A fe days later, Zhang Fangyuan invited a veterinarian to buy a prescription. The black horse's leg recovered very quickly after eating well and sleeping well, and it was full of energy with its tail flicking in just over a month.

    After Zhang Fangyuan saw that the horse's legs were fine, he set up a cart. When every households celebrated the New Year happily, visiting relatives and friends, wearing new clothes and bringing gifts, he went to the neighboring village to buy a pig.

    Got ready to do business earlier than anyone else!

    As a kind of meat with a reasonable price in today's meat market, pork was also very particular about its trading.

    When buying and selling pigs, they were generally divided into three types: live pig, hairy pig and head pig. A live pig referred to a whole pig, which was still alive; a hairy pig referred to a pig that had been slaughtered and weighed including its viscera; a head pig referred to a pig that had been briefly processed, removed the viscera and head, leaving only the flesh and blood, ready to be taken to the market to sell.

[生猪 ;毛猪 ;头猪]

    The price of live pigs, hair pigs and head pigs were quite different, with the cheapest price was live pigs and the most expensive was head pigs. Generally, villagers and butchers choose to buy and sell live pigs tacitly. Because the pig was wild and difficult to weigh, they had to be slaughtered. Moreover, the butcher slaughtered the pigs at the master's house, and the master's house could keep a large pot of pig blood.

    As for head pig, the butcher wouldn’t buy it. If the price was too high, the butcher would have no profit to make, unless the villagers wanted to sell their own meat.

    Zhang Fangyuan planned to start butcher business in the future. He not only collected some money for butchering pigs for others, after all he didn't earn much. He still had to buy and sell himself to make a lot of money.

    Nowadays, pork in the meat market ranged from 12 to 30 copper coins a catty, and the price of live pigs had dropped to 5 to 10 copper coins a catty. The specific price depended on the size of the pig and the butcher. It took a lot of haggling to settle the price.

    Zhang Fangyuan had planned to sell pork when he went to the other villages to slaughter pigs before. It  could be regarded as finding out the market and scouting spots. When he came to the neighboring village to slaughter pigs, he came to this family to slaughter pigs. This price hadn’t been pulled for long.

    The host family’s pigs were around two hundred catties, which was considered fat and popular among the common people. The minimum basic price of live pigs would be set at ten copper coins. As for the final price, it depended on the debate between the two parties.

    This family was also considered honest, and the final price they set was twelve copper coins, which was already the price of selling pork in the market, but the price of pig fat would be much higher when Zhang Fangyuan went to the market to sell the meat.

    The pig weighed 220 catties, and Zhang Fangyuan paid the owner 2,640 copper coins. He paid in one lump sum. The owner was very happy, because some butchers would only give half of the money, and the other half would be paid after they sold the pork.

    For this reason, Zhang Fangyuan proposed to borrow a place here to process the pigs before transporting them away. The owner readily agreed, and even boiled a pot of hot water for him.

    Zhang Fangyuan processed the live pig into hair pig very quickly, put it on the cart, covered it with a layer of cloth, and went back to the village. Before dawn the next day, he drove the cart to the city. When he arrived in the city, it was just dawn and it was gray.

    At this point, the butchers in the meat market were still cleaning their stalls, and there were not many voices, and all the noises were made by lifting things vigorously.

    Zhang Fangyuan tied the horse in the stable outside the meat market, threw two pennies to the old man who was in charge of the shed, went in and wiped his own stall, and when he came back, he carried half of the pork on one shoulder and threw it on the stall.

    Most of the stall holders in the meat market were butchers, and their physical strength was not inferior to ordinary people, but they couldn't help but looked sideways when they saw Zhang Fangyuan, who was tall and full of physical strength, especially the old lady who came to guard the stall for her husband, she was even more fascinated.

    "New here?"

    "Such a newcomer, is he a newcomer? I heard that he is a relative of Gou Qi, who is in charge of the stall in the meat market. Yesterday, Gou Qi came here to clean that guy's stall."

    "Tsk tsk. "The two women with big arms and round waists sighed a few times, looking at Zhang Fangyuan's eyes with a little more spirit.

    Zhang Fangyuan divided half of the pig's pork at the stall, took a few pieces of fat meat, and poked a hole in the front with a knife, twisted fresh palm leaves into a rope to skewer the meat, Hang on the bar in front of the stand for an attractive display, and left the rest on the shelf.


    In addition, the pig gut, large intestines, small intestines, heart and lung pigs were taken out and they were hung or placed in the water. the stall looked small, a cutting board was brought out, which was convenient for him to divide and cut the meat for customer at any time.

    After he finished his work, it was only the beginning of chenshi. He bought four meat buns at the gate of the meat market. There were not many people in the market, but some women and ge’ers could already be seen coming out to buy vegetables with baskets on their arms.

[辰时chén shí: 7-9 am (in the system of two-hour subdivisions used in former times)]

    The vegetables in the early hours were the freshest and had the most variety. Everyone liked to buy vegetables early, even meat.

    Seeing people coming in this way one after another, the meat market suddenly became lively, and the vendors yelled to see the meat and buy the meat in front of their own stalls when they saw people. If they were regular customers, before anyone came to the stall, the butcher would directly take out the knife and ask how much he wanted to cut or they would just pick a piece and stuff it into the basket.

    Zhang Fangyuan was a little surprised when he saw the battle. He stuffed the buns into his mouth in two bites, and hurried back to his stall.

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