Zhou Shuren sat up to watch as Zhulan rummaged around the room, scraping a corner of the kang to pull out a cloth bundle and groping about the wall clay to find another, with more on the floor and even on the beams. Reaching onto the kang cabinet, the entire room was a mess to behold, riddled with holes everywhere. Even a rat's lair wouldn't have as many nooks for hiding money.
By the time Zhulan finished searching and was gasping for air, exhausted, it was clear why she had stopped working at the start of the year. It wasn't long before her back was soaked with sweat, and her legs were trembling and too weak to stand on, making her lean on the kang to catch her breath.
Zhou Shuren spoke with concern, as he remembered his wife's frail health, "Are you alright?"
Zhulan waved her hand, "I'm fine, but there's still a ceramic jar in the room that I couldn't fetch. It's filled with copper coins, neatly strung together in ropes of five taels. I've managed to pull everything else out."
As she spoke, she climbed onto the kang, her shoes scraping against the edge. Looking at the pile of cloth bundles seemed to give her new strength.
Zhou Shuren's gaze lingered on them, "All of this is?"
"Yes, this is all the cash on hand from the house. The end of the dynasty was chaotic, as was the early period of the new one. The person who lived in this body may have lacked great wisdom, but was very cautious. We have no silver notes at home, just real currency like silver," she explained.
Zhou Shuren thought to himself that it was no surprise there was a lack of cleverness – hiding everything in one room's digging holes. Catching on to the key point, he paused, "You mean, the money in this house could be equal to silver notes?"
Wow, there was really a fair amount of money in the house. In his memory, there were no small denominations like one, five, or ten taels of silver notes – the smallest amount started at fifty taels, all large denominations.
In the original owner's memory, so much money had been spent on building a house and acquiring estate properties when the dynasty was established – almost twenty mu of land, with ten mu of paddy fields and ten mu of dry land, that he thought the family fortune had been exhausted.
Luckily, the early days of the new dynasty came with a three-year tax exemption, making their lives a bit better. But with many children at home and the costs of schooling, plus the expenses of taking daughters-in-law, the original owner had thought that if their home had ten or more taels of silver after a few years of good harvests, it would be quite good.
But now, listening to Zhulan and looking at the cloth bundles and the Money Box, he couldn't help but think about the original owner's mother – what a capable woman!
At any rate, he didn't believe the original owner's wife had these skills.
Zhulan counted the eight cloth bundles, then opened the Money Box first, tipping its contents out, "Here are the land deeds for twenty mu, the house deed, fifteen taels of silver, one thousand three hundred and thirty-five copper coins, and slightly more than one tael of silver coin left over from today. These are all the contents of the Money Box."
Zhou Shuren nodded; the money in the Money Box roughly matched the original owner's estimates. His eyes moved to the cloth bundles, "And these?"
Zhulan put the items back into the Money Box and began to open the cloth bundles, which were in three different colors and showed marks of rodent bites. She was disgusted at the thought of rats, having never seen real ones before, and if it weren't for the support of the silver coin, she wouldn't have touched them.
As Zhulan unwrapped them, both of them could clearly see that each grey cloth bundle contained ten taels of silver, totaling to thirty taels in the three grey bundles. There were two red bundles, each blinding them with their contents – oh my, gold! No one nowadays would keep so many Gold Ingots together like that, would they? Each bundle contained five one-tael Gold Ingots, equalling to ten taels of gold.
One tael of gold was worth ten taels of silver, which meant a hundred taels of silver in conversion.
Zhulan steadied herself, these were the five largest bundles, which required digging into the wall. The remaining three were smaller, with two taken down from the beams and one dug up from the floor.
Zhou Shuren looked at the remaining three bundles with anticipation. As Zhulan opened them one by one, one contained two pairs of Silver Bangles, several pairs of silver earrings, and a few Silver Hairpins. Another held a pair of Golden Dragon and Phoenix Bangles, two rings, and several small gold studs. The last bundle contained a Jade Pendant made of fine mutton-fat jade.