Chapter 133 - 119: Widespread Jubilation
Chapter 133: Chapter 119: Widespread Jubilation
A long bench with a wooden plank on top, placed against a wall, served as a bed. On it was a new cotton quilt that Zhou Yan had bought two days earlier.
A warm yellow lamp lit the room. Besides the bed, there were only two wooden chests, making the space look empty.
Zhou Momo was wrapped in a small blanket, sleeping soundly like a little caterpillar.
Zhao Tieying lay on the bed, her eyes wide open as she looked around, too excited to sleep. "Old Zhou, does this count as us moving into our new home?"
"Of course it does. And it’s a multi-story building, too! Concrete floors, whitewashed walls, and on the second floor. It’s so much better than our old, patched-up mud walls." Zhou Miao nodded with a smile. "Zhou Yan really knows how to get things done."
"That boy... it’s like he’s suddenly been enlightened. He’s become so reliable in his words and actions, knowing how to ease his parents’ worries!" Zhao Tieying was beaming, but her eyes were a little moist.
"Well, he’s the son you gave birth to. After all these years you spent raising him, it’s only right that he’s dutiful to you." Zhou Miao reached out, wrapped an arm around her, and gently patted her back.
Zhao Tieying buried her head in his chest and whispered, "That night, when I watched the house collapse, I felt like my whole world was collapsing. I never thought we’d have a new home so soon."
"As long as the family is together, it’s a home." Zhou Miao held her a little tighter.
The gentle murmuring of the river outside the window soon lulled them to sleep.
...
Zhou Yan woke up just as the sky was beginning to brighten.
It couldn’t be helped. His biological clock was set—early to bed, early to rise, and full of energy.
He pulled the cash box out from under the bed and tucked a stack of bills on his person. With only nine tables of guests for lunch today, he didn’t need to prepare many dishes, but leaving early meant he could pick out better quality ingredients.
Since the braised meat went on the menu, word-of-mouth had spread quickly. The restaurant’s revenue had held steady at around five hundred yuan for four straight days, with a gross profit of about two hundred sixty or seventy.
The past two days had been filled with large expenses: rendering lard, buying half a tractor-load of Chestnut Wood for firewood, renovating the second floor, building a new stove, and buying a new wok.
He still had 762.62 yuan in cash on hand.
It could be considered a huge sum.
Of course, this was before deducting the wages and commissions for Mrs. Zhao and Comrade Zhou.
Right now, the Kneeling Beef was consistently selling one hundred and twenty bowls a day, with a very stable sixty percent profit margin. Mrs. Zhao’s daily commission was about eight yuan, meaning her monthly salary plus commission could reach around two hundred and seventy yuan.
As for the braised meat, thanks to Comrade Zhou’s fancy cutting techniques, its revenue had stabilized at around one hundred and fifty yuan, also with a gross profit margin of about sixty percent. Comrade Zhou’s daily commission was about eighteen yuan.
Zhou Yan was happy to pay them this money. After all, Mrs. Zhao and Comrade Zhou were his angel investors; the restaurant had been started with their life savings. It would be perfectly reasonable for them to demand dividends directly from him.
Besides, the two of them were the restaurant’s core technical staff now. Without them, how could the revenue ever hit five hundred? The business would fall apart.
Helping out at the restaurant was much better than Comrade Zhou’s old job of slaughtering cattle. The workload was lighter, and after going with Zhou Yan to buy ingredients in the morning and prepping the chickens and pig heads, he would just go fish for a while by the river in front of the shop.
However, he had been skunked for four days straight.
Yesterday, Comrade Zhou had declared that the boats coming and going from the dock by the textile factory were scaring all the fish away. Today, he was going to fish at his old spot.
Those who know, know.
When fishing right under Mrs. Zhao’s nose, if you don’t catch anything, you really don’t catch anything. It wasn’t easy to sneak off to the market and buy a fish to save face.
After setting aside three hundred yuan for groceries, Zhou Yan planned to take his parents and little Zhou Momo into the city for a shopping spree after the lunch rush. He wanted to go to the department store and buy some things for their new home.
Right now, the state of the second floor was no different from being utterly destitute.
Just as Zhou Yan was about to head out, Comrade Zhou came downstairs after him.
"Dad, we’re not making braised meat or cold-tossed chicken today. Why didn’t you sleep in a bit?" Zhou Yan asked.
"I’ve been sleeping much more than I used to. I wake up at dawn anyway, and it’s uncomfortable to just lie in bed." Comrade Zhou pulled out the new fishing rod he had made two days ago from under the stairs, smiling. "I’m going to get to the spot early and catch the morning bite. See if I can land a big one."
In those days, most fishing rods used by enthusiasts in small towns were homemade from bamboo. They were usually around 1.8 meters long; any longer would be inconvenient to carry and too heavy and tiring to hold.
Comrade Zhou had always been skilled with his hands. This old, mottled bamboo pole had been straightened over a fire until it was perfectly taut. Tied to its tip was a translucent fishing line, the float was a set of six small, segmented floats made from a goose feather quill, and the hook had been upgraded from a bent embroidery needle to a store-bought one.
With a well-funded private stash of cash, Comrade Zhou’s equipment had seen a significant upgrade compared to a month ago.
The only thing that hadn’t changed was his loyalty to getting skunked.
’That shouldn’t be the case,’ Zhou Yan thought. During his post-work runs along the river lately, he had seen plenty of fishermen on both banks. Every one of them had fish in their creels, big and small. Fishermen who got skunked were a rare sight.
While you couldn’t just scoop fish out of the Qingyi River with a ladle, in an era before electro-fishing had appeared, fishing shouldn’t have been that hard. ’Anyone with hands should be able to do it.’
"Dad, what are you using for bait?" Zhou Yan couldn’t help but ask.
"Earthworms, of course. I see everyone else using them. I make sure to dig up the big ones. I put one on the hook that’s this thick and this long," Comrade Zhou said, holding up his middle finger to show the size. "It’s for catching big fish."
Hearing this, Zhou Yan’s vision went black, then black again.
’An earthworm half the thickness of a middle finger on a hook? What are you trying to catch, a freshwater shark?’
’It’s not that there aren’t big fish in the Qingyi River, but the hook Comrade Zhou is using is only about the width of a pinky fingernail.’
Zhou Yan wasn’t a fisherman himself, but he had a roommate in college who was obsessed with fishing. The guy was an expert in everything from pole fishing to lure fishing, even making his own fermented rice bait in their dorm room. He was always so tan he looked like a kid from Africa.