Chapter 75 Nei Jing
The child-stealing incident of the Chen family in Nishimura has come to an end for the time being.
But the people in the East Village are becoming more and more displeased with the people in the West Village, and people in the West Village are considered friendly if they don't say anything when they meet them.
Some women even went so far as to express their dissatisfaction and contempt by prying all the laundry stones on the west bank of the Chuanhe River near Chen Laoshuan's house into the river when no one was paying attention.
The West Village has become a den of child thieves, and not one of them is a good person! They don't deserve to wash rice and wash clothes in the same river as the East Village people!
The Jiang family worked day and night to pick out all the cotton seeds, and the three Jiang brothers began to play cotton with long bows.
Not to mention, this method is really good. The elastic cotton is softer and better made into cotton-padded jackets and quilts.
Therefore, the Jiang family's sister-in-law and her mother-in-law Jiang Liu were busy making new cotton-padded clothes for their family, using soft ramie cloth.
These ramie cloths have been starched and dyed, and the colors are very beautiful.
In the past, poor families could not afford to wear starched and dyed cloth, so most of them made clothes directly from white ramie cloth.
Now that the Jiang family is rich, they can wear colorful and patterned dresses for everyone in the family.
Bedding was also made for more than a dozen beds, ensuring that each person's bed had cotton-filled bedding, which was soft and warm, just like the treatment of an aristocratic family.
After Jiang Sanlang finished playing cotton, he went to Beishan with his two brothers to dig out the kudzu roots that had not been dug for four years.
This thing has grown thicker than an adult's thigh. It can break with a single knock. The powder content is okay.
Scrape off the outer skin and clean it, then cut it into small pieces and grind it in a stone mortar.
Soak these pieces of kudzu root in water and slurry, and then white starch will precipitate.
Pueraria lobata powder is easy to store after it is dried. In your spare time, you can take some and dissolve it in water and cook it. It has the same effect as lotus root starch. If you add some caramel sugar, the taste will be better.
This thing is the food of the common people and has existed since ancient times, but it is not common.
Because kudzu roots can only be dug for powder when they are three or four years old, and the powder extraction rate of most kudzu roots is extremely low. One hundred kilograms of kudzu root can only yield two kilograms of kudzu powder, which is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and not cost-effective.
But kudzu can be harvested every year. Just like retting hemp, the process is quite cumbersome, including peeling and beating the silk.
The woven Gebu is people's favorite clothing material in summer. It is cool and does not stick to the body.
Aristocratic families even regarded fine grass cloth as a holy product for keeping cool in midsummer.
Often the weaver girl sells the knitted Gebu to the cloth shop, and as soon as the front legs leave, the back legs are bought.
Ying Bao watched the whole process while her father was pounding kudzu root, hanging kudzu pulp, and filtering starch. She found it quite interesting.
Making tofu is also a similar process, only missing the step of boiling the paste and stewing it.
According to Shennong's Materia Medica, Pueraria lobata is sweet in taste and neutral in nature. It is mainly used to cure thirst, severe body heat, vomiting, various numbness, induce Yin Qi, and resolve various poisons.
Mrs. Wen said that kudzu root is cool in nature, so people with weak spleen and stomach, pregnant women and children should not eat too much.
Speaking of Mrs. Wen, I think of Mr. Wen.
Yingbao hasn't seen Mr. Wen for a long time, so Mrs. Wen hasn't been very happy recently.
She was a little too busy teaching students in two classrooms, so she arranged for Yingbao and Wen Shu to attend class in the morning, and assign homework in the afternoon for them to go home and study by themselves, so that she could give Huzi Erni and the others another class.
However, Mrs. Wen still purchased Yingbao’s fine golden ear and snow ear.
For five kilograms of golden ears, Yingbao got more than sixty taels of silver.
With the addition of the previous silver ingots, she is already a real little rich woman.
My parents also made a lot of money this time, probably more than a hundred taels.
Even Dani and Ni Ni made more than seven taels of silver each, but they were so happy that they kept urging the eldest cousin to take them to the market.
Yingbao had nothing to buy, so she stopped joining in the fun and concentrated on studying medicine at home.
The Medical Classics, also known as the Book of Prescriptions and Techniques, is divided into four parts: meridians, pulses, prescriptions, and medicines.
Scholars say: The scriptures explain the way, the pulse guides the technique, and the effect is achieved. The medicine distinguishes its nature. If the four are prepared, the technique is ready.
It means that as long as you learn to use the four skills of "meridians", "pulsations", "prescriptions" and "medicines", you can become a doctor.
The "jing" here is divided into 23 categories such as "Nei Jing", "Difficult Jing", Five Internal Organs, Acupuncture, Gynecology, Pediatrics, Surgery, Health Preservation, Jing Prescriptions, Materia Medica, and Food Classic.
Ying Bao has only learned the Nei Jing, and is far from becoming a doctor.
The Neijing, also known as the "Huangdi Neijing", includes "Suwen" and "Lingshu".
Suwen is mainly a question and answer between Huangdi and his teachers. It talks about the deduction of human body and internal organs and the relationship between heaven and man, which is somewhat illusory.
Lingshu is a science of acupuncture that focuses on the practical operation of meridians and needling techniques.
Ying Bao has already finished studying Su Wen, and recently learned acupoints on the human body and acupuncture from Mrs. Wen.
However, Mrs. Wen did not emphasize that she must learn the art of acupuncture well, but only required her to have a basic understanding of it.
Because acupuncture does not really cure diseases, it can only relieve some symptoms.
Just like a witch doctor bleeding people to cure diseases, it is just a medical method.
Next, Yingbao will have to learn difficult lessons.
"The Difficult Sutra" is also known as "Eighty-one Questions" and "The Eighty-one Difficult Sutra of the Yellow Emperor". It focuses on basic theories and takes into account the analysis of a variety of related diseases.
The content includes meridians, viscera, yin and yang, five elements, diseases and syndromes, Yingwei, acupoints, acupuncture, etc., involving normal human physiology, anatomy, diseases, diagnosis and treatment.
Studying medicine requires a lot of brainpower and requires memorizing many things by rote. Yingbao feels miserable.
In her spare time, she summoned her two younger brothers and asked them to endorse it to her.
The two twins are very smart and have learned to recite the Three-Character Sutra and the Hundreds of Family Surnames.
So Yingbao also taught them how to read and write.
She also encouraged them. Whoever learned ten words first every day would be taken out to ride a deer, and she would also take him to visit the piglets raised by Wen Hengyin.
The twins really worked hard and competed with each other to see who could learn more and faster.
"Look at what you wrote. One word occupies a whole piece of paper. How can you write next?"
If you don’t teach, you won’t know. If you teach, you will be shocked.
When Ying Bao saw the two children's crab claw characters, she was so angry that she vomited blood.
Not only are the characters crooked like crawling crabs, but they are also very large.
If she wasn't afraid of dampening the enthusiasm of her two younger brothers to learn, she would have wanted to hit their little paws with a ruler.
Alas, in order to enjoy the blessing of my younger brothers becoming officials in the future, I might as well endure it.
As the days passed, the weather became colder.
The Jiang family was having a great time at home. For this reason, they bought a sheep and killed it, and the whole family gathered around the stove to roast the mutton and eat it.
But not long after the good days, the villagers beat the gongs and went from door to door to announce people working on the river, that is, doing hard labor.
This river worker is not in his hometown, but is sent elsewhere at the request of the county magistrate.
This trip may last ten to twenty days or even a month. During this period, no one will care if you are sick or hungry, because the county government does not care about the food of the laborers, or even where they live.
So Chun Niang quickly prepared bedding and dry food for her husband, as well as bamboo hats and raincoats. She also sewed a small tent for him out of sheepskin.
If it rains or snows, my husband and two brothers can have a place to hide from the rain and snow.
Originally, their family could spend money to buy laborers, but the countryman said that for a big family like theirs, even if they spend money to buy laborers, the three brothers must work together as laborers, otherwise it will be difficult to communicate.
In other words, you can buy up to two places, but the other one must go to work.
Together, the three Jiang brothers should go. It's not easy to be alone outside, and no one will know if something happens.