The girl in the yellow shirt, pronounced Eru, looked slightly older than the girl in the blue shirt. She held her sister and slowly looked through the Shu brocade. After Li Xu had sent all the guests away, he put on his clothes.
He put the yellow brocade on his shoulder back into the stall and asked Li Xu in a low voice: "Are the ones of this color sold the same as the red ones?"
"One, the same. If you buy, you can use less and count less!" Li Xu felt a little guilty about making money, and his words became more and more stammering. Before heading north, his father packed all the copper coins collected at home with his mother's few items at the bottom of the box.
The jewelry was all replaced with Shu brocade. Although the expense was very high at the time, he made ten times the return in just half an hour. If he followed Xu Dayan's instructions and sold it at a high price, he felt that he was really greedy.
"I want to make two wedding dresses. One is made in the style of the Central Plains, which is red. The other is made in the style of our people, which is golden. Look at how many feet I need to buy. The price is the same as others. I
You can't bully the guests!" Eru asked in a low voice, refusing to ask for Li Xu's discount.
Her Central Plains speaking is very fluent, with a hint of the charm of the Wudi region. Different from the bright and fresh pronunciation of the girl in blue, it makes people feel another kind of comfort when listening to it.
"This, this, I, I don't quite understand! How about you take both this piece of yellow brocade and this piece of red brocade?" Li Xu took out another piece of red brocade from under the stall and placed it next to the yellow brocade.
, asked tentatively. "I can only give you half of the price!"
"Thank you, but I can't take advantage of you for nothing!" Eru once again declined Li Xu's gift. She picked up two pieces of brocade and compared them repeatedly, but finally couldn't make up her mind how many feet to buy. There are many products on the grassland.
Feng, even if he was born into a patriarchal family, he would still be condemned by everyone if he wasted too much.
"Sister Eru, why don't we take these two Hanzi back and ask Aunt Qing to measure you, yes, tailor-made, I remember this word!" The girl in blue blouse clapped her hands and said, while the silver bell on her wrist jingled.
, once again made Li Xu's mind shaken.
"That's not good, it's getting late! Besides, there may be deviations when measuring under the lamp." Xu Dayan cupped his hands and rejected the other party's proposal. In the evening, he went to visit a strange woman's felt tent. In his eyes,
This is not polite behavior.
At this time, the setting sun has set at the end of the grassland, and most of the vendors have closed their stalls. The only ones who have persisted until now are him, Li Xu and a few other people selling specialty goods. All the vendors are doing good business today, and they are expected to sell another one tomorrow.
All day long, everyone can pack up and return south the morning after tomorrow.
"We Lin people don't have so many rules!" The girl in blue shirt and Xu Dayan competed with each other to see whose eyes were bigger, and said with a slightly raised eyebrow.
"Then, I'd rather be respectful than obey your orders!" Xu Dayan bowed his hands in greeting without being sullen or angry. The woman named Eru and the girl named Si in front of him must be the apple of the patriarch's eye. He and Li Xu want to stay here.
There is no harm in establishing a good relationship with the two women for a period of time. Moreover, although the girl in blue shirt has a somewhat wild temperament, her essence is like a lake of clear water in the wilderness, untainted by any dust in the world.
Li Xu couldn't help but feel soft when he saw the longing look on the face of the woman in yellow shirt. In addition, he really had no choice but to take off Tao Kuo, the girl in blue shirt. So he had to clean up the stall, wrapped the remaining Sichuan brocade tightly in a bag, and entrusted it to the
Hao Laodao, who was watching the commotion, brought back the felt tent where everyone stored the goods. Then he led the animals, put most of the golden brocade and several feet of bright red brocade on the back of the mule, and followed the girls to see what they were talking about.
Aunt Qing.
The girl named Eru saw that the other party had made so many concessions and thanked her repeatedly. But the girl in blue shirt refused to appreciate it at all. She looked at the distance between Li Xu and Xu Dayan and her sisters, and commented unhappily.
: "Come closer, what are you afraid of? Isn't it also the rule for you Han people not to walk side by side with women?"
"Gentleman..." Xu Big Eyes handed over his hands again. For some reason, he, who had always been free and easy, became extremely fond of handing over his hands in front of two girls. He wanted to quote an ancient sage's words to explain his behavior, but he suddenly failed.
I thought that neither Confucius, Mencius nor Zeng Zi could deter these two wild men. I had no choice but to bite the bullet and walk a few steps quickly, walking side by side with the two women. But there were two people separated from each other.
A wide distance. Looking at Li Xu, he was even more cautious. He was holding his mount, and the distance between him and the girl was three horse's width.
"The rules of you Han people are really weird. You have to go around the bush to do everything! Aunt Qing is also from the Central Plains. She heard that someone from her hometown was coming, and she wanted to see her. I asked her to come, but she said that a woman can't do anything without her husband's order.
You should take the initiative to entertain distant guests..." The woman in blue shirt couldn't help Xu and Li, so they shrugged their shoulders and continued to scold.
"Is the Aunt Qing you are talking about from the Central Plains?" Xu Dayan did not take the girl's ridicule at all, but his curiosity was aroused by the Central Plains woman mentioned by the girl.
"Yes, her name is Chen Wanqing. She came to the grassland more than 20 years ago. Her father originally wanted to sell her to the Turkic Khan, but he encountered a horse thief on the way. It was my father who saved their father and daughter, so Aunt Qing
Married to her father. That old man is so weird, he actually has the heart to sell his daughter as a commodity!"
"Goods?" Li Xu asked in surprise. His intuition told him that the father and daughter mentioned by Tao Kuo Tuosi did not have a real family relationship. In his hometown, there were also cruel parents or poor people who really couldn't survive.
He would sell his daughter to a wealthy family as a slave or concubine, but he would never be so ruthless as to sell his daughter thousands of miles away. Moreover, the journey north is long, and selling his daughter to a foreigner would mean that the ultimate gain is incomparable with the risks on the road.
"They are not the real father and daughter!" Xu Dayan thought to himself. The moment the girl in blue shirt announced Aunt Qing's full name, he had already guessed this. The name Wan Qing sounded very poetic,
But it is not common. Daughters of small families in the Central Plains would not have such charming names. As for the daughters of wealthy families, it would be disrespectful to give such a name.
Then, there is only one conclusion. The Aunt Qing mentioned by the girl in blue shirt may be a prostitute who was sold outside the Great Wall by human traffickers for a high price.
"A woman who is worthy of such a big risk for human traffickers must be extremely beautiful. But beautiful prostitutes are already worth a lot of money in the Central Plains, so why would human traffickers take such a big risk?" Xu Dayan frowned and thought. Take a look.
He suddenly thought of the answer to the unseasoned face of the girl in blue.
The girl in front of her was frank and a little careless. The twenty years she mentioned may not be an accurate number. The specific number of years, according to Xu Dayan's calculation, should be twenty-one.
That year was the ninth year of Emperor Kaihuang's reign (589). The Sui Dynasty destroyed Chen Dynasty, and countless aristocratic families in the south of the Yangtze River were wiped out.
After thinking about it carefully, Xu Dayan was very curious about the life experience of Aunt Qing in the girl's mouth, and began to ask about the details of the other party. How could two girls from the Xi tribe be as thoughtful as him, who had been specially trained since childhood?
, seeing that Xu Dayan was finally willing to take the initiative to speak, she happily told him what she knew like pouring beans into a bamboo tube.
The result of the interrogation made Xu Dayan very disappointed. Although the girls had no reservations, the Aunt Qing they mentioned was just how they were rescued by their father and how they became their father's little wife. Later, they talked about Aunt Qing.
How to teach themselves to speak the Central Plains dialect, how to teach the women in the tribe to cut clothes and pickle wild vegetables. As for where Aunt Qing's hometown is in the Central Plains, whether there are any relatives in the family, and other important details, the two girls have not cared about it at all, so they naturally ignore it.
I don't know.
"Aunt Qing's name is Chen Wanqing. I've never heard her say that she has another name. She said that the Central Plains is a big place with many tribes, so everyone has their own surname!" Eru, a girl in yellow shirt, saw Xu.
Aunt Qing spoke with big eyes, and said with a frown. "Names are just pronouns for people. If you know that when someone calls you Wan Qing, you are calling her, so why do you have to ask her if she has another name?"
"
Xu Dayan was afraid that Eru would be suspicious, so he didn't dare to ask any more questions. He casually told a few jokes about names from the Central Plains area to cover up the topic, and subtly changed the topic. When the meaning of Han people's names was mentioned, the girl in blue shirt was evoked again.
Interested, he clapped his hands and showed off very happily: "Sister Eru and I also have Han names, and Aunt Qing gave them to us!"
If Xu Dayan and Li Xu were teenagers on the grassland, they would definitely ask what the girl's Han name is. But both of them are educated gentlemen, influenced by Confucianism, and have good conduct. They both have the same creed in their hearts.
: When you meet a girl of the same age, if she doesn’t take the initiative to tell you her name, don’t ask her any questions.
There was a sudden silence between the guests and the host. The girl in blue looked at Li Xu and Xu with wide eyes. Seeing that the other party still refused to ask questions, she lowered her head and said with some frustration: "Don't you want to know our names?"
Huh? It will be easier for everyone to call each other this way!"
"Xiao Ke's surname is Xu, and his name is Shiji. I dare you to ask the two girls their names!" Seeing that the girl was angry, Xu Da quickly stood still and asked politely.
"My lord, Li Xu! I wonder if I can tell you your girl's name!" Li Xu cupped his hands and asked seriously.
The two girls were stunned by the question, and then they laughed loudly, causing people passing by to look sideways, wondering what interesting things happened here.
Although the girl in yellow shirt Eru was a little calm, she was amused by Xu and Li's solemn behavior and was knocked off her feet. The girl in blue shirt bent over, smiled, pointed at Xu and Li, and said: "Ha, haha.
, laugh, laugh me to death. Hahaha, do you, haha, people from the Central Plains all talk like this?"
"Us?" Xu and Li were laughed so hard that they couldn't understand. After hearing the girl asking each other, they realized where the problem was. After thinking about it, they also laughed. While laughing, they looked at the two of them.
The girl explained: "Where we are, you are not allowed to ask women's names casually, otherwise you will be scolded, and if not, you will be chased as a bad person! Therefore, when I ask your names, you have to be more serious!"
"Let's just ask here. If someone is unhappy, they won't tell you. You won't get any cuts on your body, so what are you afraid of?" Lan Shan said over and over again while laughing.
"I think it's because we have different habits. The elders said that when Aunt Qing first came here, she didn't talk to anyone easily!" Eru slowly stopped smiling and said with understanding.
She has a beautiful life, she smiles very innocently, her smile is natural, and when she speaks she is a little more considerate than the girl in the blue shirt, so it is easy for people to feel close to her.
Xu Dayan sighed secretly in his heart, but still had a calm smile on his face, and asked in a low voice: "Where are the names of the Central Plains that you haven't told you yet? I remember both Aru and Tao Ketuosi, I just said
It doesn’t sound as good as you say!”
After asking, there was a hint of expectation in my heart. (To be continued)
