"Brother Zhong, just take me, little brother begs you!"

I got up early in the morning, and I became Heifu's follower, and I wanted to persuade him to take myself with him when he took office in Huyang Pavilion.

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

"You think I opened the pavilion and take whoever you want? I tell you, even if you go to the pavilion and eat the rations that should have been provided to me, and you are sued in the county, you and I will be punished! “

Heifu is not to scare him, other dynasties are ruthless to the people, loose to officials, among the officials, there are countless rats who take advantage of the benefits and get kickbacks, and the court also turns a blind eye, and even makes things like "raising incorruptible silver" and "fire consumption". And when one person becomes an official, it is often one person who attains the Tao, the chicken and dog ascend to heaven, and the family can also get some benefits.

Only Qin Guo is very ruthless, not only to the people, but also to the officials, like a thief......

For example, there are regulations on the daily rations of officials of what rank and title they have, and they will be distributed to each pavilion every month according to the amount, and if anyone takes it fraudulently, they will be punished. Inviting guests to dinner at public expense was very risky in the Qin State.

There is also "private use of public cars", and Qin Guo explicitly forbade the use of public buses to ride family members: "A woman in a car can be (what) a second-class person." "The money of the second class is enough to buy a bad horse, and the price of using a bus to drag a girl is so heavy, so most of the Qin officials dare not violate the ban.

Heifu thought that at the beginning of his reign in the future, he would drastically rectify similar situations, and without public funds to eat, it was not possible for the bus to go home for the New Year...... provoked local officials to complain, which is called a group of indignation. They felt that this was cutting their own welfare, and in the end, even complaints of "who would be willing to be a civil servant if this continues" came out. This problem, which has been repeatedly banned in modern times, has actually been solved in the Qin State, which is really a bit funny.

It is easy to change from honesty to corruption, and it is difficult to change from corruption to honesty, but in the case of "officials are not bored", ordinary people are clapping their hands.

And Qin's emphasis on clean government is better than that of later generations, and the sentence "honest and unslanderous" on "The Way of Officials" is indeed being implemented by Qin people.

Therefore, Heifu didn't want to take the surprise to the pavilion, so he taught people to be honest, so he said: "You will honestly take care of your mother at home and help your uncle." Besides......"

He pulled it over and exclaimed: "There is only one word in this matter, before the matter is settled, Hugh has to go out and talk nonsense!" ”

"With Brother Zhong's ability, it's light to be a pavilion chief."

Although he was a little discouraged, he was full of confidence in Heifu for no reason, and at the same time rubbed his hands and said: "Brother Zhong, if you can really take office, then you will be the first person in our family to be an official in generations!" ”

"Probably."

It is precisely for this reason that when Heifu explained the matter yesterday, his mother agreed, and babbled that she would go to the grave of her deceased husband to worship and thank him for his blessing. When their family was in the Chu State, they were ordinary people with no surname and no name, and in the three generations after entering the Qin Dynasty, they did not become officials, but the cheap father became a public servant for the first time, with some savings, and let his son learn to read......

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

In the middle, every household has a kitchen, the front door leads to the front yard, the top is generally not capped, so that the black smoke of the fire can disperse, the stove is in the kitchen, the kettle is erected, and there are a few three-legged pottery mustaches next to it.

The back door of the kitchen leads to the backyard, and when you step over the threshold, you can see a small patch of vegetable furrow, and the grass and wood ash from the cooking is sprinkled into the vegetable furrow as fertilizer. As the saying goes, "sunflower in the green garden, morning dew waits for the sun", this will be planted on weekdays, that is, winter amaranth, as the main vegetable of this era. Unfortunately, the cabbage is bare, and only a few shallots that can survive in winter are struggling to pull out the tender white seedlings.

On the left side of the vegetable furrow is a thatched hut full of firewood, and on the right is a small barn, a small earthen hut more than one person high and more than ten steps square, which stores the grain that the family will eat all winter, as well as the seeds of the next year. Between the firewood house and the barn are wells, which are the two places that are most afraid of fire.

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

When rice, millet and other grains are recovered from the ground, they are still mixed with millet grains and ear stalks, and they must first be threshed with a bamboo sieve woven by my mother yesterday, and the millet grains are sieved out and stored in the barn, where they are eaten and eaten every day. Pounding in a stone mortar can break the husk of millet and rice, and then bump and sift a few times to remove the bran and husk, and then it can be separated and cooked into fragrant rice.

There is also a very poetic description in the Book of Songs: "Or lick or pum, or dusting or trampling." The release of the Suo, the floating of the Xuan. But this process is not poetic at all, and the hard work of rice is unimaginable for modern people who directly buy white rice in the pot in later generations......

After going around to the barn, Heifu saw that his sister-in-law, a peasant woman in coarse cloth and shabby clothes, was now wearing an apron-like "knee cover", lifting a heavy wooden pestle with difficulty, and scooping the grain into a stone mortar that had been driven into the ground.

The sister-in-law's name is "Aoi", she is a neighbor, she married her eldest brother at the age of eighteen, and now it has been almost eight years, she was beautiful when she married, but unfortunately after life polished, she gradually lost her beauty, but fortunately, the eldest brother has a good temper and loves the husband and wife.

And the six-year-old little nephew Yang is squatting next to the stone mortar, yawning, holding a stick in his hand, following the rhythm of his mother's rice, from time to time to plucking the millet in the stone mortar.

The children of the poor are in charge of the family at an early age, and in the countryside, they have to share the worries of the family at a young age, and it is difficult to have a good night's sleep. Although Yang seems to always bully his sister on weekdays, when his mother calls them in the early morning, he quietly gets up and lets his sister continue to sleep peacefully, he is a good brother.

Heifu couldn't help but feel a little sorry for this sensible child.

"Sister-in-law Qiu."

He stepped forward, bowed to his sister-in-law, and said, "Let me do it." ”

As he spoke, he took the wooden pestle, which was made of solid wood, and it weighed a little in his hand. It is no wonder that the pestle from morning to night is used by the Qin State to punish women's hard labor, and it is compared with the Chengdan done by male prisoners, and Chengdan Heifu just did it a few days ago, and his hard work can be seen.

The sister-in-law drove Yang to sleep, and she pinched her sore arm and held a wooden stick on the side, slapping the grain for Heifu, and said, "Isn't Uncle Zhong (referring to his brother-in-law) going to visit Old Master Yan in the plaque?" ”

Yesterday, after Heifu told his family about his plans, they informed him that it was really unfortunate that the old man Lu Ying went to his son's house in the county seat at sunset, and he might not be able to come back until Layue, so if Heifu wanted to learn the law, he had to go to the nearby plaque to find another retired old official, Yan Xu.

"I can't go empty-handed." Heifu smiled while holding the pestle and rice: "I have to bother Sister-in-law Qiu to prepare four jerky for me, and I will give it to Yan Lao as a bundle." ”

"There are still two pieces of jerky that your uncle brought back from the county seat for you."

The sister-in-law raised her head and said puzzledly: "I heard that ordinary people go to Yan Lao to ask for advice, don't they only need two jerky?" ”

"I'm going to bring double one, because I want to go with him, so that he can learn to read and write with the son of Yan Lao and understand the law. Anyway, there is not much farm work to do in the winter, so instead of letting him idle all day long, it is better to take him to learn something useful. This was a plan that had been vaguely in Hef's mind, but it was not yet possible to say it explicitly.

The sister-in-law nodded: "Wait for me to go to Wu's hometown to ask, and I will be ready for you tomorrow." ”

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

Wu's family has several heads, and they have to kill one every winter and dry the dried meat. Because in these years, the more dried meat, the better the life of this family, the Heifu family, at most can eat a fish during the New Year, smelling the smell of meat wafting from next door and drooling, although the pig of this year has not been castrated, the taste is not as good as that of later generations, but it is also meat.

Next, the two of them didn't say anything, Heifu scooped up the rice for about half an hour, and when it was already bright outside, he finally finished the day's rations for the five big, two and seven people, and his arms were sore and tired.

He is like this for a strong man, no wonder his sister-in-law, who often does rice cooking, always has sore and swollen arms.

"Sister-in-law Qiu, how long does it take to cook rice on weekdays?" Heifu asked, wiping his sweat.

"From Pingdan to sunrise, it will take a whole hour."

The sister-in-law has begun to wash rice and cook, even if it takes so long, it is still only the roughest "rice", and the cooked rice is mixed with a lot of shell rice and bran.

Heifu looked at the heavy wooden pestle in his hand and the stone mortar made of large bluestone, thoughtful.

"The productivity of these years is really too backward, especially the rice, which is a torture for housewives, after all, men have to work outside the fields and have no time to do this. Mother said that she has been licking for decades since she was ten years old, and her arms are going to be scrapped, and now she can't move, so it's the turn of her sister-in-law, and in another ten years, it will be my niece Xiaoyue's turn. The women's good youth is like this, and it is a little bit of polished and rough......"

Heifu sighed, he can't manage other people's homes for the time being, but his own family is reasonable, and he can't let them suffer from this hard life anymore.

"What to do? Stone? Roller? It can be considered, it seems that the stone mill has been in the north, but it has not been transmitted to the southern county. But those things are made of stone, the cost is not low, a bit troublesome, I just saw a little impression in my previous life, I can't make it. Even if you find a stonemason to customize, you can't make it in ten days and half a month, and it may not be able to be used if you make it, is there anything simpler and practical, I have seen it in a documentary......"

"What's it called?" Heifu clutched his head, forgetting the strange name for a moment.

By this time, he had moved his steps and walked to the well, where he saw the jiégāo (orange tree) erected on the well.

The orange tree resembles a weighing rod, it is a tool for drawing water in this era, adding a slender wooden stick on an erected shelf, which is the fulcrum, hanging a stone at the end, and hanging a bucket in the front, when people put the bucket into the water to fill the water, due to the gravity of the end of the lever, the water can be easily pulled to the desired place, and it falls together, and the water can be saved a lot of effort.

After seeing this, Heifu couldn't help but think of it!

"Treading on the mill, yes, what I want is stepping on the mill!"

He clapped his hands excitedly and said: "The treading is the same as the orange tree, the use of the lever principle, the structure is also simple, if it is fast, it can be made in three or two days, I remember this orange tree, it was made by my sister-in-law, he is the craftsman of the book......

He went to the front yard, picked up the gifts he had bought from the county town, and said to those who had just gotten up and were stretching:

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