The Great Qin Empire---Qin Li

"Brother Zhong, just take me with you, I beg you!"

After getting up early in the morning, Jing became Heifu's follower, trying to persuade him to take him with him when he took office at Huyang Pavilion. In Jing's opinion, it was a very impressive thing for his brother to be the pavilion chief and govern a place, so how could he be absent.

"Don't even think about it!" Heifu rejected him outright.

"Do you think that the pavilion is opened by me, and I can take anyone I want? I tell you, even if you go to the pavilion and eat the rations that should be supplied to me, and someone reports you to the county, you and I will be punished!"

Heifu was not trying to scare him. In other dynasties, people were harsh on the people and lenient on officials. Among the officials, there were countless rats who took benefits and kickbacks, and the court turned a blind eye and even created things like "Yanlian Yin" and "Huo Hao". Moreover, when one person becomes an official, he often gets promoted, and his family members can also benefit.

Only the Qin State has a strange mindset. It is not only particularly cruel to the people, but also to the officials. It is just like guarding against thieves...

For example, the daily rations of officials of different ranks and titles are regulated. They are distributed to each pavilion according to the amount every month. If someone embezzles them, he will be punished. Using public funds to entertain guests is very risky in the Qin State.

There is also "private use of public vehicles". The Qin State has a clear ban on using public vehicles to carry family members: "If you take a woman in the car, you can (what) count the two-class wealth." The money of two-class is enough to buy a bad horse. The cost of taking a girl to race in a public car is so high, so most Qin officials dare not break the ban.

Heifu thought of the drastic rectification of similar situations at the beginning of the reign of the present emperor in the future. No more public funds for banquets, no more public buses to go home for the New Year... This caused complaints from local officials, and it was a public outrage. They felt that this was cutting their own benefits, and finally even complained that "if this continues, who will be willing to be a civil servant?" It was a bit funny that this problem that has continued to this day and has been repeatedly banned was solved in the Qin State.

It is easy to go from honest to corrupt, and it is difficult to change from corrupt to honest, but when "officials are struggling to make a living", ordinary people are applauding.

The importance Qin attached to clean government was even greater than that of later generations. The sentence "honesty and no slander" in "The Way of Being an Official" was indeed seriously implemented by the Qin people.

Therefore, Heifu did not want to take Jing to the pavilion and give others excuses, so he said: "You should stay at home and take care of your mother and help your brother. Besides..."

He pulled Jing over and said: "This matter has only been settled, don't go out and say anything before the matter is settled!"

"With Zhong brother's ability, being the pavilion chief is too easy."

Although Jing was a little discouraged, he had full confidence in Heifu for no reason, and rubbed his hands and said: "Zhong brother, if you can really take the position, you will be the first person in our family to become an official in generations!"

"Probably."

It was for this reason that when Heifu explained this matter yesterday, his mother agreed, and she also naggingly said that she would go to the grave of her late husband to pay homage and thank him for his blessing. Their family was a commoner without a surname or a clan name in the Chu State. In the three generations after entering the Qin State, none of them had ever been an official. However, their father became a public official for the first time, and he had some savings and taught his son to read. Now Heifu has the opportunity to become an official. It is really a great honor for his ancestors...

Heifu asked Jing to do what he should do, and he walked towards the kitchen.

In the village, every household has a kitchen. The front door leads to the front yard. The top is usually not covered to allow the black smoke from burning to dissipate. The stove is in the kitchen, with a cauldron and several three-legged pottery pots next to it.

The back door of the kitchen leads to the backyard. When you step over the threshold, you can see a small vegetable patch. The ash produced by cooking is sprinkled in the vegetable patch as fertilizer. As the saying goes, "The green sunflowers in the garden, the morning dew waits for the sun to dry." On weekdays, sunflowers, also known as winter amaranth, are planted as the main vegetable of this era. Unfortunately, the vegetable patch was bare now, with only some scallions that could survive the winter struggling to grow tender white seedlings.

On the left side of the vegetable patch was a thatched hut full of firewood, and on the right was a small barn, a small mud house more than one person tall and more than ten steps square, which stored the millet for the family to eat throughout the winter and seeds for the next year. In the middle of the firewood room and the barn was a well, which were the two places most afraid of fire.

The sound of pounding rice that Heifu heard came from the side of the barn...

When rice, millet and other grains were harvested from the fields, they were still mixed with millet grains and ear stalks. First, they had to be threshed with the bamboo sieve that my mother had woven yesterday, and the millet grains were sieved out and stored in the barn, and pounded every day for fresh food. Pounding in a stone mortar can break the shells of millet and rice, and then shaken and sieved a few times to remove the bran and shells, and then they can be separated and cooked into fragrant rice.

There is also a very poetic description in the Book of Songs: "Some pounding or picking, some winnowing or trampling. Release the rice, and cook it." But this process is actually not poetic at all. The hard work of pounding rice is unimaginable for modern people who buy white rice directly into the pot in later generations...

After going around the barn, Heifu saw that his eldest sister-in-law, a peasant woman in coarse cloth and shabby clothes, was wearing a "knee-covering" that looked like an apron, and was struggling to lift the heavy wooden pestle to pound the rice into a stone mortar that was driven into the ground.

The eldest sister-in-law's name is "Kui". She is a neighbor. She married the eldest brother Zhong at the age of 18. Now it has been almost eight years. She was beautiful when she married, but unfortunately, she gradually lost her beauty after being polished by life. Fortunately, the eldest brother has a good temper and the couple loves each other.

The six-year-old nephew Yang was squatting beside the stone mortar, yawning, holding a stick in his hand, following the rhythm of his mother pounding rice, and occasionally stirring the millet in the stone mortar.

Children of poor families grow up early. In rural areas, they have to share the worries of the family at a young age, and it is difficult to have a good sleep. Although Yang seems to always bully his sister on weekdays, he quietly gets up and lets his sister continue to sleep when his mother calls them in the morning. He is a good brother.

Hei Fu couldn't help but feel sorry for this sensible child.

"Sister Qiu."

He walked forward, bowed to his sister-in-law, and said, "Let me pound."

As he said that, he took the wooden pestle, which was made of solid wood and felt quite heavy in his hand. No wonder lifting the pestle to pound millet from morning to night was a hard labor used by Qin to punish women, and was comparable to the Chengdan done by male prisoners. Chengdan Hei Fu had just done it a few days ago, and his hard work can be seen.

The eldest sister-in-law sent Yang to have a good sleep, while she held her sore arm and held a wooden stick to pick grain for Heifu, saying, "Isn't Zhongshu (referring to his brother) going to visit old man Yan in Bianli?"

Yesterday, after Heifu told his family about his plan, they told him that it was really unfortunate that old man Lu Ying in Xiyangli went to his son's house in the county town and might not come back until the twelfth lunar month. So if Heifu wanted to learn the law, he had to go to the nearby Bianli to find another retired official Yan Zheng.

"I can't go empty-handed." Heifu pounded rice with a pestle and said with a smile: "I'll have to trouble Sister Qiu to prepare four pieces of dried meat for me. I want to give them to Old Yan as a gift."

"Your uncle brought you two pieces of dried meat from the county town."

The eldest sister-in-law looked up and said puzzledly: "I heard that ordinary people only need two pieces of dried meat when they go to Old Yan to ask for advice?"

"I want to bring double the amount, because I want to take Jing with me, so that he can learn to read and write with Old Yan's son and understand the laws. Anyway, there is not much farm work to do in winter. Instead of letting him idle around and cause trouble all day, it is better to take him to learn something useful." This is a plan that Heifu has in mind, but it cannot be said now.

The eldest sister-in-law nodded: "I will go to Old Wu's house to ask, and I will prepare it for you tomorrow."

Old Wu is the person in charge of their "five households as neighbors". Although he is not an official, only the richest of the five households can be an official.

Wu Lao's family raises several pigs. Every winter, they kill one and dry the meat. Because these days, the more meat is dried, the better life is for the family. Heifu's family can only eat a fish during the New Year. They drool at the smell of meat coming from next door. Although the pigs in these years have not been castrated and the taste is not as good as in later generations, it is still meat.

Next, the two of them were silent. Heifu pounded rice for about half an hour. When it was bright outside, he finally pounded the daily rations for seven people, five adults and two children. His arms were sore and he was exhausted.

He is a strong man, and it's no wonder that his sister-in-law, who often does rice pounding, always has sore arms.

"Sister Qiu, how long does it take to pound rice on weekdays?" Heifu asked after wiping the sweat off his face.

"It will take a whole hour from dawn to sunrise."

The sister-in-law has already started washing rice and cooking. Even though it took so long, the rice she pounded was still the coarsest "coarse rice". The cooked rice was mixed with a lot of husk rice and bran. It took a long time to swallow it. If you swallow it too quickly, your throat will even hurt.

Hei Fu looked at the heavy wooden pestle in his hand and the stone mortar made of large bluestone, thinking.

"The productivity these days is really too backward, especially pounding rice, which is simply a torture for housewives. After all, men have to work in the fields outside and have no time to do these things. My mother said that she has been pounding rice for decades since she was ten years old, and her arms are almost broken. Now that she can't lift it anymore, it's my sister-in-law's turn. In another ten years, will it be my niece Xiaoyue's turn? The youth of women is polished and roughened little by little..." Hei Fu sighed. He couldn't control other people's families for the time being, but he couldn't let his own family suffer from such hard work. "What should I make? Stone mill? Roller? I think it's possible. It seems that stone mills have already existed in the north, but they haven't been introduced to Nanjun. But those things are made of stone, and they are expensive and a bit troublesome. I only saw them in my previous life and have some impression of them. I can't make them myself. Even if I ask a stonemason to make them, it will take at least ten days or half a month to make them, and they may not be usable after they are made. Is there anything simpler and more practical? I have seen it in a documentary..."

"What's it called?" Hei Fu scratched his head, forgetting the unfamiliar name for a moment.

At this time, he had moved his feet and walked to the side of the well, and saw the "jiégāo" (jiégāo) on the well.

Jiégāo is similar to a scale bar. It is a water-drawing tool of this era. A thin wooden stick is added to an upright frame, with a fulcrum in the middle, a stone hanging at the end, and a bucket hanging at the front. When a person puts the bucket into the water and fills it with water, due to the gravity at the end of the lever, the water can be easily pulled to the required place. The ups and downs can save a lot of effort to draw water.

After seeing this, Heifu suddenly remembered!

"Treading pestle, yes, what I want is treading pestle!"

He clapped his hands excitedly and said: "Treading pestle is the same as the lever, both use the lever principle, and the structure is simple. If it is fast, it can be made in three or two days. I remember that this lever was made by my brother-in-law, who is a craftsman in this village..."

Heifu did what he said. He walked to the front yard, picked up the gift he bought from the county town, and said to Zhong who had just got up and was stretching:

"Brother, let's go to my sister's house with me!"

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