Chapter 8: CH 8

As the weather got hotter and hotter, Cui Xie saw that the back and chest of the three people’s clothes were all soaked with sweat, their breathing becoming heavier as they gasped for air. So he set down the water pouch, and stood up to say: “You all should take a rest, I’ll go buy some water and food. Even if people don’t need to rest, the horses still need to eat and drink.”

Cui Yuan hurriedly went to stop him: “How can I let you buy things, tell Pengyan to go do it!” Giving his son a hard wink, he ordered: “Once outside the gates, go directly east and walk past two streets. There will be a place selling food, beverages, and even wine. Brother Zhao escorted us for an entire journey and also suffered some hardship, Pengyan, buy some more wine and meat and invite Brother Zhao to eat a good meal before returning to the capital.”

Pengyan affirmed with a quick ‘en’ sound and stood up in response, “Father, don’t worry, I often buy food for da-ge outside. With just one look, I can tell which ones are the most delicious!” Turning back and pressing on Cui Xie’s arm, he sincerely reasoned: “Da-ge, since you do not have any money on hand, and don’t go out often, you may get lost along the way. Just wait here, I’ll go to one of our neighbors and ask for some water to wash your face with.”

Da-ge: means older brother but is used as an affectionate endearment this case and the household servants and family refer to the Young Masters of the house by their age, so Cui Xie is the eldest son of the Cui Household

Pengyan was bursting with vigorous and boundless energy, running all the way out the compound.

The neighbors located opposite and on the side next to them had all been paying attention to the newcomers. Seeing that a young manservant, the Pengyan who had shoulder-length hair, coming out from the residence, there was nothing much to avoid in terms of male-female interactions. As such, a couple of the female neighbors pulled him aside to ask: “This little brother, is your Master from the same family living here before? Are they renting that jinshi’s residence to study or are they planning on opening a school just like Teacher Wang did?”

Jinshi: highest rank a scholar can get and is attained after passing the imperial exam, when scholars attain this rank they usually become court officials. It should be noted that the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) had a very large number of jinshi graduates reaching up to around 24, 536 in total.  I will link the diagram and picture again at the very end.

Pengyan stood up a bit straighter and puffed out his chest*: “What renting a residence, my family’s Master is precisely the original owner of this compound. I accompanied the Eldest Young Master back to the ancestral home.”

*This line is actually an idiom more closely translated to strong and full of spirit and can be roughly described as being proud. It is from Qing Dynasty’s Cao Xueqin’s ‘A Dream of Red Mansions’

An old furen questioned: “Is it the Official Cui from the capital? I heard that he became a fifth-rank official, how come he told the Eldest Young Master to return to the ancestral home alone?”

Pengyan did not want to say that Cui Xie had been driven out of the house by his own father, so he lightly answered: “Young Master returned to the ancestral home to prepare for the tongsheng examination. The clamor and noise in the capital is not good for studying quietly, so he brought us back to live here for a while.”

夫人(fū ren): the mistress/wife, also a general term to refer to an official’s wife/madam.

Tongsheng: an entry-level examinee who had passed the county/prefecture exams

Everyone sighed for a while, and a furen in her thirties suddenly sharply interjected from the back of the crowd: “How old is your family’s Young Master? My eldest son was admitted as a tongsheng at the age of 18, and after testing again, he became a xiucai. Those Young Masters in the capital should be much better than us county folk right?”

Xiucai: a scholar who has passed the entry-level examination to study at a college; a shengyuan

A person nearby curled their lips and remarked, “Zhang mama spouting in front of this group of furen is nothing much, but saying that Master Jinshi’s son is not as good as your working son? All those who live on our street are all seeds of reading*, which one of them isn’t a young talent selected to be a xiucai?

嬷嬷(mā mā): while it is pronounced mama, it refers to old female servants, and is used similarly to pozi

Studious seed; Chinese idiom which is referring to prospective scholars, who inherit the knowledge of previous generations and inspire future generations

Hearing these furen bicker made Pengyan’s head hurt, so he coughed slightly to interrupt: “Sorry to trouble all the popo and shenzi, my family’s Young Master just recently moved in. The water in the compound’s well is unclean, could we borrow a few buckets of water from some of your homes?”

Popo: husband’s mother/mother-in-law

Shenzi: a younger brother’s wife/aunts

The crowd’s quarreling immediately came to a halt, and all of them eagerly responded: “Never mind drawing water, later you can ask your family’s servants to come and pick it from our yard later, it doesn’t matter how much you need. If your family wants to dredge the well, Peking University street has a registered artisan household*. To hire a dredger craftsman will only need four silver pieces per day. For house repairs and renovations, there are also masons and carpenters and it is cheaper to hire them all together.”  

In the Ming Dynasty, there was a registry system set up consisting of three different types of ‘artisan households’. This centralized management and convergence of various talents gave rise for inspiration and stimulation in the crafts. The status of these registered artisans were hereditary and individuals of special distinction could become government officials or hold equivalent office titles if their talents were greatly recognized by the Emperor. There were members of the Ming’s learned class, at the top rank of the traditional Chinese social hierarchy of four classes, (learned, farming, crafts, trade in this order) who did not think beneath themselves to engage in such projects. As such, certain artisan households found them in equal standing to literati households.

Pengyan did not dare to call the shots, so he circled back to the courtyard to ask his father.

Cui Yuan declared: “It’ll take a few days of work to fully dredge and clean the well. When you go shopping for wine and produce, take a look to see if there are any water tanks for sale. First, buy a large water tank to store water and make do with it for these next two days. Some artisans will need to be hired, but since it is getting late, let’s eat first, and then after the meal, you come with me to take a look.”

Pengyan left once again, and very quickly, someone arrived at their residence and knocked on the door, heaving a large water tank in tow, along with a ladle and bucket. Cui Yuan was currently laying down clean woven mats and fresh bedding onto the kang bed in the quarters of the main room and had no time to fetch water. So, he asked the workers to fetch some fresh water and compensated them with an extra silver piece. Hence, he asked Coachman Zhao to bring them over to the neighboring house to borrow some fresh water and along the way, see if they could borrow some fresh grass and bean blend to feed the horses.

Kang bed: heatable brick bed with its own insulating system

Cui Xie inadvertently witnessed Coachman Zhao directly scooping up the raw water to drink. Feeling that it was unhygienic, but as he was unfamiliar with wooden stoves, he had to go to the main room and ask Cui Yuan to boil the water.

Cui Yuan thought that Cui Xie was feeling thirsty, so he quickly put down the bedding and went to boil water. The trunks containing the quilts and bedding were haphazardly left open in the corner of the room, so Cui Xie spread out the quilts smoothly onto the bed since he had nothing else to do. There were inlaid wooden frames on all four sides of the kang bed and it looked quite similar to an ordinary wooden bed. While he was at it, Cui Xie climbed up and hung the sheer muslin canopy, even hanging a draping perfume/spice sachet in one of the canopy’s corners. After he was finished smoothing out his own place, he looked across the room, catching sight of a bare common mud brick-heated bed located underneath the southern windows. He went into the compound’s central hall and rummaged out the father and son’s bedding from their trunks and spread it out onto the bare bed.

A picture of what the bed would looklike but this one does not have a insulated heat system.

When Cui Yuan returned from steeping the tea, when he saw that his bedding had been neatly and tidily spread out in the quarters of the main room, he was so frightened that he almost threw the teacup out of his hands and repeatedly sputtered: “This won’t do, this won’t do at all! Young Master, how can you spread out our bedding into the main room! Which household has their servants residing in the main room? I will go and move the bedding out right now, but actually, Pengyan will have to sleep in the outer rooms at night so he can pour tea and water….Hai, how can I let you do these servant’s chores!”

He set down the lidded bowl* and went to grab the quilts on the kang bed. Cui Xie did not expect that he would be able to change Cui Yuan’s mind, so he simply brought up their financial situation and discussed: “When we first came, did you not say that we only have thirty or so taels left? It is unknown whether those in the capital will continue to send our monthly allowance in the future, and this little bit of silver will have to support my recuperation and studies as well. Just how many ounces can be allocated to repair the house? The main room will definitely have to be renovated, but you two will have to suffer in one of the other rooms and even have to spend a fair amount of money to repair them. It would be better to live here, saving both money and a lot of trouble.”

A gaiwan (盖碗; ) or zhong (盅) is a Chinese lidded bowl without handle used for the infusion of tea leaves and the consumption of tea. It was invented during the Ming dynasty. It consists of a bowl, a lid, and a saucer.

Cui Yuan anxiously murmured: “That’s…”

Cui Xie quickly raised his hand and pointed out the window, interrupting him: “Uncle Zhao and the others are still outside, let’s do this, for now, don’t let others hear us quarreling.”

Cui Yuan promptly shut his mouth, stuffily letting out a sigh.

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After a short, while Pengyan came back with a store clerk, carrying two large food boxes and a small jar of wine: one box was for Cui Xie, and it contained snow-white fish thick soup, stewed old hen soup, and lastly braised Chinese yellow eel paired with vegetables; the other delicacies were for Coachman Zhao and Cui Yuan, the dishes in the other box consisted of fried peasant’s quail, salted fish, braised meat in wine, and sweet and sour vinegar braised ribs. There was also a large plate full of fragrant white rice, and the wine was the restaurant’s trademark brewed white wine.

The store clerk sent the box to the main room, opened the box, and took out each dish. He then personally helped them to bore an opening into the wine jar’s clay stopper and instructed: “These guests please enjoy the meal, once finished, please send the bows and jars back. We are all in the same neighborhood and we hope that the Young Master can help look after our business in the future.”

After the store clerk left, Cui Yuan looked at the table brimming with wine and dishes worth at least five or six silver taels, and then recalled Cui Xie’s ‘preposterous proposal’ just now. He couldn’t help sighing a few more times.

Cui Xie just pretended not to hear anything and told Pengyan to carry the food to the kang bed and accompany him to eat. He also instructed Pengyan to keep Coachman Zhao company in the compound’s central hall and drink wine. Coachman Zhao still had to hurry off and did not dare to intake too much alcohol. He only drank a few cups of wine alone with some sweet and sour ribs, happily eating four or five bowls of rice. He then said his farewells after a short break and took his payment and carriage back to Tongzhou.

Cui Yuan cleaned up the dishes and chopsticks, poured the leftovers into the residence’s own dishes, and stored them in the kitchen. He then quietly and stealthily mentioned to his son: “You will need to persuade the Young Master a bit later, he is a great household’s Young Master, and isn’t some poor scholar. What is this notion of helping one’s servants with work! Isn’t this just throwing a master and subordinate’s hierarchy into disorder?”

Pengyan recalled when on the road when they had encountered the heretics, Cui Xie had first pushed him away and hadn’t put on a master’s airs when they arrived home. He was inwardly feeling quite happy by this development, but after listening to what his father said, he also felt that this was not in line with the mannerisms an official’s household Young Master should possess. After hesitating for a while, he said: “Currently, da-ge is only with the two of us these past few days, not bothering about etiquette. Once he goes to the academy to study for a few days, learn a few of the Sage’s teachings, he will naturally be fine.”

After chattering a bit more, the father and son pair packed up the leftovers cleaned the plates, and put them back in the wine shop’s food boxes. They then prepared to go out to buy a few daily necessities and returned the food box to the wine shop.

Cui Yuan was worried that the Young Master would start doing housework again while they were out, so before heading out, he pushed the book trunk from home next to Cui Xie’s bedside, telling him to read books when he felt bored and by all means, not work.

Cui Xie delightedly agreed: “I’ll just lie in the room and do nothing, how about that? Don’t worry Uncle Yuan, I understand the gravity of the situation.”

Now that they were now well-settled here, the problem of finding Cui Xie a teacher for his studies arose. A few days ago at the inn, he was preoccupied with being a spy and tasked himself with collecting intelligence,  and had no time to even look at the books. He ought to take advantage of these few days to practice imitating the original owner’s calligraphy style and also needed to read up on the entry-level basic core curriculum all the way through—although, just reading it did not mean complete comprehension. At least he had the ability to create PDF files in his mind. In case someone tried to assess him, he could just read the information off if needed.

Cui Yuan gave him an uneasy glance and then went out to set up the carriage.

After a while, outside the residence’s main gates, a ‘squeaking’ noise sounded out a few times. Cui Xie had thought that the father and son pair had already left, so he peeked his head out of the window to take a look. He didn’t expect Cui Yuan to suddenly come in through the second gate again and yelled: “I requested for Landlord Zhao’s family next door to lend a hand and guard the gate. We will be back before dark. The Young Master should rest well and don’t read too late into the night!”

second gate or “flower-hung gate”entrance to inner courtyard and rooms

Cui Xie had to repeatedly promise Cui Yuan he would not randomly move about, and then obediently retracted his head into the room. After another while, the main gate was slammed shut with a ‘bang’ and the small courtyard became completely quiet. 

He found the books that the original owner had used since childhood, and sat by the bedside, slowly flipping through it. He actually found a pile of papers containing the original body’s handwriting, and his eyes were immediately attracted to the sentence, ‘The so-called self-cultivation is to rectify the heart, if the body is enraged, the heart cannot be rectified’. He remembered that a phrase from the《Great Learning》, which was: ‘those who wish to cultivate their bodies, one must first correct their hearts*.He guessed that 80% of this stack of papers were copied down from teachings in the 《Great Learning》.

‘Great Learning’ is one of the Four Books in Confucianism. It was extracted by brothers Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi of the Song Dynasty from a chapter in the Book of Rites, which formed one of the Five Classics. Zhu Xi co-edited and commented on ‘Great Learning’, ‘The Doctrine of the Mean’, ‘The Analects’, and’ Mencius’, otherwise known as the Four Books. The principal teachings is that achieving a state of balance, setting priorities, and knowing what is important is essential in one’s quest for moral refinement. As such, one must bring his affairs and relationships into order and harmony and do that through self-cultivation. The expansion of one’s knowledge is called the ‘investigation of things’. It basically suggests that each and every man is capable of learning and self-cultivation regardless of status and one must treat education as an intricate system and strive from balance by making sure not to isolate any forms of learning or cultivating a single aspect.

The content was hard to understand, so he just inspected the font carefully. It was written in Yan script, and it may be that the original owner had been young, so the characters lacked strength. Nonetheless, the characters were well-rounded and rich, and neatly arranged, and were considered quite good, and were not too difficult to imitate.

Yan Script: Yan Zhengqing was a Chinese calligrapher, military general, and politician. He was a leading Chinese calligrapher and loyal governor of the Tang DYnasty. His artistic and aesthetic accomplishment in Chinese calligraphy bestows him with the title of one of the ‘grand calligraphy masters’ in history and his regular script style, Yan, is often imitated in later generations. This style is known to have flow and sharp edges, with a squared shape and spacious center portions with tight outer strokes. His characters were compact vertically. It was upright, muscular, fitting, yet also rich and controlled, which vastly contrasts the early Tang style which was sloped, feminine, pretty, and slim.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_Zhenqing

Under that pile of calligraphic papers, there was a set of semi-new《Four Books, Chapters and Annotations》, a set of original texts of the Five Classics, which were roughly 80% new, followed by the slightly beaten up 《Three Character Classic》,《Hundred Family Surnames》,《Thousand Character Classic》, 《Classic of Poetry》,《Old Style Poetic Forms》…there was also an extremely old, worn copy of 《The Classic of Filial Piety》, which had dense annotations in small print in the classic’s margins.

During the Ming and Qing dynasties, not only was Confucius’ Four Books and Five Classics the primary focus of education, the Three Character Classic, along with Hundred Family Surnames and Thousand Character Classic formed the basis of elementary education. This group came to be known as San Bai Qian (Three, Hundred, Thousand) from the first characters in the titles. It was the universal introductory literacy texts for students written mainly by Wang Yinglin. The Classic of Poetry is the oldest existing collection of the Chinese century and has traditionally been said to be compiled by Confucious (one of the Five Classics) and then studied and memorized by scholars in China. It is a rich source of chengyu (four-character classical idioms) that is still part of the learned discourse and modern society today. Old Style Poetic forms The Classic of Filial Piety is a treatise giving advice on filial piety and gives basic moral messages to young scholars.

It seemed that this child’s efforts had been spent learning filial piety, so it was no wonder that Assistant Liu had looked down upon his degree of progress then. But, the original owner actually liked reading it, so he took a picture of it in his mind. Just in case someone tested him, he could just open the PDF file of it. 

Cui Xie pursed his lips and arranged the remaining books. He then opened the《The Classic of Filial Piety》and read it line by line.

The pages of the classic he read were saved into his brain as a PDf, the pages consecutively arranged neatly after another in one long file, instead of generating a separate document for each page he viewed as he had done previously. His eyes and brain were like a scanner: If he read attentively and clearly, the documents in his mind would be scanned clearly; if he swept his eyes over the scriptures quickly, it was like viewing flowers from horseback, the characters would turn out inconsistent, the color dark or shallow.

The parts he did not read carefully would be blurry, missing characters and even the entire text would become indistinguishable. But, as long as he reread it carefully, a clearer and legible version of the text would replace the originally blurry scanned part.

Flower viewing from horseback: idiom; means a fleeting glance in passing. One will only have a superficial understanding from cursory observation

After reading the entire book to the end, the file was automatically named ‘《Classic of Filial Piety and Justice》’and shrank into a PDF icon and quietly entered the hard drive.

The previously written wine-brewing recipe and Cui Yuan’s letter to Colonel Xie were both files listed before the recently-copied book. However, they did not have a formal file name and were just named after the first few words of the content contained in the documents.

Was the naming convention of these documents the same as WORD? Could they be deleted? If he read a single character, would it just generate into a PDF file, which would take up his hard drive’s memory for nothing?

He was reluctant to delete such a long document on filial piety, so he tried to select the wine-brewing recipe and concentrated on dragging it out of the hard drive. As expected, it promptly disintegrated into fragmentary powder once it hovered out in his mind’s open space! And the creation of these files had a consistent, regular pattern: if he turned the pages and read something, a continuous document would be generated; if he closed his eyes after reading a page or a few lines, those texts would be pasted onto a newly-generated, separate document. All of these documents were automatically saved to the hard disk.

This was not much worse than the WIN10 system. He enjoyed himself quietly and thought: Although reading books would generate fragments and were a bit messy, as long as he deleted them promptly afterward, all would be good. In the future, he planned on slowly engraving those trunks of books onto the hard disk. Whenever the time came, he just needed to open the correctly-named file, and maybe he could pass himself as a genius with a highly retentive and photographic memory.

Here is a refresher of academic terms:

I highly suggest you read it and as well as the wikipedia page. Otherwise, I can keep trying to insert the diagram at the end of each chapter as a refresher. I know it’s a lot, but please bear with me!

TN: New release! This chapter is quite heavy in setting the academic and historical background. I hope you guys enjoy and feel free to ask for any clarifying questions about this stuff, I know it can be confusing! Sorry for the slightly delayed release, I have been so so busy with college, but hope you guys enjoy as much as I did. Stay safe and healthy everyone!

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