Literary Heroes of the Republic of China

The steamed buns bought by Boss Chen were eaten up by everyone. After all, they are big men. Even if they are already full, it is not difficult to stuff a steamed stuffed bun in their stomachs.

But there are a few bread left in the store, no one wants to eat them.

Boss Chen has always forbade his employees to take home food from western restaurants, even leftovers. After all, opening such an opening would cause a lot of trouble. For example, the cook might intentionally make more bread, or One will be dissatisfied if one takes the other.

But Mu Qiong does not enter the kitchen, and the cook and helper Xiao Wang will not be dissatisfied with him... Boss Chen gave Mu Qiong all the remaining six breads today.

Before, they would continue to sell the leftover bread of the day the next day, but today's business is good, and tomorrow's business may not be bad, so Boss Chen became generous and didn't keep the overnight bread.

He also negotiated with the cook during the meal, and asked the cook to come to the store two hours earlier every day.Of course, he will also give him an extra two yuan a month, and the monthly salary will change from eight yuan to ten yuan.

As for Xiao Wang, the helper, Boss Chen also talked to him and asked him to quit his job at the bun shop and only work here in the future.Of course, the salary will also increase. Boss Chen will pay him eight yuan a month in the future-this will be the same as his income from working two jobs now, and he can get up later-the bun shop, but in the early morning I have to go to work around three o'clock.

The cook and Xiao Wang agreed without even thinking about it.

As for Mu Qiong, his salary has increased accordingly, directly by four yuan, and will be ten yuan a month like the cook in the future.

At this time, outside the concession, if you hire a shopkeeper who can write and calculate, you only need to pay [-] yuan a month, which is not a low monthly salary.

"If the business continues to be so good in the future, I will recruit two more people." Boss Chen replied.

Mu Qiong agreed with this very much. Although he is not tired of working at Boss Chen's place, he doesn't have much free time... If Boss Chen recruits two more people, he can be free to do other things.

On this day, Mu Qiong was holding a small black pottery pot filled with stir-fried vegetables, carrying deep-fried pork cutlets and bread on the tram.

Not surprisingly, he ran into the boy who took the tram with him almost every day again.

This young man should be from a good family, well-dressed, and able to study... These days, if you want to study, there are cheap schools, but those schools are outside the concession... Taking the tram to study in the concession every day is definitely expensive.

Often met in the car, Mu Qiong also noticed that this young man ignored him, probably because he looked down on him.

He is not surprised.

Through some materials he has read in his previous life and his understanding these days, he knows that in this era, scholars basically think highly of themselves. A well-known literati in this period said when talking about education, "A child who has studied in primary school After six years of study, after graduating and returning home, wearing a long gown, he disdained to help his elder brother with carpentry and his father's farming, and he said that he was a student and a special class."

But in fact, many people with such high self-esteem can't find suitable jobs at all...

Mu Qiong is too lazy to meddle in other people's affairs.It's good not to chat on the tram, he just has time to think.

When Mu Qiong came home that day, Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu were not waiting for him at the door.

He was quite surprised, after all, before, these two people would wait for him at the door every day, and Mu Changyu would cook some kind of pickled vegetable soup, so that he could have a hot bowl of it when he got home.

But after entering the house, Mu Qiong knew what was going on.

Zhu Wanwan had already put the door panel on a stool and made a "bed", but did not put any bedding on it. At this moment, she and Mu Changyu were using it as a table, and they were holding it by candlelight. Tin foil folded silver ingots.

There was a basket next to the two of them, which was filled with ingots folded out of tin foil.

"Brother, you're back!" Seeing Mu Qiong, Mu Changyu stopped what he was doing and smiled at Mu Qiong.

"I'm back... why are you folding this?" Mu Qiong was puzzled.

These days, Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu have been helping people with laundry and mending, but Mu Qiong didn't stop them.

After all, their family is still very poor, and there is no next meal for the last meal.

It was the first time he had seen them do such a job as folding ingots.

"We're folding ingots, brother. After folding five catties of tinfoil, you can get thirty cents." Mu Changyu was full of excitement, and explained the ins and outs clearly in a chattering voice.

There is a local custom that when someone dies in the family, some silver ingots are to be burned, and the silver ingots are all folded with tin foil.

At that time, there was no cheap tinned paper or silver glossy paper like modern times, and the production technology could not keep up. Most of the tin foils were hand-printed with tin, which was expensive.In order to show their financial strength, many wealthy families will buy more than ten catties of tin foil to fold into ingots and incinerate them at funerals.

When the old lady of the family where Zhao Chunjuan worked died, their family bought twelve catties of tinfoil and returned.

Generally, tinfoil is used to fold ingots, which is done by the women of the family when they are keeping watch, but their family moved here, and there are few relatives and friends. There are only five people in total including the night watchmen and the servants, and it is impossible to fold so many tinfoils. Well, the lady at home was still unwilling to fold it, so she finally took out five catties and asked others to fold it for them.

They asked Zhao Chunjuan to find someone, and Zhao Chunjuan gave it directly to her old mother, but Aunt Zhao happened to be having menstruation, so she was not allowed to touch these according to the usual practice, which made it easier for Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu.

"Thanks to Aunt Zhao for this job." Zhu Wanwan was very grateful.Although the ingot is urgent, and she will have to stay up late tonight to fold it, but she can get three cents!Instead of doing laundry, she would have to wash dozens of pieces!

Not to mention sitting and folding things without being tired at all.

"Mother, you can cut a catty of pork and send it to Aunt Zhao tomorrow." Mu Qiong said: "Aunt Zhao gave you the work, you should thank me." It can be seen that she is not a bad person, but she loves to take advantage of small things.Zhu Wanwan got benefits from her and gave her something, she must be happy, and she should think about Zhu Wanwan in the future.

Zhu Wanwan was a little bit reluctant, but she still said, "That's fine."

"Let's also buy a catty for our own family. Fat meat is boiled in lard, lean meat is fried and eaten, and we can buy some rice to cook rice...you can eat it yourself, don't keep it for me. The business of western restaurants is good. I live there. I ate very well, I ate meat buns tonight, and the boss also said that we will cook braised pork tomorrow." Mu Qiong said.

Zhu Wanwan hesitated.

"Changyu is so thin, he should eat something good." Mu Qiong said again.

Zhu Wanwan glanced at her daughter and agreed.

At this time, Mu Qiong took out the food he had brought back.

Both the tonkatsu and the stir-fried vegetables were already cold.

Cold dishes are not so delicious, especially tonkatsu. After the crunchy tonkatsu is cold, the bread crumbs on the outside become soft and not fragrant.

But it's meat!

It's meat fried in oil!

Mu Changyu's eyes lit up.

"Changyu, cut the pork chop in half and eat it with your mother," Mu Qiong said.

Mu Changyu nodded.

The kitchen is outside the house, and they cook outside, but when they are ready, they will pack up all the pots and pans and put them in the house, and even the firewood for cooking is piled up in the house.

Otherwise, it might be taken away by someone else.

Mu Changyu found a knife from the things piled in the corner of the room, cut up the fried pork chops, and brought them back in a bowl.

Zhu Wanwan always thinks about her children: "Qiong'er, mother will share the food with you..."

"Mom, I'm not hungry after eating a lot at night." Mu Qiong frowned: "I will let you eat in the future, so you can eat, don't push around like this."

Zhu Wanwan was afraid of making Mu Qiong unhappy if she backed down again, so she finally started to eat.

Seeing this, Mu Qiong also took a piece of bread to eat. It took him two hours to come back and he had to walk a long way... Now it's past nine o'clock, so he can eat some more naturally.

Speaking of it, their house is a bit far away from the concession, but he has no money to move for the time being... Forget it, let's treat it as exercise!

The three of them ate everything that Mu Qiong brought home. After eating, Zhu Wanwan and Mu Changyu started working again—they still had a lot of ingots that had not been folded, and they would have to work for two or three hours to finish. .

Mu Qiong wanted to help, but Zhu Wanwan refused to let her go, insisting that men can't do these things.

Mu Qiong sneered at the saying that men can't break ingots, but he has to get up early tomorrow... He still fell asleep first in the dim candlelight.

The young man's body also made him fall asleep very quickly.

When Mu Qiong went to the western restaurant the next day, the cook and helper Xiao Wang were already there.

The cook got up early today. As for the helper Xiao Wang, he resigned after helping the owner of the bun shop make buns in the morning, and came to the western restaurant early.

Boss Chen had already purchased pork chops and vegetables early in the morning, and they were busy processing them right now.

Mu Qiong helped Boss Chen clean the shop briefly, and then opened the shop early.

This day's business was even better than the previous day. Before it was time for dinner, many people came to eat. The three people in the store were very busy, and Mu Qiong, who was standing at the door, was the most relaxed.

"Young man, you can speak foreign language, why do you still do this kind of work?" Mu Qiong was greeting the guests when suddenly a young man in his thirties came to talk to him.

"I didn't find another job." Mu Qiong replied casually.

"You are wronged by doing this, the owner of this shop should not give you much money, right?" the man said again, looking like a caring brother.

Mu Qiong felt that something was wrong, and at this moment, Boss Chen's voice sounded: "Mu Qiong!"

"Boss, what's the matter?" Mu Qiong smiled and ran to Boss Chen.

"It's nothing...Mu Qiong, I have something for you." Boss Chen said, and took out a tube of heavy silver dollars wrapped in paper to Mu Qiong: "I wanted to give you this money yesterday... Your business can improve, thanks to you, I should give you some rewards."

There are about ten silver dollars wrapped in this barrel.

Mu Qiong also felt that the value of the idea he gave to Boss Chen was more than the one silver dollar that Boss Chen gave him at first, but he never thought that Boss Chen would be willing to give him so much money just when the business started to improve.

Seeing that Mu Qiong was a little surprised, Boss Chen lowered his voice and said, "But don't teach others these things!"

"Boss, I will definitely not teach others." Mu Qiong agreed with a smile.He felt that he didn't need to teach this, others would learn it casually...

"Good!" Boss Chen was very happy.

Mu Qiong was not as happy as him. After all, the layout of the store is really easy to be imitated: "Boss, the teacher who taught me foreign language told me some foreign dishes. Do you want to sell them in the store?"

"What dish? Could it be fried steak?" Boss Chen asked immediately.He also wanted to develop a few new dishes. After all, if there is only fried pork cutlet in the store, no one will come to eat it every day, no matter how delicious it is, right?

Even if you are a person who comes to the concession, if you eat tonkatsu this time, you will probably want to change the taste next time.

"No, it's something called a hamburger." Mu Qiong said, "A hamburger is a piece of bread the size of a palm is cut open and eaten with meat and vegetables inside."

At this time, there were already hamburgers abroad, but not in China.

Of course, what Mu Qiong was talking about was not an authentic hamburger... He just asked Boss Chen to bake some bigger buns, and then put fried pork cutlets in the middle to sell.

"We can sell hamburgers with fried pork chops for a dime, and we can also make hamburgers with a fried egg inside, which costs about three copper dollars..." Mu Qiong said a lot.

Boss Chen's eyes became brighter and brighter.

Taking this opportunity, Mu Qiong said again: "Boss, I want to buy some winter clothes tomorrow morning, so I have to come later."

"No problem, just come over at noon!" Boss Chen said, "I won't deduct your salary."

Boss Chen is very happy at the moment, and Mu Qiong is also very happy with the heavy money in his arms - he has a lot of things he wants to buy.