Caixia was surprised when she heard that Xiulan even had eggs and oil.
Without asking the prices, Caixia hurriedly replied, “Yes, definitely! Sister, how many do you have there?”
Oil and eggs were more expensive than gold at this time. Furthermore, they were difficult to buy.
Foodstuffs might be available on the black market, but the chances of being able to buy eggs and oil were much smaller than the chances of buying other foodstuffs. That was the reason why Caixia didn’t ask for the prices and immediately said that she wanted them.
“I don’t have much eggs and oil. I only have ten eggs and a kilo of oil here,” replied Xiulan
In order to make it clear to Caixia, Xiulan also took the initiative to quote the prices, “The egg is fifty cents per piece and the canola oil is twenty yuan per kilo. If you have tickets, canola oil is sixteen yuan per kilo plus 500-gram oil coupons.”
After hearing that, Caixia felt that the prices quoted by Xiulan were still cheap. “Okay, Sister! I know that you are a sincere person and I want all these things.
“However, I didn’t bring so much money and coupons with me. Why don’t you go home with me to send these things over to my house? In that way, we don’t need to do the trade in this crowded place and I’ll pay you with money and coupons when we go to my house. Is that okay with you?”
This era was different from the 21st century where there was not so much fraud and danger in business dealings.
Moreover, if she encountered something, Xiulan’s skills were not too bad to be able to deal with it.
During her last life, in order to deal with the apocalypse, she still had a lot of self-defense tools in her space.
There was no way that she would refuse this proposal, so she went back home with Caixia.
The two reached an agreement and left the black market together. Caixia led her to a residential building.
***Original translation is from enchantesstranslations.com. Please read it on the translator’s website.***
The residential building was in a large courtyard and many families were living in it.
This building had two floors and each family occupied one room in it to be their house, which resembled a unit in a small apartment building.
During this time, the houses in the city were also scarce.
Houses like this were basically allocated to employees by the work units.
The house was not large. It was estimated to be forty to fifty square meters only and the whole family had to be squeezed into that small space.
Some families had many members, so the lives of a large family were all in this small house, which was really crowded.
But even so, it was not easy to have a house in the city.
Xiulan followed Caixia into the house. There were also a few children in the house. The eldest was a girl who was about five to six years old, and there was a little boy who was about three years old. There was also a baby lying on the bed who was about five to six months old.
Although the house was very small, it was very clean and tidy, which made people feel comfortable at first glance.
Xiulan took the foodstuffs out of the basket and put them on the floor of Caixia’s house. Caixia also went into the house to rummage through her things to look for the money and coupons. Then, she handed them over to Xiulan.
The rice and white flour were five kilos each, and because she had coupons, she only needed to pay sixty yuan. If she also paid food coupons for the dried noodles, a kilo would only cost seven yuan, so the four kilos of dried noodles were a total of twenty-eight yuan.
Ten eggs were a total of five yuan and if she paid with oil coupons for the canola oil, half a kilo would only cost eight yuan, so a kilo would be sixteen yuan.
All in all, it was a total of 109 yuan, plus fourteen-kilo food coupons and one-kilo oil coupons.
Because the food coupons were not enough, she put together ten-kilo food coupons and twenty-yuan industrial coupons. She handed over eleven hundred-yuan bills and many different coupons to Xiulan.
Xiulan was about to find one yuan as a change, but she was stopped by her. “Sister, you don’t need to give me the one-yuan change. I know that the prices you quoted are not high. You can sell these many things to me and I am very grateful for that.”