Nowadays, although she is no longer in the weaving workshop, that experience transformed her.
She dares to loudly check accounts with delivery men, can understand simple contracts, and even secretly bought a few books compiled by the Gu Clan school, "Introduction to Women's Literacy" and "Practical Arithmetic," to read at home.
She discovered that some patterns and colors brought by the Sea Merchants, regularly visiting the shop, vaguely correspond with the "geometric shapes" and "exotic color palettes" in the books she had secretly read.
This discovery made her heartbeat quicken, as if she glimpsed the secrets of a larger world.
At midday, the busiest period on the canal had passed.
In the tea shed, several resting old men were smoking dry tobacco, with conversations shifting from livelihood to the scenery of past and present.
