Chapter 10
The tradition of the living occupying wood and the dead stone still seems to be followed, related to the theory of the Five Elements. However, those who do this are mostly people of high status. For ordinary people, having a place to stay in troubled times is considered a blessing.
The hay was spread flat on the repaired and dried kang, and then a mat was laid on top. There was still some warmth from the fire, but because the outside walls were made of wood, a cold wind still blew in.
"Amu, come here and try it?" Wen Yi waved, motioning Amu, who was standing not far away, to sit on it and try it.
Shu had been watching the process of setting up and adjusting the device from the side, and upon hearing this, he carried Ah Mu to the mat. Ah Mu also placed his hand on it curiously, feeling the warmth spreading up from below.
"It's warm!" Amu raised his head and put his hand that had touched the mat on the loser's hand. It was indeed warm.
However, the space above is not very spacious and can barely accommodate two adults.
Wen Yi also built a symmetrical earthen kang and stove on the other side, and rebuilt a wall of mud bricks outside the wooden exterior wall to block the wind. However, the internal structure was not demolished, and a layer of hay was added on top.
The ground was also reinforced and smoothed with lime mixed with sand and gravel. Although it could not be compared with those rich families who paved floors, it was much cleaner.
Various containers were gradually being manufactured, and Zhong Ji had now completely taken over the area. However, once the coldest days of winter arrived, the group stopped venturing out in the snow and settled back into their comfortable, renovated dwellings, only occasionally checking the snow's depth to prevent the outer thatched roof from collapsing.
In the past, on days like this, everyone would chat while weaving baskets with rattan, but now those familiar people are gone, and there is a moment of silence.
Wen Yi thought for a moment, then took out a few rolls of starched wild silk and bamboo silk from the collected materials, leaned over and asked Shu:
"Sister...can you help me weave something?"
Shu nodded, took the things Wen Yi handed over, and waited for her explanation.
Wen Yi was making a bamboo curtain, but due to limited materials, she could only make one about the length of her forearm, which would be used for papermaking later. She had initially considered waiting for the weather to warm up before starting preparations, but the atmosphere was truly depressing right now. If this continued, even without a natural disaster, the emotions would overwhelm her. She thought it would be better to find something to do beforehand.
Wen Yi asked a middle-aged woman named Qing Ping to help him carve a frame out of wood with many grooves in the middle. Then he wound the silk around the small piece of wood, weaving it alternately on top, and used thread to weave the bamboo silk into a whole piece. He also made a wooden frame to pad under the bamboo curtain.
In fact, it would be best to apply lacquer on the woven bamboo curtains, but no lacquer trees were found here, so we put it aside for now.
Wen Yi began looking for something that could be made into paper medicine.
In the earliest papermaking, sheets of paper were usually scooped out one by one and spread out to dry, or simply dried one sheet at a time on a scoop net. This was inefficient and took up a lot of space. In order to separate the stacked wet paper scooped out from the bamboo screen after drying, paper medicine was added.
In the production of Xuan paper, wild carambola vine juice, also known as kiwi vine juice, is often used as paper medicine, but other plants can also be used. After drying and crushing, it is brewed with boiling water and then precipitated. After adding paper pulp and stirring evenly, the paper fibers can be more uniform, similar to the suspending agent used later.
As for the raw material for the pulp, they used weeds and tree bark that had been brought to the stream to soak during the previous land reclamation. Any fiber would do. After this period of erosion and tearing, the fibers could already be seen.
Take out an unused clay pot and boil it, adding wood ash to remove the lignin.
During the cooking process, the fibers will continue to expand. You need to use a wooden stick to push back the overflowing part from time to time, and keep stirring so that every part can be heated.
Because wood ash is used instead of other alkalis, the boiled product is gray. The solids are washed with coarse cloth and then pounded and crushed.
This process is quite difficult due to the complex raw materials and the widely varying fiber conditions, often requiring the use of a pulping machine. Wen Yi ultimately had to manually remove some of the long, tangled fibers, then flush the fibers into a pulp using water, adding pre-made papermaking chemicals.
Use bamboo screens woven with bamboo and green apples to make paper pulp as thin as possible, then stack the paper layer by layer and set aside to dry.
Without using bleach, the resulting paper is gray-brown in color, with a rough surface and obvious traces of vertical and horizontal fibers.
Wen Yi breathed a sigh of relief. Although there were many flaws, at least there weren't any major problems. She had participated in papermaking activities before, but the pulp had mostly been made directly from waste paper. This was her first time starting from scratch.
Shan picked up a piece of rough paper, and with Wen Yi's approval, he took out a pen and a small piece of black stone from his personal cloth bag, ground them with water, and carefully wrote on it.
As a former village head, Shan, influenced by his surroundings, wasn't particularly good at writing, but he was always able to record things. Previously, documents and records often required thin, processed bamboo strips of varying lengths, barely longer than a palm. As I got older, reading became difficult, and I sometimes had to rely on those around me.
Unfortunately, that person was no longer around, and Shan hadn't looked at the bamboo slips he still carried with him during this period, treating them as a thing of the past.
Having lived together for such a long time, Wen Yi and Shu had never concealed anything. Shan naturally noticed that she seemed to have a lot of secrets, but like the other two, he tacitly agreed not to ask.
They had all seen what Wen Yi had done during this period, so even though they discovered that the writing on this item was similar to that on bamboo slips, they didn't say anything, just like they had done when they built the kiln before.
Although the rules prohibit farmers from doing these things, what does this have to do with them becoming refugees?
Wen Yi originally thought that this was something quite meaningful to the village head, and his expression seemed to change even less than when he saw him making mud bricks. But after careful consideration, he realized that he had taken it for granted.
The emergence and innovation of paper production technology has epoch-making significance for those who came later, but that is based on the premise of mature skills. Looking at these things that are more like cardboard, without the assistance of printing, it is really difficult to associate them with cultural communication.
For ordinary people, having better eating utensils is much more useful than this thing.
Wen Yi sighed, carefully tore off the dried paper, and put it into the box.
But perhaps he was inspired, and the next day Shan asked Wen Yi and several other children if they would like to learn some words during the day.
As a small village head, being able to recognize common characters was the limit for him. Even if he had one or two volumes of books made of bamboo slips, no one would explain the meaning to him. It was really difficult to read them with the few characters he knew, so Shan almost forgot them.
He knew that he didn't have much time left, and originally wanted to try his best to do some work so as not to hold everyone back. Suddenly, he found that he could still do something, which cheered him up.
Shu looked at Shan in surprise, and the middle-aged woman and Zhong Ji also looked shocked.
Generally, the village head would teach his own children or the person chosen to inherit the position, as many things required hands-on instruction. This was somewhat similar to the secrets of aristocratic families, which only the heirs were entitled to, leaving ordinary farmers completely inaccessible to writing and knowledge.
Even if there are some outliers who try to learn, they will eventually become silent again because they have nowhere to go, and work day after day for a living.
Wen Yi didn't hesitate and replied, "It's troublesome."
Shan's words also reminded her that even if everyone was willing, it was impossible to live here forever, as many supplies here were always in short supply.
I was so busy doing various things before that I neglected these things for a while. When Wen Yi wrote down his own notes, he used handwriting and symbols that he knew, which others couldn't understand. It would be better to understand some words when he went out instead of always having someone to write for him.
However, apart from Amu who decided to learn together, the other two little kids, one decided to follow Amu, while the other one was unwilling to continue after drawing on the ground with a branch for a long time, and would rather run to the other side to help weave baskets.
Shan didn't force it, so when the weather was good, they would squat outside and write and draw with tree branches.
*
"I win!" Amu stood up and stood beside the stone with his hands on his hips, somewhat proudly. On the stone was the same rough paper that Wen Yi had made before.
There was a grid painted in black on it, and chess pieces carved from wood were placed next to it.
The girl kneeling opposite Amu scratched her head in frustration, as if she was very upset about her previous mistake.
Wen Yi watched the two men play chess from a distance, stretched himself, and then copied and drew something on rough paper with a homemade brush. If someone looked closely, they would see that Wen Yi was recording something using the characters he had learned during this period.
Some time ago, under Shan's leadership, everyone completed the Spring Festival, officially becoming a family. After weighing the weight of the different seeds buried in the ground beforehand, they began to work on the land they had reclaimed during the winter.
Of course, they were using the very same curved plow that Wen Yi had modeled and given to Amu as a toy. Qing Ping had been working with wood for a shorter time than Wen Yi, but perhaps because of her experience, she had become able to straighten or bend wood by baking or steaming it.
To put it in a good way, everyone is good at different things, just like when pickling pickles and sauerkraut, everyone carries different strains of bacteria on their hands. Some people may succeed easily, while others may not.
Wen Yi heard the comfort in Shan's words. She thought that the old man saw that she was struggling with Mu Tou but was defeated time and time again, and was worried that Wen Yi would not be able to understand and get angry with him.
Wen Yi actually accepts the fact that she cannot complete many things. Maybe when she was very young she still had a yearning for omniscience and omnipotence, but as she grows older she will always become realistic.
"I understand." Wen Yi smiled. She hadn't even re-entered the waters where she emerged on her first day here, so why wouldn't she accept anything else? But she still had to accept Shan's kindness. Now he was considered a teacher to them.
The use of the new farm tools only slightly accelerated the planting process, but the effort consumed was no less. Wen Yi finally understood why cattle and horses were so valuable, enjoying even better treatment than many wealthy families and officials.
Yes, I saw this in the documents from Congshan. The food standard for each cow is roughly equivalent to that of a normal family of three, not counting other subsidies.
The standards for horses are slightly lower than those for cattle. It turns out that agricultural labor is still the most important.
Wen Yi pondered this while sketching a waterwheel on paper and the ground, considering how to modify it slightly for the current situation. A wheeled waterwheel was actually a better choice than a waterwheel that required human intervention, but the terrain here was more complex, making the former seem essential.
The land they cultivated wasn't far from a stream, but every time they fetched water, they had to repeatedly bend and straighten their backs, which took a toll on their bodies. After just a few days of helping with the watering, Wen Yi could hear her spine creaking when she lay down at night.
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