I couldn't take it anymore; when I went home for Chinese New Year, the family genealogy book ha

Su Qing didn't say anything, but pushed the drawing paper to the center of the table, leaned back in her chair, and waited for everyone to see it.

The three old men gathered around at the same time.

The lines on the paper are surprisingly simple.

A cylindrical glass bottle, its body transparent, largely blank, without patterns, gilding, or any decoration. In the center is a narrow white label with four characters written in neat small characters—

**"Jiang Family - Spring Tidings"**

The bottle opening had no plastic cap; it was covered with a piece of plain linen cloth, tied with a slipknot by thin hemp rope.

that's it.

The whole sheet of paper looks clean and neat, as if it were cut from some high-end magazine.

The three old men stared at it for a full ten seconds.

My second uncle was the first to raise his head, his expression complex.

"That's...that's it?"

Su Qing nodded.

"Nothing in Phnom Penh at all?"

"no."

"This label is so white it's practically invisible," Uncle said, pointing to the white label with his finger. "Isn't this going too far in trying to save money? Even the printing factory probably wouldn't want to take this order."

The pedantic scholar Jiang Jianwen leaned closer, picked up the paper, and examined it under the light, his brows furrowing into a deep frown.

"What does 'spring message' mean? Aren't we selling strawberry jam? Why are we selling messages now?"

He put the paper down, pushed the folding fan aside, and said uncertainly, "Could it be addressed to spring?"

Retired teacher Jiang Qiming put on his reading glasses, studied the text seriously for a long time, and finally spoke.

"The name is interesting, it sounds refined and like tea for cultured people... but the black and white characters on paper don't look festive enough."

He pointed to the empty bottle, "If you put this bottle at a wedding banquet, the guests will think it's medicine, right?"

Su Qing wasn't in a hurry; she waited until they finished speaking before speaking herself.

"This is called minimalism."

All three of them looked at her at the same time.

"Young people in the city are into this now, it's called..." She paused, "it's called sophistication. It's not about saving money, it's about minimalist aesthetics—the less, the more expensive; the whiter, the more high-end."

After hearing this, my second uncle shook his head vigorously.

"Subtraction aesthetics? I don't understand that stuff. All I know is, if there's a row of sauces on the shelf, and you're all white and bland, who would grab that first? They'd definitely grab the one with the big red and gold lettering!"

He pushed his gold brick sample forward for comparison, saying, "Look, this is called visual impact! Wow!"

Su Qing glanced at the gold brick, said nothing, but simply tapped her finger lightly twice on her drawing paper.

"Second Uncle, when you go to the supermarket, do you buy the one with fifty words printed on it and three layers of adhesive tape, or the one with only two lines of text on the label and a nice-looking bottle?"

Uncle opened his mouth.

"This...this is different..."

"What's different?"

"..."

The second uncle couldn't get a reply, so he could only push the gold brick to the side.

Jiang Jianwen seized the opportunity: "I think we should change the name. The characters 'Chunxin' are not easy for ordinary people to remember. How about changing it to 'Jiang's Spring Brew'? It has a sense of history and a grander feel to it."

Su Qing shook her head: "'Spring Brew' is the name for wine. When it's used for jam, consumers' first reaction is that it contains alcohol and is not suitable for the elderly and children."

Jiang Jianwen: Oh.

He put the folding fan away and didn't say anything more.

It was Jiang Qiming's turn. The old man adjusted his posture and decided to launch his attack from a literary perspective.

"The name 'Spring Message' is understandable to cultured people, but who is our main customer base? It's the tourists who walk in and the young people who order online, and these people may not all have read classical poetry—"

"Whether you've read classical poems or not isn't important," Su Qing interrupted him, her tone blunt. "What's important is whether the name sounds nice and whether you can remember it. The two characters 'Spring News' are easy to pronounce, and when you type them out, they're just two characters. They're clean and easy to recognize when you put them on your phone screen."

She paused for a moment, then added, "Moreover, 'spring letter' means a letter brought by spring, which goes very naturally with strawberries, a spring fruit, and needs no further explanation."

Jiang Qiming shut his mouth.

The meeting room was unusually quiet for a moment.

The three old men looked at each other in bewilderment.

No one said another word.

This silence is not the kind of silence that comes from being persuaded; it's the kind of silence that comes from holding your breath and not finding a point of rebuttal.

Jiang Chen watched the whole thing from the side, and only now did he shift his gaze from Su Qing to the drawing paper in the middle of the table.

He read it carefully once.

Glass bottle, blank space, small regular script, linen rim, hemp rope knot.

Five elements.

He turned to look at the batch of strawberry jam at the factory, then at the piece of paper, and already knew the answer in his heart.

He tapped on the table.

"This is it."

The three old men looked at him at the same time.

"Second Uncle, your gold brick is good for displaying on the table during the New Year, but it doesn't sell well at other times, so just leave it aside."

My second uncle was about to speak.

"Uncle Jiang Jianwen, your porcelain jar with the ancient poem is certainly cultured, but the cost of that jar is more expensive than a bottle of sauce. It doesn't make sense."

Jiang Jianwen tucked the folding fan into his sleeve without saying a word.

"Teacher Jiang, we shouldn't use the phrase 'top scholar in the imperial examination,' because it will be difficult to explain if problems arise later."

Jiang Qiming pressed the stack of red paper under his lap and looked away.

"Let's use Su Qing's." Jiang Chen picked up the drawing paper and held it up to the three of them. "A clear glass bottle, white label, 'Jiang Family Spring Letter,' sealed with burlap."