Unconsciously, Chen Shu has been in Beijing for a month and a half, the weather has entered winter, most of the trees in Xiyuan have lost their leaves, and Haiyan Hall is also heated, not the iron stove that is born in Jinan, but through the underground to send hot air in, the ground is always hot, and she must open the window at noon, because it is too hot.

She gradually adapted to her new life, and she fell in love with her new home, Haiyan Hall, especially the furnishings in the room, including the fine porcelain of different shapes. Before my uncle left Beijing, he always liked to admire the hundreds of pieces of porcelain upstairs and downstairs alone, and sighed that it was worthy of royal style. Chen Shu, on the other hand, is more fond of furniture, and the new furniture in Jinan, which has aroused the admiration of relatives, is like a nouveau riche compared to a family that has accumulated for several generations compared to the steady and imposing furniture of Haiyan Hall, which is carved with various patterns and patterns.

In addition to this small Western-style building, Chen Shu especially likes to visit the West Garden. At first, she always called Bai Ling, who lived in Fengze Garden in the east of Jinggu, but Bai Ling was always tired, so her playmate was changed to Li Wenxiu, Lushan's daughter-in-law. Because Lu Shan is going back to Kanto to guard, Li Wenxiu of course has to go to work with her husband, so she is also very nostalgic for the scenery of Xiyuan, and she is tired of playing with Chen Shu. Whenever she thinks that these exquisite courtyards with different shapes were once exclusive to the royal family, Chen Shu has an indescribable feeling, which adds to the fun of her play.

Standing upstairs, you can see the royal palace with its golden roof to the east. She was eager to go in and have a look, and finally got his permission, so she took her two sons and a group of wives and a group of soldiers from a company led by Ouyang Zhong to visit the palace. Also going with him was Bai Ruiting. They entered through the Xihua Gate and spent the whole day wandering around the palace. Zhenhua, who was elated at first, couldn't walk anymore, and it was the soldiers of the guard company who carried him around the palace. It is said that this palace complex has 9,999 rooms and a half rooms, which is really huge! There were thousands of eunuchs and palace maids who served the emperor, empress, and concubines alone. She did see the eunuchs, dressed in gray clothes sweeping the empty square, sneaking a peek at them from time to time. However, the palace looks very desolate and dilapidated, and many palace doors are locked, and looking through the cracks in the doors, the courtyard is overgrown with artemisia grass, which is very desolate.

Li Wenxiu and Feng Guozhu's wife Fu Caiping were the most excited and amazed.

They're just watching the fun. Bai Ling is worthy of being the young lady of the official eunuch family. It can call out the names of many palaces: this Taihe Palace is used by the emperor to hold a ceremony, and it is usually not opened, and the Qianqing Palace is the sleeping palace where the emperor and the queen are married, but the emperors of the Qing Dynasty generally live in the Yangxin Palace instead of the Qianqing Palace. That Yikun Palace once lived in Cixi. Yuan Guifei, the favorite concubine of Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, lived in Yikun Palace...... Stand in the cool garden. Chen Shu suddenly found that there were basically no trees in the palace! Bai Ling explained that it was because he was afraid of hiding the assassin. The emperor is extremely afraid of death! Assassins may be hidden in the trees. So she asked Bai Ling, had there been assassinations in the palace? Bai Ling said that there was, and legend has it that Qing Shizong's head was taken by the assassins. It's nothing but legend. However, there was a case of attack in the Ming Dynasty, and there was also an incident of a palace maid plotting to assassinate the emperor, and Emperor Jiajing was almost strangled to death with white silk. Chen Shu didn't understand what "white silk" meant at first, but Bai Ling smiled and said that it was white silk. She sighed that people still read a lot, although she has read a lot of books over the years, she still doesn't know these stories.

When she visited the palace, she remembered that her husband did not allow the Qing court, who was in Baoding, to return to the palace. Indeed, they have already perished, how can they occupy the palace again? He is also right not to occupy the palace, how can his family live? What would it be like if everyone lived in? Thinking of this, she remembered the person who didn't go to Beijing with him, if compared to the emperors in the past, he really did a good job, but she still couldn't accept that he had other women......

After visiting the palace that day, I came back and talked to him about the palace. Ask him what the palace will be used for in the future. He asked her rhetorically. She said she didn't know, but who could take it? It's too big, it's too high, it's too insane. He said that it would not be big to hand over the palace to the common people, and there were 40,000 people in the whole country. In the future, how good would it be to use the palace as a museum and allow people to visit it freely? Of course, it's not that anyone who wants to enter just wants to enter, and they have to charge a little ticket. You see, it costs a lot of money to maintain the palace, and it is settled from the tickets. It is this West Garden, we are also temporarily living here, in the future conditions allow, to build the presidential palace, to build a government office building, to build outside the city, to use this place as a park, so that the people come in to visit.

The conversation turned back to Xiyuan. Chen Shu is really reluctant to be here, compared to the cold and majestic palace, the West Garden is more comfortable. Why move out of West Garden? He smiled and said, living here, it is inevitable to breed the idea of an emperor, I have always reminded myself that I will never be an emperor, I hope you will often remind me, don't let me forget the days of taking a cold shower in Zhengjiazhuang. It is the presidential palace, and it will also be made into an official residence system, and whoever becomes the president will live in it, and if it is not right, he will move out.

Chen Shu doesn't understand all these things. Where do you move out? He said more than once that he would not always be president, but that was later, and Chen Shu did not take it to heart. But having said that, she couldn't help but ask.

"It's good to stay anywhere. Or go back to Jinan, or go to Guangzhou, or you can live in Hangzhou. Haven't you heard? There is heaven above, and Suzhou and Hangzhou below. A West Lake, the scenery is definitely better than here. What about you, save some money now, and when I retire, wouldn't it be better for us to buy a house by the West Lake? West Lake is not only picturesque, but also the food is excellent. Our country is so big, there are many good places. ”

Chen Shu couldn't help but yearn for the legendary West Lake again, and felt that her life was really full of reverie.

Haiyantang's diet is also excellent, the cook is found by Deng Qinghua, cooking a handful of excellent Lu dishes, a thick recipe to order casually, that is, early, is also varied, so that she has a great appetite, and feels that she has gained a lot of weight in the dozens of days she has been in Beijing.

Originally, Deng Qinghua also found a tailor to sew clothes for her. The tailor was a small man with two mouseaches, which looked funny. Deng Qinghua said that this person is a master of the Internal Affairs Bureau, and making cheongsam is a must. Chen Shu has never worn a cheongsam, but when she has seen others wearing cheongsam, Bai Ling often wears a cheongsam, revealing the woman's curves just right, looking graceful and moving. It must be admitted. Among their wives, Bai Ling is the most beautiful, although she gave birth to a daughter, she still looks like a girl who has not left the cabinet, and Li Wenxiu looks much older than her actual age. Perhaps because of the reunion with her husband, Li Wenxiu's personality changed a lot after staying in Xiyuan, and she became cheerful and enthusiastic. The opposite example is Bai Ling, perhaps because of her husband, or because her father was not assigned an errand. Bai Ling always seemed depressed and unhappy, and he was reluctant to accompany Chen Shu to wander around.

Let's move on to cheongsam. The little tailor surnamed Qiu with a pair of mouse beards also brought a book of patterns for her to choose from. She was immediately hooked. That time, I happened to meet my husband who was free. I personally chose two for her, and also made two sets of clothes for each of my two sons. To his surprise, he asked Tailor Qiu to make him two identical clothes, not military uniforms (he always wore them). Nor is it a caftan. It's not a Westerner's dress. It's a style of clothes that Tailor Qiu doesn't understand, and she's never seen it. So he found a pen and paper and drew a pattern for Tailor Qiu. Tailor Qiu asked the question of the collar and coat pocket in detail, indicating that he understood. She thought it looked ugly, but after Tailor Qiu made it from the dark gray fabric he specified, he wore it to see if it fitted, but she thought it was very good-looking, looking solemn and majestic. He didn't wear those two clothes when they were ready, they hung up.

It was more than ten days before his clothes were ready, but that day he criticized Deng Qinghua for not doing his job, which made Deng Qinghua very embarrassed. After he sent Deng Qinghua and Tailor Qiu away, he said to her sternly, I'll set a few rules for you, first, don't make requests to Ouyang or Deng Qinghua lightly, if you need to tell me, I'll arrange it. Second, you have to pay for things and pay according to the price. Thirdly, if you want to cook your own cooking like at home, I think it is best to cook at home.

At that time, the uncle had not left, and immediately expressed his approval. So she didn't dare to talk back. But the cook eventually stayed, but the diet was much simpler since that time, just four dishes at noon and night, two meat and two vegetarian dishes, and a soup at noon. The staple food is generally two, rice, noodles or pancakes, which is much simpler than when you first came.

He was always there to receive guests, or to convene meetings. It's usually in the downstairs reception room. The reception room was originally covered with a crimson wool carpet, which he ordered to be removed, saying that it was difficult to clean. At night, he always slept late, and was in the study to review the "cantata" or write something. After Ouyang Zhong took over as the director of the secretariat, he had no time to "serve" him, so he looked for a secretary for him, the young man was called Wang Zhao, who was brought into Beijing by Zhou Xuexi, graduated from Shandong University of Technology, and worked in Huayuan Industry for a year and a half, always cautious, but her husband seemed to be more satisfied with Wang Zhao, and the sign was that more and more affairs were handed over to the young man.

His office is located in the room on the east side of the first floor, and the reception room and conference room are located on the west side, and the dining hall is also there. On the east side is a suite, and on the outermost part is Wang Zhao's office, which is relatively small, and through it is his office and study. The room is so big, more than three times larger than his study in Jinan, and these days Wang Zhao has found books according to his book list almost filling the large bookcase on the north wall. In addition to the bookcase, there is a large writing desk by the window on the south side, and the green lampshade on the desk has a unique shape, she once asked why she used a green lampshade, and he said that green is good for the eyes. In addition to the desk lamp, there is also a telephone with a gold-plated handle, so you can contact his subordinates who live in Xiyuan without going out. Sometimes he was in the study talking to the guests. His old subordinates were casual, but others were always reserved. More often than not, the reception was in the reception room on the west side, where they drank tea and smoked while talking. The most people who came were several directors of the Military Commission, especially Zhou Xuexi, who came almost every day.

An oversized map of the whole country hung on the wall across from his desk, and she noticed that he often stood in front of it in contemplation, sometimes sketching on it with a red pencil. Probably in order to keep it secret, he asked Ouyang Zhong to make a curtain for the map, and when the guests came, the light blue curtain was usually drawn, and he only talked to his subordinates about military affairs, such as Feng Guozhu's return from Jiangning, and the two of them argued about the map for a long time. She knew that Feng Guozhu was going to be the commander of the Northwest Military Region, and probably the two of them were arguing about the matter of marching into the northwest.

In the morning, he would call his two sons out for a run, and he would go east from Haiyan Hall and run north along the shore of the lake, which would take about half an hour. The strange thing is that the second child's physique is stronger than the eldest one, Zhenhua always looks a little unbearable, but the six-year-old Xinghua is very happy to run with his father. He said that the tiger head is too weak and needs to be strengthened. At the end of the run, he washes and eats. It's still the same as before, eating very quickly, and as soon as others start, he ended in a storm. Then he read the newspaper in the dining room, which he had chosen, and there were as many as six or seven copies, and Wang Zhao would put the newspaper on a low table next to his accustomed seat before the meal. After reading the newspaper, his busy day begins. And she herself is thinking about who to call to visit today, Xiyuan is too big. It takes half a day to walk from Haiyan Tower to the Regent's Palace, which has been half repaired. Not to mention the Beihai north of the Jinao Yudong Bridge. The Regent's Palace, located in the northwest corner of Zhonghai, is said to have been built for the biological father of the ousted Emperor Xuantong. As soon as the project began, their country was lost, leaving behind a ruin. At the beginning, Bai Ling sighed when he saw the construction address of the Regent's Palace, and even said that it was a pity.

My uncle has returned to Shandong. Officially became the feudal official of Shandong. Before leaving, her uncle talked to her for a long time. told her a lot of things. It's nothing more than not to interfere in politics, not to refute him in front of others, and not to mention that person. Don't be arrogant...... A lot of rambling. She cares more about her uncle and aunt and Xiaoxian Xiaozhi coming to Beijing to reunite, and she sometimes misses the days when the family was together and felt very warm. But the memories are more in the years in Jinan, and the time in Yizhou and even Chenjiaya seems to have been forgotten by her.

When Zhou Xuexi came to Beijing, he brought a lot of gifts, and the living room was full of people, from food and clothing, to everything, saying that Huayuan was filial to himself. The husband was unhappy, criticized Zhou Xuexi and Ouyang Zhong in front of him, asked Zhou Xuexi to quote the price one by one, made her pay on the spot, and set a rule for Ouyang Zhong, he would never accept gifts in the future, and he couldn't pay! Zhou Xuexi was very embarrassed, he said a lot of things to President Zhou, it was still his set of things, what would never be Li Zicheng, never Cixi. Zhou Xuexi is just a weiwei. Ouyang learned a good way, and when Feng Guozhu and Qiu Jin entered Beijing, there were basically no gifts. Feng Guozhu only brought them two ducks - it is said that they are famous in Jiangning, and they can't be broken. But it's not delicious, it's salty. The two ducks didn't pay, though. She thought that if she gave money, it would be too heartbreaking.

Now it's time to talk about money. When Chen Shu entered Beijing, she brought a sum of money, not much, only 400 silver dollars, all of which were minted by the Shandong Silver Dollar Bureau. The money was spent quickly, she didn't expect him to have so many rules, he had to pay for everything, even food. When she settled the bill in the first month, she was shocked, because the bill clearly stated that the total Yinyang was 305 yuan and 4 jiao! She thought that she didn't have to pay for food, so he ridiculed her once, why didn't she pay? How can there be free food in the world? I can't pay, Lu Shanning Shijun can't pay? Since there is a military salary, of course you have to pay for it. In this way, it was not enough for her to buy other things, but fortunately, she also brought a fold, and Jingshi had a branch of Shandong Commercial Bank, which could withdraw money, so she took another thousand oceans. That money was actually not his military salary, and he rarely brought back the military salary to her, but Hua Yuan's dividends. She complained once, so he had a long talk with her and told the story of Cixi, and she learned that Cixi also had regulations, and those concubines had regulations. The people are very sympathetic to Concubine Zhen because the regulations are not enough to spend, so she sold her official in private, relying on Guangxu to favor her as an official, which angered Cixi and sent Concubine Zhen into the cold palace. She suddenly rang the well where Concubine Zhen died, and she felt cold on her body. He said that Cixi's problem is to set rules for people and not for herself, she is extravagant to the point of astonishment, just fresh fruit costs tens of thousands of catties a year, and you can't eat so much, the old woman likes to smell the fragrance of fresh fruits, put it in the palace to smell, and change it every day. As for eating, it is even more wasteful, there are dozens of hundreds of dishes for each meal, all of which have regulations, and they cannot be less, she will not be happy without them, even if a chopstick does not move, it must be put up. Just spending on the old woman, I'm afraid a million silver is not enough. You say, where is there heavenly reason if the Manchu Qing Dynasty does not die? Think about the villagers of Chenjiaya, how many families have ten taels of silver in their savings? How many restaurants can eat meat? Now that I have overthrown the Manchu Qing, how can I follow the old path of Cixi again? That's right, we live better now, eat better, and wear better, no one will say, and no one dares to say, but you have to know the truth of the upward and downward effects! If our family dares to do it, let's follow. In other words, we are more simple and frugal, and the following is more restrained. You see, we've been eating more simply, and Lord Bai and they're also getting simpler. As for the money, it is enough, after the state is regularized, my salary as a president will not be low, it should be enough to spend, and my salary will be handed over to you. However, you have to pay for food and clothing at home, including tea and cigarette rolls, you have to remember. As for the salary of my troops, I am not going to put it forward, so many fallen officers and soldiers have to be compensated, and money is spent everywhere, you must understand this, and you must do it according to my rules. Actually, they're going to look at you more, you know?

She doesn't seem to understand, but this is no problem, as long as he doesn't accept concubines, it's no problem. Chen Shu thought, it's not that he hasn't endured hardships, so how much money does he make? Even if he doesn't give a cent, isn't there still a bonus from Huayuan and ZTE? Enough is enough.

He is happy most of the time, when he eats, especially at dinner, he will chat with her and his two sons, where to go today, what books Zhenhua reads, and the atmosphere is very good. She wouldn't ask what he was up to, knowing that he was preparing for the establishment of the country. But sometimes he was angry, and the subordinates who reprimanded him in the study were too loud, and she would bring tea to him, and he would calm down. Sometimes it's a person who sulks, and she asks him why, and he doesn't say, but lets him out. Especially when Mr. Cai from Shandong Normal University came, I don't know what to talk to him about, after Mr. Cai left, he stayed in the study, and he didn't eat dinner, Jiang Yun rushed over, and was reprimanded by him in a loud voice, and she could hear his voice upstairs. He rarely seems to be so angry. So he hurriedly went down to persuade him, Jiang Yun had already hurried out, and he was sitting there in a daze, his face was ugly, and he asked several times, but ignored her.

She was a little uneasy and went to find Ouyang Zhong. Ouyang said Madam, don't ask, the commander has too many troubles! How do they know the commander's difficulties just because they reach out to the commander to ask for money? Originally, we were almost enough to just manage the army, but now the commander has to manage such a big country! There are too few competent people, how can the commander not worry?

But she felt that he had indeed changed a little, especially when it came to his former subordinates. On the contrary, those fresh faces she had never seen came to the door, and he seemed more easy-going and polite.

In fact, such days are also boring! Chen Shu will only be happy when she sees her former friends, such as Zhang Hongcao and others, who work at the Mengshan Military General Hospital, come. Zhang Hongcao said that there are too many things for the commander, you don't know if you don't go out, in such a big country, the commander has to take care of everything, you have to take care of his life. Chen Shu thinks that he doesn't need to take care of his life, but more importantly, his mood. But she really couldn't help.

One day he seemed to be in a good mood and said to her, what should I do for the Chinese New Year this year? She said she didn't know. My uncle is carrying the burden of Shandong, and I am afraid that he will not be able to come to Beijing. Yes, yes, even Yanbing Xiaoxian and Xiaozhi haven't seen each other for a long time. Then I give an order to bring them. After the New Year, they went back again. So she was very happy, and after counting the days, it was really not far from the New Year.

"In the first half of next year, it will be time to form a central government anyway. You see, I'm going to make a big difference in our country, and I'm going to surprise those who are ready to see my jokes. He laughed heartily.

Upper end. (To be continued......)

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