Queen of flowers - Chapter 8
In the spring of that year, the Yong family encountered a situation where the goons bullied people. The family business that Dad Yong fought many years for was destroyed.
Dad Yong had been an elementary school chef. He was smart, diligent, and motivated, and had excellent skills. When he was nearly forty years old, he saved enough money to buy a small yard in Shuangxi Hutong and opened a private restaurant—Yongjia Restaurant. Dad Yong himself took charge and brought a primary school apprentice to help the chef.
But it didn’t take long for a big family nearby to want to expand their house. They needed his small yard, so they offered to buy it.
Yong Jiayuan didn’t dare to go against the big family. Instead, he asked them to pay a little more money to help him find another place to re-open his restaurant. As for the loss of his customers caused by the relocation, he didn’t dare to mention it. But the big family was so abominable, not only were they unwilling to pay the extra money, but they were also very picky about the small yard of his place. They quoted a price lower than the market one.
Father Yong’s life savings and hard work were pinned in that small restaurant. Naturally, he was unwilling to sell it.
It didn’t take long for the Yongjia Restaurant to have an accident. Some guests had more than one diarrhea after eating in the restaurant, and they thought it was an outbreak and reported it directly to the official. A search was made by the government where they found dozens of people were having diarrhea! When they checked again, these dozen people who had diarrhea had visited Yongjia Restaurant for dinner!
Everyone in the restaurant including Father Yong and the elementary school disciple were taken to the public hall for punishment.
When they were beaten down, the elementary school disciple confessed the crime. He said that Father Yong wanted to sell the restaurant to go back to his hometown. Father Yong wanted to earn more money for travel expenses and have substantial capital in hand before selling the restaurant. In order to save costs, the diseased, dead pork at home was used as raw materials for cooking, and the homemade red sauce was used to make it fresh.
Actually, in a jar in the kitchen, they found a few pieces of pork marinated in red sauce. A few days before that, the Yong family did have diarrhea. They dug a pig carcass buried deep, and the meat on the back of that pig leg was cut off!
Now that the witnesses and physical evidence were present, Dad Yong was passively sentenced to death. Finally, he couldn’t carry it and confessed.
According to the law of the court, the intentional sale of spoiled or poisonous food, which caused someone’s death, was sentenced to death by hanging. If it caused any serious illness but no death, the punishment would be of sixty rods and one-year imprisonment.
In the case of the Yong family, no one died, but many people had diarrhea and collapsed and almost died. Dad Yong was sentenced for eighty rods and a year in prison. The victims have also been compensated with some silver.
Dad Yong was not young anymore, and because of the loss, he died in prison before leaving it. In order to not lose money, Zhou had to sell the small yard to the big family, she even sold her dowry and the slightly valuable things in the house. Their family also had to move from their original place of residence to a broken yard.
“My dad is timid, cautious, and sometimes a little hesitant. One of the words he said most to us was, be conscious, don’t make money with ignorance, or else you will lose it sooner or later. How could such a person cut dead pork for cooking ?! “
Yong Ruo took a long breath and said, “This case has a lot of odds. But we have no evidence. We can only carry this crime in our heart.”
“The key figure, in this case, is that elementary student. Do you know his whereabouts?”
Yong Ruo shook her head, “I don’t know. The elementary school student followed my father for more than ten years. Once the case was closed, we never saw him again. He was originally from Ruzhou and fled to Beijing. Both his parents died. My father said he was lonely and helpless, and smart, so he accepted him as an apprentice, but he didn’t know he had led the wolf into the house. “
Feng was thinking deeply. His fingers circled around the arm of the chair.
Yong Ruo adde, “Not long after the case was closed, there was another incident in the hutong. A silk village next to my house caught fire at night, not only burning his own house, but also burning sixty-seven houses next to it, and losing money. It’s awful not to say that when the family was brought into the hall for fire crimes and hit the fifty boards. Within a few days after the fight, the family died when the mother dragged the old man and the children and sold them. Some went to depend on relatives and friends. Now, the homestead of my small yard and the homestead of that silk village have already become the backyard of that big family.” She smiled ironically.
“Who is that big family?” Feng Liao asked. He looked dull, and she could not guess his mood.
“The big family name was Wei. They were originally doing business. Later on, the son of the family became a sergeant and thus turned into an official family. Now his son has married the daughter of a senior official in the supreme court.”
“After your father died, what did you live on?”
“It’s up to me. My mother started to make embroidery and do laundry. Unfortunately, our embroidery was not very good. So we could only take ordinary jobs and earn some money …”
“Don’t you have any relatives?”
“No. My mother was sold by her stepmother since she was a child. She was originally a slave girl and was later released from the government to marry my father. My grandfather, who also died early, had nowhere to stay in the clan and went to Beijing. My grandmother only gave birth to my father, and there are no relatives in the family … “
She smiled, “I once thought of selling myself as a slave, going to a big family to give my family better living conditions. But my mother didn’t agree. She said that she was born as a slave; she didn’t want her daughter to bend her knees and become one as well. It’s a hard time. As long as our family is in one place, the hardship would be sweet. “
Comments for chapter "Chapter 8"
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Chinesefanreader
The plight of rich and powerful people abusing poor people it timeless 🥺 So where is justice when you need it
Thanks for the chapter