Villager of Daming

Chapter 800 Lantern Festival Lanterns and the Full Moon

While everyone was busy, the fifteenth day of the first lunar month came and there were more people selling lanterns. Xiaqiu Village sold the best because of mass production.

Other bamboo craftsmen need to get their own bamboo to make a lantern, then roll it, and then buy paper of various colors to paste it on.

Compared with a person doing only one thing and doing many things, the former is obviously more efficient. This is the principle of assembly line operations.

In Nanjing, the factory in Xiaqiu Village specializes in selling two types of lanterns: a larger one for people to hang outside the window, and a smaller one for children to carry.

However, the color is single and the appearance is also single, there are only two kinds, but the price is cheap and everyone can afford it, and they also come with a small candle as a gift.

Then we sell candles. This one is paraffin, so cheap!There are all kinds of thick and small ones, no longer like butter or big wax.

In the past, candles were made of fats, such as suet, butter, beeswax and white waxworm wax.

None of them are cheap, and ordinary people can't afford them. They usually put the oil in the lantern and add a wick to light it.

Since petroleum has been continuously transported and processed, paraffin has appeared. You can’t even think about it. It is a by-product.

There is also petrolatum, which is Vaseline, which will inevitably appear during refining, including asphalt later.

"The ones sold are all single-color ones, but the ones we use candles here are colorful, but the best ones are the small battery-powered lanterns."

Zhu Yuanzhang once again asked ministers to come over for a gathering today. At the same time, the ministers' families also came, and they will continue to have a holiday tomorrow.

There are only two types of lanterns sold in Xiaqiu Village, and they don’t change. They look very monotonous, but because they are cheap, everyone buys a lot of them.

But today is supposed to be a lantern festival, so not all of them buy Qiu Cun. Some buy candles, small candles, which are enough to burn for half an hour.

The ministers had nothing to say. Their families came and enjoyed it again. As for the monochromatic things they were selling, they understood.

Xiaqiu Village is unwilling to attack people who specialize in selling lanterns, so they count on making money from lantern festivals held several times a year.

Xiaqiu Village also wholesales candles to these lantern sellers!Especially cheap, don't use animal fats and oils to make wax.

Because animal fat oil and vegetable oil from lamps can be used to make soap and toilet soap, and petroleum wax is exchanged, Xiaqiu Village takes advantage.

It would be a waste to burn a large piece of butter wax that is ten centimeters in diameter and fifty centimeters high. It would be a waste to replace it with twice the amount of paraffin wax.

After changing it back, you can make soap and toilet soap, and there is also glycerin!
Glycerin can be purified and then used by humans in winter and used for medicine in normal times. The consumption of this medicine is not much, but it is used to make explosives.

……

Songs are singing and dancing is happening.

Everyone continued to gather at the Kowloon Bridge, and then there were glutinous rice balls. The glutinous rice balls were held in the hands, not the kind of dumplings, but the kind of red bean paste buns.

The two hands need to be joined together, and the movement is not difficult. Children can learn it in a few minutes and practice it by kneading mud.

Some people have good gastrointestinal function and can eat a lot, while others can only eat one or two to taste, and then eat vegetables. If they really want to eat dumplings as their staple food.

"Everyone, if you're not too busy eating, let's go to the Qinhuai River to see the lantern festival later. This year it's all our money."

Zhu Yuanzhang ate two glutinous rice balls, stopped eating, and told others to slow down and go to watch the lanterns.

The ministers already knew today's program schedule. There was a large group of painting boats parked on the moat early.

The money provided by the palace was used to put thousands of water lanterns, and all the lamps in the streets and alleys came from the palace.It starts on the first day of the Lunar New Year. After the fifth day of the Lunar New Year, some of it is reduced and so on. It is too expensive. On the fifteenth day of the Lunar New Year, it is time to add more colorful lanterns until the end of the month.

Everyone goes out for a walk at night, and there are lights when they come home late. People who live next to the street also like to keep the lights on. Anyway, it doesn't affect their sleep. There are no glass windows, nor paper ones. The windows are blocked with boards at night.

In the summer, you can put a screen made of thread on the window to keep it cool and prevent mosquitoes from entering the house. Generally, the effect is not very good. Mosquitoes and flies can still get in. Just walk through the door.

As expected, everyone slowed down and went to the boat to continue drinking. However, one boat could not carry too many people and they needed to be separated. The boat was too high to cross the bridge.

Children and people who don’t drink need to eat enough. Don’t pack too many glutinous rice balls, an average of four or five per person. Older people all eat one. After all, it’s the festival.

Then everyone eats dumplings. There are all types of dumpling fillings, including pork, beef and sheep, plus leek, garlic, bamboo fungus, mushroom, fish, oil residue, pickled cabbage, and radish. Anyway, there are meat and vegetables. .

There are a lot of dumplings, and some of them are frozen in the ice cellar, so that the minister and his family can take them with them when they go home tomorrow. The ice will last for two days.

There is no need to cook anymore. If you want to cook, just stir-fry. If you don’t want to stir-fry, then there are pickles and pickles brought back from Xiaqiu Village!

When everyone was almost done eating, they prepared to set off fireworks. They came to the moat and boarded a boat. Some children were already sleeping.

The main ministers naturally had to be in the same boat with Zhu Yuanzhang, including the ministers of various ministries, the imperial censors, Liu Bowen and Wei Su, and several of Zhu Yuanzhang's sons.

The only ones left are the 24 people from Xiaqiu Village and the guards. There is just enough space for one boat, and there is no room for more.

Unless it's the kind of boat that doesn't cross the bridge and only moves within a range.

The headmaster touched his chest from time to time and held a stack of papers in his arms, ready to receive inquiries. He was learning more and more things now.

"When we look at the people playing on the shore, we feel comfortable. They are wearing new clothes. There is no shortage of cotton-padded clothes for sale in the store."

Zhu Yuanzhang held up a telescope and looked at it. Everyone had one, some were short-sighted, some were short-sighted, and some were wearing glasses.

After everyone heard Zhu Yuanzhang's words, they all looked at the shore. The cotton-padded jacket was in line with Zhu Wentian's aesthetics, not the kind of cotton-padded jacket seen in movies.

The outside is uniformly flat, but in order to seal the cotton inside, small grids are sewn with threads so that they cannot be seen from the outside.

Then there are four pockets. They are very straight after being ironed, but they are not the color of a military coat. Men's ones are usually blue, women's pink, and children's light yellow. There is no white.

The style is the same, but the sleeves are different. Everyone is afraid that the sleeves will get dirty and be easily damaged, so they find cloth outside and wrap it up again, so they can just remove the cloth.

Children carry toilet paper in their pockets. The toilet paper is not valuable and is used to wipe their noses. Otherwise, they would rub it with their sleeves.

There are bamboo trash cans on the roadside for people to throw away paper and sticks for eating fried skewers. There were no such trash cans before, so they were just thrown on the ground.

Nowadays, when there is a trash can, people are very conscious and will throw it in when they need to throw something away. The locals want to maintain their pride, and those from outside are afraid of being embarrassed.

"Your Majesty, the lanterns are beautiful and colorful, but it's a pity that they will be gone in two days. It takes too much wax, so why not sell the wax to the people?"

Hu Weiyong finally found a chance to talk. He was now marginalized, powerless and helpless. He really couldn't stand up to the shameless expert.

"Hu Qing is right! It should be long. Can electric lights be used?" Zhu Yuanzhang also wanted to provide lighting to the people of Nanjing every night.

The head of the village took a deep breath and put his hand into his arms: "Your Majesty, the village has a new oil lamp made of asbestos mesh, which can burn gasoline."

(End of this chapter)