You have to pay an entrance fee to enter the city. Now even if you go in alone you have to pay a penny. Of course, kids like Datou don't have to pay.
But Zhou Dalang still felt the pain in his heart.
He took out the money. He had already spent several cents when he first entered the city, and he was very worried, so he didn't go anywhere and pulled the cart directly to the drugstore.
There is only one pharmacy in the county town, and that is Jishidiang.
When the waiter saw Zhou Dalang coming, he said, "You are here to sell medicine, right? Please wait a moment, our boss will be here soon."
Zhou Dalang came twice. Once he brought fresh Ligustrum lucidum to ask the price, and another time he brought dried Ligustrum lucidum to ask whether it was prepared correctly, so the waiter remembered him.
The shopkeeper came out quickly. Zhou Erlang was afraid that too many people would annoy the pharmacy, so he asked Wulang and the children to wait outside. Only Manbao followed Zhou Erlang in curiously to watch the fun.
Zhou Dalang and Zhou Erlang looked at the youngest sister, said nothing, and brought her closer to them so that she would not be lost.
These Ligustrum lucidum fruits were rinsed with hot water before being dried in the sun and were now packed in fine cloth bags.
Zhou Dalang opened the bag and showed it to the shopkeeper.
The shopkeeper took it in his palm and looked at its color, then ate another one and nodded slightly, saying, "It's OK after drying it in the sun. It will be even better next time when it is rinsed with water and allowed to grow for a while longer."
He flipped through the ones below and found that they were of similar quality, so he nodded and said, "Okay, weigh them, we'll take them all."
The waiter immediately brought a scale and said, "A total of twelve and a half pounds."
The shopkeeper said, "Your fruit is of average quality, so I will give you fifty coins per pound, a total of six hundred and twenty-five coins. If you have more Ligustrum lucidum in the future, send it to me. As long as the quality is good, we will buy it."
Manbao asked curiously, "Boss, can the medicine shop sell so many Ligustrum lucidums?"
The shopkeeper looked down and found a little girl at the feet of the two brothers. Hearing her address, he twitched his lips and said, "Our Jishitang medicine shops are all over the world. Of course, we can take this amount of children, and even a hundred or a thousand times more. Little girl, you should call me uncle."
Zhou Dalang wiped the sweat from his forehead and apologized repeatedly, saying, "I am so young and ignorant, please forgive me, shopkeeper."
The shopkeeper then looked at Manbao again and said with a smile, "So she is your sister. No wonder."
He looks about the same age as Zhou Dalang, no wonder the girl calls him "big brother" instead of "uncle".
The shopkeeper laughed and shook his head, but he didn't mind.
Manbao was still very excited and didn't mind changing the topic: "Uncle Shopkeeper, if my family grows a lot of Ligustrum lucidum in the future, can your family also buy it at this price?"
The shopkeeper had originally asked the clerk to pay them and was about to leave, but when he heard this, he turned around and asked, "Why, do you want to grow medicinal herbs at home?"
Manbao said: "I want to plant it."
The shopkeeper said, "This is not easy. This kind of medicinal herbs are prone to pests and may be dry or flooded. What kind of medicinal herbs do you plan to grow?"
Manbao first asked him, "What kind of medicinal herbs do you think are suitable for growing in our area?"
The shopkeeper looked down at the little guy, paused for a moment, and then smiled and said, "I think we have a lot of medicinal herbs suitable for growing here. The key is whether you can grow them?"
“You can learn if you don’t know how.”
Seeing that she was acting like a little adult, the shopkeeper couldn't help but laugh and said, "As long as you can grow them, you will be able to sell the herbs, because people will get sick, and when they are sick they need to take medicine."
Manbao understood, and turned around and dragged her second brother to help her carry their Centella asiatica in.
When the shopkeeper saw them dragging in two large sacks, he stopped in curiosity.
"Uncle shopkeeper, this is our dried Centella asiatica, would you like it in your herbal medicine shop?"
The shopkeeper bent down and touched it, and found that it was quite dry, so he nodded and said, "Yes, this thing is a good thing to cool down in the summer. It's twenty cents a pound. Let's weigh it."
Even though this thing has two large sacks, it is actually not heavy at all. The two sacks together weigh only 35 kilograms.
Wu Lang and the others who were lying at the door with great excitement were stunned. They had pulled out so many, why was it so light?
They were all a little disappointed, but when they saw the waiter take out seven strings of money and give them, they were stunned again.
It seems like this money is easy to make.
Zhou Dalang was a little surprised to see that some of the children earned more than them.
The shopkeeper said, "Don't send me any Centella asiatica next time. It's everywhere. We don't need to buy it from outside. This is enough for our shop to use in the summer."
Manbao rolled his eyes and said, "It's definitely not enough. Summer is so long, and your family has to make medicinal soup every day. You need at least a handful a day, and a handful is one pound. Thirty-five pounds is only enough for thirty-five days."
The shopkeeper couldn't help laughing when he saw that she could calculate so clearly at such a young age. He touched her little head and said, "In our small county, we don't need a pound of Centella asiatica in a day. You want to make everyone suffer. This little bit is enough. I won't accept more if you send me."
Manbao felt very sorry. She didn't expect that Centella asiatica was a one-time deal. She sighed like a little adult.
The shopkeeper thought the kid was very interesting, mainly because he knew all the herbalists in the area. It was obvious that Zhou Dalang and Zhou Erlang were farmers, not herbalists.
He was curious about how they knew Ligustrum lucidum.
Many flowers and plants in the countryside can be used as medicine, and even many elderly people know how to use these flowers and plants. For example, Centella asiatica is used by many people in the countryside to stop bleeding after falls or cuts.
But they don’t know that Centella asiatica has other benefits, and they would never think that Centella asiatica is also a medicinal ingredient in the pharmacy, let alone selling it in the pharmacy after drying.
If Centella asiatica can be used as medicine simply by drying it in the sun, many other medicinal herbs require special processing before they can be preserved for use as medicine. This is knowledge that only doctors and herbalists know.
Most people in the world only like to do what they are good at , and always avoid things they are not good at.
This is risk avoidance, which is human instinct.
If a person suddenly enters a field that he is not familiar with, he must have something to rely on. If the other party is an honest person, then the reliance will be even greater.
The shopkeeper wondered if they had any medical books.
He also asked Zhou Dalang about it, but Zhou Dalang just smiled foolishly, and it was unclear whether he was really foolish or pretending. While the waiter was paying them, the shopkeeper simply took Manbao's hand and sat aside, asking her, "Who did your family learn how to prepare Ligustrum lucidum?"
Manbao: "Hey, wasn't it the shopkeeper uncle who taught you?"
The shopkeeper thought about it, as if he had mentioned it, he paused and asked, "Then who recognized Ligustrum lucidum as a medicinal herb?"
Manbao immediately said proudly: "Me!"