Chapter 33: A room full of snowflakes (Part 2)

What can two taels of silver do? In November of the second year of Xining (1069), Kaifeng suffered heavy snow and many poor citizens were frozen to death. The court issued an edict: "If the poor cannot save themselves, they will be given twenty dollars a day." In the second year of Yuanyou (1087), Fan Zuyu pointed out in Kaifeng: "If a hungry person gets ten coins a day, he will not die."

The 20-word daily articles in Xining included the cost of purchasing food, while the 10-word daily articles in Yuanyou were other necessary expenses (including rent). This means: in the Song Dynasty, the minimum living expenses for a person in Beijing were 20-monthly (600-word monthly). For people in Beijing, they could buy two adult pigs in Huangzhou.

After Su Dongpo ordered the escort, he looked up and saw Zhao Xing. He was a little stunned, as if he didn't know how to speak. After a moment, he laughed: "You brewed good wine!"

Zhao Xing respectfully held the disciple's etiquette: "The bachelor's poem is well done!"

The two laughed at each other.

In fact, it is a bit too much to say that Zhao Xing brews good wine - each has its own preferences for pickles and radishes, and Maotai wine is OK. Some people don’t drink a glass of wine for life and would rather drink low-alcohol wine. However, Zhao Xing’s wine is not very outstanding in strict terms. In fact, the wine he brews is just some Fenjiu mixed with juice or Fenjiu with fruit aroma.

How many famous wines were there in the Song Dynasty? According to the records of "Dream of Tokyo", there were more than 280 well-known wines at that time. The top ten famous wines of Chinese descendants, such as Xifeng wine, Wuliangye, Fenjiu, Shaoxing wine, Dong wine, etc., had appeared at this time - it can even be said that since the Song Dynasty, there has been no new (famous) wine.

Relatively speaking, fruit wine brewing in the Song Dynasty was not well developed, and the number of famous fruit wines was not large. The appearance of Zhao Xing just happened to fill the gap in fruit wine and high wine.

Chengjiaao is located in the mountains, with little arable land and abundant resources. Women and children can pick wild fruits all over the mountains without much labor, which greatly reduces the brewing cost of fruit wine. Due to the environment, Zhao Xing had to develop fruit wine. However, after he walked around Fuzhou, he also knew that the wine he brewed was still far from the famous wines in the world, so he was humble in the face of Su Dongpo's praise.

With the "bet account" paid by Zhao Xing yesterday, Su Dongpo's gift to Zhang Taiyuan this time was also very generous: the various fine wines produced by Cheng Jiaao filled the vacant grape baskets, which made the guards very satisfied.

When Su Dongpo came back, he found that Zhao Xing was still there, and he was only left in the room studying the snowflakes all over the wall with interest. Su Shi couldn't help but ask with satisfactory questions: "How about the cramped residence?"

Zhao Xing bowed and said with admiration: "The scholar's wonderful ideas made his disciples amazed."

Su Dongpo was a little surprised.

When others look at his house, they will only evaluate how elegant, stylish and so... But the young man in front of him was incredible, making him feel that this person's thinking is even more reckless than him.

"How to solve it?" He couldn't help but ask.

"Everyone knows that lime can be used to float hemp, and only the bachelor's degree is used to paint walls - such a strange idea that students admire."

Su Dongpo was stunned for a while before he came back to his senses. He explained with a little shame: "Actually,..., originally..., the use of greystone on walls is not self-starting. In Huangzhou, the method of applying greystone on walls has a hundred years of history. I thought of it when I heard the villagers talk about this."

Su Dongpo paused for a moment and said proudly: "However, they all painted the wall directly with greystone, and dissolved the greystone in water and painted the entire wall - it started with oneself."

The "graystone" that Su Dongpo mentioned is the name of lime in the Song Dynasty. According to him, he heard that there was a child named Bi Sheng in Huangzhou who studied word since childhood. Because his family was poor, he could not afford to buy paper and pen, so he used dry and hard lime blocks to graffiti on the wall. He called this lime block "chalk". It was only after Su Shi heard this legend that he thought of using lime to graffiti on the wall.

Bi Sheng - This name made Zhao Xing respectful. Bi Sheng of the Song Dynasty was probably Sheng Bi Te, a native of Sumo who invented the printing of movable type. He asked carefully: "Where is this Bi Sheng?"

Su Dongpo shook his head and replied: "It's not clear, alas... this person later went to Hangzhou Wanjuantang Bookstore as an apprentice."

It was indeed the Sogdian Bi Sheng. He invented the movable type printing technique in Wanjuantang, Hangzhou, and was buried in Yingshan not far from Chengjiaao after his death. Modern archaeology discovered a family tree of the Bi Sheng family, which used Sogdian words to record the experience of Bi Sheng's ancestors changing their surname to "Bi" after entering the Central Plains.

The reason why Huangzhou was still a remote place in the Song Dynasty was because the barbarians had not been reborn for a long time. The history of the Song Dynasty recorded that the Xiyang barbarians and Xincai barbarians "the barbarians had no corvee service, the strong did not provide official taxes, and they formed gangs and hundreds of thousands of people. The power of the prefectures and counties was weak, so they became thieves. There were a few types and household registrations that could not be known." There was no village system in such barbarian areas, and therefore, the Song Dynasty's Shizhou County Chronicles had very little record of Qizhou.

Thinking of Bi Sheng, looking at the lime painting on Su Shi's wall, Zhao Xing's head turned like an axle.

Jumping thinking, what is jumping thinking? Su Dongpo could think of using lime as a painting. I am a modern person without inspiration.

Printing, what else can you do? Printing!

In this era, the technology of woodblock printing was very mature and the printing industry was at an unprecedented time. Therefore, Zhao Xing could buy "Qimin Yaoshu" in a remote and closed place like Huangzhou. However, although the printing industry in the Song Dynasty was extremely developed, it was printed on paper. What if it was printed on cloth.

The dyeing method of the Song Dynasty was the so-called "ethnic printing and dyeing industry" later - Miao batik.

When batik was invented in the Song Dynasty, we should have gone further and continued to develop printing and dyeing, that is, "printing, dyeing and weaving". Because in this era, all the knowledge and technology required for printing and dyeing have matured, and you can cross the technical threshold with just one step...

Zhao Xing didn't know the specific technology of printing and dyeing, but he occasionally saw how to print newspapers on TV... Yes, what I thought of in the morning was printing, and I printed cloths if others printed paper. There were no technical obstacles, the same technology, but different objects were just different.

The woodblocked rollers are transformed into wooden rollers. Can the Song people think of this kind of jump in thinking?

Zhao Xing was still excited there, and Su Shi looked at the tall and strong man with different thinking from ordinary people with appreciation. Because of this appreciation, he did not refuse to call himself "a disciple". Looking at the other party's dress, he asked happily: "Are you the only one who is the first to be a disciple this year? Who is your last name and who is your master?"
Chapter completed!