Gasp! She's a Time Traveler Using Modern Tech to Improve Ancient Life-Chapter 509 - 508: Dowry Gifts

During breakfast, the family noticed that Lin Wanwan’s swollen eyes had not yet healed, and they were very concerned.

Little Qingyu looked up and asked Lin Wanwan, "Mother, what happened to you?"

Lin Wanwan rubbed her little head and said, "Mother got snow blown into her eyes from outside."

"Ah, then why doesn’t the baby get snow blown into her eyes?" The little one had reached the age where conversations often dwindled.

"Because you are amazing, you are the best!"

Today, all the servants in the Lin Mansion were very cautious because Le’an Village Lady was in a bad mood.

Even Xiao Yixun had become much more well-behaved, and the animal army of little Qingyu sensibly stayed quiet and curled up silently.

In the Warm Pavilion, Lin Wanwan was accompanying little Qingyu in writing calligraphy, copying a script written by Xiao Chong.

Outside, the ground was all iced over, so Lin Wanwan did not allow little Qingyu to run out to play wildly but confined her at home to write large characters.

As long as Lin Wanwan was willing to accompany her, little Qingyu didn’t mind writing.

The world was completely silent, and you could even hear the sound of snow melting on the branches outside the window.

Lin Wanwan’s heart calmed down under the comfort of little Qingyu. Such a little person, yet the strength she gave was infinite.

After practicing writing, little Qingyu couldn’t sit still, so Lin Wanwan decided to take her along to select New Year gifts for various households.

Lin Wanwan prepared padded brocade robes for Xiao Chong, Dugu Di, Xiao Ce in the County Government, and the doctor Chen Liang, two sets each. The cotton came from the Lin Workshop, and the finished garments were from a clothing shop she had acquired in Xiaoxi Town.

Besides clothes, the various foods beloved by the foodie Xiao Chong were also indispensable.

Lin Wanwan had "collected" goods twice from the Wild Pier, openly allowing carts and horses to bring them into the Lin Mansion, providing Xiao Chong with New Year gifts of cherries and sugar oranges, as well as the sunflowers and peanuts she grew in the greenhouse.

Peanuts and melon seeds stir-fried with salt and pepper provided absolute leisurely delight.

Lin Wanwan didn’t just send these to Xiao Chong but also to various households she interacted with in Xiaoxi Town.

Besides these individuals, the most important New Year gift was prepared for the maternal family in Qiantang.

In addition to the New Year gifts, she also had to prepare trousseau for the twin sisters of the main Xiao Family branch.

Both of them were betrothed, and the trousseau gifts were scheduled for the same day, the day after tomorrow.

The gifts Lin Wanwan prepared for them were considered very "luxurious" in the Great Tang, each a vintage-style copper makeup mirror.

The original version had one regular side and one with three times magnification.

Lin Wanwan felt the double-sided mirror was too advanced, too rare, so she modified the three times magnified side into a piece of Su Embroidery, depicting the wood peony (also known as the peony flower) beloved by noblewomen of the Great Tang.

The copper mirror with a refined copper base cost Lin Wanwan only one hundred and eighteen yuan in the modern world. As for the Su Embroidery, it was produced by the embroideress in her own embroidery workshop, costing her almost nothing.

The monthly salary of 800 and additional business bonuses for the embroideress were negligible for Lin Wanwan.

After all, whether sold through the Silk Clothing Shop or directly as a high-end luxury item in the modern world, the profits were in the thousands of times.

Choosing to modify the three times magnified side of the mirror into Su Embroidery was partly to reduce the technological content of the mirror and also to better highlight Lin Wanwan’s thoughtfulness in preparing the gift.

One look and you could tell the Western-style mirror was painstakingly modified, not just throwing money and being vulgar.

On the day of the twin sisters Xiao Shulian and Xiao Liwei’s trousseau ceremony, the most climactic part was when the servants responsible for registering gifts announced Lin Wanwan’s trousseau gift.

The Glazed Mirror, once announced, caused a sensation, and the news quickly spread all over Qiantang.

From ancient times to the present, the gossip in noble households has always been the most talked-about topic in the market. 𝐟𝐫𝕖𝗲𝘄𝚎𝗯𝕟𝐨𝕧𝐞𝚕.𝕔𝕠𝐦

As long as there were subordinate servants, there were never completely secret things in a mansion.

Moreover, such matters, once spread, also brought face to the host family, so naturally, there was no reason to stop the servants from discussing it.

The first exquisite mirror in the world appeared in Italy in 1507, and it immediately caused a sensation throughout Europe, becoming a fashionable item sought after by everyone in high society at the time.

The last time Lin Wanwan took out a Tan Carpenter’s mirror at the Ge Xian Temple polo field, it sparked a round of discussion only in the small circle of elite women.

Because afterward, Lin Wanwan did not mingle with this group of young girls but instead became a young disciple of the senior Sun Simiao, revolving around Elder Sun, so the mirror’s matter did not spread widely.

This time, the two-sided Glazed Mirrors as trousseau gifts for the Xiao sisters would naturally attract many of their friends to come see the novelty.

Thus, the story about the Glazed Mirror spread wider and wider, and many noble ladies began sending people to Western Region merchants to inquire where to find Glazed Mirrors.

But how could they possibly find it?

According to history, it would still take over 800 years for mercury and tin foil mirrors to be created in the world. It would be odd for the Western Region merchants trading with the Great Tang now to come by such Glazed Mirrors.

In this space-time, only Lin Wanwan could possibly produce a glass mirror, but Lin Wanwan simply did not want to venture into this area.

She felt buying a few in the modern world for personal goodwill was enough. Glass, soap, perfume, wine—these epoch-making lucrative industries—she had temporarily no interest in pursuing.

As someone using the identity of a granddaughter of the Xiao family in the Lin family, Lin Wanwan sending gifts that were effortlessly for her, to bring face to the Xiao family, was considered giving back.

She prepared four such copper mirrors, one for each of the four Xiao sisters.

Although Lin Wanwan had the best relationship with Xiao Xianghua, she did not want to show favoritism during the trousseau ceremony.

Because each gift in the trousseau would be announced and registered on the spot, becoming part of the lady’s dowry, entirely public (the dowry list is useful in divorce cases, the Great Tang has divorce cases), as the saying goes, not fearing scarcity but inequality, why bother.

Since she was close with Xiao Xianghua, if she wanted to give her extra gifts, she could do so in daily correspondence with her, why make a big fuss over it at the trousseau ceremony.

With this grand gesture at the Xiao family’s trousseau ceremony, Lin Wanwan would not even fear the emergence of the real granddaughter of the Xiao family in the future. She believed the Xiao family would certainly try their best to protect her then.

If the real granddaughter fell into poverty, she might not even be acknowledged.

After all, Lin Wanwan’s identity as Le’an Village Lady now, and her wealth that could rival a nation, was a great support to a branched-out Xiao family line.

As long as a person is useful to others, they will never be abandoned. If they become useless, even relatives might not be reliable.

Why does Xiao’s mother have the highest say in the Xiao family, merely relying on the brainwash of "filial piety is priority"?

The bigger reason is that now most of the Xiao family’s businesses in Qiantang are in the hands of the old lady, along with her dowry business subsidizing family expenses.

Not to mention the Great Tang, even in modern times, the treatment of an old person with a pension vs. without a pension with their children is different.