Passing through the marketplace, Xu Yi stopped in front of a sweet soup shop and spent five wen to buy a bowl of sweet fragrant drink.
Edible peach blossom petals were sprinkled on top, and below were dumplings made from glutinous rice, cooked and soaked in sugar water. They were crystal clear, looked tempting, and tasted refreshingly cool and appetizing.
Xu Yi finished this bowl of fragrant drink in just a few gulps. After rewarding himself, he didn’t forget Little Huang. At the adjacent stall selling steamed buns, he bought four meat buns, two for each of them, and ate them quite quickly.
It was almost time for the evening meal. At this hour, two meat buns could only fill the stomach temporarily. He still had thirty-seven wen left. He spent fifteen wen to buy a chicken leg and another twelve wen to buy the locally famous braised mandarin fish.
After removing the sharp spines from the fish’s two gills, it was braised with soy sauce, lard, fermented black beans and other seasonings, then placed in an earthenware pot and slowly simmered until tender. With one pinch of chopsticks, the fish meat would separate from the bones. The meat was fresh, tender and plump, fatty and delicious, with therapeutic and health-preserving effects.
Especially for young children, elderly people, and those with weak constitutions and poor spleen and stomach function, it could replenish qi deficiency, was easy to digest, not high in calories, and wouldn’t cause weight gain.
The vendor picked out two plump mandarin fish from the earthenware pot, wrapped them in oil paper, and handed them to Xu Yi with a grin.
Xu Yi carried the food and returned home in a leisurely mood.
Little Huang was also happy. It had been away from home for several hours. It sniffed here and there, finally stopping in front of a pile of straw. These past few days, it had been sleeping here. The middle part of the straw pile had sunk down from being slept on.
It lay down on it contentedly, its yellowish eyes watching Xu Yi bustling about in the courtyard.
The residents of Stone Well Lane all drew their daily water from the well with a pulley at the end of the lane. If they were lazy, they could also call on an idle laborer to carry it for them, two buckets of water for one wen, which could save quite a bit of physical effort.
At first, these idle laborers only took delivery orders from wine shops, tile houses, and high-end restaurants. But how many households living on South Street could afford to eat such high-end food?
The people living here bought less food from market shops on the spot, and couldn’t compete with those idle laborers who monopolized the prosperous streets. So the idle laborers here developed side businesses.
Xu Yi still had medicinal materials to process, so he poured the remaining clean water from the vat into a wooden basin to soak the heshouwu he had just dug from the soil.
He pushed open the wooden fence and called out to an idle laborer sitting on a stone stool outside, asking him to carry four buckets of water and handing over the copper coins to him.
“Right away, young master, just wait.” The idle laborer tucked the money into his bosom, his attitude very good.
He did this work often. Skillfully, he went into the house, took out empty buckets, and within a quarter-hour had carried back two full buckets of water. After two trips back and forth, he had filled Xu Yi’s water vat.
With the water problem solved, Xu Yi put rice on to steam, then picked out edible purslane from the bamboo basket.
Purslane was a common medicinal herb for treating dysentery. It could be used for conditions like damp-heat strangury syndrome and abnormal vaginal discharge, and could also serve as a common wild vegetable. When Xu Yi saw it, he originally hadn’t planned to pick it.
It was just that since transmigrating here, he hadn’t properly eaten vegetables. He hadn’t eaten any today either, so he thought to pick some back to make a cold dish for the evening.
Xu Yi looked around in the kitchen and found that cooking seasonings were quite scarce, only soy sauce, coarse salt, and lard that was down to the bottom of the earthenware jar. The main seasonings of scallions, ginger, and garlic were all absent.
After thinking it over, Xu Yi chose to blanch the purslane, then tear the chicken leg he’d bought into shredded chicken meat and stir-fry it together with the blanched purslane into one dish.
It looked rather mismatched, but at least the purslane absorbed the chicken’s fragrance, and eating it wasn’t bad at all.
Xu Yi smelled the aroma and instantly had a good appetite. When the rice was steamed, he portioned out a third for Little Huang, and also picked out some of the roasted chicken and mandarin fish meat into its bowl.
Dinner was taken care of, but there was still more important business.
Freshly harvested medicinal materials needed to be processed as soon as possible. While it was still early, Xu Yi scrubbed the heshouwu clean and spread it out on a winnowing basket to dry.
Making ripened heshouwu required time. Every step was important. If any step went wrong, it could lead to the complete loss of all the medicinal materials.
Looking across thousands of years of Chinese history, traditional Chinese medicine occupied a very important position in the long river of China’s history. The discovery and recording of each medicinal material had gone through countless attempts, perfected step by step through various clinical trials and recorded in detail.
Xu Yi didn’t dare look down on the physicians of this era. In the Song Dynasty, there were famous medical experts like Qian Yi, Song Ci, and Yang Shiying. Their writings like “Pediatric Pharmacology and Syndromes Directly Determined” and “The Washing Away of Wrongs” were all works Xu Yi had read.
Studying traditional Chinese medicine wasn’t divided into specialties, only areas of expertise. Born into a medical family, Xu Yi had studied and researched pulse diagnosis, cold damage disorders, pediatrics, internal medicine, and difficult miscellaneous diseases.
If he wanted to be a physician in the Northern Song Dynasty, he wasn’t worried. He was just afraid of starting off poorly.
To ripen heshouwu required three steamings and three dryings. During this process, it needed to be mixed with black beans and steamed in a pot. After steaming, it would be dried. The dried heshouwu slices would continue to be processed, steamed again, and dried again.
After three times, when the heshouwu’s color turned dark black and shiny, had the unique medicinal fragrance of ripened heshouwu when smelled, and felt like it had an oily texture when touched, it would be considered complete.
The warm spring days were just right for making ripened heshouwu.
That very night, Xu Yi lit an oil lamp and cut the surface-dried heshouwu into slices.
Early the next morning, he shouldered the classified and bundled medicinal materials, told Little Huang to guard the house, and went out carrying the bamboo basket by himself.
The Miracle Hands Hall on East Street was the largest medical hall aside from the official physicians of Yanting County. The most famous person there was Doctor Chen. In addition, there were three younger physicians who looked to be in their thirties, along with several apprentices who sorted medicinal materials.
The place where Xu Yi wanted to sell his medicinal materials was this Miracle Hands Hall. He’d heard that they had also opened branches in several other counties of Tongchuan Prefecture. The physicians there all had some reputation, and without exception, their consultation fees were not cheap.
With many patients, the usage of medicinal materials was large. They were the medical hall in the county that purchased the most medicinal materials.
Xu Yi had left home quite early, but who would have thought that after passing through the marketplace and arriving at Miracle Hands Hall, he would see that at the small door for purchasing medicinal materials, six or seven commoners wearing short coarse cloth garments were already lined up.
Everyone was carrying baskets on their backs, holding baskets in their hands, or had things tied with hemp rope, more or less, all had around ten jin or just a few jin of medicinal materials.
Suddenly seeing a young man carrying a bamboo woven basket half as tall as a person, the people in line all turned their heads to size up this incongruous youth.
After seeing clearly that it contained dozens of kilo of medicinal materials, they all gasped.
That was way too much!
They didn’t know how many days it would take to dig up so many medicinal materials.
Even the apprentice at the front who was purchasing medicinal materials was attracted by the successive gasps. He turned his head to look at Xu Yi. Xu Yi kept his eyes straight ahead, and toward those looking at him, he pressed his lips together and nodded slightly.
He looks like an honest one, someone in the crowd thought, and came over to ask: “Where did you dig these? How could you dig up so many?”
Don’t tell me they’re all some wild grass or wild vegetables, mistaken for medicinal materials.
The other several people didn’t speak, but their gazes didn’t move away either. Clearly they were quite interested. It seemed that whether ancient or modern, people all loved to gossip.
“I didn’t go anywhere special, just the several mountains outside the county town, ” Xu Yi said.
An old uncle came closer to the bamboo woven basket. In his youth, he had read a medical book and knew quite a few medicinal materials. An old hand like him could dig up at most around ten kilos in a day. In all these years, he had never seen any independent seller sell this much in one go.
He had originally thought it would be some cheap, unwanted low-grade medicinal materials. But coming closer to look, seeing through the gaps two or three types of expensive medicinal materials, the suspicion in his eyes toward this young man transformed into shock.
“Did Uncle Lin see something?” one person who recognized the old uncle asked.
“It’s medicinal materials…” Uncle Lin was stunned. When others wanted to continue questioning him, he closed his mouth and stopped talking.
To think that he, someone who had lived several decades longer, was outdone by a teenager in his teens, his feelings were extremely complicated.
The apprentice purchased the medicinal materials, weighed them on the scale, and beside him was a young servant specifically responsible for recording and paying out money.
When it was Xu Yi’s turn, those who had sold their medicinal materials but hadn’t left yet wanted to see what good things this young man had dug up.
Xu Yi stepped forward and politely performed a bow to the apprentice.
Xu Yi’s courtesy was very satisfying to him. His stern face softened somewhat, and he showed less coldness toward Xu Yi, who was about his age.
He said: “Our Miracle Hands Hall purchases any medicinal materials. The prices are all standardized, calculated by the official scale’s weight. For precious medicinal materials, the price is twenty percent less than the purchase price. For common medicinal materials, it’s thirty percent less. The daily pricing is different. If there are no problems, I can calculate it for you now.”
Xu Yi nodded. Independent sellers couldn’t compare with the “Ripened Medicine Office.” This “Ripened Medicine Office,” also called the “Medicine Selling Office,” was an official institution specifically established by the government to be responsible for the production and operation of medicines. From medicinal material procurement to testing, management and supervision, there were dedicated people in charge.
Whether civilian medical halls or official medical halls, most of the medicinal materials used came from the Ripened Medicine Office.
For independent sellers, these were fresh medicinal materials that hadn’t undergone any processing. After being sold to medical halls, they couldn’t be used directly. Medicinal materials that didn’t need processing could be dried, sliced, or cut into sections for storage. Medicinal materials that could only be used after processing had to go through tedious steps.
Now Miracle Hands Hall was purchasing medicinal materials dug up by common folk at twenty to thirty percent below market price, this could be considered a conscientious price.
Opening the lid of the bamboo woven basket, Xu Yi took out the medicinal materials inside one by one. Each time he took out a bundle, he softly announced the name of the medicinal material.
Before long, Xu Yi had announced over twenty medicine names.
The largest quantity among them was wulianmei; priced lower than heshouwu, one kilo could sell for sixteen wen.
There were twelve kilos of it inside, which calculated to one hundred ninety-two wen.
The other medicinal materials were priced at ten wen for the more expensive ones and five wen for the cheaper ones. Calculated altogether, it came to one hundred forty-four wen.
Shortly after, the young servant recording beside them counted out the copper coins, a total of three hundred thirty-six wen.
So many copper coins would be quite heavy to hold. Xu Yi had the young servant exchange three hundred wen of it into three qian of silver.
Having been here for several days, this was the first time Xu Yi had touched silver. Three qian of silver wasn’t much, the quality was mediocre, about the size of a peanut.
Those several people who hadn’t left, seeing that Xu Yi had sold his goods for such a high price, appeared extremely incredulous.
At most they earned a few dozen wen. How on earth did this young man manage it?
Never mind them, the apprentice purchasing medicinal materials was equally surprised inside. He had been an apprentice for two years, and a year ago he had been put in charge of purchasing medicinal materials. In all this time, only a few veteran farmers had the capability to find this many medicinal materials.
“Good heavens, young brother, don’t hide it and refuse to tell us, which mountain exactly can you dig up so many medicinal materials from?”
“Please teach us. Next time we’ll also go try our luck in those mountains. Never mind selling for three qian of silver, even a hundred wen would be good!”