Great Song Dynasty Writer

Chapter 52 Repaying kindness
"Go back and prepare well for the county exam; it's in a month."

Li Pan looked at Lu Beigu and said, "Also, hurry up and get the relocation of your household registration done. Don't delay it until after the county exam, otherwise it will affect your admission to the state school."

"Yes, Your Excellency, I remember."

After parting ways with Li Pan, Lu Beigu, carrying his satchel and bundle, did not return to the county school first. Instead, he went to a rice shop in the county town to buy some rice, and then went to a meat stall near South Street to buy mutton.

The butcher at the meat stall looked fierce, with a face as red as pickled meat in a jar of soy sauce. He had a black mole the size of a soybean on his left cheek, and three stiff hairs on the mole would twitch as his muscles twitched.

On his right cheek, there is a deep, dark purple scar that extends all the way to the corner of his eye.

The moment Lu Beigu saw this man, he felt that he had found the prototype of the "Zhen Guanxi" who was killed by Lu Zhishen with three punches.

"Ten catties of lean meat, chopped into minced meat, with not a single bit of fat on it."

The butcher was taken aback for a moment, then replied, "Okay."

He then picked out ten pounds of lean meat from the butcher's block and finely chopped it into a sauce.

People in the Song Dynasty preferred mutton and thought pork was just so-so.

For Lu Beigu, beef was actually his favorite food, but it was not usually sold in the market. Like horses, cattle were important resources controlled by the government, and unless a draft ox died of disease or old age, it was rare to eat beef.

Therefore, even in high-end restaurants, you can't order dishes like "stir-fried beef with yellow peppers".

Well, Lu Beigu has never eaten at a restaurant before, but he remembers hearing that the big restaurants in Hejiang County only serve average-quality stir-fries, about the same level as the county's canteen.

Or rather, although the iron pots produced by the Song Dynasty were considered to be cutting-edge technology by neighboring countries.

However, the people of the Song Dynasty had not yet fully figured out how to make the most of the iron wok for stir-frying, and it still needed time to develop their own methods.

These supplies cost Lu Beigu a total of 350 copper coins. He put the few strings of coins he had broken into five-guan denomination paper money into his pouch.

With these things in hand, Lu Beigu found the home of the fisherman who had rescued him from the water that day.

Lu Beigu is a person who always repays kindness. He had been busy with one thing after another before and didn't have time to do this. Now it's time to do it.

It's easy to find because the incident occurred right on the riverbank in front of the fisherman's house.

As soon as Lu Beigu reached the courtyard, he smelled the familiar fishy smell. Several fishing nets were drying under the eaves outside the courtyard, and a bamboo fish basket was leaning against the door, with two palm-sized crucian carp jumping inside.

He gently knocked on the wooden door, and the old fisherman's hoarse voice answered from inside.

"coming."

The door opened, and the space inside was not small; it was a standard courtyard house in Hejiang County, about 200 square meters.

"Old man, I apologize for bothering you. Do you still remember the person you pulled out of the water that day? I have come to repay your kindness."

Lu Beigu bowed and handed over the rice bag and mutton.

The old fisherman was taken aback, then waved his hands repeatedly: "Young man, what are you doing? It was just a small favor, I don't deserve this!"

"If it weren't for the old man's rescue, I'm afraid I would have already lost my life in the river."

Lu Beigu insisted, "This is just a small gift to express my feelings."

The old fisherman had no choice but to accept it, saying, "Young man, come in and sit down. I'll have my wife make you some tea."

The two sat down inside and chatted for a while.

The old fisherman's name was Feng Si. His family had been fishing for generations, and the neighbors all called him Old Feng. He also had a daughter, but she got married and no longer lived here.

Before long, there was a rustling sound from inside the house. An old woman with gray hair came out carrying a rough porcelain teacup, with an awkward smile on her face: "Young man, please don't mind, we only have some coarse tea at home."

Lu Beigu took the teacup and saw that the tea was cloudy with a few coarse stems floating on top, but he didn't care.

He took a sip and smiled, "Did you go fishing on the river today, sir?"

"Got it, got it!" Old Feng rubbed his hands together, his wrinkles smoothing out. "I had good luck today, caught several big bass, just had my wife take them to the market. It's a pity, we only got 1200 copper coins in return."

1200 iron coins sounds like a lot, but in reality, it's only worth about 100 copper coins.

"Can't I exchange it for copper coins?"

“Sigh.” Old Feng was also somewhat helpless when this issue was mentioned. “Fish are not rare things. They just give us iron coins. Take it or leave it. We can only lose a little.” At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, Shu followed the coinage policy of Later Shu, mainly circulating iron coins. However, iron coins had low value and heavy weight. Sometimes, it would cost 20,000 iron coins to buy a bolt of cloth, weighing several hundred kilograms. Therefore, the people of Shu were very disgusted by this.

However, there was no way around it. The decades-long wars during the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period had reduced the economy of most regions to a primitive state. On the one hand, the Song Dynasty was indeed short of copper, and on the other hand, it always maintained a wary attitude towards the Shu region, which could easily form its own system.

Therefore, the problem of iron coins in Shu was not only not solved, but it became even more serious because the imperial court set up an iron coin mint in Baizhang County, Yazhou, to mint large quantities of coins.

By the time of Emperor Renzong, the exchange rate between iron coins and copper coins had gradually stabilized at 10:1, but the purchasing power of iron coins was still inferior to that of copper coins.

Therefore, for sellers, if the goods they have are relatively scarce, they can exchange them for copper coins, but if they are just ordinary goods, they have to accept them even if they don't want to.

This awkward dual-currency system did not improve with the introduction of Jiaozi (paper money). The people of Shu (Sichuan) continued to suffer, and it even seriously affected economic development. Everyone wanted to save copper coins to spend iron coins, but in reality, things often didn't go as planned.

Lu Beigu didn't know if his plan could change everything.

However, he had high hopes for the combination of Zhang Fangping and Fan Xiang, after all, these two were already the most economically savvy technocrats in the Song Dynasty.

If Zhang Fangping is reinstated as the Commissioner of the Three Departments and Fan Xiang is promoted to Deputy Transport Commissioner and Salt Commissioner, and the new salt and paper money system is implemented effectively, with a large influx of copper coins, then the inconveniences suffered by the people of Sichuan may be alleviated because of him.

Lu Beigu nodded, his gaze sweeping over the old fishing gear and dried fish in the corner of the room, and casually asked, "How do the fish from Anle Creek compare to those from the Yangtze River?"

"That's far from the truth!"

Old Feng got excited and gestured as he said, "The fish in the Yangtze River have thick, delicious flesh, especially after passing the Wu Gorge, there's a kind of fish called shad, that's really plump and delicious!"

The two chatted casually about everyday matters.

Not long after, another person suddenly entered through the door.

He was dressed as a butcher; he was a burly man with a round belly protruding from under his greasy apron.

The light was dim at the entrance, so Lu Beigu couldn't see his face clearly until he came in.

—Isn't this the butcher from earlier?

"Old Taishan".

The butcher's booming voice shook the dust off the beams, and his fan-like hand slammed against the doorframe, his short, thick knuckles still stained with dark brown scabs of blood.

Old Feng frowned, but he had no choice but to go forward.

"what happened?"

The butcher, who looked like Old Feng's son-in-law, shouted, "Do you still have any money at home? The pawnshop on South Street was taken over, and now it's for sale. It's a shop in the front and a yard in the back. I've got my eye on it, but if I'm too late, someone else might buy it first."

"You filthy scoundrel, how many copper coins can an old man get for pawning his bones?"

Old Feng pushed his son-in-law's belly and scolded, "You think it's easy to make money by slaughtering pigs and sheep? All you think about is buying shops. Which shop doesn't cost a hundred coins? If you're so capable, then handle it yourself and don't come looking for me."

Lu Beigu looked at the sliced ​​mutton sauce on the table with a strange expression.

"This is self-produced and self-sold," he thought to himself.

Old Feng's son-in-law was a big, burly man, but he didn't dare to talk back to his father-in-law; he just kept nagging.

Such comments include things like, "Isn't that also for your daughter?" or "The meat stalls are so cramped now, it's hard to even turn around."

Old Feng ignored all of this and just kept trying to get him to leave.

When pushed around too hard, the butcher actually raised his large, fan-like hand!

Lu Beigu thought he was going to slap Lao Feng. If he really did, Lao Feng would probably lose half his life. But he couldn't just watch his savior get beaten to death in front of him, so he quickly stood up.

Instead of receiving a slap, the butcher covered his eyes, sat down, and burst into tears.

“Old man, it was your daughter who forced me to come and ask for money. She said that if I didn’t get the money, I should go back home and she would beat me half to death.”

Lu Beigu was dumbfounded.

I originally thought he was either Zhen Guanxi from "Water Margin" or Butcher Hu from "Fan Jin's Success in the Imperial Examination," but it turns out he's the one who gets "roared by the shrew from Hedong." It seems Chen Jichang lives in Meishan now.

(End of this chapter)