Chapter 139 Cousins' Refusal to Marry: The Older Sister Was Not Wrong!
"Yang Shunxin is the female doctor in the story of 'Yang Shunxin's Medical Practice'."
Yao Xiaoyu's works are well-known in Shanghai, but not in other places. Wei Sijie didn't know this, and the waiter didn't find it strange.
"The Medical Practice Chronicles is a work by Xiaoyu, a very famous writer in Shanghai. She wrote "The Biography of Ding Xian", "The Gold-Patterned Bowl", "The Story of Getting Rich in Shanghai", "Swapping Babies", and "Back to the Ming Dynasty".
Ever since the waiter read Yang Shunxin's story, he started digging into the other stories of "A Little Fish". Every day after work, he would stay up late to read them. He had just finished reading all the stories a couple of days ago and was able to tell Wei Sijie about them as if they were his own.
"I've seen the gold-patterned bowl before; it turns out it was also made by this artist!"
Kong Fengzheng spoke with delight. She was completely bewildered by the other works, but her sister had sent this story back to her. She had been so frightened by it that she cried and slept with her mother for several days.
When Kong Fengming sent articles home, she chose short stories due to size and weight limitations. After editing and reading many articles, she could distinguish between good and bad, and the choice of stories was not limited to the "Golden Hairpin Narrative" of her work.
"The complete books of Ding Xian's Biography and The Road to Wealth can be found in any bookstore with a decent reputation..."
The waiter's diligent introduction, along with the initial impression left by the gold-patterned bowl, piqued Kong Fengzheng's interest in the articles. Her eyes lit up as she repeatedly asked questions. Had Wei Sijie not held her hand, Kong Fengzheng would have almost rushed out to buy things on the spot.
"So Yang Shunxin's story spread because... allicin in it really works?"
Once her daughter had finally shut up, Wei Sijie quickly changed the subject. Shanghai is such a bustling city, there should be plenty of bookstores. She could look for books later and learn more about them. She had some guesses about Yang Shunxin's story, and if they were the same as hers, then the book would be much more important.
Yes and no.
The waiter kept her in suspense, and only felt relieved when he saw that the lady in front of him did not show any anger. He then slowly revealed the key point he had figured out while organizing his thoughts.
"Besides allicin, there are many other recipes in this book, none of which are made up."
Allicin was so effective against dysentery that it caused quite a stir, unlike the minor incidents before. Even with Editor-in-Chief Bei in charge at the Novel Daily, the pressure from the joint efforts was not pleasant. After confirming that Yao Xiaoyu did not have a similar prescription, they published a statement in the newspaper.
The statement essentially explains the origins of various knowledge points in Yang Shunxin's story: they were all obtained by paying people to obtain information from various pharmacies and clinics, and were only published after repeated cross-comparisons to ensure they were harmless. There are no ancestral medical books or miraculous prescriptions, so digging into the details would be pointless.
Those people not only consulted doctors who had settled in Shanghai, but also quack doctors. The method for making allicin was something they all brought over together—how many people believe they don't know this, but at least it's a plausible explanation. As long as Yao Xiaoyu doesn't produce similar prescriptions in the future, her identity won't be exposed too much.
However, these are all power struggles among the upper class. The common people at the bottom only noticed that the knowledge points in the statement were all based on consultations with doctors, which stirred up a hornet's nest—the difficulty of accessing medical care has never been limited by the times, and it is even more difficult now than in the materially abundant future.
"You were born into a good family. If you feel unwell, you can just go to the doctor. But many people may not be able to find a doctor right away. This prescription will be a great help."
Yao Xiaoyu specifically considered the cost issue, and many of the prescriptions were chosen to be time-consuming but inexpensive, which made them more popular with the people. What's a little trouble? Where can you get Chinese medicine for a pittance? As for the effort... well, isn't strength something you can get back after a good night's sleep?
The waiter was quite tactful and didn't utter anything like "Why don't they eat meat porridge?" The mother and daughter were indeed somewhat naive before leaving the Confucius family, but after these few months of experience, they understood the hardships of ordinary people's lives and nodded in agreement.
However, this person is wrong about one thing. It's not that wealthy people can rest easy when they are sick. It depends on the person and the place. For example, when they were in the Kong family, because of the strict separation between men and women, when they were unwell, they could only seek out some female doctors and healers. They were also lectured by other relatives and friends not to let them into their home.
If you want to see a male doctor, the rules are even stricter. More than ten years ago, even if the doctor had a beard longer than his hair and more wrinkles on his face than a chrysanthemum, you still had to have your pulse taken through layers of curtains. The change was not because of the Confucius family's kindness, but because of a tragedy.
She had a friend who had also married into the Kong family. Giving birth to her first child should have been a joyous occasion, but she experienced continuous bleeding after giving birth. Her husband was somewhat responsible and invited a doctor to examine her, but the clan elders prevented him from using the four diagnostic methods of traditional Chinese medicine. In the end, they used a ridiculous method called "pulse diagnosis by thread" and prescribed a remedy. After taking it for two months, she died. It is said that she was calling for her mother before she died.
The child lost his mother and died within a few days. The husband lost his wife and then his only son. His family property was not enough to support him to remarry. After the two funerals were completed, he took a knife and went to the homes of the clan elders who had prevented the doctor from entering. Without saying a word, he stabbed each of them in the heart.
After everyone had finished stabbing him, the man didn't run away. He simply slit his own throat at home. By the time the clan elders' families came to confront him, the man was already dead.
This wasn't the end. It's unclear whether the man had planned it all in advance, but when those people came looking for trouble, they happened to run into the people who came to collect the house. When they talked to each other, they found out that the man had sold all his belongings and used the money to buy a coffin and his own funeral arrangements. The coffin was the one he had been lying in after he committed suicide. They couldn't even exchange it for money again—who would want a blood-soaked coffin!
After the man was buried with his nose pinched, the rule that male doctors must take pulses with a thread was not changed openly, but the Kong family did not care.
"...Some people thought about using it for their own purposes, while others thought about making money from the formula inside. For example, there was a girl who made the medicine outside. She made some money by selling the deworming pills inside, and her family no longer lived in the old-fashioned latrine but moved into a large courtyard in Shanghai."
The waiter sighed, saying that it was really frustrating to compare oneself to others. His family had clearly seen the recipes, but they hadn't thought about making money from them. Now that the news about garlic extract had broken, almost all the recipes had been taken over, and it was too late to add them. Fortunately, he had taken the initiative to plant garlic on his family's land, so he could earn more money after the harvest.
These thoughts flashed by in an instant, and the waiter quickly began to tell the first half of Yang Shunxin's story, full of "100,000 Whys," which amazed the mother and daughter. Their resolve to pay the bill, which they had already been planning, became even stronger.
"Besides these, there is another major event that made Yang Shunxin famous."
The waiter, who was very good at adding drama to his performance, lowered his voice. The mother and daughter adapted well to him, widening their eyes and acting both timid and curious.
"At the end of the medical practice, a little fish wrote that marriage between blood relatives is likely to result in children with intellectual disabilities or physical disabilities."
The two women had been eagerly anticipating what was to come, but upon hearing what they already knew, they couldn't help but feel a little disappointed. Seeing their expressions, the waiter smiled and added:
"This blood relation refers to several generations, including not only the father's side but also the mother's side."[1]
The mother and daughter understood the meaning of those words and immediately gasped. Kong Fengzheng almost trembled as he squeezed out a few words through gritted teeth:
"Cousins...?"
She didn't say anything more. Seeing the waiter nod, she looked at her mother in alarm. When she met Wei Sijie's similar expression, she knew that the mother and daughter had thought of the same thing.
Before Kong Fengzheng's feet were bound, she got along very well with an older sister of the same generation. When Kong Fengzheng was around ten years old, that older sister got married. The family she married into was carefully chosen; they were childhood sweethearts with bright futures. At the time, Kong Fengzheng was happy for her and gave her a generous wedding gift.
The older sister was also quite lucky; she became pregnant in her first year, and the doctor said it was a boy. The whole family was overjoyed. However, when the baby was born, he had three arms. Although the family didn't say anything to the older sister, they became distant after dealing with the baby. The older sister became depressed because of this and passed away less than two years later.
At the time, she thought her sister's life was really bad, but now that she thinks about it, her sister and her husband were cousins, so it wasn't a demon... Her sister died unjustly!
“The garlic extract caused quite a stir before, and everyone knew that anything that was brought up in this story must be true, so when this claim was made, the whole of Shanghai was shaken.”
The waiter noticed their slightly red eyes, but in a place like a grand hotel, the most important thing is to learn to pretend not to see, so he pretended not to see and continued talking about the uproar this matter had caused.
Unlike the previous impact that mostly affected the lower classes, the concept of prohibiting marriage between maternal relatives caused an uproar in Shanghai from top to bottom—marrying within families is a tradition, and cousins marrying is not just something that happens at the lower classes.
The waiter couldn't remember where he'd heard a joke: when a little fish listed out its blood relations, all the married cousins in Shanghai were calculating how many generations apart they were.
Although it had a bit of an emperor-with-golden-hoe feel to it, the waiter felt there was some truth to it, since his relatives had been arguing a lot lately. His wife, who always kept her head down, spoke loudly, while his relatives, who were like a triumphant rooster, were dejected.
When he went to mediate the fight, he learned that the relative's two sons and one daughter were not actually all their children. Two of the children were born with two extra fingers and one missing an eye, respectively, and were disposed of at birth. The wife felt that giving birth to such children was a sin she had committed in her past life, so she was extremely obedient to the relative, until the relationship between the cousins came to light...
The waiter was thankful that his two older brothers didn't get along with their cousins and had married orphaned girls who had fled famine. Otherwise, it was uncertain whether his nephews and nieces would be normal. Just the fact that his second niece was so smart, coupled with the dull look in the eyes of the idiot, made him feel like he couldn't breathe.
"There's still a commotion outside because of the cousins' affair. It's just that Xiaoyu has started a new book, otherwise the newspapers wouldn't be so calm."
The waiter shook his head. The mother and daughter, having recovered from the sadness of their neighbor's older sister/daughter, grasped the key words and said in unison:
"new book?"
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The author has something to say: [1] Cousins are not allowed to marry: This is a law established after the founding of the People's Republic of China. If we go back in time, the general public probably didn't have a very accurate understanding of it.
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