"Xiaomei come in!"

Zhen Qian knew that this little girl was eavesdropping outside the door, and when he saw Xiaomei poking her head out of the door slowly, she said with a smile: "You take Xiaoya to the street to buy some new clothes, new jewelry, beads and flowers for the New Year, and then take a good bath, and you must be high-profile when you go out, so that everyone in the Zhen family knows that Xiaoya is my concubine, understand?" ”

Xiaomei nodded reluctantly.

Meng Xiaoya raised her head and looked at Zhen Qian, and suddenly felt that the sense of happiness came so violently, the man in front of her thoughtfully arranged his life in person, did he hear it wrong.

Xiaomei and Meng Xiaoya have known each other for a long time, the two have not been together for a long time, and they have not sighed with the same fate, but they are very wary of this woman who is dangerous to their status, one is a good person as a concubine, and the other is a maid as a concubine, the difference in identity makes each other talk very little, but they have to accept this fact.

Seeing the two of them walking out of the door awkwardly, Zhen Qian laughed in his heart, the women in the family are not all kind and harmonious together, and they are more careful to compete for the favor of men, which Zhen Qian doesn't want to care about, and is happy to see them compete for favor, this is an era of men's dreams.

"Tianxing, give these gifts to Zhao Sanlang, and say the Zhen family's New Year's gift!"

Zhen Qian made a pot of tea, took a chair and sat under the patio in the middle of the room to bask in the sun, Fujiwara Shuxiong on the side was concentrating on studying chess with a table, and raised his head and said: "Zhen Lang, your Zhen family is really big, why did you move to Luquan County in the first place?" ”

Zhending's Zhen family occupies half an area in the county, there are as many as thirty or forty households, large and small, with a population of four or five hundred, and of course there are many slaves and maids in it.

"Is it big here? Tomorrow, I will take you to the ancestral hall of the Zhen family, most of the entire village is surnamed Zhen, so what is the big one? ”

In the eyes of Fujiwara Shuxiong, in addition to being prosperous and strong, the biggest feature of Datang is that there are many people, a large land area, and there are so many people that they are rubbing shoulders and sweating into rain, and a capital city of Chang'an has a population of millions, and it is difficult to imagine how to manage a country's population of nearly 100 million.

The Zhen family is also very large, almost faster than the scale of the Fujiwara South family, and there are many, many more families like this in Datang!

"Zhen Lang, kill a few games with me!"

The two of them put the chess pieces in front of the table to fight, and when playing chess with Li Huang, they had to consider handicaping, and they couldn't win too beautifully or lose too badly, which was both a science and a kind of torment. Playing chess with Fujiwara Shuxiong has no worries, the big open and close rampage, the offensive is sharp, the defense is solid, and soon Fujiwara Shuxiong is in a hurry, shouting that he hasn't thought about ...... yet.

"How come Zhen Lang's chess skills haven't improved by leaps and bounds for a few days!"

Saying that, the two looked at each other and laughed, this little trick ****** people know, and it's not a big secret.

"One more game, Zhen Lang doesn't want to show mercy to his subordinates, be happy...... Bring the wine! ”

Originally, Zhen Qian wanted to introduce Fujiwara Shuxiong to Zhen Sheng, but after Zhen Sheng talked to him about the marriage, Zhen Qian was ready to hide the matter.

"Fujiwara-kun has been wronged here for two days temporarily, if you are bored, I will let you accompany you to the street!"

"Thank you!"

Fujiwara Shuxiong naturally doesn't know what Zhen Qian is thinking, Zhen Qian's family affairs are not easy for outsiders to mix, there is food, drink, good hospitality, and what is not satisfied.

After fighting a few plates, the servants came to invite Zhen Qian to eat the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, saying that it was the Chinese New Year's Eve dinner, which was different from the dinner that the later generations ate at six or seven o'clock in the evening, and the Tang Dynasty Chinese New Year's Eve dinner was at three or four o'clock in the afternoon, and the whole family would sit around and talk while eating, and eat until late, and in the evening, they would light firecrackers to say goodbye to the old and welcome the new.

The firecrackers here are made of real bamboo, and the whole bamboo is sawn into sections more than a foot long and burned on the fire to make a "crackling" sound.

On Chinese New Year's Eve, the whole family gathers together to eat and have fun without sleeping, a custom that has been passed down to this day and is called the custom of "keeping the year".

The Chinese New Year is a day of reunion, regardless of high and low, high and low, including direct children and grandchildren, younger brothers, sisters, sisters and brothers who have already started a family, and even nephews will come back to gather together to celebrate the New Year. Even the great poet Bai Juyi wrote about the scene of the New Year in his own family, and said: My younger brothers, sisters, wives, nephews, and nephews are making fun of me.

At about 12 o'clock in the evening, the whole family began to enter the process of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new, the keepers stood up one after another, the younger generations saluted the elders, and the slaves and maids kowtowed to their masters, saying something such as: Blessing and extending the new day, celebrating the life of the boundless; Auspicious words and festive words such as the beginning of the new year of Fuqing and the extension of longevity.

The younger generation mainly prostrates on both knees, and the time, frequency and body posture of prostrations depend on the status of both parties. Women, on the other hand, are required to practice a more formal ritual called "prostration." At that time, the "bow" was generally to kneel on both knees, and then clench your fists or join the hands in front of your chest, and the body and head also bowed slightly forward, and the range of movement did not need to be too large.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, they began to visit friends and worship their ancestors, sit together to eat, drink, and have fun.

Early in the morning of the first day of the Lunar New Year in the Tang Dynasty, a very long bamboo pole was erected in the courtyard, the bottom of the pole was buried in the soil, and a long flag made of paper or cloth was hung on the top of the pole, shaking in the wind, which was called "flag". Later, this custom spread to the Wa Kingdom, and gradually evolved into "Shark Floating".

There are also activities at the entrance of the gate, to exchange peach charms, paste door gods and spring couplets. The peach charm is a pair of wood chips made from the branches of the peach tree, usually painted red, and hung on both sides of the gate, which is said to have the effect of warding off evil spirits. Every year on the first day of the Lunar New Year, you need to pick up the old ones and replace them with new ones. It doesn't matter if there are poor families who can't afford to replace them with new ones. Take it off, repaint it and put it back on. On the first two peach talismans, one is written "Shen Di" and the other is written "Yu Lei", both of which are legendary gods who can suppress evil ghosts.

In the middle of the Tang Dynasty, due to the hype led by the royal family, this brother was replaced by Qin Qiong, Qin Shubao, and Wei Chi Jingde, who were more popular with the masses. And the big guy thinks that just writing the names of the two on the peach charm is not enough, so he directly draws the two people's samples and sticks them on the door, so it seems that the power has greatly increased a lot! That's how the gods came to be.

As for the Spring Festival couplets, it was originally thought that this custom existed only from the late Tang Dynasty and the fifth dynasty, but the written data unearthed in Dunhuang can already prove that as early as the Tang Dynasty Xuanzong Kaiyuan period, there were couplets pasted on both sides of the gate.

The wine drunk during the New Year is also very particular, one is called "Tusu wine", and the other is called "pepper and cypress wine". Tusu liquor is a traditional Chinese medicine agent, which is made by mixing seven kinds of herbs, including rhubarb, white art, bellflower, Shu pepper, cinnamon sin, wutou, and sarsaparilla. It is said that these two kinds of medicinal wine can have the effect of driving away evil spirits and detoxifying, prolonging life and longevity.

When the people of the Tang Dynasty drank these two flavors, they also had a particularly interesting habit of drinking them from the youngest child in the family. This is because "the younger ones get the younger ones first, and the younger ones get the old ones first, and the old ones lose their age, so they drink with the wine later", that is, as the children grow up day by day, drinking first is a way to express their celebrations, and the old people are getting older day by day, so they drink later to delay their time.

When drinking, a "five-spice plate" is served at the table, which is a piece of green and spicy steam, and each holds five kinds of vegetables, including garlic, small garlic, leeks, brassica, and coriander. The purpose of eating Wuxin Pan is to dissipate the depression accumulated in the five internal organs, so that you can prevent the epidemic and not get sick.

Many of the customs of the Tang Dynasty have been lost after thousands of years, this is the second New Year that Zhen Qian spent in the Tang Dynasty, and found that he was more leisurely and elegant than later generations, without worrying about the troubles of 5, without the laziness brought by modern civilization, it was completely the earliest original intention of the New Year.