Chapter 19: Temptation
Old Zhou was unwilling to move. "What's the point of weaving that little basket? It's not for eating or drinking."
"We can make flower baskets and earn money," Manbao told her father about her plan, omitting only the sugar part. She said confidently, "When I make money, I can give Dad some money for his hard work."
Old Zhou touched the tobacco on his waist, but couldn't bear to smoke it. He had decided to sell all the cigarettes at home. Although they were not worth much, he could still buy some medicine for his wife.
Old Zhou looked at his daughter and shook his head, saying, "Dad doesn't want the hard work fee, so I'd rather not do it."
He didn't want to mess around with a bunch of kids.
Everyone had a look of disappointment on their faces. Manbao went to her mother for support. Qian couldn't stand Manbao's coquetry, so she could only say to Old Zhou, "It's not a big deal. You have nothing to do anyway, so why not make a few for the children? It's not hard work."
With his wife giving the order and his daughter and a group of grandchildren looking on eagerly, Old Zhou had no choice but to go to the shack and drag out his second son to weave bamboo baskets for them with used bamboo strips.
Seeing that Datou and Ertou were squatting down to watch the fun, he pulled them over and said, "Come, let grandpa teach you. You are not young anymore, it's time to learn some skills."
There are not many people in the village who can do bamboo weaving, but there are not too few either. However, this is not a craft that you can master just by learning it. At least Zhou Erlang is the only one in the whole village, young and old, who can sell bamboo weaving to the market or the county town.
The bamboo baskets he wove were so strong and dense that even wheat could not leak out. However, some people's bamboo baskets were just for show. They looked no different from those sold in the market, but after a few uses, the bamboo strips would become crooked and holes would appear, making them useless.
Lao Zhoutou’s craftsmanship belongs to the latter category.
However, he couldn't weave a big bamboo basket, but wasn't the bamboo basket in the little girl's hand, which was only as big as her little head, difficult to weave?
It's just a showpiece. At most, you can put ten eggs in it. Old Zhou thinks it won't go bad even if you carry it for ten years.
Because he didn't take this thing seriously, and the bamboo sticks he used were all Erlang's discarded bamboo sticks, he didn't feel bad about letting his grandsons get involved in the trouble.
Manbao was also very excited after seeing it, so he took a bamboo stick and wanted to learn, and also asked Daya and Erya to join him.
Old Zhou glanced at his two granddaughters. He thought that this kind of craft should not be learned by girls. But when he looked at the bamboo strips on the ground, he thought, let’s learn it. Once the bamboo strips are used once, it will be difficult to use them again. He is not the second son, so he cannot break them back.
When the bamboo strips are used up, there is no need to weave them again.
Manbao had no idea of his father's conspiracy, and he was staring at his actions with his big eyes.
While Old Zhou was weaving slowly, he said to her, "You little kid, you can't even bend a bamboo stick, why are you joining in the fun here? Be careful not to hurt your hands."
Qian was sitting on a stool basking in the sun. She smiled and waved to Manbao, saying, "Manbao, come here, mother will teach you."
Manbao happily ran over holding the bamboo strips, "Mom, can you also weave bamboo?"
"I've watched it for a lifetime, so even if I've never tried it myself, I've got a general idea of how to do it." Qian was ill and couldn't do heavy work, but she had no problem bending the bamboo strips while sitting.
She just sat there, weaving and explaining to Manbao that this kind of small bamboo weaving was not difficult and the process was quick, and Qian's first finished product came out soon.
Manbao took it and compared it with the two her father had already made, wrinkled her nose and said, "Mom, yours is so ugly."
Old Zhou laughed proudly, "After all, your father has made a lot of bamboo weavings, so of course they are better looking than your mother's."
Qian was not discouraged. She waved to Manbao and said, "Bring a few more and I'll make another one."
She smiled and said, "Practice makes perfect. If you learn something you don't know a few times, you will learn it."
Manbao felt that what her mother said made sense, so she dragged another handful of bamboo sticks to her mother.
The four children had originally moved from their grandfather's place to their grandmother's place to learn, but felt that their grandmother's weaving was ugly, so they just moved back to their grandfather's place, looking left and right, not knowing who to learn from.
Manbao despised them and said, "You two can't be so indecisive. Forget it, Datou and Ertou, just follow your father. Da Ya and Er Ya, come and learn from your mother."
The four children finally settled down and stopped wandering around.
Qian looked at them with a smile, feeling that her daughter was the one who made the final decision.
The most idle person in the room was Manbao. That was just on the surface. In fact, she was also very busy. As soon as the bamboo basket was made, Manbao took it and discussed with Keke, "Do you think the bamboo basket made by my mother is good enough?"
The system said: "There is nothing in this world that cannot be turned into a commodity. You can perform secondary processing."
Manbao: "Then I will give it the most beautiful flower."
Manbao began to pick out the most beautiful flowers from the pile, and then put them into her mother's basket. The flowers were all mixed together in a colorful mess, but she liked them and was very happy. "This basket looks beautiful at first glance."
Koko was silent for a long time before saying, "There may not be many people in this world who share the same aesthetic taste as the host."
Manbao repeated this sentence again and again, then realized, "Koko, you said my flower basket is ugly?"
"A flower basket doesn't look like this." The system couldn't help but search for some pictures in the encyclopedia, and then showed them to Manbao, "This is what you call a flower basket. Yours is called, um, a bamboo trash can for flowers. And it's a failed trash can."
Manbao could no longer hear what Koko was saying. She stared at the pictures with bright eyes, almost rolling on the ground with joy. "So beautiful, so beautiful, Koko, can you give them to me?"
Old Zhou and Qian saw their daughter holding her broken bamboo basket and laughing so hard that her saliva was about to flow out.
The couple was silent for a moment, then looked at the messy flowers she had put in the bamboo basket, and felt that they should pay attention to their child's education on beauty and ugliness. Really, how could she be so happy with such an ugly bamboo basket?
The four big-headed children lowered their heads, as if they wanted to bury themselves in the bamboo sticks . The young lady must be thinking about their plan to make money again, but can such an ugly bamboo basket really be sold?
The system glanced at Manbao's points and said, "Host, your points are enough to buy a bamboo basket, but you don't have the authority to open the mall, so I can't buy it for you."
It was the first time that Manbao heard of a mall, so he asked, "What is a mall?"
"It's similar to your market. The host can buy all kinds of things there, including flower baskets."
"Then when can I open the mall?" Manbao thought that if the mall could be opened, then she could go shopping whenever she wanted in the future.
"When the host's accumulated points reach one thousand and he has no historical debts, then you can do it."
Manbao dropped her shoulders and tried to bargain like her second brother, "It's a lot, can't you make it cheaper?"
Koko rejected her mercilessly, "No!"
