Vegetables & Contract

A few days later, a carriage entered the Chen Village. Not always a carriage will enter their village, especially a luxury carriage such as this. For the past few days, the Chenjiagou has been lively, thus the appearance of a luxury carriage is like the icing on top of a cake. The coachman stopped and asked a few villagers on the road about a certain destination. Once he got the answer, they resumed their road.

The villagers who were listening to the conversation went and asked about the destination of the luxury carriage, and they were confused as to why a rich person looking for Li Wenmin's house. Some of them speculated that maybe someone from his father's side had come, some said a rich man from town is seeking marriage while some just waited patiently and try not to spread rumours.

By the time the carriage arrived in front of Wenmin's house, most of the people in the village already knew about a luxury carriage heading towards Wenmin's house. The Chen family felt strange as to why a rich man was looking for their estranged ger and not the one living with them. While Jiahao was still calm, he knows that his marriage proposal to Wenmin is still good and Wenmin will not find just any rich man to be wed with.

*knock knock* someone was knocking on his door, Wenmin heard the gallop of a horse and the knocking from his garden and quickly went to open his door. There stood the shopkeeper and Young Master Liu. They saw a youth with dirt on his hands and sweat on his forehead, beaming with a big smile on his face.

"May I help you?" Wenmin started the conversation, acting as if they had never met. He leads the two men to his front porch. They sat on small stools and there was a round table in the middle. Wenmin went inside his kitchen and serve some warm peach tea and nuts to them.

The shopkeeper started to introduce themselves, "We are from The Rainbow Pavilion. I am shopkeeper Hong and this is my master, Young Master Liu. A man came to one of our branches, Hao Chi Restaurant, a few weeks ago recommending to us that your vegetables are good. We tasted a few and sold them in our food. They were hot with the customers, we came here to do an inspection on your vegetables and maybe establish a contract with you."

Wenmin heard that the vegetables that he had provided before were praised and were the favourites of the customers. He smiled and said, "Really? I may have to greet that person and thank him. If you want to do an inspection, then you may follow me to my garden. I don't have the manpower to plant them on bigger lands so the number of vegetables may be limited."

Wenmin lead them to the back garden. What they saw was completely different from what they imagined. They only thought that a ger would only manage to plant some simple vegetables, but what was in front of them was completely different.

There were rows of vegetable plots and neatly planted fruit trees along the house walls. The numbers were small but for only one ger to be able to plant such numbers was still impressive. "Most of the things here were planted by my Ama. I took over when he died and tried planting a few more vegetables and took care of the fruit plants. You can check them out. If there is anything that you would like to ask, do call for me."

Wenmin left shopkeeper Hong and Young Master Liu to do their jobs and went inside to wash his hands. He heard someone's voice calling for him and went out to see Xinyi and Aunt Bao at his door. "Min ge'er, are you okay? Why is there a rich man looking for you?" Aunt Bao sounded nervous.

"Aunt Bao, they are the shopkeeper and the owner of Rainbow Pavilion from the capital. A friend of my Ama recommended our vegetables to them and they came to check on our vegetables." Wenmin hold Aunt Bao's hand and explained to her calmly. He leads them into his house and closes his courtyard door so that the other villagers wouldn't be able to see what's going on.

"I wouldn't be able to work on the fields alone, having someone purchasing my vegetables would be good. I don't need that many people working in my garden, plus if they are satisfied with my vegetables, they may issue a contract with me to provide them with the vegetables." Wenmin explained while handing them warm peach juice.

They drank the juice and felt like the worries and nervousness in their bodies disappeared. "Minmin, if what you said was true then that's good. People in the village are talking about a rich man marrying you. Your Aunt and Uncle were frowning, probably dissatisfied with why the rich man is not looking for their ger. Hehehe" Xinyi opened his mouth and smirked.

Aunt Bao slapped Xinyi's hands and do a 'shh' gesture at him. We don't know who might hear what they talked about and spread it to others. While they were talking, shopkeeper Hong and Young Master Liu were checking the plants.

Shopkeeper Hong's eyes were shining when he checked the vegetables. Almost most of them were taken good care of and not many insects have eaten the leaves. Young Master Liu checked the fruits and he was captivated by their sweet smell. He started to get interested in the young ger.

"Young Master! This little ger's vegetables are very fresh and there's not a lot of insects eating them. Judging by how healthy the soil is, I don't think he uses any pesticides on the vegetables." Shopkeeper Hong's eyes were shining like stars when he talked about the vegetables.

They were impressed with the care and Young Master Liu discussed with the shopkeeper establishing a partnership contract with Wenmin. A good person who can do a good job is very rare, plus a ger to boot. They must get this ger no matter what it takes.

They decided on the terms and went inside the house, they saw another ger and an old lady sitting with Wenmin. "Wenmin brother, we decided to establish a partnership contract with you. Would be okay if we can discuss this among us alone?" Young Master Liu said, glancing at Xinyi and Aunt Bao. He knew that Wenmin is an orphan and he didn't have any grown-ups around him.

Wenmin looked at Aunt Bao and Xinyi, then lead the men to the porch again. They sat down and shopkeeper Hong took out a piece of paper containing the partnership contract. "Wenmin brother, we are very satisfied with your vegetables and would like to purchase 100kg of vegetables with you every month. Please read the contract and discuss with us if you have anything that you might want to change."

Wenmin took the contract and read it. They wanted to purchase 100kg of vegetables every month, which would be hard if he work alone. He also saw a 60:40 revenue split. He thought that it would be better to split them to 50:50 as he would be doing the hard work and also he might have to pay workers in the future.

He puts down the contract, "I agree with the contract, however, I would like to change the pay split from 60:40 to 50:50." When the shopkeeper and Young Master Liu heard that they were confused. Why would a ger want to split them into equals. Wouldn't it be more profitable for him if he took the 60 and gave them the 40?

"The reason why I would like us to split it equally is that I am still new to this business. Plus, I need a worker to fulfil the 100kg of vegetables per month that you want. When the time comes when both of our sides are satisfied or dissatisfied with each other's work, we might have to review the contract again. We can wait until then to revise the contract." Wenmin told them his thoughts.

They were impressed by his thinking. Not a lot of people would think like Wenmin, people would just put money first and ethics second. Young Master Liu was even more interested in Wenmin. Shopkeeper Hong saw the interest in his young master's eyes and nudge him under the table. "Then, if it's like that, let us change the split equally. Please sign your name here and stamp your thumbprint beside it."

Wenmin signed and stamped his thumbprint. "Shopkeeper Hong, would you like to take 50kg of vegetables first? I picked them up recently. They are still fresh." Wenmin took them to the lingyin room where he put the vegetables he picked two days ago were in. They checked the conditions of the vegetables and were satisfied with the freshness and cleanliness of the vegetables.

"Alright. Let's take them first. We will come back to take another half in another two weeks. Since you provided us with 50kg of vegetables, we will give you 50 taels of silver first and the other half would be given once we received the rest of the vegetables." Shopkeeper Hong gave a bundle filled with silver coins in them.

Wenmin didn't count the silver and just smiled and nodded. He quickly went inside his room acting as if he was keeping the money inside his room when he was keeping them in his space. He accompanies shopkeeper Hong and Young Master Liu to the door. Shopkeeper Hong called the workers and coachmen to load the vegetables into the carriage.

The villagers who were crowding outside Wenmin's house were surprised to see people loading baskets of vegetables from Wenmin's house into the carriage and they whispered among themselves. Wenmin's aunt and uncle saw the incident and they started to feel envious. They only thought that the ger that they separated wouldn't be able to live a good life but they were wrong.

Shihuang was also present. He kept himself hidden between the crowds and guess that the people who came were not the people who wanted to marry Wenmin, but rather the people who are doing business with him. His impression of Wenmin went even higher as he could see the ger is self-sufficient and would be able to take care of himself if he married his boss.

When the carriage left, people started asking Wenmin about the rich man and the vegetables. Wenmin only said that they were the people his Ama knew, they came to buy some vegetables and that was it. He didn't tell them about the money and other things. Shihuang went home and told Jiahao about it. He was praising Wenmin to the sky.

Jiahao was even more impressed by his bride-to-be and only smile. He saw the carriage filled with baskets of vegetables passing in front of his yard. He saw a man a bit older than him looking outside of the window. Jiahao looked at him and released his menacing aura, the young man flinched and looked at Jiahao.

Young Master Liu nodded his head and closed the curtains. "Hong, find any information about that man and send it to me by tomorrow night. He doesn't look like a normal villager." The news about Wenmin ge'er making money selling vegetables was spread among the villagers. Some of them were envious, and jealous while some of them were cynical about a lone ger doing business on his own.

Wenmin didn't care about the rumours, he went inside and cooked his late lunch for himself and Heihei. He told Heihei about the contract, money and his plans to add more workers inside his garden. Preferably, someone that he could trust. Thus he made plans to ask Aunt Bao and Xinyi tomorrow morning.