Chapter 28 Chapter 28 Kindness
Today, the imperial kitchen sent over a dish of mutton noodles, a stewed vegetable dish and a noodle dish.
The imperial kitchen also reported the amount of leftovers sent by each palace today. Shoukang Palace still had the most, and Yikun Palace had the most among the six palaces in the east and west.
"Why is there so much leftover food in Yikun Palace every day? Even more than in Xianfu Palace." Yonglian had found this strange for the past two days and thought he'd observe further, but if it happened every day, something was truly amiss. Xianfu Palace and Yikun Palace each housed only one master, and Nara in Yikun Palace was only a concubine, her allotment smaller than that of Concubine Gao. Yet, her leftovers were twice as much as those in Concubine Gao's palace.
This is definitely not a problem of how much they eat.
The Queen had already sensed something was amiss and had a vague suspicion in her mind. "I'll ask Nara tomorrow."
After the people from the imperial kitchen left, everyone picked up their chopsticks and tasted today's dishes.
There was a large piece of tofu and some vermicelli left over from Shoukang Palace today, and they tasted great when added to the stew.
Fu Heng said, "This is better than the stew sold by street vendors. It must be made with broth."
Yonglian nodded, "Sometimes there's more broth, sometimes less, but there's always some left over every day." Broth was often used to enhance the flavor of dishes in the palace, so there would always be a pot or two left over every day.
Sometimes there is leftover chicken soup or duck soup, and Yonglian thinks it can be used to make noodles, soak steamed buns, or soak rice.
Fu Heng suggested selling two noodles for one cent. "Usually, only children like to eat them. If they are too expensive, adults will not buy them. Soup noodles can be sold for two cents a bowl."
The mutton noodles served today contain several pieces of mutton with bones. It is difficult to buy such mutton noodles for two cents on the street.
Yonglian nodded, found a pen and paper and wrote down the tentative price.
"Because the leftovers vary somewhat from day to day, the meals sold to the people can't be fixed," Yonglian said. "But they can be divided into three types: stewed vegetables, noodle soup, or rice."
Mingrui and Yonghuang both nodded.
Niu Lun was curious, "Then how many coins can we sell every day?"
"The imperial kitchen just said they made about twenty bowls of stewed vegetables, fifty noodles, and twenty bowls of noodle soup." Yonghuang said, "Let me calculate."
The three children in the Shangshufang immediately calculated together. Mingrui gave the answer first, "One hundred and twenty-five coins."
"One hundred and twenty-five coins a day, that's three thousand seven hundred and fifty coins a month." Fu Heng knew the three children were slow at calculating, so he did the math for them. "That's less than five taels of silver a month."
"It's so little." Niu Lun couldn't help but frown when she heard it. When she heard her mother calculating the expenses, she often said hundreds or thousands of taels. Making a piece of clothing would cost more than ten taels of silver.
They eat so much, but they can only earn less than five taels a month.
The Queen sighed, "We're not doing this to make money, we just don't want to waste food."
Yonglian nodded, "Mother is right, we must not forget our original intention."
Yonglian planned to choose two places where there were more poor people to build sheds.
Fu Heng was already very familiar with the outer city and mentioned two locations where coolies gathered.
The next thing will require the help of Sixteenth Uncle. Let him select a group of reliable people to be responsible for this matter.
The palace wanted to set up a tent outside to help the people, so it had to give notice to the Infantry Commander's Office.
When Yunlu went to see the infantry commander E Shan, he was in a state of panic and had asked people to investigate the collusion between the officials and the bannermen to collect protection fees.
"I don't know how His Majesty knew about this. It's New Year's Day, and he asked me directly." E Shan shuddered when he thought of the emperor's expression that day. It was said that the current emperor was benevolent and kind, unlike the previous emperor who was harsh and mean.
He would never agree with this statement again. When the current emperor gets angry, he is more frightening than the previous emperor!
"How could His Majesty not know what's going on under the Emperor's feet?" Yunlu said, "In my opinion, this matter deserves severe punishment. Especially those bannermen and bondservants. Where did the money the court gave them go?"
E Shan sighed, "Where else could he go? He gambled it all away."
Many bannermen were addicted to gambling, and Yunlu knew this. Even the royal family members would play a few rounds occasionally.
But after losing all my money gambling and burning down my house, it was really inappropriate to move out of the city to make such ill-gotten gains.
"We can't fool around about this. From now on, the palace will send people to set up tents in the outer city to provide relief to the people. The emperor will know about any movement in the outer city more quickly." Yunlu said.
When E Shan heard this, the hairs on his back stood up. He knew that it would be difficult to be the commander of the infantry in the future.
During the Chinese New Year, Yonglian finally finished copying his punishment and ran to hand it to Khan Ama.
Qianlong was annoyed, "I thought you had forgotten about this long ago."
"How dare I forget the punishment from Khan Ama? I reflect on it every day while copying." Yonglian chuckled.
Qianlong pinched his son's mouth into a duck's mouth and said, "You have a smooth tongue."
He carefully flipped through the thick stack of large characters again and could clearly see that the little guy's handwriting was improving bit by bit.
Yonglian's academic performance was not outstanding among the four children in the Shangshufang, and Qianlong would occasionally get anxious.
But seeing that the little guy was making progress, he couldn't say anything harsh to his son.
As the crown prince, while civil and military skills are important, even more important is the ability to identify and employ people. Otherwise, Emperor Kangxi would not have chosen my Khan Ama to succeed him, but would have chosen my uncle, who was both civil and military, instead.
There are definitely only a few people like me who are both talented in literature and martial arts and who also understand people's hearts.
Fortunately, Yonglian was quite methodical in his work and knew how to employ and guard against others. With more experience in the future, he would surely become a good emperor.
Taking advantage of the free time during the New Year holiday, Qianlong took out his old math books and flipped through them. There were so many questions he didn't know how to answer.
He was too embarrassed to ask others, so he called Hong Zhou into the palace.
Hong Zhou: "...Royal brother, do you think I'm good at math?"
Qianlong: “…”
"You can just ask the missionaries to teach you. Don't the Emperor Mafa and Khan Ama often ask missionaries to give them lectures?" Hong Zhou said.
Qianlong did not want to invite missionaries because he knew that the questions were not difficult and they were all things he had learned before.
This person is too concerned about reputation, and this concern overwhelms his desire for knowledge.
But if his son came to ask him a math problem and he had no idea the answer, he would lose even more face.
After some hesitation, Qianlong finally invited missionaries.
When Yonghuang and Yonglian came to the Yangxin Palace to have Khan Ama test their homework, they happened to meet a missionary teaching mathematics to Khan Ama inside.
Yonglian was shocked. Hadn't Emperor Qianlong historically disdained Western knowledge like mathematics, physics, and chemistry? How could he actually take the initiative to learn them?
Worthy of encouragement, worthy of encouragement!
Yonglian deliberately found a few math problems to ask Khan Ama today. They are still learning addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of two-digit numbers, so of course Qianlong will teach them.
"Wow! Khan Ama is so awesome!" Yonglian looked at Khan Ama with admiration.
Qianlong laughed and said, "It would be unacceptable if I can't even answer this question."
"I don't care, I don't care. You're just amazing," Yonglian said with a frown on his face. "Big brother and I have been discussing this for a long time and we can't figure it out."
Yonghuang nodded beside him.
Qianlong told his two children that they needed to be patient in learning mathematics and that this subject was very important.
Yonglian: “???”
Yonglian always felt that today's Khan Ama was possessed by the Emperor Kangxi.
But soon, Yonglian realized that Khan Ama was still the Khan Ama who didn't like mathematics.
After two days of listening to the missionaries lecture on mathematics, Qianlong grew impatient. How could something so dull and boring be possible? He thought it would be too late to catch up on his studies once Yonglian and his colleagues started learning to solve equations.
It is incredible that Khan Ama and Uncle Thirteen studied mathematics together at the end of the year and developed such a deep relationship.
He now disliked the missionary who taught him mathematics. Fortunately, this man was on duty at the Imperial Observatory and he didn't meet him often.
After the fifteenth day of the first lunar month, the various departments of the imperial court began to operate normally, and shops and stalls in the outer city also opened one after another.
"There's a stall over there. Is some noble person going to give out porridge to the people?"
A lame little beggar stumbled into the alley and told his companions the news.
"I haven't finished eating the snacks I picked up last night, so I'm not going." Yesterday was the fifteenth day of the lunar month, and there was a lantern festival on the street with many stalls. Several beggars asked for a lot of food, and after the lantern festival was over, they also picked up some snacks that fell on the ground, intending to save them for the next two days.
"I'll go check. The steamed buns I picked up yesterday are frozen solid. If I could have a bowl of porridge, they'd be perfect for soaking in."
The lame beggar staggered away.
After a while, the little beggar came back shouting, "Hurry up! It's the imperial meal from the palace, with steamed duck, braised pork, and small snacks shaped like flowers!"
"How is it possible? The food from the palace is placed here?" The others didn't believe it.
"It's true. They said it was the leftover imperial meal in the palace. It smelled so good that I couldn't walk. I was thinking of you, so I came back to report the news." The little beggar said as he swallowed his saliva.
The remaining few people were curious and slowly got up, "Let's go and take a look. If you dare to lie to us, don't follow us anymore!"
When they arrived at the place where the tent was set up, the steamed duck and braised pork were gone, leaving only some side dishes and snacks.
But there were still many beggars and some ordinary people around.
These people were simply curious about the imperial meal. As soon as they saw the vegetable soup base, they knew it was very oily.
There were officials maintaining order. "The food here is only distributed to beggars. There's a Huimin Canteen two blocks away that sells imperial meals. A bowl of noodles is two cents, and a bowl of pork stew is three cents! If you want to taste the imperial chef's cooking, go there!"
The name Huimin Canteen was chosen by Yonglian. Qianlong thought it was a good idea. The word "Huimin" just expressed the purpose of this move, so he agreed to his suggestion.
"Why is the food here free but over there is?" someone asked.
"The ones over here are the leftovers from the masters, and the ones over there are freshly made with the leftover ingredients." said the official.
"That must be the delicious food left over by the nobles in the palace! The food made for us common people must not be very oily..." said an aunt.
Before he could finish his words, the officer glared at him, "It's good enough that I gave you something to eat, but you're still so picky!"
The onlookers all thought what the aunt said made sense, and one old man even whispered to his wife, "If we eat this dish, wouldn't it be like we've eaten from the same bowl as the emperor?"
"Isn't it? Maybe the Empress even picked up her chopsticks from that plate of braised pork." The old man smacked his lips. Unfortunately, the braised pork was gone in a flash. They were too old to compete.
The officials promoted the event for a long time, but only two or three people went to the Huimin Canteen. The rest insisted on sharing the free soup, and even their pots, pans, and utensils were almost snatched away.
The lame beggar who arrived late grabbed some vegetable soup and went home to dip his steamed buns in it. He thought it was delicious. The New Year was already over, how could there be such a good thing?
In another alley, a group of young beggars grabbed steamed duck and snacks and ate them secretly in a corner.
"I've never eaten such delicious steamed duck. Wow... this duck is so fat!"
For beggars who don't have much oil to eat on a daily basis, fatty meat is definitely better than lean meat.
Another one ate a snack and burst into tears, "It would be great if my child could have a bite like this before leaving."
His children did not survive this winter. The capital city was too cold. In winter, it was inevitable that a few beggars would freeze to death.
"Your child has a very hard life. If he can just hold on for a few more days, he'll be able to wait for the officials to give him clothes."
For some reason, during the Chinese New Year this year, the police were very kind-hearted. They not only arrested those arrogant and domineering land thugs, but also gave some warm clothes to the beggars.
You have to know that these officials were not so kind-hearted in the past. They were ferocious and ruthless to ordinary people, not to mention beggars. Extorting street vendors was a common practice.
"In my opinion, it's not the officials who are kind-hearted, but the emperor who has a heart of a bodhisattva." The beggar held the snacks in his hand and looked towards the direction of the palace.
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