Rebirth: Splendid Marriage in the 80s

Chapter 26: Chapter 26: A Lion’s Mouth Wide Open

Chapter 26 -26: A Lion’s Mouth Wide Open

Hearing this, Guiying felt like she had seen a ghost.

Just yesterday, Chiang Xiao was as if she was fighting for her life—how come her attitude had changed so suddenly? Was she willing to compensate?

Ding Daqiang, a stout and tall man with dark skin, had a hint of imperceptible ferocity in his eyes. Chiang Xiao could tell from the way he had slammed the hoe on the ground just now, that he had brought it with him as a threat.

When Guiying returned home yesterday and said that Chiang Xiao had become fierce, Ding Daqiang didn’t believe it but felt inspired. Chiang Songhai’s family was known for their honesty and simplicity. As long as he carried a hoe with a stern attitude, he was sure he could scare them and getting money out of them wouldn’t be hard.

This was exactly what Chiang Xiao had spotted, which is why she didn’t start quarreling with them from the get-go. She wanted to buy some time, waiting for the village secretary to arrive.

She had asked the secretary to come over early in the morning, but Ding Daqiang’s family had arrived earlier than she had anticipated.

If a conflict were to arise now, she was worried that her grandparents would get hurt.

Although they were from the same village and Ding Daqiang might not dare to swing the hoe, if the situation got out of hand, who could say for sure?

Upon hearing that Chiang Xiao seemed intended to compensate, Guiying was overjoyed and immediately spoke up before her husband could.

“Although Da Ni’s shirt was made by me, the fabric wasn’t cheap, and my craftsmanship is also good. You can’t just compensate for the fabric, you need to include my labor cost. Plus, I also used two candles while making the shirt. Moreover, this was a gift from my nephew, and Da Ni was supposed to wear it to town tomorrow, but now that’s not possible—all of these should be included in the compensation,” she said.

Tsk tsk, Guihua would be an absolute sharp dealer if she went into business.

Without a response from the others, Guiying continued, “So adding all this up, just compensate us with a piece of fabric. Thinking about how it’s not easy to buy fabric these days, let’s say ten feet of fabric upfront, with the rest converted into cash. We’re all villagers here, and in consideration of Uncle Songhai’s face, we can’t ask for too much, so let’s just take an additional thirty yuan.”

Chiang Songhai and Ge Liutao gasped in shock, stunned by Guiying’s audacious demand.

Chiang Xiao wasn’t quite clear about the prices of the era, but if she remembered correctly, a shirt would use just a few feet of fabric, and a decent ready-made shirt would probably cost around a dozen yuan at this time. She had thought Guiying would at most ask for twenty yuan in compensation, never expecting her to be so bold and act as if she was doing them a favor!

Ten feet of fabric plus thirty yuan!

As for her memories from a previous life, she wasn’t clear on whether it was a piece of fabric and some money and a basket of eggs, as villagers tended to casually refer to over ten feet of fabric as a “piece,” without any standard.

While she was still calculating in her head, she heard Guiying add, “Besides, Da Ni did save Little, after all, and that’s out of goodwill. To talk about money undermines the sentiment, so just give thirty eggs as a gesture of goodwill and call it even.”

Pfft.

So that’s how the matter of the basket of eggs came about.

A shirt worth about a dozen yuan, and they’re asking for compensation of ten feet of fabric plus thirty yuan and a basket of eggs!

All added up, it would cost nearly seventy yuan.

Keep in mind, seventy yuan in the year 1980 had a very different value. To put things in perspective, pork was only six jiao per pound in town, and an ordinary worker’s monthly salary was only around twenty to thirty yuan.

Seventy yuan—Chiang Songhai could barely save that much selling herbal medicine for a whole year! And that’s if they didn’t spend money on anything else.