Walking out of the gate of the school field, bypassing a photo wall, the street scene owned by this large country in the Central Plains finally appeared in front of me.

Well, it's quite deserted, after all, it's right in front of the county office.

Shu Hui and Yuan Tiangang were followed by a few "smart" yacha, and the group went out of the gate of the county office and headed west. This county office is located in the middle of the city, and the political leaders and security forces of the entire county are concentrated. It is because most of the surrounding areas are rich residential areas, and the shops on the street are relatively prosperous.

Most of the streets west of the county office sell some daily necessities, and compared with the cultural utensils on the east street, the style is much lower. Most of the roadside vendors are dressed in soap (black) clothes and sell along the street, and occasionally vendors in plain clothes carry some vegetables and fruits through the street.

The materials used for clothing are mostly cinnamon cloth (kapok), summer cloth (ramie cloth) or kudzu cloth (kudzu cloth). Occasionally, there are spacious households dressed in silk and satin, and there are three or five slaves and maids who go in and out of some teahouses and restaurants, and they are also dressed in plain colors.

The Tang Dynasty followed the Sui system, and there were strict restrictions on the color of the people's clothing. Even if it is not a court dress, a ceremonial dress, or a command dress, the colors that officials at all levels are allowed to wear are also applicable to regular clothes.

In the Tang Dynasty, the common people wore white, and the merchants wore soap. Scholars can wear yellow, which was once abolished, so now readers are also honestly dressed in "white clothes and snow". For officials, the color range of regular clothes is not as clear as that of court clothes, green, blue, and blue can be mixed below the sixth grade, scarlet clothes above the fifth grade, and purple above the third grade.

Of course, in order to show their low profile, those bigwigs in the DPRK and China often go out in white. But if you do the other way around, this will not work, you will be fined, and in serious cases, you will have to go to jail.

Therefore, whether it is the Shu brocade woven by dyeing cooked silk, or the four famous embroideries of the plain bottom pile of colored threads, or the batik, twisted (tie-dyeing), and clamped (engraving) of the finished cloth, most of the handicrafts made are used in the decoration of screens, fans, etc. The only people who can really wear them out of the door are the officials who are high above the temple.

Except for a few errands, Shu Hui and his entourage all have grades, and they can barely wear colorful clothes to go out. So when they go up the street, they seem to stand out from the crowd.

In fact, Shu Hui refused to wear this green dress at first, but it was still the same sentence, the guest is as he pleases, and it is not easy to pick anything.

Most of the ancient buildings were wooden structures, and they were quite low due to various rituals and techniques. It is because the layout of lighting is not required, but it needs to pay attention to the function of keeping out the cold. Under this demand, the humility of facing the south and sitting in the north has been established, and after years of evolution, it has become a small and small science, with a faint meaning of feng shui.

Regardless of the layout of the castle or the direction of the interior buildings, this principle is followed. After turning an interface, Shu Hui and his party walked up a long street running north-south. It's much more prosperous than the east-west street.

Probably because most of the east-west directions are restaurants and inns, and the owners operate during the day and settle down at night, all in the same place. The north-south street, lined with shops on both sides, is lined up with small partitions. I want to come to the property of a large family, and I will be taken care of by private servants during the day, all for business.

Shu Huiren's calves were short, and only their trouser legs could be seen between a group of guards lining up the crowd. So Ao Guang hugged him on his shoulder, so that he could take a closer look at what the shops in the Tang Dynasty had.

In fact, Hongyu wanted to hug him more, but was wittily stopped by Shu Hui. Although he may be less than thirty pounds, he doesn't look like he can do heavy work, and he is afraid that he will have to slide him to the ground with soft hands if he can't hold it for a while.

And she's not tall either!

Shu Hui climbed onto the shoulders of Ao Guang, a seven-foot strong man, and was a little frightened by the ups and downs of his walking, and couldn't help but wonder if he was also infected with his fear of heights.

This Huojing County is only a middle and lower county, and there are not many high-end goods on the streets. However, this place is not far from Tibet, and some yak skins and dried meat are also sold. Most of the cloth shops sell silk and satin, as well as cinnamon cloth shipped from Lingnan Road, but not many people buy it. During the period of small-scale peasant economy, the folk men cultivated and women weaved, and the transaction volume of finished fabrics was actually not large. Most of the time, cloth is spun and not sold as a commodity, but as a currency circulation or reserve.

Listening to Hongyu's explanation, it seems that there is a material called white stack in the cloth shop in Chang'an City, which has both the softness of silk and the thickness of ramie, and is more insulating than the two. It sounds like cotton cloth, and it is said that the price is expensive, so expensive that Shu Hui feels a little unbelievable.

According to Yuan Tiangang, due to the drought in recent years, grain prices have been rising. A bucket of rice has doubled from six coins in the Wude period to twelve coins today, and it seems that it will continue to rise. This year, a raw silk can only be exchanged for four buckets of rice, in fact, because the mulberry leaves are also affected by the drought and the harvest is reduced, the price of silk silk has also been raised.

A horse of raw silk was forty feet long, and now it was worth forty-eight dollars. After degumming, refining and then dyeing, the most expensive can be sold for 200 yuan without weaving and embroidery.

And the best white stacked cloth costs twenty dollars for one foot! If you buy enough horses, you will need 800 yuan.

It's really expensive, Shu Hui chooses to wear silk cloth. As the saying goes, scarcity is expensive, and this is true. Who would have thought that cotton cloth, which was even cheaper than linen in later generations, would now be worth four times as much as fine silk?

This topic is a bit heavy, after all, it involves drought and food prices, and Yuan Tiangang, a county parent, and Shu Hui, a child who eats salty radishes and worries about it, were silent for half of the conversation.

Shu Hui decided not to think about it anymore. Drought and crop failures are a problem that cannot be completely avoided in future generations. You can't be pretentious just because he ran to ancient times and knew a little more than others, and forced himself to take the work that he would be blind in the future life.

There are no calligraphy, paintings, antiques, or rouge gouache shops in this western street. Whether it is a talented person or a beautiful woman, he has not made do with it, but he still has a lot of life.

On this entire street, only Shu Hui and his party were not in vain, and the pedestrians were not overly frightened when they saw them. Most of them take the initiative to get out of the way when they get closer. In the Tang Dynasty, although the law was used to divide people into three classes, in the end there was no distinction between officials and ordinary people, and the relationship between officials and people was quite harmonious.

Moreover, the pedestrians on the road are all on foot, neither riding horses nor sitting in sedan chairs. Horses were a rarity at this time, and they were about the same as the luxury cars of later generations. Coupled with the sparse population, although there is no ban on horses, it is difficult to see.

As for the sedan chair, it is not even some dynasties that Shu Hui saw on TV, where the rich lady had to sit in a sedan chair so that a certain disciple could hide. The current sedan chair can only be sat by the emperor and empress. Rich? Being a big official? Then you have to ride a horse honestly. Of course, if you really have money, you can also ride in a carriage.

In addition, Shu Hui also saw all kinds of meat and spices that Yuan Tiangang deliberately "hidden" to prevent him from eating, which really made him excited, and he almost asked Yuan Tiangang directly why he didn't get it for him.

He even smelled a familiar fragrance in front of a shop that sold beeswax pine and other lighting fuels and animal fats, and when he asked Yuan Tiangang, it was indeed sesame oil!

You can't be mistaken, sesame oil is sesame oil, not flax oil, which has no smell. Shu Hui was a little forced to name these common plants, so he was not distorted by the merchants who sold oil in later generations.

With sesame oil, stir-frying is not a dream. Although the current pressing efficiency is slightly lower, I think that Shu Hui's current net worth can still afford it.

At present, there is no large-scale workshop for vegetable oils. Sesame seeds are relatively easy to obtain because they are ground directly after hot water and the oil can float to the surface of the water, so some farmers will also squeeze some of them themselves.

And what is sold here is those rich families who have more abundant private slaves, and will let the slaves and maids who have spare time to engage in some production. The weaving of cloth for women and the oil extraction for men are also the early prototypes of the workshop.

However, although sesame oil is fragrant, it is also too fragrant to mask the taste of the food itself. I'm afraid it's not very beautiful to eat for a long time, so Shu Hui asked Yuan Tiangang if there was any flax oil.

This sesame seed is one of several crops brought back by Zhang Qian's mission to the Western Regions in the Han Dynasty and successfully introduced, but the pepper brought back during the same period is only a finished spice and has no cultivation method. Listening to the name flax, it seems to be native to the region of Little Asia, if Zhang Qian can bring back sesame seeds from the Western Regions, then flax should not be a problem.

Shu Hui looked at the hemp clothes all over the street, he couldn't tell what kind of hemp they were, there should be flax...... Right?

"Linen? What is that? Yuan Tiangang said that he didn't know anything about flax. Shu Hui looked at the other two, and they also shook their heads, and then looked at a few yachas...... Well, haven't heard of it.

In fact, flax should not have been introduced to Chinese mainland until the Yuan Dynasty conquered Europe, as an edible oil crop. Fibrous flax, which is used as a fabric crop, was not introduced until the 19th century. China's traditional linen cloth is mostly ramie, kudzu hemp and hemp, among which hemp is the most high-end, and the price is similar to raw silk.

Of course, this hemp can't be used to slip leaves.

After walking a little further, I saw a hawker walking by with two baskets of fresh vegetables. Shu Hui saw that there was still lettuce in it!

"Oh, lettuce, you say? It was a visit from the envoy of the Western Regions to the emperor of the previous dynasty. I heard that he received a lot of rewards for the seeds of this vegetable. Seeing Shu Hui asking about lettuce, Hongyu replied.

"Lettuce? Oh yes, lettuce. Shu Hui remembered that the real name of lettuce should be called leaf lettuce. It is also native to the Mediterranean region, since the lettuce in the Western recipe is lettuce, so if it was introduced to China during the Great Sui Dynasty in the previous dynasty, the variety should be relatively primitive.

He thought right, after the lettuce was introduced to China, it was only in the process of domestication that the relationship between climate and soil quality mutated, and lettuce for stems was derived, which is what we often call lettuce or green shoots. If lettuce was cultivated in the north at this time, it is possible that some areas have already produced pioneer varieties of lettuce.

Anyway, seeing this, Shu Hui rekindled hope for her recipes.

There are also several porcelain shops in the middle of the street, there are Xingyao Ding kiln products transported from the north, and there are also Yue kiln Hongyao transported from the south, most of which are monotonous celadon and white porcelain. Of course, the most of them are locally produced kilns.

After asking Yuan Tiangang, I learned that the Qiongyao kiln in Qiongzhou is quite famous in Datang because of its natural yellow-brown color.

Didn't expect there to be such a specialty here? Shu Hui pondered, if porcelain can be produced here, there is no shortage of kaolin, so write it down first.

After passing through a section of shops selling ready-to-wear and shoes, you will enter the wealthy residential area of Huojing County. There are no clans here, but except for a few merchants, there have been some officials to a greater or lesser extent. has always changed dynasties, and most of the portals that can have poetry and books can always make a comeback, so Yuan Tiangang often has contacts with them.

These people have all come to see Shu Hui's "look", and they all offer "offerings", which makes Shu Hui feel a little kind. However, Tang people don't play mahjong and don't watch TV, unless there are few people visiting the house during the New Year's holidays. Usually in and out of the purchase, most of the slaves and maids are busy in the morning. Now these houses are closed, as if they are afraid of running away from the wealth.

Shu Hui didn't have any luggage, and some gadgets from those who had come to visit him were just sent by Yuan Tiangang to send them back. After turning another corner, the group slowly paced to the west side behind the county office empty-handed, where the door of a house was open, and a short, fat man with a smile was waiting at the door.

This is Shu Hui's new residence. The courtyard with three entrances before and after was already very magnificent in Shu Hui's opinion, and only the three of Shu Hui lived plus more than a dozen pure people who were dismantled and transferred from a nearby temple, which seemed a little empty. However, he also knew that this was not worth mentioning at all among those large clans with hundreds of masters alone.

However, this house is much more spacious than Yuan Tiangang's county order house in the county office.

The whole house is about 30 meters wide from east to west and about 55 meters long from north to south. As soon as the main gate enters, about ten meters wide, it is a courtyard, and the residence and gatehouse of the slave and maid are located in this entrance. The gate of the house is on the east side of the entrance, and the westernmost side is the thatched house and stables.

The north side is the courtyard wall of the second courtyard, and the gate of the second courtyard is a circle of verandahs around the entire second courtyard. There are a lot of flowers and plants planted in the courtyard, but although they seem to have been taken care of, they seem to be quite messy, and Shu Hui even saw a few leeks in it.

Facing the gate of the second courtyard is the main house, the residence of the owner. The transept rooms on both sides of the main house were originally reserved for filling houses or children to live in. On the left side of the courtyard gate is the west wing, and on the right side is the east wing, both of which are connected to the main house with a verandah.

The ear room of the west wing is a thatched latrine, which is connected to the thatched toilet of the slave maid's residence. The transept of the east wing is a kitchen, and there is a separate door that leads to the first courtyard, and the well of the whole house is also here.

Behind the main house, there is also a three-entry courtyard, or a back cover room, which is generally the residence of the master close to the slave and maid, and is also used as a storehouse.

That Yazi diligently introduced the various arrangements of the house to the group, thinking that he had already told Hongyu and Ao Guang yesterday about the same thing, and he was enthusiastic about it at this time.

"This house was originally built by a Suzhou silk merchant, but in the past few years, the drought has caused the price of grain in the mainland to skyrocket, and it is difficult to do business."

"So as soon as I heard that the red lady was going to buy a house in the county, she asked our tooth shop to introduce the transaction. Yesterday, the negotiation was settled, and his family went directly back to his hometown. ”

"It is said that the food there is not too expensive, and there is a lot of aquatic products, so there is no need to worry about the sky."

"A large amount of furniture is still kept, because the red lady buys a house happily, then the Suzhou businessman will directly send it, and you don't have to buy it again."

Shu Hui looked left and right, yes, the house is quite new.

This main house lives by itself, and the ear room or wing room Ao Guang and Hongyu can live wherever they want. There are few people in this house, so when the time comes, rebuild the back cover room and make a small kitchen and bathroom, perfect.

Then he was led by the red fish through the verandah, and into the tallest main room facing the door of the second courtyard.

The main room is about 14 meters wide and 5 meters deep, and is divided into five parts by screens and curtains. The most spacious of them is the central hall for entertaining guests, paved with blue bricks, with a long table and a few beds. The first two of them also have backrests, and they are already chairs except for their names.

Behind the screen on the left hand of the door are two museum shelves, on which the calligraphy, painting and antiques have been taken away by the original owner, leaving only a few strange stone roots, which is quite in line with Shu Hui's appetite. Lift up the gauze curtain again, and there is a small study behind it, and there is still an inkstone and a pen holder at this time. The pens on the pen stand are still brand new, and they are all ornamental playthings.

After all, the original owner here was just a businessman, and I am afraid that at most he happened to be literate.

There is also a thick gauze curtain behind the screen on the right hand side of the central hall, and when you open it, you can see that there is a small round table with tea cups and mud pots on it, and a small bed is spread against the wall. Further to the right is the openwork moon door, which is also only used for decoration, and behind the door is the master's bed.

"The young master sleeps here, and the slave sleeps outside." Redfish pointed to the innermost bed, and then to the small bed against the wall outside the arch, explaining what the term maid meant.

After being silent for a while, Shu Hui felt that something was wrong, but it seemed that it should really be like this. He decided to put it aside for a moment and asked:

"Ao Guang, where do you live?"

"Young master, our family will live in the ear room next door to you."

Shu Hui stroked her chin, well, that's not bad. In this way, the three giants in the house are all in this area, and it is not a problem to cover their own halo effect.