"Brother Zhong, just take me with you. I beg you, little brother!"
When Jing got up early in the morning, he became Hei Fu's follower. He wanted to persuade him to take him with him when he took office in Huyang Pavilion. In Jing's view, it was a very prestigious thing for his brother to become the pavilion chief and govern the place. How could he
Can be absent.
"Don't even think about it!" Heifu rejected him flatly.
"Do you think I run that pavilion and can take whoever I want? Let me tell you, even if you went to the pavilion and ate the rations that were supposed to be provided to me and were sued to the county, you and I
Everyone will be punished!"
Hei Fu is not trying to scare him. In other dynasties, they were cruel to the people and lax to the officials. Among the officials, there were countless people who took advantage of them and took kickbacks. The court also turned a blind eye and even came up with the idea of "raising integrity".
Things like "silver" and "fire consumption" come. And when one person becomes an official, it is often the case that one person achieves enlightenment, chickens and dogs ascend to heaven, and family members can also benefit from it.
Only the Qin State has a unique mind. Not only is it extremely ruthless to the people, but it is even more ruthless to the officials. It is as guarded against thieves...
For example, there are regulations on rations, what level, and how much are the daily rations for officials with noble titles. They will be distributed to each pavilion according to the amount every month. If someone pretends to receive it, he will be punished. Using public funds to treat guests to meals is a common practice in the Qin State.
Very risky.
There is also "private use of public cars". The Qin State explicitly prohibited the use of public cars to carry family members: "How can you pay Erjia to carry a woman in a car?" Erjia's money is enough to buy a bad horse, so he uses a public car to carry his family members.
The price for girls racing was so high that most Qin officials did not dare to violate the ban.
This problem that has continued to be banned in modern times was actually solved in the Qin State. Heifu thought of the later generations who took drastic measures to rectify similar situations at the beginning of his rule. Without public funds to eat, without stored-value cards for consumption, he could only eat moon cakes and rice dumplings.
You have to buy it yourself, and you can’t take the bus home to celebrate the New Year... This caused local officials to complain, which made the masses feel indignant. They felt that this was cutting off their own benefits, and in the end they even complained, "If this continues, who will be willing to be a civil servant?"
They all came out, which is really funny.
It is easy to change from being honest to being corrupt, but it is difficult to change from being corrupt to being honest. However, when "officials are not able to make a living", ordinary people are applauding and applauding.
Qin's emphasis on incorruptible government was even greater than that of later generations. The people of Qin were indeed conscientiously implementing the sentence in "The Way of Being an Official": "Integrity must not be slandered."
So Hei Fu didn't want to go to the pavilion in shock and give people excuses, so he said: "Just stay at home and take care of your mother and help your uncle. Besides..."
He pulled her away and said in surprise: "There is only one word in this matter. Don't go out and talk nonsense before the matter is settled!"
"With Brother Zhong's ability, being the chief of the pavilion is an easy task."
Although Jing was a little discouraged, he had no reason to be confident in Heifu. At the same time, he rubbed his hands and said, "Brother Zhong, if you can really take office, you will be the first person to become an official in our family for generations!"
"Probably so."
It was for this reason that when Hei Fu explained the matter yesterday, my mother agreed, and even said that she would pay homage to her late husband's grave and thank him for his blessing. When they were in the Chu Kingdom, they were common people without a surname.
In the three generations after entering the Qin Dynasty, no one has ever held an official position. It's just that the cheap old man became a public servant for the first time. He had some savings and taught his son how to read. Now that Hei Fu has the opportunity to become an official, it's really smoke coming from his ancestral grave.
…
Heifu asked Jing to do whatever he had to do, and he walked towards the kitchen.
In the kitchen, every household has a kitchen. The front door leads to the front yard. The top is usually uncovered to allow the black smoke from the fire to escape. The stove is in the kitchen, with a cauldron set up, and there are several three-legged pottery pots next to it.
The back door of the kitchen leads to the backyard. When you step over the threshold, you can see a small vegetable patch. The ashes produced by cooking are sprinkled on the vegetable patch to make fertilizer. As the saying goes, "Sunflowers in the green garden wait for the morning dew to shine." On weekdays, sunflowers are planted here.
, that is, winter amaranth, as the main vegetable of this era. Unfortunately, the vegetable beds are bare now. There are only some green onions that can survive the winter, and they are struggling to pull out tender white seedlings.
On the left side of the vegetable patch is a hut filled with firewood, and on the right is a small barn. It is a small earth house that is as tall as a person and more than ten steps square. It stores the millet that the family will eat throughout the winter, as well as seeds for the coming year. The woodshed
Between the barn and the well is the well, which are the two places most afraid of catching fire.
The sound of pounding rice that Heifu heard came from the side of the barn...
When rice, millet and other grains are recovered from the fields, the grains and stalks are still mixed together. First, the bamboo sieve made by my mother yesterday is used to thresh the grains, sieve out the grains, store them in the barn, and eat them every day.
Now pound it. Pound it in a stone mortar to break the husks of millet and rice. Then shake and sieve a few times to remove the bran and husks, and then you can separate them and cook them into fragrant rice.
There is also a very poetic description in the Book of Songs: "Some are pounding or tearing, some are winnowing or trampling. The old people are relieved, and the old people are floating." But this process is not poetic at all. The hard work of pounding rice is that later generations will just buy white rice.
The pot is unimaginable to modern people...
After walking around the barn, Heifu saw his sister-in-law, a peasant woman in coarse clothes that barely touched the floor. She was wearing an apron-like "knee covering" and was struggling to lift a heavy wooden pestle.
Pound the grains in a stone mortar driven into the ground.
My sister-in-law is named "Kui" and she is from the neighborhood. She married her eldest brother Zhong when she was 18. It has been almost eight years since she was married. She was beautiful when she got married. Unfortunately, she gradually lost her beauty through life. Fortunately, her eldest brother has a temper.
Okay, the couple is in love.
And the six-year-old nephew Yang was squatting next to the stone mortar, yawning, holding a stick in his hand, and following the rhythm of his mother pounding rice, he fiddled with the millet in the stone mortar from time to time.
The children of the poor have been in charge of the family for a long time. In rural areas, they have to share the family's worries at a young age, and it is difficult to have a good night's sleep. Although Yang seems to always bully his sister on weekdays, every morning when his mother calls them, he gets up quietly and lets them know.
My sister continues to sleep peacefully, she is a good brother.
Hei Fu couldn't help but feel a little sorry for this sensible child.
"Sister-in-law Qiu."
He then walked forward, saluted his sister-in-law, and said, "Let me pound it."
As he said this, he took the wooden pestle. The wooden pestle was made of solid wood and was quite heavy in his hand. No wonder holding the pestle to pound millet from morning to night was a form of hard labor used by the Qin State to punish women and men.
Comparing it to the Cheng Dan that was done in vain, Hei Fu had just done the Cheng Dan a few days ago, and his hard work can be seen clearly.
The sister-in-law drove Yang to have a good sleep, while she pinched her sore arm and held a wooden stick to the side to pull the grains for the black husband. She said at the same time: "Uncle Zhong (referring to the husband's brother) is not going to visit Yan's father-in-law in Banli.
What?"
Yesterday, after Hei Fu told his family about his plan, they told him that, unfortunately, Mr. Lu Ying went to his son's house in the county town at sunset, and he might not be able to come back until the twelfth lunar month, so if Hei Fu wanted to learn the laws and regulations, he had to go nearby
Find another retired official Yan Zheng in the plaque.
"I can't go empty-handed." Hei Fu said with a smile as he pounded the rice with a pestle: "I have to trouble Sister Qiu to prepare four dried meat sticks for me. I will give them to Mr. Yan as bundles."
"There are still two sticks left of the dried meat your uncle brought back from the county for you."
The sister-in-law raised her head and said in confusion: "I heard that most people go to Mr. Yan to ask for advice. Don't they only need two sticks of dried meat?"
"I want to bring double the number because I want to take Jing with me so that he can learn to read, write and understand the laws and regulations from Yan Lao's son. Anyway, there is not much farm work to do in winter, so instead of letting him idle around and cause trouble all day long, it is better to take him with us Learn something useful." This is a vague plan that Heifu has in his mind, but he can't explain it clearly yet.
My sister-in-law nodded: "I'll go to Wu's house and ask, and it will be ready for you tomorrow."
Mr. Wu is the person in charge of their "Five Households as Neighbors". Although he is not an official, only the richest of the five households can be appointed.
Mr. Wu's family raises several pigs, and every winter they kill one and dry the meat. Because these days, the more dried meat is dried, it means the family is living a better life. Hei Fu and his family can only eat at most during the New Year. On the fish, my mouth watered as I smelled the smell of meat coming from next door. Although the pigs of this era were not castrated and the taste was not as good as those of later generations, it was still meat.
Afterwards, the two of them were speechless. Heifu pounded the rice for about half an hour. When it was already dark outside, he finally finished pounding the day's rations for the five, two, and seven people. His arms were already sore and he was very tired. .
He is a strong man like this. No wonder my sister-in-law, who often does rice pounding work, always has sore arms.
"Sister-in-law Qiu, how long does it take to grind rice on weekdays?" Heifu asked, wiping his sweat.
"It takes a full hour from Pingdan to sunrise."
My sister-in-law has already started washing rice for cooking. Even though it took her so long, what she came out with is still only the roughest "rice". The cooked rice is mixed with a lot of shelled rice and bran. It takes a bite to break. For a long time, I swallowed hard and even had a sore throat.
Heifu looked thoughtfully at the heavy wooden pestle and the stone mortar made of large bluestone in his hand.
"Productivity is really lagging behind these days, especially rice pounding, which is simply a torture for housewives. After all, men have to work outside and farm and have no time to do this. My mother said that she has been pounding rice for decades since she was ten years old. They are all going to be crushed to pieces. Now that she can’t lift it, it’s my sister-in-law’s turn. In ten years, it will be my niece Xiaoyue’s turn. This is how the beautiful youth of women is roughened little by little... …”
Heifu sighed. He couldn't control other people's families for the time being, but his own family was so reasonable that he couldn't let them suffer like this anymore.
"What should we do? Stone mill? Roller? You can consider it. It seems that stone mills already exist in the north, but they have not spread to the south county. But those things are made of stone, the cost is not low, and it is a bit troublesome. I have only seen them in my previous life. I have an impression that I don’t know how to do it. Even if I ask a stonemason to make it custom-made, it will take less than ten days and half a month to make it, and it may not be usable. Is there something simpler and practical? I have seen it in a documentary. …”
"What's your name?" Heifu scratched his head, forgetting the unfamiliar name for a moment.
At this time, he had moved his steps and walked to the well, where he saw the "jiégāo" placed on the well.
The tangerine resembles a scale beam and was a water-draining tool in this era. A slender wooden stick is added to an upright stand, with a fulcrum in the middle, a stone hanging at the end, and a bucket hanging at the front. When a person puts the bucket into the water
After the water is filled, due to the gravity at the end of the lever, the water can be easily lifted to the desired place and dropped together, saving a lot of effort when drawing water.
After seeing this thing, Heifu couldn't help but think of it!
"Tadi, yes, what I want is Tadi!"
He excitedly clapped his hands and said: "The treadmill is the same as the orange peel. It uses the principle of leverage and has a simple structure. It can be made quickly in three or two days. I remember that my sister-in-law helped to make this orange peel. He
He is a craftsman here..."
Hei Fu just did what he said. He walked to the front yard, picked up the gifts he bought from the county town, and said to the man who had just gotten up and was stretching: