“Right! You’re so smart, Sis!” Xiaogu nodded in agreement.
“Come on, buying those vegetables here would be a rip-off. Let’s go get some meat.”
From where they stood, they could already see the meat section.
Lin Xiaohe headed straight for the pork counter, but Xiaogu was drawn to the chicken legs and couldn’t tear herself away—they were so cheap!
Same price as the cucumbers—5.98 yuan per jin! But that was just vegetables, and this was meat!
And not just any meat—chicken legs, something they’d never even gotten a turn to eat!
Lin Xiaohe turned around and noticed her little sister hadn’t budged. She hurried back over.
“What’s wrong?”
“Sis, can we get some chicken legs? They look so cheap.” Xiaogu stared at her with big, pleading eyes.
Lin Xiaohe picked one up and examined it. “These are all covered in ice—they might be pretty heavy. Let’s grab two and see how much they weigh.”
No sooner had they bagged two than the auntie behind the counter took them to weigh.
“Chicken drumettes—11.96 per kilo…”
Two drumettes turned out to be pretty cheap—about 2 yuan.
“Sis, do you think this price is good? I think it’s not bad! Oh wait—so these aren’t actually chicken legs.” Xiaogu tugged quietly at her sister’s sleeve.
“I don’t think it’s expensive either. Let’s grab another bag and take two more—make it five, one for each of us at home.
I think these are the part above the wing, right?”
Five chicken drumettes cost 5 yuan, each one coated in a thick layer of ice.
“Sis, how are we going to cook these?” Xiaogu licked her lips at the thought of meat, almost drooling.
“Fry them in lard first, then toss in a couple of dried chilies and add some water to braise. We don’t have many seasonings at home anyway.”
The sales clerk overheard them and immediately chimed in, “Little girls, the seasoning section has a promotion today—everything’s really cheap. You should go take a look.”
Lin Xiaohe hesitated for a moment, then decided to check it out. No harm in looking.
Following the direction the clerk pointed, they found the seasoning aisle. Shelves stretched all the way to the ceiling, stacked with every kind of seasoning imaginable—dizzying to look at.
There was a small separate section with various seasonings on display—that must be the discounted area.
Reading the regular price tags, Lin Xiaohe could just about manage. But when it came to discounts and promotions, she was completely lost.
“Auntie, how much is this soy sauce?” If she couldn’t figure it out, no problem—she could just ask.
“This is dark soy sauce. Regular price is 9.80 yuan, but today it’s 40% off—only 5.88 yuan.”
“Sis, maybe we should get one. I heard people say cooking with soy sauce makes everything so fragrant.”
Actually, she’d heard it from the educated youth in the village. Last year during the brigade pig slaughter, everyone was raving about the pork stew, saying it was so good they wouldn’t trade it for gold. But one of the male educated youth had scoffed, saying there wasn’t even any soy sauce—no flavor at all. He and a female educated youth kept going on about how delicious soy sauce made food, and she’d remembered.
The Lin family had never bought soy sauce before.
Xiaogu had always been curious about what soy sauce tasted like.
“Alright, we’ll get one.” Seeing how much her sister wanted it, Lin Xiaohe waved her hand and made the call.
“Yay!”
“Come on, let’s see what else we should get.” She did a quick tally in her head. Out of the money they had, 20 yuan had to be set aside untouched, another 50 was for buying rice, and the rest could go toward useful things.
The top priority was still grain!
“Sis, look, look! Aren’t those sweet potatoes? Why are they so expensive?”
Xiaogu felt like she hardly recognized the prices anymore. Were these really sweet potatoes? Why were they so expensive!
Lin Xiaohe was stunned too. “Sweet potatoes are over three yuan a jin? That’s almost as much as a pound of rice.”
She’d just seen rice going for 2 yuan a jin over there. The cheap rice they’d bought a couple of days ago was only cheap because the bag was torn—the regular price was probably 2 yuan.
“I don’t get it. I really don’t get it.” Xiaogu shook her head. “Too bad the sweet potatoes over on our side don’t taste good—we probably couldn’t sell them for this price over here.”
Sweet potatoes from their area were so dry and starchy you had to thump your chest to swallow them.
“It’s okay. We can buy some sweet potato seedlings here and plant them. The ones grown here taste good—I just don’t know about the yield.”
But she had another thought. The place where they usually dug wild greens was up in the mountains—unclaimed land. They could find a corner, scratch the soil, and plant a few things.
Their own private plot was just a tiny patch—barely enough to grow anything.
“Sis, that’s a great idea! You’re so smart!”
“Enough with the ‘so smart’ already. Let’s keep looking for a bit, pick up a few more things, then head back.”
What they saw next completely upended their understanding of prices!
A white plastic tray held half a piece of pork liver, wrapped in cling film.
That cost seven or eight yuan!
“That’s almost enough for half a jin of meat! And that liver isn’t even a jin. Who buys this stuff? It’s so expensive.”
Just as Xiaogu was muttering, someone who’d been picking through meat for ages ended up grabbing two trays of liver.
Her eyes went wide with shock.
Xiaohe was already getting used to it. She’d come to accept that prices between the two worlds were completely flipped.
If she ever saw something whose price wasn’t upside down, that would be the real shock.
After all, wild greens at 10 yuan a jin was already mind-blowing enough. Everything else was just small change~
But the next second, she was proven dead wrong.
Snow-white lard was selling for 8.90 yuan a jin!
Even cheaper than pork liver!
Although she knew that things valuable on their side were worthless here, she never imagined they’d be this worthless!
Back in their brigade, they only slaughtered two pigs a year for New Year’s, and people would literally fight over who got the lard.
Yet here, it turned out to be the cheapest thing around.
Even a tiny box of pig blood cost several yuan!
Buy! They were buying that pure white lard!
She picked out the best-looking piece and had the clerk weigh it—a little over two jin.
She gritted her teeth and also bought a palm-sized piece of meat—half fat, half lean. That kind was the most fragrant when stir-fried.
That piece cost 5 yuan. Together with the lard, the total came to 25 yuan.
She also bought a bottle of soy sauce. That felt about right.
“Let’s go—time to head back!” Just thinking about all that white lard made Lin Xiaohe’s steps quicken with urgency.
She tugged her sister and broke into a little jog.
But Xiaogu was sniffing the air like a little puppy. “Sis, do you smell that? It smells so sweet.”
“Sweet? I don’t smell anything.” Lin Xiaohe stopped.
“Super sweet! Sis, you really can’t smell it?” Xiaogu couldn’t believe it. She followed the scent and found a four-section shelf—white sugar on the left, brown sugar on the right, and across from them, rock sugar and yellow sugar.
In three of the sections, the price tags were blue. Only the white sugar section had a red tag. Behind it, there was also a blue tag, but the red one was covering it up.
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