As they both erged from the jewelry shop in town, Yaya looked at Xiao Yu with a face full of admiration.
"Sister, you’re amazing, earning money as soon as you said you would! Did you dig those pearls out of the sea yourself?"
Xiao Yu had entered the jewelry shop and sold ten pearls. Since they were sea pearls, not freshwater pearls, she was given 50 copper coins for each one. Ten pearls amounted to 500 coins, which was only half a tael of silver. To Xiao Yu, this price seed absurdly low. Thankfully, she was only selling them because she urgently needed the money; otherwise, she wouldn’t have been willing to let them go.
After all, she had painstakingly extracted each pearl from the shells herself, and it had taken quite an effort to accumulate a jar full. She intended to keep them for making her own jewelry in the future, and definitely could not waste them like this. This had to be a one-ti exception.
"Yes, I dug them out of the sea myself. It wasn’t easy. If I hadn’t needed the money urgently, I wouldn’t have wanted to sell them."
With the 500 coins, things were much easier. Worried that the child didn’t have food at ho, she made an excuse to leave for a while and actually brought out so dicinal materials and food from her space. She then spent two cents to buy two passes before leaving the city.
Yaya’s house wasn’t close to the town, they walked for about two hours, going around a mountain before reaching the small fishing village behind it.
Their fishing village was called Huagang Village, a small seaside village. Although not large in area, it had mountains, water, and fields. The entire village consisted of roughly twenty or thirty households. It may not sound like many people, but Yaya sighed and said,
"There used to be over fifty households, but after consecutive epidemics and famines, many left or died. Now, this is all that remains. Less than ten families in our village have boats. The rest just do odd jobs for these boat-owning families. The elderly, won, and children can only farm, raise chickens, and pigs to survive. Like my family, we can’t even feed ourselves, let alone raise chickens or pigs."
Houses by the sea, due to rough winds and waves, all had wind-blocking stone walls, and the actual houses were built inside these walls. In an era without reinforced concrete, only stone and wood were used. Yaya’s house had stone on the exterior, and the interior was built with adobe bricks, similar to the ones she made on the island.
Yaya’s house was not big, with two rooms in the main house and one wing room on each side. Tucked in the corner was a pigsty and chicken coop, but they seed to have been unused for a long ti.
Adjacent to the courtyard wall was a small vegetable garden, planted with radishes and cabbage, but they looked unimpressive, riddled with insect holes, and clearly showing signs of malnutrition.
Turning around, she saw many jars on her left-hand side, which, if she guessed correctly, contained soy paste or pickles, just like in her own ho.
In the left corner of the house was a latrine, a very rudintary structure enclosed by wooden planks without even a roof.
The right corner of the house was a utility room, piled high with firewood. As for the cooking area, it was outside in the yard.
"What if it’s windy or raining? How do you cook then? Haven’t you thought of building a kitchen?"
Yaya shook her head: "We’ve always cooked outside. If it rains, we wait for it to stop. If it doesn’t, we just sleep, and when we’re asleep, we don’t feel hungry."
Xiao Yu choked upon hearing this, and then her heart filled with compassion.
The ho was in disrepair, but it was clean, particularly the vegetable garden, which clearly showed that the owner took care of it carefully. But still, the crops were riddled with worms. Without pesticides or fertilizers in those tis, they probably had no choice.
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