Chapter 460 - Chapter 460: Chapter 460: Hard Labor (1/2)
Chapter 460: Chapter 460: Hard Labor
After staying at the clinic for several days and recovering, Mother Zuo’s condition finally stabilized. Liu Sisi thought it was not appropriate to stay in the clinic any longer, so she brought Mother Zuo back to her home and arranged for her to stay in the guest room.
As Liu Sisi’s pregnancy progressed, she asked the old woman to serve her.
Mother Zuo tried to decline, but she couldn’t refuse Liu Sisi’s kindness, so she had to accept the arrangement.
However, she secretly vowed to herself that she would have a good talk with her son Yu Er in the future so that he could find a good daughter-in-law like Liu Sisi.
Recently, Liu Sisi has been training the newly bought house servants.
These house servants who had signed dead contracts were different from those who had signed open contracts. In the future, they would live in Di Family all year round. It was not good if they had ill intentions or were unwilling to put in their best efforts.
Especially the necessary rules, which were even more important!
Worried that she might not teach them well, she specifically asked Old He for advice. Old He used to be an Imperial Physician, and he should know more about these etiquette rules than ordinary people.
Upon seeing a few servants, Old He directly lent her one of his personal old women to help at Di Family for some time. In fact, she came specifically to train these house servants.
After being trained by the old woman, the servants showed remarkable improvement in their behavior and work.
Old He earnestly advised, “It’s not good for you to do all the work and worry on your own. It would be better to find a professional accountant to help you manage your household finances. Besides, your gatehouse is now managed by the coachman, which is not good.”
Liu Sisi reluctantly smiled, “It’s not that we can’t afford it, but I don’t know how to deal with the spring corvee labor by buying more people.”
“Why did you buy all dead contracts? You could have bought open contracts. Open contracts seem simple, but they’re actually more convenient than buying dead contracts.”
It wasn’t until then that Old He told her some details she didn’t know before.
“Open contracts usually last from one year to thirty or forty years, with strong laborers earning half a tael of silver a year without needing to provide food and shelter. As for children around ten years old, signing a contract for twenty or thirty years would only cost 2-3 taels of silver. When the contract term is over, the child would have already started a family by then. You can give them a house servant, and as long as you’re not a cruel master, they will stay with you forever.”
“Oh! I see!” Liu Sisi suddenly realized.
These children were brainwashed from a young age in the master’s family. With the desire for a stable life and having their own families, house servants were naturally passed down from generation to generation.
“What’s even more important is that open contracts do not require registration with the government office and are still valid!”
This struck a chord with Liu Sisi.
At present, Di Yelei is working day and night, and it’s all because of the spring corvee labor. The promised holiday has also been canceled because of it.
Fortunately, because of Di Yelei’s connections, both Hu Daniu and Hu Erniu were assigned to corvee labor on the riverside and engaged in relatively light work like digging trenches.
Since the beginning of this year’s early spring, there has been continuous rain without a sunny day.
The accumulated snow on the mountain began to melt, and the water level rose rapidly. Di Yelei and others started living on the riverbank, and it had been three days since they returned home.
“Madam, don’t worry too much. This hard labor is the same every year, it’s just tiring and exhausting, but generally, there are no problems,” Ms. Gao saw that Liu Sisi’s eyebrows were tightly furrowed and couldn’t help comforting her.