The best gift for daily visits is a small snack that can be used as a snack.

Shu Hui asked Redfish to prepare chiffon cake this time. It differs from traditional cakes in that its fluffy, moist texture is created by beating egg whites and mixing them with vegetable oil.

The literal translation of chiffon literally means chiffon. In Shu Hui's opinion, egg whites with a certain dryness after beating are indeed very similar to chiffon.

Compared to the traditional use of butter or butter foaming, egg white is obviously easier to obtain and fewer people avoid it.

What's more, replacing animal oils with vegetable oils with lower saturated fatty acid content is a healthier diet.

Relying on physical whipping to mix the ingredients with air, there is no need for time-consuming fermentation, and the delicious chiffon cake is baked in less than an hour.

Shu Hui looked at the two plates of cakes that were a little browned around and slightly white in the middle, and couldn't help pouting. It seems that the oven customized for making Peking duck is indeed not suitable for baking noodles, and it is not a matter of experience and technology.

"Red fish, put the plate above that is not too ugly into two boxes, one for Yuan Ye to carry over, and the other for me to take." After speaking, he turned back to the slave who baked the cake and instructed the "pastry chef": "Keep two of the remaining plates for each of us, and take the rest and divide them." ”

"Yes, young master!"

Suddenly, I felt a warmth in my back, and I seemed to be itching a little bit behind my knees. Shu Hui didn't have to look back to know who it was, and asked the pastry chef to take the plate down a little, he picked up a cake and stuffed it into Fat Da's mouth with his backhand, and added casually:

"Lock up Fat Da and don't let it follow."

"Yes, young master!"

……

What is the name of Third Brother Zhang, Shu Hui is not very clear. only knows that he is the third oldest among his peers in the family, and his elders call him a whole egg.

Of course, this whole egg is just a nickname. According to the naming custom at this time, Shu Hui estimated that he should have had some special experience in his infancy: for example, the old hen at home happened to not rest that year, and for example, when drawing lots, he only cared about catching eggs......

Shu Hui was thinking wildly about the origin of Brother Zhang's nickname, and walked to the door of Zhang's house - that's right, the Zhang family's house is next door to Shu Hui's house, and the two gates are only forty meters away.

A porter went in to pass the word, Hongyu handed him the gift, and Shu Hui and the three of them followed directly behind.

Although the Zhang family is very famous in Huojing County, as Shu Hui, there is naturally no need to submit a letter of worship in advance. In addition, this trip was just to find Zhang Sange to inspect the stationery market, and he went to the house where Zhang Sange and his father lived, not the Zhang family's ancestral home, so it was a lot more casual.

Now the head of the Zhang family is the ancestor (grandfather) of the third brother of Zhang, but his father is the sixth oldest in the family, and he only gets a small house in the county of the Zhang family.

The two families lived next to each other and had contacts with each other for three years, but more often than not, it was Uncle Zhang's family who had contacts with Shu Hui. But in the end, it is a local family with origins, although the scale of the house of Zhang Sange's family is similar to that Shu Hui inherited from foreign merchants, its structure and decoration are undoubtedly more connotative.

At least Shu Hui didn't see leeks planted in their second courtyard.

At this time, in addition to Shu Hui and his party, there were several visitors in the courtyard. After stopping and paying attention a little, I knew that they were all ordinary people who had some contacts with the Zhang family, and came to congratulate Third Brother Zhang on being recommended to study in four schools.

It's not that they all make an appointment at this time, but there are too many people who can get involved in some relationships. I have received news one after another, and the people who have come to congratulate have been in an endless stream in the past two days.

Seeing this, Shu Hui was a little speechless, he wasn't worried that this trip would be mistaken for a friendship with these people, I am afraid that the Zhang family will be the first to believe it. It was a coincidence, and I felt a little embarrassed to take out this gift.

However, the gift has been mentioned in front of the master by the porter who went to pass the news, and at this time, Brother Zhang's father, Shu Hui, only knew that he was the sixth in his peers, so he called him Uncle Zhang.

After all, this is an eighth-rank lord, which is equivalent to a fifth-rank official. What's more, this is a god! The kind that can save the suffering, immortals!

In fact, Uncle Zhang doesn't know much, anyway, from the few words he can hear from his family, this little lord is a powerful figure in Huojing County and even the entire Qiongzhou.

Of course, if you don't count Shu Hui's superstitious second identity, Qiongzhou is an Shangzhou, and Qiongzhou is a third-grade official, and his grade is several levels higher than Shu Hui.

Shu Hui smiled and waved his hand: "Sixth Uncle Zhang doesn't have to beckon me to wait, the third brother has not come back, if he is at home, he will find someone to take me over." ”

Uncle Zhang Liu hurriedly said that he was at home, and then summoned the concierge who was about to return to work after the transmission just now and asked him to lead the way.

Third Brother Zhang also has two brothers, both of whom have married and live in the east and west wings at this time. As the third child who is not yet fifteen, because Yu Jingce is quite talented along the way, he can live in an ear room alone.

From the pendulum gate of the second courtyard, which is more elegant than its own shape and has more layers of pulp on the vertical pillars, through the hand-copying verandah planted with camellia and peony along the edge of the pine floor, and a few steps up to the ear room where Zhang Sange lives.

When Shu Hui and the others passed, several children in the courtyard were playing a soccer ball made of pigskin. I don't know if it's Brother Zhang's younger brothers and sisters or nephews and nieces, but they are quite lively and cute, and when they saw Shu Hui watching them, they also invited Shu Hui to play ball together.

At the beginning, Yuan Tiangang made a model of "Luo Shu" in his eyes, but after Shu Hui used it as a ball, he followed Shu Hui's advice and filled the inside with some lacquer cloth that is not easy to absorb water. After that, the toy spread from Huojing County, and people also knew that Shu Hui didn't care about kicking this thing as a ball.

Even the Xuangui Temple, which was completed a mile north of the fire well a year ago, held the first national football tournament as a sacrifice to please the people who saved the people from fire and water, and relieved the people from the spirit of the turtle hanging upside down.

Shu Hui, who was a guest at the scene, was indeed pleased. Especially the competition between the women's group and the senior group, he couldn't help but admire Datang's bold spirit, which is not far behind compared with later generations.

Well, this looks very good, don't overdo any feudal etiquette.

Shu Hui suddenly remembered that he seemed to have decided at that time that in the court in the future, once he saw anyone who wanted to regain the classics of those barbaric times and engage in those ideological bindings that had been poisonous for thousands of years, he would be killed directly.

Well, this should be remembered, but not forgotten.

Quite majestically glared at the children who were playing with the ball, so frightened that they shrank their necks and started playing on their own, as if their legs and stomachs were a little trembling, and the level was much worse than before.

Shu Hui looked at his deterrent effect with satisfaction, wondering if he just happened to think of killing some people, causing something called murderous aura to leak out?

As everyone knows, just now a few children saw Ao Guang following Shu Hui, but they mustered up a lot of courage to talk to him. Ao Guang's burly body shape is too intimidating, and many people in later generations prejudiced that muscular men are equal to violent tendencies, and in the eyes of children in this era, big people are equal to bad people.

However, at a distance of more than 20 meters, and without looking at the scenery along the way, Shu Hui and his entourage came to the ear room where Zhang Sange lived under the guidance of the previous concierge.

It is thought that the spiritual life of the current era is not rich enough, so that most people's concept of privacy is relatively weak. The door of Brother Zhang's ear room was open at this time, and before he entered the room, he could see him holding his sleeve and holding a pen on his wrist, and he was swaying some inspiration on the desk.

"Third Brother Zhang, I'm here to get my fan!" Without waiting for the porter to greet him, Shu Hui shouted directly outside, and stepped into the door while shouting.

As soon as Third Brother Zhang heard Shu Hui's voice, his hand suddenly shook, and he heard him say "ahh He put away the waste paper with a sad face, but he didn't complain about Shu Hui, he looked aggrieved.

Shu Hui had already walked to his desk at this time, but the desk where he was writing was relatively high, and Shu Hui couldn't reach the table, so he climbed to the low table on the other side and stood.

One side asked strangely: "Isn't it just a piece of paper, as for feeling distressed like this?" While looking at the third brother Zhang's desk, he was looking forward to the dazzling array of stationery.

There wasn't much on the desk. Just a pen stand, hanging five or six pens of different lengths and thicknesses, Shu Hui can't recognize a famous one; On one side there seems to be some kind of inkstone ground from ore, plus a water tank for washing pens; In addition, there are only two pieces of wooden paperweight that have been painted with paulownia paint.

However, when he saw that Third Brother Zhang went to the shelf next to him and took out a new piece of paper, Shu Hui noticed that his good things were all over the museum shelf.

There are more than a dozen inkstones of different materials and processes on it, and there are about seven or eight kinds of ink toner in a layer. And each of them is two copies, and I don't know what kind of psychology this is.

In addition, there are all kinds of paper and silk. At present, the most mainstream carrier of calligraphy and painting is silk silk, which can be preserved longer than current paper and is easy to fold.

If you want to get a better writing experience than silk silk, you must use the most expensive Xuancheng paper. Although almost all parts of the country produced paper, most of which can also be regarded as tribute, only Xuancheng paper, which is made entirely from the bark of the sandalwood tree, is flexible enough to support the alum process without allowing the ink to infect too widely.

Just make a written record, and other paper can make do, but calligraphy and painting as a work of art cannot.

Because this museum shelf is facing a vertically placed bookshelf, it forms a partition layout, leaving only a gap behind the desk when the door is used, which is not seen when Shu Hui enters the door.

Zhang Sange took out a piece of paper again, but this was a fan that had been cut, which belonged to the finished paper. I thought that he took Shu Hui's excuse seriously, and was ready to send Shu Hui away first and then continue his unfinished creation with peace of mind.

While flattening the fan with a paperweight, he casually answered Shu Hui's previous question: "That is a piece of rice paper sprinkled with gold leaf, which is precious." Even if it's waste paper, it's worth five or six dollars if you sell it. ”

Shu Hui opened her mouth when she heard this, and suddenly felt a little speechless. You say you're sprinkling gold leaf on a piece of paper, isn't it vulgar? Shouldn't scholars treat money like dung...... Well, it occurred to him that there was no such thing.

"Don't you have any white paper here?" Shu Hui looked at the paper that was either yellow or brownish, and asked a little puzzled.

"Yes, there is, but it's too easy to soak in ink and can't be used to write." Third Brother Zhang took out a box from his shelf, took a piece of paper from it, which was still yellowed, but undoubtedly much whiter than the ones just now, and handed it to Shu Hui.

Shu Hui looked at it several times, stroked it with her hand, and finally pinched a corner and bent it gently...... In the end, it was concluded that the paper fibers were short and stiff, and it seemed that the pulp also lacked gum. The intensity is very low, and the gaps are large, which is really not conducive to writing.

"This kind of paper is produced everywhere, with bamboo and hemp as raw materials, lime pulping, and most of them are used to make window paper. In addition, Xuancheng paper is already the whitest variety. ”

It can be seen that Zhang Sange is worthy of being a talented man with a collecting habit, and he can more or less tell some about his collection, and his explanation made Shu Hui feel that the trip was worthwhile.

For example, brushes are divided into hard, both and soft, different creative content uses different pens, and what are the subtle differences between pens made of different animal hairs. However, Shu Hui just went in the left ear and out of the right ear, and he didn't care about this at all.

The most famous brush at this time is the Xuanbi, which is also produced by Xuancheng and is a treasure of the study sought after by the literati of all dynasties.

The best ink is pine smoke ink, and at this time there is no particularly famous ink block for sale, and pine smoke ink is mostly sold as toner in boxes. The lumpy ink is the black edge handed down by Xingyi, that is, modern graphite, which is a natural mineral.

"Is this black edge graphite?" Shu Hui asked.

"Graphite? It's not graphite, the black edge is the black edge, and graphite is now called charcoal, and it's used to cook wine. ”

It seems that these terms are very confusing, Shu Hui touched his chin, but it didn't affect him to know what it was. If graphite wants to be used for writing, it has to be ground well in an inkstone, and the handwriting is relatively light.

The good thing is that it won't be as wide as pine ink. However, at this time, anyone who has some net worth will choose a convenient and clear pine smoke ink. Its particles are finer and can penetrate deep into the fibers of paper or silk, so that they can be preserved longer without fading.

Famous inks such as Hui ink were not formed until the late Tang Dynasty, and after the ink blocks made of smoke ink re-glued and pressed became popular, various famous inkstones with suitable roughness and low hardness also appeared one after another, which was not mentioned in Zhang Sange's explanation at this time.

Most of the inkstones he collected were polished with natural high-hardness ores or ceramics produced in famous kilns.

The cost of pine smoke ink is high. A box of toner produced in a nearby state or county, without any gold, silver powder or spices, costs fifty yuan. A copy of the Analects (11,750 characters) can be used up to three boxes of toner.

The best paper is Xuancheng paper, which is all made from the bark fibers of the sandalwood tree. The juice boiled by the kiwi vine is added as gum, and it takes a year to bleach, and the resulting paper is flexible and smooth, and it is not easy to be soaked in ink. Because the yield is very low, it is very valuable.

Shu Hui now understands why the ancients wrote letters, and most of them cherished words like gold. Every word is money, and if you don't have enough money, of course, you have to do everything you can to reduce a few words.

Thinking of racking her brains to control the number of words, Shu Hui seemed to recall the fear that various comments were dominated by the length limit of 140 words.

As far as Zhang Sange himself is concerned, he needs to consume four boxes of toner per month. Although there are occasional outbursts of inspiration and a waste of pen and ink in writing a few large artistic characters, more often it is still the regular use of scholars such as copying scriptures, practicing calligraphy, and trying to make strategies.

In addition, every time you use the pen, you need to wash the ink residue on it, so that it can better absorb ink when you use the pen next time, and so on. According to Zhang Sange's own estimates, if his interest part is excluded and only for the imperial examination, the monthly expenditure on pen, ink and paper will be nearly 300 yuan.

"Since there needs to be enough adhesive paper on the paper to avoid ink, and it is wasteful to add glue to the paper, why not add it directly to the ink?" Shu Hui asked her doubts.

Zhang Sange was also quite helpless about Shu Hui's strange thinking: "I can't write words when I add rice soup, let alone add glue." And after a few uses, the pen will break down, which will be more expensive. It turns out that these ideas have been explored by someone a long time ago, and they have found that this way does not work.

When Shu Hui heard this, she had her own plans. If you can't write with a brush, doesn't mean that other pens can't write?

It seems that it is necessary to sacrifice the secret weapon of the hard pen. A hard pen can write smaller characters, saving ink, and can use a more viscous ink, which is not as picky as a brush. For record-keeping purposes alone, it's clearly better than a brush.

As for the scholarly imperial examination, although it is not all calligraphy (specifically examining calligraphy), it will also examine the students' calligraphy attainments.

The brush also has its own advantages in many aspects, and scholars also have to use the brush calligraphy on some formal occasions, so it is necessary to consider how to save the cost of this part of the practice.

Shu Hui couldn't help but think of the first gift that every bitter child who was forced by parents or teachers to practice calligraphy was not a brush calligraphy, nor a pen, ink, paper, and inkstone, but a water writing blanket!

Seeing that Shu Hui no longer asked, Third Brother Zhang asked Shu Hui what words he wanted to ask. Shu Hui thought about it, her eyes lit up, and she blurted out:

"Enwei is used at the same time, both soft and hard!"