Daily life of farming and supporting a family on the ancient Loess Plateau

After lunch, Ji Yongning and Ji Yongzhou skipped and hopped around the village, shouting that their family was going to collect medicinal herbs. As a result, a bunch of people came to visit the Ji family's courtyard.

Everyone noticed a wooden board hanging on the outer wall of Old Ji's courtyard, with some black characters on it, which looked like they were written with a fire poker. Upon closer inspection, they confirmed that it was indeed writing.

"What does it say on this?" asked one of the illiterate people.

"Yongning is reading aloud from the side, saying that he wants to collect medicinal herbs."

"What? They're collecting medicinal herbs again! Let me in quickly and see what they're collecting, I have a ton at home." With that, the man pushed his way through the crowd.

"Who has the Ji family hooked up with this time? They've even started doing business now?"

"I don't care if they're noble or divine, as long as they can exchange my pile of herbs for copper coins, I'd be happy if they could get more noble connections and collect more herbs."

"That's right. Herbs are medicinal materials only if people are willing to buy them. If they're not, they're just a bunch of weeds. Oh, it would be best if the Ji family could buy mugwort and other herbs every year."

"If you can get in touch with someone important, you must have accepted bribes more than once, right?"

"Ling'er, are you going to accept medicinal herbs from outside villages this time?" someone shouted to Ji Yongling at the door.

Ji Yongling turned around and said to the crowd, "They're being collected. You can bring them here to collect, or you can wait in your own village. My father and my fourth uncle will go to the surrounding villages to collect them."

The crowd began to stir, noisy and bustling, as lively as a temple fair.

Some literate people had already read the list and knew what medicinal herbs to collect. They chatted with the people next to them as they left the crowd and hurried home, as if afraid that if they were late, the people would not accept them.

In less than half a day, before dark, the news that the Ji family had started collecting medicinal herbs had spread throughout the village, and even some people in the neighboring Chenhu Village and Huyangzhuang Village knew about it.

After arranging the collection of medicinal herbs, Ji Ling quickly discussed with the women in her family how to make medicine pouches.

Upon hearing that they were going to make medicine pouches, Hu Xirong immediately dropped the unwashed dishes and ran out, rubbing her hands together, eager to get started.

Ji Yongling spread out the scraps of cloth in front of him and said to Yang, "Grandma, these scraps of cloth are of different sizes, and we may not be able to use them all. I think it would be better if we continued with the assembly line work."

Yang was taken aback: "What do you mean by 'assembly line work'? Does it mean rinsing the machine in a ditch first?"

"Pfft, you're quite funny, Grandma." Ji Yongling chuckled and said, "It's like some people are in charge of cutting, and some are in charge of sewing and embroidery. Everyone does their own thing and has their own job."

"Then you could just say that each person only does a portion of the work. Why use a name like 'assembly line work'? It sounds too convincing," Yang said, pursing her lips.

Ji Yongling pulled on Yang's hand and said, "Grandma, everyone has different strengths. You are a master tailor with excellent cutting skills. We can set the size and you can just cut the fabric into pieces. Fourth Aunt is young, has sharp eyes, and is good at threading needles, so she can sew. My mother is good at embroidery, so I'll have her embroider the words."

After hearing this, Yang grabbed the scrap of cloth in front of her, shook it, and said, "So much cloth! You'll have to go find Manager Wang tomorrow. Even if we stay up all night, we still can't finish it. Are you trying to kill us all with work, you little girl!"

“Mother, this is too far-fetched. Manager Wang said today that making a few samples is enough.” Hu Xirong also grabbed a handful of cloth and said.

"That's good. However, Ling'er, your mother is still in her postpartum period, so the postpartum caregiver shouldn't do too much needlework, or she'll get postpartum illnesses," Madam Yang added.

Speaking of this, Ji Yongling felt helpless.

In ancient times, postpartum care emphasized lying down as much as possible, minimizing activity, avoiding drafts, washing one's hair, consuming salt, and avoiding any raw or cold foods, etc.

Ji Yongling knew that these ideas were unhealthy and unscientific.

In the past, she had seen many postpartum women suffer from deep vein thrombosis in their lower limbs, postpartum urinary incontinence, and pelvic inflammatory disease because they stayed in bed during their postpartum period.

But now, she just can't win against these women.

A few days ago, she helped her mother hang the straw curtain over the door to let in some air, and was scolded by Yang. Yesterday, she put some salt and vinegar in her mother's bowl, and was scolded by Hu Xirong again. Even today, when she told her mother that she could come out of the yard for a walk and exercise, she was scolded by her mother.

She knew that these outdated ideas that went against science were hard to change. Just like in later times when modern medicine was so advanced, there were still people who died of heatstroke because they didn't use air conditioning or fans during their postpartum confinement in the sweltering summer and wore long sleeves and pants; there were even cases where babies were dressed in thin cotton clothes in the sweltering summer and ended up in the ICU.

Fortunately, Jia Ronghua now lives in a cave dwelling, which is warm in winter and cool in summer. Although it's very hot outside, it's still very cool inside the cave. Otherwise, with the weather getting hotter and hotter, she would either get heatstroke or become mentally impaired from the heat.

Although Ji Yongling and Ji Manchuan would tell Jia Ronghua about the recent events in their family, Ji Yongling felt that her mother should be more involved in family matters and not just stay cooped up in the cave dwelling all the time.

So she said firmly, "My mother is the best embroiderer in the family. If we can't even make the samples well, how can Manager Wang trust us to make the products? So my mother will definitely have to do the needle and thread."

Yang was reluctantly persuaded.

When the group arrived at Jia Ronghua's cave dwelling, Jia Ronghua was invigorated when she heard that she was to embroider words, feeling that she finally had a chance to use her talents.

Fortunately, the earthen bed was big enough, and several people sorted the scraps of cloth by size and stacked them layer by layer.

Ji Yongling found a fire poker about the thickness of a bamboo skewer, drew a rectangular template for cutting a medicine bag on a thin piece of wood, and wrote the words "Saving the World" on another piece of wood. He then had Ji Manchuan cut them along the edges.

Next, she placed the cutting template for the bag on a stack of fabric and had Yang cut along the edges of the template neatly, thus creating several square pieces of fabric that could be made into medicine pouches.

She took a piece of cloth, placed the template of the two characters "济世" (ji shi, meaning "to save the world") in the lower right corner of the cloth, and had Jia Ronghua embroider colorful threads along the two characters "济世".

Finally, Hu Xirong sewed the four sides of the fabric piece, leaving only the opening. At one end of the opening, the two pieces of fabric were then sewn together to form a rolled seam, just big enough to thread the rope through.

She wanted to design a modern tote bag-style medicine pouch with drawstring closures at both ends, rather than the current method of filling it with powder and then sewing the opening shut.

So when she wrapped the two ropes around the opening of the bag and pulled on both ends, the bag was completely tightened, and Yang and the others were stunned.

Yang blinked, her wrinkles deepening, and said, "This is much better than sealing it completely. The powder can be changed, and the bag can be reused."

Hu Xirong reached out and grabbed the medicine pouch from Ji Ling's hand, examining it from front to back. Although it was made of scraps of cloth, the two words embroidered on it seemed to instantly elevate the pouch's quality.

She suddenly thought of something and said, "If we make it even bigger, wouldn't it be able to be used as a money bag to hold coins?"

Ji Yongling thought about it and it seemed like a good idea.

Nowadays, people tie their wallets like grain sacks, which is inconvenient because you have to untie them when you need to use them. It would be much more convenient if they were replaced with drawstring wallets.