Beigen's Liulichang is considered to be the most famous local antique calligraphy and painting street. The street is full of old antique calligraphy and painting shops. During the reign of Emperor Yongle, this area was just a Liulichang factory. Later, Emperor Jiajing renovated it.
Behind the city, this area became a neighborhood. Most of the people who came to Beijing to take exams in the later Qing Dynasty gathered here. Shops selling the Four Treasures of the Study and antique books were opened, which continued until today and became the famous Liulichang.
This is a lively place that has almost been trampled on the stone ridges of the streets. Rongbaozhai has a history of more than 300 years. Many people want to come and see what the old store that can attract Zhang Daqian and Qi Baishi as repeat customers looks like. Ancient books in Chinese bookstores
Does it really contain the original source of the secret history of the palace?
There is a bookish and elegant antique shop three steps away on the side street. Tourists who claim to be literary and artistic young people who come here for pilgrimage hold a paper fan in their hands. People walking on the stone street are surrounded by the chirping of the birdcage at the door of the shop.
Smell the scent of ink, and imagine that you have returned to the era of a hundred years ago, when you were successful and had horseshoe disease.
The best time to visit Liulichang is always during the day, but the new tourists coming here now don't seem to follow common sense.
Beijing time, 3:00AM.
Late at night, an old Volkswagen Beetle parked on the street outside the quiet Hengjie. After turning off the engine, the owner took out the key, took it in his pocket, opened the door, and got out of the car. He stood on the street.
I took out my mobile phone and compared some navigation maps with the actual scene in front of me. I made sure I was in the right place before turning around and slamming the car door.
With a "pop" sound, the black car door closed, causing the car glass to buzz and shake. When closing the car door, he did not forget that the owner of the car rental agency reminded him to use more force or it would not close. This old thing seems to have been overdue for a long time.
into the recycling plant, or the garage of some collectors who have a special affection for old things, but he still caught his eye on it at a glance in the corner of the car rental shop, instead of other McLarens, Ferraris or Corvettes.
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——Who knows how many inextricable battles had occurred in those cars that were rented out more frequently than the beautiful girls around him. The thought of having to sit in that kind of private space for a period of driving made him feel a little sick.
answer.
Caesar has always had some mental mysophobia, which is not very obvious, but people who know him know it more or less, so every girl who pursues him publicly declares that she has no ex on the Internet.
Looking at the entrance of Hengjie late at night, Liulichang Street is already not as lively as it is during the day or as brightly lit later in the day. At two o'clock in the night, some supper shops are preparing to close their stalls. The Four Treasures of the Study should have taken advantage of the fine weather.
Stretch out the incense sticks in the sun. There should be other corners to come out for air in the middle of the night.
Caesar walked into the side street. There were unexpected figures on the side street late that night. Those black figures were hidden in the night, using the red pillars and eaves in front of the shops on the street as cover, and they gathered together in groups and whispered something.
Caesar ignored the quaint shops that were out of business and walked all the way to the entrance of a deep alley. He turned around to confirm the name of the shop opposite the alley, and then walked along the alley.
Walking along the alley, it gradually widened from being narrow enough to accommodate only one person to being able to accommodate four or five people side by side. Then it became crowded again - not because of the width of the road itself, but because of the sudden appearance of the alley.
The crowd was noisy, standing or squatting in groups on the side of the road in the narrow alley. The light of countless flashlights swept back and forth in the alley like lasers. There were more and more whispers that were deliberately kept low.
It creates a kind of low and not noisy noise.
Generally, transactions that take place at night are called "night markets", with lights and colorful decorations and the aroma of snacks and snacks. But after all the stalls in the "night market" are closed, in the early hours of the morning, silent sellers come to the narrow and remote market.
The stalls set up in the lane have become a "ghost market" that few people know about and patronize.
People here go out to sell stalls in the middle of the night without saying a word. Selling goods all depends on fate, and pricing depends on the buyer's pocket. Sellers don't ask where the goods go, and buyers don't ask where the goods come from. There is no market supervision, no urban management,
There are only the most primitive transactions that have been agreed upon.
The things on the carpets here are always strange and weird. In the dark, sellers and buyers use flashlights to look for the fat sheep and big ducks they like. The evil ways and sinister world are the norm here. The children of rich families steal the treasures and sell them at low prices.
Don’t expect to get an invoice from the fresh goods excavated from the soil or the dirty goods stolen and kidnapped. The only thing that can prove that the thing in your hand is genuine is the earthen pistol carried by the seller in his military coat.
"Do you want some porcelain? Buy some to take home as souvenirs. There are some from the Song Dynasty, the Yuan Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty." A man in a gray coat naturally came to Caesar's side, looking mysterious.
Secretly he lowered his head and spoke in a lowered voice.
Caesar, a blond foreigner, is particularly eye-catching even when walking in a dark alley without lights. For many people in the ghost city, this guy is the biggest fat sheep tonight. Everyone loves fat sheep.
, especially foreign varieties, which means more oil and water. After all, judging from the foreign exchange rate these days, foreign green grass is indeed more nutritious.
"How much?" Caesar didn't stop because someone talked to him. He asked as he walked deeper into the ghost market at his own pace. This alley was much deeper than it looked from the outside. According to the theorem of darkness, the deeper you go, the more you go.
The farther you go, the darker the items are, and the more likely you are to find good stuff, or are you more likely to be eaten by someone else?
"Hey, you still have a Henan accent. As for the things, I only need this amount." The man in the gray coat compared the numbers with Caesar, and decided that no matter how much the foreign silly old man said for the first time, he would put up the price with an exaggerated face.
Go up one number.
But Caesar didn't even look at his gesticulating fingers, "Let's see the goods first."
"This is against the rules." The man in the gray coat looked embarrassed, but he was wondering if this ghost guy was an expert at pretending to be a fish? Or was he pretending to be an expert at pretending to be a fish?
Caesar didn't want to say anything nonsense about this person, so he quickly walked forward to find the person he was looking for. When the gray coat saw that the fat sheep was about to run away, he became anxious and quickly slipped up and walked into Caesar's arms.
He handed over a dirt-stained cloth bag that looked suspicious, "How about we find a place to take a closer look? And give me a price?"
Caesar glanced at the dirty cloth bag in his hand. He probably understood some of the tricks. He looked at the man in gray robe and then took out a banknote and gave it to him.
The man in the gray coat suddenly turned dark. Without even looking at the one hundred yuan bill, he snatched the cloth bag back, turned around and left, quickly disappearing into the crowd of the ghost market.
Caesar leisurely looked at the disappearing figure of the man in the gray coat and took back the banknotes. At the same time, there was a flashlight and an alligator leather wallet inexplicably on his left hand.
The man in the gray coat misunderstood. The one hundred yuan was not to buy the "unearthed cultural relic" that looked too fake to be fake, but to buy the flashlight in his arms.
If the man in the gray coat had cleaner hands and feet and did not touch the wallet in Caesar's pocket when passing the cloth bag, then Caesar would probably stuff the hundred dollars into his pocket when they separated, instead of taking it in vain like now
A flashlight and a fake crocodile leather money clip.
Caesar didn't think much about the extraneous matter. Taking the wallet was just to teach others a lesson. He didn't despise the contents inside, so he threw the fake crocodile leather wallet on the ground and continued walking inside with a flashlight.
There is no stall number in the ghost market. Following the instructions given by the person on the phone, he turned three times in the extremely long alley, then stopped at the bend and looked at the stall in the corner opposite the bend.
There were almost no people crowding in front of the stall there. In other stalls, there were a group of people picking up leaks on the carpet with flashlights. But here, even the stall owner was leaning against the wall, huddled up with his hands in his sleeves and dozing off.
.
Caesar walked to the stall, squatted down, picked up the flashlight and shined a light on the things on the carpet. At a glance, he understood why the place was deserted. The other stalls were all selling contraband and some dirty things from shady sources.
, jewelry, brand-name bags, expired controlled drugs, antiques whose authenticity is unknown, etc., but what this man has on his stall is the most indispensable thing in the entire Liulichang, ancient books.
"Tuibei Tu", "Yongle Dadian", "Qing Nang Shu", "Tai Gong's Art of War" and so on, the flashlight swept over the rotting book covers, and the names on them were more thunderous than the last, but the more classic they were, the more people despised the carpet boss.
Are you treating people like fools? Generally, if someone passes by and takes one more look at the stuff on the carpet, they will roll their eyes and just ignore it.
Caesar picked up a book that was so rotten that the cover was missing and read it with great interest. His Chinese proficiency was not high, and he could still understand more than half of the traditional Chinese characters in this ancient book. From "Shi Xuan San"
Judging from the short words such as "Huiyang Tang" and "Yueju Wan", this should be a medical book in traditional Chinese regular script, probably an ancient book from the Ming Dynasty?
"Take pockmarks to make a good doctor? Unruly gray hair, take a square inch dagger three times a day to cure the hair and back? Cure all erysipelas and bad gas to attack the body, redness, swelling and pain." Although Caesar didn't understand it, it was still very interesting to see. He always
I am interested in these things with a sense of history. Through those brittle and yellowed papers that have spent hundreds of years, those words seem to bring the sense of weight of time to the present. Reading those words is like watching the ancients in the past.
The scene when reading at night.
"The medical books written by barefoot folk doctors in the Ming Dynasty were unnamed. There are a total of eighteen volumes. There are seventeen volumes here. The missing volume is a catalog of medical skills, so it is innocuous, but in terms of overall quality, it may be a problem if it is auctioned.
Because of its incompleteness, the value of the collection has been greatly reduced. For a person of Mr. Gattuso's status, this medical book may not be qualified to enter the collection room." In front of Caesar, the stall owner who had been asleep said.
Caesar put down the medical book. When he saw the prescription for lead poisoning to soothe the nerves, he knew how unreliable it was. It is true that the reaction of lead poisoning is dizziness and unconsciousness, but such a fatal thing
It is only taken orally to calm the nerves. It is no wonder that the wealthy gentry in ancient China all died early.
Caesar cast his eyes on the stall owner. Even in the dark, he could see the other person's appearance clearly, which also surprised him slightly.
In a ghost market full of locals, this stall owner turned out to be an authentic European, with gray hair and iron-grey eyes, slightly raised cheekbones on his thin cheeks, and slightly sunken eye sockets.
"Aryan" is almost written on this face. I think when he was young, he was a handsome man who could compete with Professor Schneider.
And such a European is actually wearing an authentic coat, a round hat on his head to protect him from the cold, and old Beigan cloth shoes on his feet. He looks completely nondescript? But what should I say?
What you say is indeed authentic, and you can't find any faults with it.
"Mr. Lin Fenglong?" Caesar was still a little unsure whether the other party was the person he was looking for. Although the location and clothing matched, the other party on the phone never mentioned that this guy was the same as Caesar.
The fellows from the border area (for many Chinese, all people with non-Asian faces are called foreigners).
"Mr. Caesar Gattuso, you are so young. You are much younger than I thought." The stall owner stretched out a hand from his sleeve and shook Caesar's hand.
Warmth, strength, and thick calluses on the skin.
"Hunters also have all kinds of monsters." Caesar took back his hand and looked him up and down calmly.
"I'm sorry to ask you to meet in a place like this at this time, otherwise I would definitely entertain you in the store. My store has a lot of good tea, good things picked from the tea trees, and I am also very good at my own tea art.
Confidence, but you should also know that what you want is contraband anywhere, so I have to be careful." The stall owner took back his hand and put it in again, acting like a veteran.
亰.
"I understand. That's why we made an appointment to meet in a place like this." Caesar glanced around. Sometimes the crowds of people are a kind of protection in the dark. He still understands the principle of hiding in the city.
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Furthermore, he also knows how dangerous the next transaction he may make with the man in front of him is. It is so dangerous that if the situation is extreme, the Gattuso family behind him may not be able to protect his successor in the first time.
life.
"So, does it mean that you did bring what I wanted?" He changed the subject.
"Of course, the Gattuso family has always spent money like water, especially Mr. Caesar. Such a big deal will inevitably make me, who have been stable for many years, tempted and make some decisions that may make me regret it for the rest of my life, such as
Selling some things that should have never seen the light of day." The stall owner huddled leisurely in the corner, looking at Caesar who was squatting in front of the stall, his sunken eye sockets slightly narrowed, as if he was sizing up the residual value of his customers, and also as if
It's just that I didn't wake up and took a nap.
Behind the two of them, people were coming and going in the ghost market. Many people were paying attention to the blond ghost guy here who might be slaughtered, and they were eager to get an extra mouthful of soup after their colleagues ate the meat.
"It seems that you know me well enough, and you know the Gattuso family well enough. I can guarantee that as long as the information is true, more or less money does not matter. What you said on the backend of the hunter website is not a boring scam."
Caesar looked up at the stall owner and said calmly.
The name of the Gattuso family is a threshold. People who are below the threshold will disdain this name. Only those who have truly reached the level will shelve this name, either keeping it at a distance or treating it as a guest.
At the moment, it seems that the mysterious hunter whose registration ID is "Phoenix" on the hunter website is the latter, but an intuition tells Caesar that he may be an extremely rare third type of person besides the former and the former.
The stall owner smiled and whispered, "Mr. Caesar, I do know just a little bit of everything you want, just a little bit."
"The awakened Dragon King hiding in Bei'an."
"Fourteen years ago, the whereabouts of the 'Mu Yue' who escaped from orthodoxy is now as well!"