First Attempt At Doing Business (By Quan Jingye) Poem by Denis Mair

by Quan Jingye
(translated by Denis Mair)

In 1987, my wife's factory was not breaking even
She was laid off for a few months
This wouldn't do…she had to find a way
To earn back her lost wages
So she decided to bake pastries for sale
After some failed attempts…she went through a friend
To contact someone in Ning'an who made a living from pastries
Watching him go through it once, she was able to master it

Now that she knew how to bake cakes, it was time to sell them
That happened to be during rice-planting season
I took time on a weekend to go with my old lady
We took some freshly made cakes to Dage Village
Where we planned to sell them beside paddy fields

In order to sell them, we had to give people a taste
But as my wife watched the cake tasters licking their lips
She felt embarrassed about selling them
"Let's just divvy them up among the people
We have ties with all of these country people"
My old lady was blinking her eyes as she said this
"I don't see a problem. Go right ahead."
My wife flashed me a wisp of a smile
Hopping like a little bird, with the cakes in her arms
She handed them out door-to-door, happy as you please

It seemed that neither of us was cut out
For doing business…the next morning
While lying under the covers she said
"Well, this attempt at business has gone sour [1]
This bears out the saying…
We "‘raided the hen's nest but ended up breaking the eggs! '"

[1] In the local dialect of Jilin Province, the Chinese word for "go sour" is HUANG-LE, which literally means "turn yellow." In his wife's colorful expression, yellowness fits amusingly with the color of eggs used in making a cake.