dwimmered path

  Chapter 54 In early July, Xu He's tea stall officially opened for business. He couldn't read or write. He had been thinking of finding someone in the village who knew characters, or perhaps hiring a tutor in town to write a signboard. But before he could even ask, Zhang Fangyuan had already brought a sign back himself and taught him the name of the stall. “With all those big banyan trees around the stall, let's use the character rong '榕'. But just one character doesn't roll off the tongue. What character should go with rong '榕'? Naturally, it’s yi '易' — easy, ease, right?”* * rong shu (榕樹) / rong (榕) — banyan tree/banyan; i.e. Chinese banyan (Ficus microcarpa); yi (易) — easy, amiable, to change + rong (容) — to hold, to contain; rongyi (容易) — easy, straightforward; the full sentence here is ‘自然是易，容易，容易嘛’ — essencially the word rongyi ‘ease’ 容易 and the name they picked rongyi 榕易 has the exact same pronunciation, so it’s a play on words; notice al...

  Chapter 53 Xu He was going to go up the mountain to cut some bamboo. He planned to weave curtains from bamboo strips for the tea stall windows to block the light. Before he could go to fourth uncle's house to call Zhang Shiyue, she came over with her child to help. At this time of year, the crops in the fields weren't ready for harvest yet; they had entered a brief period of agricultural downtime, so there wasn't much to do at fourth uncle's place anyway. Over at their place, besides building the tea stall, they also needed to plant more seasonal vegetables and fruits in the fields. Once the tea stall opened, they could pick their own produce instead of having to buy it elsewhere. Of course, buying vegetables from nearby villages was easy enough and cheaper than in town, but Xu He had always been one to save whenever possible. Zhang Shiyue didn't come as a guest. She wore a gray hemp garment with an apron tied around her waist, she brought Guan Xiao'e and imme...