Chapter 18 Tatar invasion

Author: Potato Sweet Potato Pie

Chapter 18 Tatar invasion

After signing a contract with the shopkeeper and receiving the money and goods, Xia Yuan couldn't help but feel very good.

It seemed that he had made a profit and the shopkeeper had lost. In fact, this was not the case. If it had been a real loss, the shopkeeper would never have agreed to the price.

So he may make a small profit, but the boss will definitely not lose.

At best, I only earn a few taels less.

It's a pity that this era does not apply to division, otherwise division would be the fairest.

Before leaving, Xia Yuan bought two more dollars of good paper and promised to send another part of the manuscript ten days later, before he was sent out of the door by the shopkeeper.

The more than forty taels of silver weighed nearly three kilograms and were heavy in his arms. Strictly speaking, this was the first pot of gold he earned after traveling to the Ming Dynasty, and he was one step closer to buying a house in the capital.

It was already afternoon, and lunch time had long passed. When passing by a shed noodle stall, Xia Yuan walked over and ordered a bowl of wontons.

A bowl of wontons, which costs seven cents, is similar to the wontons of later generations, except that there is no shrimp skin, no seaweed, only a few green onions floating on the soup, and the taste is bland.

After eating one bowl, Xia Yuan felt his stomach and felt it was not enough, so he asked for another bowl. Before he could eat the second bowl, suddenly, there was the sound of rapid horse hooves, accompanied by "Six hundred".

Urgent Riga!" shouted.

Hearing the shouts, the people on the street fled almost instinctively, and then a soldier on horseback came across the street at such a fast speed that they didn't even see clearly what the man on horseback looked like or how he was dressed.

It was already whizzing past on the street, throwing up countless dust.

"I'm afraid it's the Tatars who are invading us again." Some diner at the next table said something.

"Yes, it was the same 600-mile rush in the first two months."

"The Tatars are really hateful."

"hateful."

"."

Xia Yuan ate wontons and silently listened to the gnashing discussions of the people around him. The relationship between people in this era and Mongolia was at odds with each other, even among ordinary people.

But the novel I wrote has a plot in which the protagonist works for Genghis Khan. Will this cause trouble?

After thinking about it, Xia Yuan felt that it didn't seem to matter. What era did Guo Jing live in? He didn't know what would happen to Temujin later. Besides, the Han people's life-and-death enemy at that time was the Kingdom of Jin.

Although Guo Jing served, it was because Temujin was kind to him and he knew how to repay his kindness.

In addition, at that time, the Song Dynasty couplet was destroyed by the Jin Dynasty.

Therefore, even if he led the troops, Guo Jing only helped to attack the Jin Kingdom, and during this period he tried his best to prevent Temujin from attacking the Song Dynasty. Later, it was for this reason that he broke with Temujin and guarded Xiangyang.

Moreover, the book is full of feelings of family and country, national justice, and the main theme is positive, which is absolutely in line with the values ​​of this era.

What's more, the novel publishing industry in the Ming Dynasty was already prosperous, and the literati in the Ming Dynasty were also very bold. Various novels that satirized the court and officialdom emerged in an endless stream, such as The Plum in the Golden Ping, Journey to the West, and Surprised at the Second Moment.

type.

There is also Water Margin. This book was banned by Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming Dynasty because it contained content promoting rebellion, but now it is blatantly and openly displayed on the shelves of major bookstores, and it is quite popular.

Even the rebel books are fine, so what is he afraid of?

Of course, if it were in our Qing Dynasty, Xia Yuan would never dare to engage in such a sensitive thing.

However, if it were really in our Qing Dynasty, he would definitely be the first to raise the banner of uprising.

With random thoughts in his mind, Xia Yuan drank the second bowl of Chaos and felt the fullness in his stomach before he stood up and left.

Originally, I wanted to pack some raw wontons for my little wife to take back and cook, but now that it is summer, I kept them in a cloth bag for fear of them smelling and going bad, so I had to give up.

I went to the market and bought some salt. When I passed by a stall, I found that the stall owner was killing a pig and removing its hair. Xia Yuan stopped and stood aside for a while. He bought a few kilograms of fresh pork and asked the stall owner to

I cut a lot of fat for myself and prepared to take it back for refining oil.

If we go back a few hundred years, the great writer Su Dongpo of the Song Dynasty wrote a down-to-earth poem like "The good pork in Huangzhou is as cheap as dung."

Pork was really cheap at that time, and the price was as low as dirt.

But now it's the Ming Dynasty, and the second senior brother's value has increased. He is no longer as cheap as dirt. The pork Xia Yuan bought just now is twelve cents per pound.

Twelve cents does not sound expensive, but at this time, mutton was only more than ten cents per pound, and rarely exceeded twenty cents.

As for the reason why the value of pigs has doubled, it is definitely not because of the funny reason that the Ming Dynasty emperor's surname was Zhu, but because castrating pigs became a norm in the Ming Dynasty.

If the pig is not castrated, it will taste fishy and smelly, but the castrated pork will become very fragrant.

Xia Yuan continued to walk around the market with the pork in hand. He was also planning to buy some more spices to stew the meat home.

Thanks to Zheng He's voyages to the West, spices from Southeast Asia poured into the Ming Dynasty in large quantities. In many cases, the court even used these spices to pay the wages of ministers.

Those who were officials in the imperial court would be embarrassed to go out and say hello to others if they did not have three to five dou of spices at home.

However, although the quantity of spices has caused a qualitative change, they are no longer luxury goods exclusively for nobles in the past, and common people can also buy them, but the prices are still not cheap.

Xia Yuan bought a small bag of pepper and spent more than one tael of silver, which was really distressing, but he couldn't find anywhere that sold star anise, cinnamon and ginger. Finally, after asking someone, he found these things in a drug store.

figure.

It turns out that these things were not only seasonings but also medicinal materials in the Ming Dynasty.

After buying these, Xia Yuan wandered around the market for a while and bought some other things, including a finely crafted silver hairpin, which was given to his little wife at home. The little girl didn't even have a better hairpin.

Each time I tie my hair, I only use a wooden hairpin.

After spending nearly half of the forty taels of silver he earned, he hired a bullock cart and headed to Xiajiazhuang with large and small bags.
Chapter completed!