Siheyuan: Selling Noodles from a Stall, Huaihua Completely Under My Thumb

Nobody in the courtyard thought much of the orphaned Wang Dasheng and his widowed mother. His father had just died, his mother had fallen ill, and they were dirt poor. No one expected this spineless fool, whom Huaihua could swindle out of money with just a few words, to suddenly set up a noodle stall, charge one yuan a bowl, and have customers fighting to buy from him every day.

Nobody knew where he got his noodles. His costs were astonishingly low, and he limited sales to ten bowls a day, yet made more than half a year's wages at the factory. Huaihua could only watch as the fool she used to push around suddenly turned his life around. In a panic, she tried every trick to pry the source of his goods out of him, but the new Wang Dasheng wasn't falling for any of it. Instead, he used Huaihua to sell his family's job slot for several hundred yuan more than he had expected.

The noodle stall had become a hit right after opening, but this little bit of money couldn't satisfy Wang Dasheng's appetite. The 1980s were full of opportunities, and he had connections no one else could get their hands on. He had his sights set on an even bigger business. Huaihua was still brooding over a few yuan, and Silly Zhu was still puzzling over the secret of the noodle broth, while Wang Dasheng was already figuring out how to maneuver everyone in the whole courtyard onto his chessboard, one by one.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people or events is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.