Chapter 101 The first year of Jianxing

When Liu Hou's wedding ceremony is completed, the new year will come, and the new year can finally be used with the new emperor's year name, which is the first year of Jianxing (224 AD).

Due to the emperor's wedding, everywhere is decorated with lights, red and green, and it will be the New Year in a few days, and those joyful decorations do not need to be removed, which can continue to come in handy in the New Year.

There were several years of New Year's before Liu Hou spent in the battle, and he hadn't had a good New Year for a long time, but now that he has finally settled down, Liu Hou can just have a stable year.

So, Liu Hou brought Tai Changqing over and asked him to arrange the New Year's program. He now finally knows why he is the head of Jiuqing too often, you look at how important he is, after Liu Hou returned to Chengdu, except for Zhuge Liang, he was the one he saw the most.

But to be honest, the show arranged by Tai Changqing was not fun at all, and it was very tiring, and Liu Hou had to find the show by himself. First of all, Tai Changqing gave full play to the professional advantages of their department and chose an auspicious day, on the 26th day of the lunar month, to hold the ceremony of "sealing the seal" and "sealing the pen".

The ceremony was presided over by Tai Changqing as usual, and Zhuge Liang, the first important minister, personally washed the emperor's seals and wiped them dry. Huang Hao, the eunuch with the palm seal, came over with the treasure box, and Zhuge Liang carefully put the seal into the box and stored it.

Then Guo Youzhi, Liu Hou's gold medal secretary, went out and washed the pen that the emperor usually used to approve the chapters, and also put it in the pen box and handed it over to a Bingbi eunuch named Ma Liang to put away.

This Ma Liang is not the white-eyed Ma Liang in the "Ma Five Constants", let alone the magic pen Ma Liang who will come to life when he paints anything in mythological stories.

That Ma Liang character Ji Chang, because there are white hairs in his eyebrows, known as the white-eyed Ma Liang, is Ma Yan's brother, the official to the servant, Zhuge Liang's left and right hands, and the important minister of Shu Han. And this Ma Liang is a little eunuch, with the same name and surname.

When it was auspicious, the emperor personally went to the temple, Huang Hao and Ma Liang placed the treasure box and pen box on the incense case one by one, and Liu Hou lit the incense candle to worship heaven and earth and ancestors. After the ceremony, Huang Hao and Ma Liang respectfully took the treasure boxes and pen boxes to the special palace for collection.

This is the ceremony of "sealing the seal" and "sealing the pen", which means that from today onwards, the emperor is on vacation, he is not working, don't bother me if there is nothing, even if there is anything, don't bother me! I'm going to accompany the queen to the black skin. After the palace sealed the treasure, the yamen of the various government offices also sealed it as usual and began to spend the Spring Festival on holiday.

After a busy year, Liu Hou can finally take a few days off, and in the past few days, he has been leisurely accompanying his three newlyweds to visit the imperial garden and climb Wudan Mountain. The third daughter was a first-time wife, and she was also very uncomfortable at first, but after a period of adaptation, she gradually began to get used to the new role.

Liu Hou treats the three women equally, tries to be fair in everything, never favors one or the other, the three girls get along very well, the three girls are busy with their own things, and they don't have the heart to put on the intrigue, Liu Hou's most worried palace fight scene has not appeared for the time being.

However, Liu Hou also knows that this may be temporary, and he must not take it lightly, saying that everything is fair, but how can he be absolutely fair in daily life.

Besides, now that the three daughters have no heirs, it is not yet time to fight for the throne, and when they all give birth to princes in the future, it is difficult to say whether there will be a thrilling palace fight drama when they reach the age of seizing the heir.

Seize the time to enjoy this wonderful time of youth. In addition to the traditional programs such as fluttering butterflies and releasing paper kites, Liu Hou also specially transferred a hot air balloon and rose to a high altitude with the three girls to look down on the scenery of the city.

Of course, for the sake of safety, the hot air balloon is tied to the weight of the ground with a long rope so that it will not be blown out of the palace by the wind, and from a distance, it looks like a paper kite, and the four people just sit in a hot air balloon and spend a romantic time in the sky.

He was so happy to have fun with the people, he was very happy and excited to see the three girls boarding the hot air balloon, so he was inspired and decided to pull out two hot air balloons from the air force and turn them to civilian use.

The specific usage is to rent hot air balloons to people in the lively part of the city for sightseeing, and those tall TV towers in later generations, as long as you pay the money, you can take the elevator to the top of the tower for sightseeing, you can overlook the whole city, you can also eat some refreshments, it is very pleasant.

So, soon, everyone in the city, regardless of their status, as long as they give money, can board a hot air balloon and rise to the sky to enjoy the scenery of the whole city. Of course, due to the high fees, only some high-ranking officials and wealthy people can afford to enjoy this unprecedented service.

Although the fee is very expensive, it can realize the dream of flying and have such a novel and exciting amusement project, which will naturally soon become a popular project for nobles in the city. It is conceivable that Liu Hou's approach is actually under the guise of having fun with the people, and in fact it is to collect money.

Of course, Liu Hou wanted to make more money, and gave Xu Jing and Wu Yi such a deal, the civilian goods of the "Ministry of Industry" were suspended for more than half a year, and with the continuous war, the treasury of Shu is now empty. He had to do everything he could to make more money.

Anyway, there is no war for the time being, and the hot air balloon is idle there, so it is better to use it. At such a rate of making money, Liu Hou believes that the two hot air balloons will soon be able to earn back the cost of making two hot air balloons. When the time comes, you can use this money to build two more hot air balloons, and the air force can be expanded.

Time flies, five days passed in a blink of an eye, and on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, Liu Hou specially ordered the imperial chef in the palace to make a dumpling to eat. Dumplings were invented by Zhang Zhongjing a few years ago, and the custom of eating dumplings in the New Year has not yet been formed among the people.

However, under the leadership of the emperor himself, it is believed that the formation time of this custom will be greatly accelerated. After eating the New Year's dinner, Liu Hou and the three queens went to the foot of Wudan Mountain to set off fireworks. Naturally, there are no fireworks at this time, and there are firecrackers, but they are real bamboo.

At this time, the firecrackers are to throw the dried bamboo into the brazier and burn it, and after the bamboo is burned, it makes a crackling sound, so it is called firecracker. As the emperor, Liu Hou naturally wanted to get some tall firecrackers to release, so he asked craftsmen to pour gunpowder into the bamboo to make firecrackers in the true sense of later generations.

As a result, not only the palace city, but even the people of the entire imperial city heard a rumbling sound from the direction of the palace, which frightened everyone to think that the palace had changed again, and many people did not sleep all night.

The reason why it is so loud is because the bamboo selected by the craftsman is too thick, and the firecrackers made are no different from small fried # bombs.

The Han people have the custom of keeping the New Year on Chinese New Year's Eve, that is, they do not sleep on the night of Chinese New Year's Eve, keep until zero o'clock, and keep until the arrival of the New Year, Liu Hou also followed this custom, and frolicked with the three daughters until after the third change before going to bed.

On the first day of the Lunar New Year, the holiday is over, and a ceremony will be held on this day to re-"open the pen" and "open the seal". Therefore, Liu Hou had to get up early in the morning, go to the temple to worship, and complete the ceremony of "opening the seal" and "opening the pen".

The last item of the "open pen" ceremony is to ask the emperor to write a few words by hand, Liu Hou originally wanted to learn from Emperor Kangxi, write some "Fu" words to the ministers, who knows that his hand-held brush is rotten, thinking that writing out is not good, so he had to give up.

Then the most solemn court meeting of the year will be held, all the courtiers must bow to the emperor three times and bow nine times, and prepare a "ode table" early to the emperor to sing praises to the emperor, which is equivalent to the people's New Year's greetings. Of course, the representative of the ministers was Zhuge Liang, and except for him who wanted to read the "Ode Table", the others only needed to hand in a piece of music.

Then Liu Hou gave red envelopes to the ministers, princes and nobles, and palace maids and eunuchs. Of course, the emperor made extraordinary moves, and the red envelope was not a simple copper coin or silver tael, but "Ruyi". The so-called "Ruyi" is to make gold, silver or jade into a "Ruyi" shape and put it in a red envelope, which is really high-end and high-grade.

Liu Hou specially instructed that the name of "the first year of Jianxing" be printed and engraved on these wishes, making them extremely commemorative and collectible. Aside from their own materials, they were a gift from the emperor in the first year of Jianxing, and they were very small in number, and they had the mission of commemorating the new era, and their value was immeasurable compared to those limited edition gold and silver coins in later generations.

Of course, the premise is that the antique collection market is going to rise, and most of the people at this time do not understand these, and it is estimated that most of these wishful wishes will be used as ordinary gold and silver, and there must be very few that can be passed on to future generations.

Liu Hou also did not remind everyone that these things are indeed not worth much now, antiques need to go through the baptism of time before they can appreciate, and the smaller the quantity, the more valuable they are. Liu Hou deliberately kept some of it for himself, collected it, and left it for his children and grandchildren to increase in value when the time came.

After the court meeting, at noon, Liu Hou held a royal banquet to invite the ministers, and songs and dances were arranged during the period. This was also the first time Liu Hou watched the court songs and dances of the Han Dynasty. Those singers who are good at dancing with long sleeves, thin waists, and crisp and half-lu, Liu Hou almost couldn't hold it anymore.

And the three queens were not idle, they feasted the female dependents of the ministers in the harem, which was like this in ancient times, men and women ate separately and did not interfere with each other. Even in modern times, many times at some banquets, men consciously gather at one table, and women consciously gather at the other table, which is a customary habit.

From Chinese New Year's Eve to the first day of the new year, Liu Hou was the busiest and hardest, basically did not sleep much for a day and a night, and arranged one program after another, which made him tired enough, which was simply comparable to the hard work of his previous wedding. He didn't expect to be so busy and hard to be the emperor for the New Year, no, he had to reform! In the future, these "bad" customs must be improved, Liu Hou secretly made up his mind.

What he didn't know was that not long after the establishment of the Shu Kingdom, it was surrounded by hostile countries, and if it was a strong dynasty, the emperor would have to meet, feast, and reward foreign envoys;

In the future, the royal family will spread out more, and he will have to accept the New Year's greetings from the prince, the princess, the grandson and some other members of the royal family, so that the emperor of the New Year will be busier and more tired than he is now.

The end of the first day of the new year does not mean that the year is over, for a few days, Tai Changqing arranged programs for Liu Hou, most of which are related to sacrifices. Liu Hou also added a program to himself, that is, to go to the barracks to comfort and reward the soldiers.

Those are all subordinates who have followed him all the way, and he knows that the army is the foundation of his own country, so he can't pay any less attention to the army. It took him three days to go to all the troops, greet the soldiers and greet them, and received good results.

Liu Hou gave each soldier an extra month's salary as a New Year's benefit, and in addition, he also ingeniously pulled the song and dance troupe that performed songs and dances at the banquet to the barracks when he gave the banquet to the ministers, and performed songs and dances for the soldiers.