Chapter 126 Chapter 126 Update.
"It's not tiring," Ji Xu said. "Are you all okay at home?"
"It's fine. My second sister took me, Little One, Big Yak, Little Brother Pi'er, and Little Flower to weave some spider webs out of bamboo sticks. We went everywhere to catch cicadas, and we brought back a ton!"
Ji Zhu's face was sunburned red. She looked taller and had a slightly darker skin, but her arms and legs were plump.
The little girl no longer has head lice. She has a bun on both sides with red hairbands. She has a pair of big eyes and looks well-behaved and cute.
They went to catch cicadas today, and now they are watching the little starlings playing in the water. They are extremely happy. The little one can't speak, but can clap his hands and jump around Ji Xu.
Ji Feng said, "I've made cicada jerky from the cicadas we caught, adding cilantro. We'll eat it with corn porridge."
"Oh, you're all done? That's great to see."
Ji Xu opened the bamboo net bag on the table that was used to prevent flies and insects, and the aroma of cicada jerky filled his nose. He saw that the corn porridge was cooked in advance and was not hot at all. It had cooled down now. After sitting in front of the charcoal fire in Huai City all day in this hot weather, he had no appetite for anything else. Only a bowl of cool corn porridge was the most refreshing.
The little starling's cage was hung under the eaves. After washing their hands, they all sat on the mats facing the table to eat. Tian was fanning herself with a large palm-leaf fan, and Ji Xu was sitting beside her. The breeze was very cool.
This cicada jerky was a popular food in the Western Han Dynasty. When Ji Feng was in his hometown, he would catch cicadas everywhere to make it. In the past, people were poor, so this was at least a meat dish.
After beating the cicada, roast it over the fire, tear the meat into small pieces, add some seasoning such as vinegar, and finally finely chop a handful of coriander, which is the cilantro in later generations, and mix it in. It tastes sour, spicy, crispy and fragrant, and it stimulates the appetite. It is best eaten with porridge.
Ji Xu was afraid of eating the cicada insects at first, but after eating them twice, he got used to it and felt better. He ate two large bowls of corn porridge and relieved the summer heat.
They took the belongings off the car, washed off the oil stains with soapberry water, wiped the water stains with a clean cloth, and covered it with a lid to prevent insects and rats from climbing in.
He even wiped off the dust on the car. Although the car looked old, it was very clean.
After finishing their work and sweating, they fetched water to take a bath in a small room next to the wing. This large jar of water was filled in advance and placed in the yard to heat up. It would be too hot to wash directly, so they had to add cold water. It was enough for the five of them to take a bath.
Ji Xu also washed her hair. Her hair was waist-length, thick and abundant. Ji Feng helped her by using a handkerchief to twist her hair from behind.
She would have liked to cut her hair shorter in such hot weather, but nowadays people believe that the hair on your body is given by your parents, and they attach great importance to hair. Cutting or shaving the hair is even a punishment for criminals, which is what is called "shaving the hair" nowadays, and it is an extremely humiliating way.
You won't see people with short hair on the streets. Some have even grown their hair long since birth and never had it cut. If she doesn't wear her hair in a bun and goes out with short hair, she will be treated as an alien and people will speculate whether she has committed a crime. It will be difficult for her to do business, so she doesn't cut her hair.
"Girls in Beijing all like to wear their hair in a horse-like bun. I'm going to do one for my sister too. It was Aunt Liu who taught me."
Aunt Liu, who lives next door, used to be a hairdresser for a wealthy family when she was young. Later, when she got old and her eyesight became blurry, she stayed at home. Daya and Xiaohua were her grandchildren, and they often played together.
Aunt Liu joked that Erfeng was born with a pair of dexterous hands. She could pick fruits, catch cicadas, and comb her hair, but she just couldn't hold a pen to write.
The same word, when she wrote it, looked like chicken claws, while Ji Zhu wrote it upside down, neatly.
I saw her first wrung out her hair with a towel, combed it carefully with a comb, applied some osmanthus-scented hair oil, and then tied it up.
This fallen horse bun is tied at the back, with a silk rope ending in the middle, shaped like a horse's belly, and hung behind the shoulders.
"It's really beautiful. Sister's black hair looks really good in this bun. It makes her snow-white face look even more beautiful."
Ji Xu looked in the mirror. Tian Shi also sold this bronze mirror, so the family had enough.
"It's done really well. Sister Feng has really skillful hands. Combing a bun like this is much cooler than the usual bun."
"Xiaozhu and Xiaoyao's hair is too short. I can't comb it even if I want to play with it. Sister, I can comb the hair that is tied on the side of the head so that it is not close to the neck and it will be cooler. Can you let me play with it for a while?"
She loved such long, shiny black hair and was eager to comb her sister's hair into various buns, pin the hair flowers she bought on her, and dress her up beautifully.
The girls also sat in the courtyard to enjoy the cool air. Ji Xuyou asked her to toss her hair, took out a volume of "Cangjie Pian" and a charcoal pencil, and wrote and drew on the ground to teach them how to recognize words.
Ji Feng had a headache just seeing the words, so she was busy braiding her hair for fun, saying:
"Oh, the sun has set and I can't see clearly. I'll try to identify it tomorrow."
"This girl has completely forgotten and is looking for an excuse again."
It was getting dark when Tian, who had been chatting in the alley, came back with two melons given by other families. She smiled and told Ji Feng to put them in a water jar and cut them up for eating tomorrow.
"The summer in Chang'an is even hotter than back home."
When it was time to go to bed, Tian fanned herself with a palm-leaf fan and said that the cool mats on their kangs were for girls who didn't care about anything and just slept in their belly-hugging blankets and underwear to keep cool.
Tian lit a lamp and shone it on their sleeping child. After seeing clearly, she said:
"Tsk tsk, Erfeng and Xiaozhu have prickly heat. It's just like when you were a kid, you also got prickly heat when it was hot. Now that you're older, you don't get it anymore. Xiaoyao, on the other hand, didn't get it when you were little either."
Ji Xu remembered this incident. At that time, Tian Shi brought a large stone back home from Niupi Mountain and asked her to press her chest and back against the stone to cool down and not scratch the prickly heat.
"Did my mother boil some grass to give me a bath?
"It's called Little Fish Herbal Grass. There's no mountain in this city. I'll go to the medicine store tomorrow to see if they have it for sale. I'll boil some and use it to bathe them. This prickly heat is itchy, and scratching it won't look good."
"I heard there's square-mesh gauze for sale in the East Market. It's as thin as air, and looks like a mesh, so it's called square-mesh gauze. I saw some students wearing Zen robes made of this material, and they're very cool. My daughter will ask about the price tomorrow. If it's worth it, we can buy a piece to make summer clothes so we don't have to cover ourselves up and get prickly heat."
The next day, he bought two kilograms of dried small fish fairy grass, but he couldn't buy the square-mesh gauze because it was too expensive, costing dozens of taels of silver per piece.
No wonder only the young men of Wuling wore it. Ji Xu guessed that the material was precious, but she didn't expect that such a thin material could be so expensive. She asked in the cloth shop, and Tian hurriedly took her away.
"Is it made of gold? It's so expensive."
Later, I used ordinary linen cloth to make two summer clothes. The material was light and thin, and I could still wear them.
The weather had been hot and humid for several days, and today it rained heavily. The raindrops fell on the eaves like knotted ropes. The heavy rain made the weather much cooler, but it trapped people at home and prevented them from going to Huai City to set up stalls.
Tian came back from emptying the urine bucket, took off her straw raincoat and hat, and said:
"Mrs. Jin and her daughter went to the Jiaomen Market to do business without fail. After all, the Jiaomen Market has a better shelter from the wind and rain."
The Huai Market is open-air in the Huai forest. It can be shaded in the sun, but it is useless when it is windy and rainy. You can wear a straw raincoat, but the food stalls cannot be shielded from the rain. Nowadays, there are no large iron umbrellas like those in later generations.
In addition, the rain made the roads muddy, which affected the students' ability to go out to buy food, so they simply soaked some dry food and meat jerky to make a meal.
Even though the stall cannot be maintained, the monthly city rent still needs to be paid. Every day of delay is a waste of money. No wonder Tian is anxious.
The rain continued on and off for three days. Tian cursed:
"This awful weather! It doesn't rain at night, but only during the day. The muddy ground in the locust tree forest will need several days of drying."
Huailin Road is crowded with people riding horses and carriages every day. When it rains, the road is covered with wheel tracks, horse hoof prints, puddles and mud. There is no good place left. Even the students who walk have to wear wooden clogs and roll up their trouser legs to cross the road.
Ji Xu and his daughter went once when the rain was light, but their cart got stuck. It took them half a day to get it out after filling it with stones and shoveling sand. When they returned, they hadn't sold anything.
The rain was getting heavier, hitting people's faces at an angle. Along the way, we encountered many stuck carriages, and they were all complaining.
From the south of the city to Anling Town in the north, everyone was soaked by the rain.
The Jin family's mother and daughter were returning from the trade store. That place was close, and there was a tunnel in the city, so they didn't get wet. Seeing them huddled in the car like chickens in the rain, they clapped their hands and laughed behind their backs, saying:
"Look how wet they are! Like drowned rats! They deserve it! It's better for us to go to the store, where we're out of the sun and out of the rain, oh my!"
As soon as he said that, he fell off the car and rolled over.
It turned out that Ji Zhi was not very familiar with driving and he didn't pay attention, so the wheel hit a stone and it bumped. Jin was busy making fun of others and didn't sit firmly, so she fell off and rolled all over the mud.
Tian heard the noise and turned around. It was her turn to laugh and say it was time.
"This is called retribution!"
He deserved it for letting this Jin family laugh at him behind his back.
That day, the rain continued to fall, but Tian came back with a happy face. She pulled Ji Xu, who was picking weeds at the door, and said:
"One of the stores is closed!"
Ji Xu was also delighted and hurriedly asked for details. It turned out that the family was going back to their hometown to settle down, so the stall in the tunnel was vacant. However, the stall was located at a busy intersection, so many vendors were interested in it.
"Because that street only sells meat, and the place originally sold jerky, many people were eliminated, leaving only two companies competing for it."
"meat?"
Ji Xu thought for a moment and said, "My daughter can also cook meat and sell it. If we can rent a place for the store, we won't have to worry about the weather."
Tian thought the same thing. "When the weather clears up, Mom will take Erfeng and the others to sell the houses in Huai City. We can take care of both places and quickly save enough money to buy a house and move in."
Jin, who lived next door, also took a fancy to this good location and whispered to her daughter Ji Yuan:
"Our current location is out of the way, not as central as that one. You could ask your son-in-law to secretly give us that vacant space. We also sell meat. If we get that place, wouldn't our daily business double?"
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