Riding the wind of rebirth

"What is Yanggu?" Although Mai Xiaomiao didn't know, but since Zhou Zhi had laid a lot of groundwork in the previous part, he thought it wouldn't be a good word.

"It's like a lamb to be slaughtered." Zhou Zhi warned: "Anyway, remember our secret code and follow my command."

"Well! We can't be like sheep." Mai Xiaomiao clenched his fists and nodded firmly.

The Daliushu Market is still the same. Originally it was a flea market, but since when did flea markets become synonymous with antiques?

Now a large part of the area here is still a second-hand market. Electronic products, various old watches, books, furniture, etc. are all in the middle of the market with better lighting.

The darker area around has become the territory of antique stall owners. Now the center is covered with plastic film, with heavy snow piled on it, making it a vast expanse of white. The surrounding area, on the other hand, has been trampled into a black circle by people who came early, which shows that even though the weather is so cold, the market here is still not bad.

Speaking of antique cities in the capital, Panjiayuan is the first choice that everyone knows. In fact, many of Panjiayuan’s goods are bought from here.

The goods on the stalls here are also varied, but porcelain is still the majority. The rest include some jade pieces, snuff bottles, cigarette holders, even hot water bottles, abacus, etc., which can be said to be a dazzling array.

There were quite a lot of people here. Mai Xiaomiao held Zhou Zhi's hand, and their fingers were tightly clasped together through their gloves to avoid getting separated. Sometimes they were still squeezed together.

"What to buy?"

"Just take a look at anything you like. You don't have to pay for it. Whether you buy it or not is another matter."

"What are those little pots? The pictures inside are pretty nice."

"That's called a snuff bottle, and the painting inside is called inner painting, which is done by dipping a special brush into the paint and inserting it into the bottle."

"Really? How small would that be? And it has to have a bend, right?"

"Yes." Zhou Zhi said, "There are four major schools of inner painting: Beijing, Hebei, Shandong, and Guangdong. The Beijing school uses bamboo brushes and willow wood brushes to paint, and is known for its simple and elegant paintings; the Shandong school uses fine hair brushes to paint, and is known for its delicate, bright and colorful paintings."

"And what is snuff?"

"Snuff is a tobacco product made by roasting, grinding, fermenting and adding spices to tobacco leaves. It is taken by sniffing."

"Snuff became popular in Europe in the 17th century. Zhao Zhiqian said in Yong Lu Xian Jie that it came from Italy in the Atlantic Ocean. In the ninth year of the Wanli reign, the missionary Matteo Ricci brought it to Guangdong and then to the capital. After that, it became popular and was often used by dignitaries. They put snuff bottles in a small bag inside their short coats so they could take it out at any time."

"Because it was used by dignitaries, the utensils were very exquisite."

"The old toys in Beijing are all very particular. Craftsmen whose skills are recognized by everyone will become masters. For example, there are Chen Yinsheng, Zhang Yuechen and Yao Mangfu who are good at copper engraving. In the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China, there were four famous artists of inner-painted snuff bottles - Zhou Leyuan, Ye Zhongsan, Ma Shaoxuan and Ding Erzhong."

“What about these on this stall?”

"These interior paintings are too modern in style and are not very valuable. On the contrary, the ones without paintings are quite interesting."

"You are an expert." Upon hearing this, the stall owner gave Zhou Zhi a thumbs up: "These inner paintings are actually not bad. They are at least imported goods from the Tongzhi and Guangxu periods. However, they are not as good as these pieces. These are made of materials passed down by our ancestors from the past three dynasties!"

"The ancestors of the past three dynasties?" Zhou Zhi was both amused and confused. What kind of vicious words were these?
"I am a bannerman, a bannerman! Look, look here!" The stall owner took off his fur hat and pointed to the crack between his eyebrows leading to the top of his forehead: "This is called the Tongtianwen. If it were the Qing Dynasty, we would also have been able to eat iron-clad crops." "Oh, is that what you mean?" Zhou Zhi said with a smile.

"It's not bad, they are from the three upper banners. These pieces are from the Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong dynasties! In our mouths, they are the ancestors of the three upper dynasties."

"Three dynasties?" Zhou Zhi was happy: "Three weeks is about right. Do you know what a material vessel is? A material vessel is glass, emulsified glass. This glass cannot be melted without 1,700 to 1,800 degrees. If your snuff bottle was one color, it would still be fooling people. But now it has five eyebrows and three lines. Without modern heating equipment, it is impossible to make such a pattern. It's superfluous."

The stall owner waved his hands repeatedly: "This is something passed down from my ancestors."

"Do you think your ancestors liked to use this color?" Zhou Zhi took out a snuff bottle with a lotus root pink base and a dark pink dragon coiled on it. "You are in the banner and you know the family well. There were no female ancestors who used snuff. You can't talk about virtue, words, appearance and merit if you sneeze all the time. But if it were a man, would he use this feminine color?"

The stall owner was left speechless by Zhou Zhi's words.

"And this hat, the green hat, do you think it's a good omen? It looks nice, but our ancestors didn't wear it this way."

When Mai Xiaomiao heard Zhou Zhi say the words "looks good", his eyes lit up immediately: "But I think it's good, I like this little pot!"

"Xiao Miao, you have to think carefully. The old man said this thing was used by his ancestors..."

"No, no, no... This is not included in the utensils passed down from my ancestors. I bought this in West City a few weeks ago." The stall owner immediately changed his words: "Little girl, if you like it, I will reluctantly give it to you. I'll open a shop for 600 yuan!"

"Twenty!" Mai Xiaomiao's voice was so loud that even she scared herself.

6◇9◇Book◇Bar

The stall owner was shocked by the price the little girl offered. Although they could only see each other's eyes, girls were obviously easier to please than boys. He didn't expect that the price she offered was so impressive.

"Twenty is not a sincere offer, you are making fun of me." The stall owner was very angry: "Don't play like this so early in the morning! Two hundred is about right!"

"Two hundred is fine. I'll take all the single-color ones for two hundred." Mai Xiaomiao squatted down and picked out the single-color and multi-color ones from the pile of snuff bottles. There were about five or six of them: "I'll increase the price by ten yuan for each one. Thirty-one, one, two, three... a total of six, one hundred and eighty!"

"That's impossible." The stall owner picked up all the single-color ones because Zhou Zhi just said that the multi-color pots were all modern crafts. It made sense. After all, among the multi-color objects, there was the pink-bottomed red dragon with a green hat. It didn't look like something that a nobleman would have. "These three, you round up to two hundred and take them. These ones are not allowed. I won't let you buy one for less than two hundred."

"Okay, I buy them because they look pretty, and I'll use them as perfume." Mai Xiaomiao put away the three snuff bottles. Zhou Zhi unzipped his thick down jacket, took out his wallet from his waist bag, and took out two hundred yuan and handed it to the stall owner.

"Don't you want to look at other things?" The stall owner took the money and flicked it, then put it away without even looking at it carefully: "These three items are really handed down from my ancestors. If you like them, we can talk about them again..."

"Thank you. We still have other things to look at. If we don't find anything good later, we'll come back and talk." Mai Xiaomiao followed the routine Zhou Zhi taught her yesterday and said goodbye to the stall owner.

“See you next time!” The stall owner has made quite a bit of business here at Mai Xiaomiao and he is very happy.

After walking away from the stall owner for a while, Mai Xiaomiao excitedly whispered to Zhou Zhi: "Elbow, did we miss something?"

"Yeah." Zhou Zhi laughed softly and said, "The stall owner wasn't lying. These pieces of utensils are really from the third century of the Qing Dynasty."

"But you just told the stall owner..." (End of this chapter)