The shop assistant of this supply and marketing cooperative was so mad that she almost raised her nostrils to the sky.
Although Xiulan was dissatisfied, she did not bother to with the shop assistant. It was useless to argue with such a person, so it was better to save some of her saliva.
The shop assistant came over and asked, “What do you want to buy?”
“I would like to ask how much is soap!”
The shop assistant said lightly, “One yuan plus 1-yuan industrial coupons.”
Pictures of coupons
Xiulan was a little dumbfounded by the shop assistant’s answer. So, it’s not enough to only use money to buy things because you still need coupons to purchase goods?
“What are industrial coupons? Do you need these coupons to buy things?” Xiulan didn’t understand, so she asked.
When she asked these questions, the shop assistant looked at her with disdain in her eyes and sneered. “As expected, a country bumpkin doesn’t understand anything!
“In addition to using money to buy things, you also have to use coupons. These two things are indispensable. Like for foodstuffs, you have to use food coupons, for pastries, you have to use pastry coupons, for candy, you have to use sugar coupons, cloth coupons for cloth, and oil coupons for oil!
“For things like soap, towels, iron tools, tobacco, and alcohol, you have to use industrial coupons!
“I won’t sell it to you if you only have money but no coupons! It’s different from your countryside.
“Country bumpkin, peasant, go away if you don’t have money or coupons, don’t hang around in front of me!”
With that said, the shop assistant stopped paying attention to Xiulan and continued to crack her melon seeds.
Xiulan had no money and no coupons. She was despised by the shop assistant, but she didn’t have the courage to argue with her, so she turned around and prepared to leave the supply and marketing cooperative.
***Original translation is from enchantesstranslations.com. Please read it on the translator’s website.
As she was leaving, she seemed to hear the shop assistant continue to mock and ridicule her.
She was very annoyed by that person’s attitude. Isn’t it just not having coupons? Why does she have to look down on me so much?
Before leaving the door of the supply and marketing agency, Xiulan suddenly bumped into a girl who was entering the door. The girl looked about the same age as her, about seventeen to eighteen years old.
She was probably from the city, since her clothes were much more fashionable. She was wearing a nice blouse on top and a black skirt on the bottom
The girl’s name was Liu Xiaohong, who bumped into Xiulan. Xiaohong cried out in pain and looked at the person she bumped into. She just heard the conversation between Xiulan and the shop assistant just now.
She looked at Xiulan’s clothes again that were tattered, and she didn’t know how many patches were on them. Her eyes also showed a strong disgust.
She patted her clothes and said to Xiulan angrily, “This country bumpkin, you have soiled my clothes. Do you know how expensive my clothes are? Can you afford them?”
Xiulan suffered a bit of pain from the collision, but she didn’t mind it. However, when she saw Xiaohong’s attitude, she immediately became a little annoyed. “It was obviously you who bumped into me, okay? Why would I care about your clothes? Do you still want to rely on others for your own mistakes?”
“You…” Xiaohong gritted her teeth angrily. Just now, she accidentally bumped into Xiulan’s body, so she really couldn’t blame Xiulan, but she was not willing to reconcile after Xiulan said that to her. So, she could only retorted angrily, “I bumped into you first, but so what? Who let someone like you, who have no money and no coupons, come to the supply and marketing cooperative? I am different from you. I buy things and can afford them! If you ask me, a country bumpkin like you shouldn’t come to this kind of place in the first place, so you won’t bump into me!”
Xiulan didn’t know where Xiaohong got this mindset. She was unreasonable and too sinister to twist her words and forced her own logic onto people. Xiulan immediately raised her voice and countered, “What’s the matter with being from the countryside? Have we eaten your meal? Heh! Do you think that the people in the city are that great? If it weren’t for the foodstuffs that the people from our side have worked so hard to grow, do you think the people in your city would be able to eat these foodstuffs?”