diskusbooks Chapter 117 Renovating the Shop and Building a Toilet
Chapter 117 Renovating the Shop and Building a Toilet
The letter reads:
Si Shaoheng handed over both the bone injury ointment and the wound medicine. After the doctor from the county government inspected them on-site, they were rated as first-class wound medicines and were returned at two taels of silver per bottle.
Si Shaoheng proactively informed that the bone injury ointment has an "expiration date," and once opened, it should be used up within two months at most in the north.
Registrar Xu laughed and said, "Two months? With only three hundred cans, I'm afraid it won't be enough for the Northern Army to use for ten days or half a month."
Si Shaoheng immediately became more cautious and inquired about Bian Bei's medication situation.
Judging from the rate at which the medicines were being consumed, Si Shaoheng deduced that there were likely small-scale attacks every three days and large-scale attacks every five days in the Bianbei area.
So when he wrote back, he was telling Cheng Ruoan that he planned to use all the 1,600 taels of silver collected by the county government for wound medicine, as well as the 5 taels of silver deposit paid by people for ten jars of hand ointment, to buy grain and store it in his spatial storage.
After all, war could break out at any time. Even if they could all hide in the deep mountains of Daxi Village, the Si and Cheng families still had to stockpile food.
Songshan County is the largest county town in the northern region, except for Beiming Prefecture. It has twelve wards in total, with no fewer than twenty rice and flour shops.
Si Shaoheng's large-scale grain purchases over there are unlikely to arouse suspicion.
After reading the letter, Cheng Ruoan put it into her spatial storage.
While standing on the street, he squinted and took a moment to go to the living room of the villa and write a note, which he then placed on the coffee table.
"Mr. Si, have you forgotten that you can freely enter and exit your own space? If you want to send me a message, you can just leave a note in your space! Why bother having someone bring it back, and even folding it into squares? Don't you find it tiring?"
Besides, you're right, we definitely need to stockpile food.
But now we only have less than 500 taels of cash left. Don't use all 1,605 taels to buy grain. Buy 1,000 taels to stock up first.
I still have other uses.
While you're in town, you can also buy some various vegetable seeds, fruit seeds, and grain seeds.
Take some time to tidy up the yard and plant something. Thanks for your hard work!
After leaving the note, Cheng Ruoan's consciousness left the space, and when she opened her eyes, she stepped into the bricklayer's shop.
Unlike other shops, this shop had no counter or shelves, only various bricks and tiles of different sizes scattered around, as well as stacks of adobe molds.
Not seeing anyone, Cheng Ruoan called out a little louder, "Excuse me, is this Yang the tiler's shop?"
The dark blue curtain in the shop swayed, and a dusty-faced man walked out from behind it. "Yes, yes, I am Yang the bricklayer. What does this lady need to buy, or does her house need repairs or renovations?"
Cheng Ruoan took out a simple construction plan she had drawn herself from her sleeve and handed it to Yang the bricklayer.
"Mr. Yang, could you please take a look? I'd like to convert the row of back-facing houses in front of my house into shops like this. Can you do that?"
Yang the bricklayer took the construction plan, frowned and looked at it for a long time before he suddenly realized, "It's just about demolishing one wall and sealing up one door, it's not difficult at all!"
"But lady, don't hire your painting master again next time. What is this painting? It took me ages to look at it."
Cheng Ruoan awkwardly touched his nose and coughed twice to cover his embarrassment: "Yang the bricklayer, take a closer look. Besides the blueprints for the shop, there's also a latrine. Do you think you can build it?"
The original outhouse in the Cheng residence was the typical style of the Great Xia Dynasty: a wooden plank house with a chamber pot inside.
In wealthy households, the chamber pot would be covered with a layer of wood ash after each use. Once the chamber pot was full, a servant would come to clean it up and take it away. At night, it would be handed over to the chamber pot cleaner through the side door.
But in ordinary families, they only care about relieving themselves and don't care about dusting. When they take out the chamber pot to empty someone else's chamber pot, it's a full bucket...
Cheng Ruoan simply couldn't accept it.
Besides, everyone she's hired is a worker. They're already busy with their own jobs every day, so where would they find the time to help them with their chamber pots?
Therefore, Cheng Ruoan preferred to spend more money to build a toilet near the side gate of the front yard and the side gate of the second courtyard.
Cheng Ruoan helped Yang the bricklayer find a toilet blueprint and explained to him the small details that he couldn't draw himself.
After listening to and asking all the questions, Yang the bricklayer said, "Although I have never seen a latrine like this before, I can make one."
However, according to your idea, simply digging a passage for this filth is probably not enough.
Using polished stone slabs to piece together and lay the latrine is feasible, but it's labor-intensive and uses a lot of stone, so the cost of building a latrine that way wouldn't be low.
When Cheng Ruoan heard him say "it can be done", he breathed a sigh of relief and waved his hand generously, saying, "A higher price is fine, as long as it can be made."
In this way, the toilet pipes can be directly connected to the outside of the house, and a latrine can be buried in the alleyway outside the Cheng residence, making it convenient for the person collecting night soil to clean it.
When Yang the bricklayer heard that Cheng Ruoan didn't care about the money at all just to build a latrine, he found it amusing.
"Cheng Erniangzi, you don't know the cost of firewood, rice, oil, and salt when you're not in charge of the household!"
The labor cost for building this outhouse for you would be no less than five taels of silver, and the stone for the pipes would also cost at least three or four taels of silver...
"Tsk tsk, how many chamber pots and wood ash could you buy with eight or nine taels of silver?"
Cheng Ruoan laughed and said, "But the shop that my family converted is for a food business, and there will inevitably be people in the shop who need to relieve themselves. If we use a chamber pot, then in order to keep it clean and odor-free, I'm afraid I'll have to hire or buy someone to clean the outhouse..."
Yang the bricklayer: !!!
He couldn't laugh anymore after hearing what Cheng Ruoan said.
I immediately went through the calculations in my mind.
The minimum cost to hire a capable worker is ten taels of silver, and hiring a laborer would cost at least two hundred coins a month. Over three and a half years, the wages would far exceed eight taels of silver.
Building a toilet like this, even if it doesn't last a hundred years, should easily last twenty or thirty years.
Most importantly, as Cheng Ruoan said, after using the toilet, you just rinse it with a ladle, and the filth will be gone. Wouldn't that make it clean and odorless?
Isn't this exactly what wealthy families and those in restaurants and brothels are most interested in?
The more Yang the bricklayer thought about it, the more excited he became—this was a business opportunity!
A golden opportunity!
Yang the bricklayer looked at Cheng Ruoan, scratching his head with a smile, "Second Madam Cheng, I'd like to make a deal with you, about the construction plans for your toilet..."
Cheng Ruoan could guess what he was going to say just by looking at his smile.
"I drew this diagram myself. I wouldn't dare say that I'm the only one in the world who knows the details of how it was built, but no one in Bachuan Prefecture or Beiming Prefecture should know it."
The bricklayer, Yang, said excitedly, "My family has lived in Beiming Prefecture for generations, and we have never seen a latrine like this before. So what I want to ask is, Madam Cheng, are you selling these building plans?"