Baozi Xishi's Struggle

Mrs. Liu pointed to the wider courtyard gate next to her and said, "My family lives in the courtyard next door. Please wait a moment. I will go and get the key to this courtyard."

Shen Yu and Li stood on tiptoe and looked inside through the gap in the courtyard gate. The courtyard looked very small, only the size of a palm, with two main rooms and a small kitchen squeezed next to them.

As I was looking inside, Mrs. Liu took out the key, opened the door and went in. As expected, the courtyard was not big and looked like it had not been lived in for a long time, with weeds growing everywhere.

Li was not very satisfied. She curled her lips and said nothing. She didn't even want to go into the house to take a look. She just wanted to take Shen Yu away.

Shen Yu quietly shook his head at her, followed Mrs. Liu, opened the door and walked into the house.

The house is not big, let alone clean. There are two rooms, one big and one small. There is a wooden bed in the corner of one of the rooms, and some old furniture such as a broken table and rotten wooden frames.

Mrs. Liu looked at the broken furniture in the room awkwardly, and smiled a little sheepishly: "Well, these are some old furniture that our family replaced. Most of them are broken and can't be used anymore, but the head of the family is reluctant to throw them away, so we piled them here first. If you don't need them, you can chop them up and use them as firewood. They can be used for a while."

Shen Yu looked at the messy house and didn't care. He asked calmly, "Sister Liu, how much does it cost to rent this small courtyard for a month?"

Mrs. Liu curled her lips when she saw the mother coming in, thinking that the mother and daughter looked down on this small courtyard. She was regretting bringing them on this trip in vain. Unexpectedly, this girl who looked like a delicate flower asked about the price directly without even a word of disdain.

Mrs. Liu was delighted to see that the courtyard could be rented out.

Four or five groups of people have come to see her yard, and they all disliked it because it was small and shabby. Finally someone came to ask for the price, and she didn't want to scare him away because of the high price.

Mrs. Liu considered the way the mother and daughter were dressed and looked like they didn't look like rich people, so she said, "Young lady, you are a straightforward person. The rent for this courtyard is one thousand coins a month. If you pay for a year at a time, I can give you less."

Shen Yu was furious: "You dare to ask for a thousand coins for this little shabby house? Madam, are you here to rob me?"

She didn't show it on her face, and said in a somewhat embarrassed tone: "Mrs. Liu, if you want to live in this house, you have to clean it up. The furniture in the house is all over the place and can't be used. You have to buy some new furniture before you can live in it. There is no well in the yard, which is really inconvenient."

Mrs. Liu felt a little disdainful when she heard what Shen Yu said, and she immediately became anxious. Her face flushed and she said, "This room is small and easy to clean. Not all the furniture is unusable. Look, although one leg of this bed is broken, it will be stable after some repairs!" As she spoke, she shook the wooden bed that was supported at one corner by bricks. The wooden bed made an unpleasant "creaking" sound, shook a few times, and almost fell over.

Mrs. Liu quickly and secretly supported the wooden bed, pulled the two of them outside, pointed to the next door, and said anxiously: "There is a well in my yard, right next door. If you live here, we are a family. You can just come to my house to get water. Look around here, who else has as convenient water as mine? My well is a sweet water well, unlike other people's wells, which are shallow and the water is not as sweet as mine."

As soon as Shen Yu entered the yard and looked around the house, she had already decided to rent it. She had just arrived in the county with the three Li family members and was spending money on food and accommodation every day, so she didn't dare to be picky. She just wanted to rent a house and settle down quickly, set up a food stall and start making money. Once she had money, she would have plenty of good places to live.

Shen Yu pretended to be hesitant and looked at Li. Li had been waiting in the yard for a long time and was getting impatient. She couldn't wait to leave. She was used to living in big yards and bright houses in the countryside, and she looked down on this stuffy little yard from the bottom of her heart.

Seeing Shen Yu looking at her hesitantly, Li said, "Yuzhi, let's go somewhere else. This yard is too small."

Shen Yu nodded obediently and was about to go out with Li. Mrs. Liu held out her hand and hurriedly stopped them, saying, "How about this? I'll reduce the rent a little more, to 800 yuan a month."

Shen Yu stopped and pulled Li's sleeve, "Mother, how about we talk to Sister Liu and rent this house for 700 coins?"

Li didn't like the small and stuffy house, but seeing Shen Yu's expression, it seemed that he wanted to rent it. She was originally indecisive, but when she thought about spending less money, she changed her mind and joined in, saying, "This small yard is not worth 700 coins. If you want, I will follow your lead, but I don't know if the owner is willing."

Mrs. Liu felt a little painful when she heard the other party lowering the price, but she thought that the house had been vacant for a long time and it was always good to have an income of 700 yuan a month. If she let the mother and daughter go, she didn't know how long the house would remain vacant without any income.

After making up his mind, he gritted his teeth and said, "If you only rent it for one or two months, my price is too bad. You have to rent it for a longer period, at least more than half a year, to get this price."

Shen Yu nodded and said, "We have to rent it for half a year, but we need to clean the house and tidy it up for two or three days before we can move in, which is another expense. How about this, we can reduce the first month's rent by another 100 wen. We have to buy some plaster and paint it before we can move in."

Mrs. Liu knew that what the girl said was true. If she wanted to hire someone to clean and paint, she couldn't find anyone here for even a hundred coins, so she readily agreed and told her, "When you hire a car to move here, say we are Liu's family in Liushu Lane. There is no driver around here who doesn't know about our family."

Shen Yu nodded. Seeing that she had agreed on the rent with Mrs. Liu, and that it was not worth finding a middleman and signing a lease for renting such a small courtyard, she immediately took out her purse, counted out six hundred coins and gave them to her. They agreed to collect the rent for the next month on the tenth day of every month. After taking the key to the courtyard, she parted ways with Mrs. Liu at the alley and went back to the inn with Li.

As they walked along the road, Li couldn't help but complain to Shen Yu: "Why are you in such a hurry to rent this yard? I feel very uncomfortable with this small yard. It's so small and narrow. I have to put in a lot of effort to clean it up before people can live in it."

Shen Yu knew that Li was not satisfied with the rental place, so she was not annoyed after hearing this. She explained in a gentle voice: "Mother, this small courtyard is very close to the market. I plan to set up a food stall at the entrance of the market. It is more convenient to set up the stall if it is close. Besides, we don't have much money now. The houses in the county are different from those in the countryside. If you want to rent a house of the same size as in the countryside, you can't do it without spending ten or eight taels a month."

Li couldn't help but sigh: "My God, renting a house in the county town is so expensive, why don't we go to your uncle for help."

Shen Yu was a little amused and had to patiently explain to Li: "You only see that it costs a lot of money to rent a house in the county town, but there are many people coming and going in the county town, and there are many opportunities to make money. If you work hard here, the money you earn in a month can catch up with the annual harvest in the countryside. If you earn more, you can naturally afford to rent a big house, eat well, and live well. It is much better than farming in the countryside and eating vegetable porridge without oil every day."

Li listened to the bright future described by Shen Yu, half believing and half doubting, but said nothing more.

The two talked all the way back to the inn. After a short rest, they took the three of them out of the inn and came to the newly rented courtyard.

Yutao and Yucheng stood in the yard, looking around curiously, not knowing what their eldest sister was going to do.

Shen Yu, however, wore a headscarf, rolled up his sleeves, and directed the three people to also wear headscarves and pick out usable furniture together.

He pieced things together and picked up some bricks to restabilize the wooden bed with broken legs. He also found two broken bed boards that were still usable and used wooden bench bricks as bed legs to build two small beds. In this way, he had three beds.

In a larger room, the wooden bed with broken legs and the small bed made of wooden boards were moved to the left and right and set up. Shen Yu planned to sleep on the small wooden bed and let Li and Yutao sleep on the big bed.

Although Yucheng was still young, he was a boy after all, so a small bed was set up in the corner of another room for him to sleep on.

The hut is not big. After putting a bed in it, the remaining half is used to store the table and chairs for daily meals, as well as the ingredients and kitchen utensils used for setting up a food stall.

There weren't many usable things in the pile of junk. Most of them were broken wooden legs, broken cabinets, and some small wooden stools, which were probably replaced when Mrs. Liu set up a stall.

The family worked together to move out the useless broken wood and piled it in a corner of the kitchen. The only thing that could be used was a small square table, a few wooden stools, and a small cart frame without wheels. It looked quite sturdy and could be used with wheels, so they put it aside for the time being.

By the time they had cleaned up, it was already dark and everyone's faces were covered in dust.