Upon arriving at the cloth shop, Xiao'er, knowing the financial situation of her family, asked the shopkeeper, "Shopkeeper, do you have any affordable cloth? Old stocks or dampened ones, perhaps?"
The shopkeeper could tell from their coarse clothing that the group was not well off. Just that morning, he had found two rolls of fine cotton cloth that had been dampened from storage for several years. One was a blue roll that was a bit moldy, the other was white and had yellowed. He brought them out, "These two rolls are damp. They're only 60 coins each. Their original prices were several hundred coins."
Cotton was quite rare during this era, so cotton cloth was expensive. Linen and coarse cloth were much cheaper, but the better ones were still over a hundred coins per roll.
