Chapter 4
Passing by the market, Xu Yi stopped in front of a candy shop and bought a bowl of sweet and fragrant drink for five cents.
There are edible peach petals sprinkled on top, and glutinous rice dumplings underneath, cooked and soaked in sugar water. They are crystal clear and look attractive. They taste cool and very appetizing.
Xu Yi drank the bowl of fragrant drink in a few sips. After rewarding himself, he did not forget Xiao Huang. At the bun stall next door, I bought four meat buns, two for each person and two for the dog, and ate them very quickly.
It was almost time for dinner, and at this time, two meat buns could only fill my stomach. He still had thirty-seven cents left, so he spent fifteen cents to buy a leg of roast chicken, and another twelve cents to buy the famous local braised mandarin fish.
Remove the spikes from both gills of the mandarin fish, simmer it with soy sauce, lard, tempeh and other condiments, then slowly simmer it in a clay pot until it becomes tender. With just a pinch of chopsticks, the fish meat can be separated from the fish bones. The meat is tender, plump, plump and delicious, and has therapeutic effects.
Especially for children, the elderly and frail people with weak spleen and stomach, it can replenish qi deficiency, make digestion easy, the calories are not high, and you will not gain weight after eating it.
The vendor took two plump mandarin fish out of the clay pot, wrapped them in oil paper, and handed them to Xu Yi with a smile.
Xu Yi returned home in a leisurely mood with food in hand.
Xiao Huang was also happy. He hadn't been home for several hours. He sniffed left and right, and finally stopped in front of a pile of straw. In the past few days, it has been sleeping here, and the middle part of the straw pile is sunken.
It lay on it with satisfaction, its yellow eyes looking at Xu Yi who was busy in the courtyard.
The residents of Shijing Lane get their daily water from the windlass well at the end of the alley. If you are lazy, you can ask an idle man to help you pick it up. Two buckets of water cost a penny, which can save a lot of energy.
At first, this idle man only took takeout orders from restaurants and high-end restaurants, but how many families living in South Street could afford such high-end food?
There are fewer people living here buying food and drink in the market shops, and they can't compete with the idle people who occupy the rich streets. The idle people here have developed side businesses [Note 1].
Xu Yi still had medicinal materials to deal with, so he poured the remaining water in the tank into a wooden basin to soak the Polygonum multiflorum that had just been dug out of the soil.
He pushed open the wooden fence, shouted to the idle man sitting on the stone pier outside, and asked him to fetch four buckets of water, and handed him the copper coins.
"Okay, young man, please wait." The idle man put the money into his arms with a very good attitude.
He did a lot of work. He skillfully entered the house and picked out the empty buckets. Within a quarter of an hour, he brought back two full buckets of water. After two trips, Xu Yi's water tank was filled.
To solve the water problem, Xu Yi steamed the rice and picked out edible purslane in the bamboo basket.
Purslane is a common Chinese herbal medicine used to treat dysentery. It can be used for damp-heat stranguria, leukorrhagia and other diseases. It can also be used as a common wild vegetable. When Xu Yi saw it, he had no intention of picking it.
He just thought that since he came here, he hasn't eaten vegetables seriously, and he didn't eat them today, so he thought about picking them and making a cold dish at night.
Xu Yi checked in the kitchen and found that there were very few condiments for cooking. There were only soy sauce, coarse salt, and lard at the bottom of the clay pot. The main seasonings, onions, ginger, and garlic, were missing.
After much deliberation, Xu Yi chose to blanch the purslane, then tear the leg of roast chicken he bought into shreds, and stir-fry the blanched purslane into a dish.
It looks nondescript, but at least the purslane has the aroma of chicken, so it tastes pretty good.
Xu Yi smelled the aroma and instantly had a good appetite. After the rice was steamed, he gave a third of it to Xiao Huang, roasted chicken and mandarin fish, and also picked some out into his bowl.
Dinner is taken care of, but there are more important things.
Freshly harvested Chinese medicinal materials must be processed as soon as possible. While it was still early, Xu Yi washed the Polygonum multiflorum and dried it on the dustpan.
Preparing Shouwu takes time, and every step is important. If one step goes wrong, all the medicinal materials may be wiped out.
Throughout China's thousands of years, traditional Chinese medicine has occupied a very important position in the long history of China. Every traditional Chinese medicinal material can be discovered and recorded after countless attempts. In various clinical trials, one step Record it perfectly in every step.
Xu Yi did not dare to underestimate the doctors of this era. In the Song Dynasty, there were famous medical scientists such as Qian Yi, Song Ci, and Yang Shiying. Xu Yi had read all of their works such as "Pediatric Medicine and Zhijue" and "The Collection of Cleansing Wrongs". .
The study of traditional Chinese medicine is not divided into disciplines, only one specializes in one. Born in a medical family, Xu Yi has researched and studied pulseology, typhoid fever, pediatrics, internal medicine and difficult and complicated diseases.
If he wanted to be a doctor in the Northern Song Dynasty, he was not afraid, but he was afraid of a bad start.
To cook Polygonum multiflorum, it needs to be steamed and sun-dried three times. During this period, black beans are mixed with it and steamed in a pot. After steaming, it is dried in the sun. The dried Polygonum multiflorum slices are then cooked, steamed and dried in the sun.
After three times, when the color of Polygonum multiflorum becomes dark and shiny, the unique medicinal aroma of ripe Polygonum multiflorum smells, and the texture feels like oil, it is ready.
The warm spring weather is just right for making Shouwu.
That night, Xu Yi lit an oil lamp and cut the Polygonum multiflorum into slices whose skin was dried in the sun.
Early the next morning, he carried the classified and bundled medicinal materials on his back and asked Xiao Huang to guard the house while he went out carrying the bamboo basket.
The Miaoshou Pavilion on East Street is the largest medical clinic besides the official doctor of Yanting County. The most famous person among them was Dr. Chen. In addition, there were three younger doctors in their thirties, and several apprentices who picked medicinal materials.
This is the Miaoshou Pavilion where Xu Yi wants to sell medicinal materials. I heard that his family also has branches in several other counties in Tongchuan Prefecture, and the doctors there are all well-known. Without exception, the consultation fees are not cheap.
The more patients he sees, the more medicinal materials he uses. His family is the medical clinic that collects the most medicinal materials in the county.
Xu Yi had gone out early, but he didn't expect to walk through the market and arrive in front of the Miaoshou Pavilion. He saw six or seven people in short brown lining lined up at the small door where the medicinal materials were collected.
Everyone is carrying baskets on their backs, carrying baskets, or tying them with hemp ropes. More or less, they contain about ten kilograms or several kilograms of medicinal materials.
Suddenly I saw a young man carrying a bamboo basket half as tall as a man. People in the queue looked sideways at this out-of-place young man.
After seeing clearly that there were dozens of kilograms of medicinal materials inside, they all inhaled.
This is too much!
I don’t know how many days of digging it took to find so many medicinal materials.
Even the apprentice who was collecting medicinal materials in front was attracted by the sound of inhalation and turned his head to look at Xu Yi. Xu Yi looked straight at the people who looked over, pursed his lips and nodded.
He looked like an honest man, someone in the crowd thought, so he came over and asked, "Where did you dig it? How did you dig so much?"
Don't mistake the wild grasses and vegetables you dug for medicinal materials.
The other people didn't speak, but they didn't look away, obviously very concerned. It seems that no matter whether it is ancient or modern, people love gossip.
"I haven't gone anywhere. There are several mountains outside the county." Xu Yi said.
An old man came close to the bamboo basket. He had read a medical book when he was young and knew a lot of medicinal materials. For someone with experience like him, he can only dig out more than a dozen kilograms in one day. In so many years, he has never seen any retail investor sell so much in one go.
I thought it would be some cheap low-grade medicinal materials that no one wanted. When I looked closer, I saw two or three expensive Chinese medicinal materials through the cracks. The suspicion in the young man's eyes turned into shock.
"What did Uncle Lin see?" someone who knew the old man asked.
"It's medicinal materials..." Uncle Lin was stunned. Others wanted to continue asking him, but he kept silent.
Thinking that he, a man who had lived for decades longer, was compared to a teenage boy, I felt very complicated.
The apprentice collects the medicinal materials and weighs them on the scale. There is a boy next to him who registers and pays.
When it was Xu Yi's turn, there were people in front of him who had not left after selling medicinal materials, so they wanted to see what good things this young man had dug up.
Xu Yi stepped forward and saluted the apprentice politely.
Xu Yi's etiquette was very useful to him. His face was gentler, and he was less cold and arrogant towards Xu Yi, who was similar to him in age.
He said: "We accept all kinds of medicinal materials at Miaoshou Pavilion, and the prices are all uniform. They are calculated according to the official weight. If the expensive medicinal materials are expensive, the price will be 20% less than the purchase price, and the low-grade medicinal materials will be 30% less. The price is different every day. , If there is no problem, I can help you figure it out now."
Xu Yi nodded. Bulk goods cannot be compared with a "prepared medicine office". This "prepared medicine office" is also called a "medicine selling office" and is specially established by the government. The official organization of pharmaceutical production and operation has dedicated personnel responsible for everything from the procurement of medicinal materials to testing, management and supervision [Note 2].
Regardless of whether it is a private medical clinic or an official medical clinic, most of the medicinal materials used come from well-known medical clinics.
Like bulk goods, they are fresh medicinal materials that have not been processed in any way. They cannot be used directly after being sold to medical clinics. Medicinal materials that do not need to be processed can be dried, sliced, and cut into sections for storage. Medicinal materials that need to be processed before they can be used need to go through tedious steps.
Nowadays, Miaoshou Pavilion purchases the medicinal materials dug by ordinary people at a price lower than 20% to 30%, which can be said to be a conscientious price.
Opening the lid of the bamboo basket, Xu Yi took out the medicinal materials one by one. Every time he took out a bundle, he quietly announced the name of the medicinal materials.
After a while, Xu Yi reported more than 20 names of medicines.
Among them, blackberry is the most abundant. The price of blackberry is lower than Polygonum multiflorum, and one kilogram can be sold for 16 cents.
There are twelve kilograms in it, which works out to one hundred and ninety-two coins.
The price of other medicinal materials can be ten cents if it is high, or five cents if it is low, which amounts to one hundred and forty-four cents.
Not long after, the boy taking notes next to him counted out the copper coins, a total of three hundred and thirty-six coins.
Such a lot of copper coins must weigh in the hand. Xu Yi asked the boy to exchange three hundred coins into three coins.
After coming here for several days, this is the first time Xu Yi has touched silver. Three coins is not much, the quality is average, and it is about the size of a peanut.
The few people who had not left seemed very unbelievable when they saw that Xu Yi had sold it at such a high price.
They defy the odds and earn dozens of pennies. How on earth did this young man do it?
Not to mention them, the apprentice who collected the medicinal materials was equally surprised. He had been an apprentice for two years, and he was responsible for collecting the medicinal materials a year ago. After so long, only a few old farmers have the ability to find so many medicinal materials.
"Oh my god, little brother, don't hide it and tell us, which mountain can we dig up so many medicinal materials?"
"Teach us a lesson. Let's try our luck in that mountain next time. Don't tell us. I sell it for three cents, but it’s good to have a hundred cents.”