unclear

Chapter 441: Changing with each passing day

As May approaches, the temperature gradually rises. Spring turns to summer, people take off their winter clothes, and activities become more and more frequent. Markets everywhere are crowded and bustling.

If you want to ask what was the busiest place in the capital in the late Ming Dynasty, it was neither the east and west sides, nor the Drum Tower in the north city and the Langfang Hutong in the south city. It was a place called Qipan Street. To be precise, it should be called Tianjie.

The so-called Tianjie is located between Daming Gate and Zhengyang Gate. It is called a street. It is actually a small square one hundred steps long from north to south and one hundred steps wide from east to west. Because the stones paving the square are large and square, it looks like a Go grid, so it is commonly known as Chessboard Street.

If you want to ask why Qipan Street is the most prosperous commercial street in Beijing, there are two reasons. The first is its superior geographical location.

It is bounded by Daming Gate to the north, Zhengyang Gate to the south, Dongjiangmi Lane and Dongchengxia Street to the east, and Xijiangmi Lane and Xichengxia Street to the west. If you have a map of the capital from the Ming Dynasty, you can find out after unfolding it that Qipan Street is basically the center of the city. To use military terminology to describe it, it is called the thoroughfare of the four provinces and a battleground for military strategists.

Since most of the central axis of the inner city is occupied by the Imperial City, residents in the east and west districts have only two roads to choose from if they want to move around each other. Either go around outside Bei'anmen, or take Qipan Street. Note: Coffins and funerals are not allowed to go through Qipan Street and can only go around the north of the city.

Zhengyangmen is the main passage connecting the inner city and the outer city, and it is open day and night. People from the inner city want to go to the outer city, and people from the outer city want to enter the inner city. There are Xuanwumen and Chongwenmen to choose from during the day, but at night they can only go to Zhengyangmen.

Second is the customer source. In the era of the Internet economy, traffic dominance is important, but in the era of the real economy, human traffic is the priority. Qipan Street is not only the choke point between the inner city and the outer city, but also a gathering place for government departments.

On the west side of Daming Gate are the Five Military Governor's Office, Jinyiwei Yamen, Taichang Temple, General Affairs Department, and Xingren Department; on the east side are the Five Ministries (the Ministry of Punishment is not among them), Zongren Mansion, Honglu Temple, Qintian Prison, Taiyuan Hospital, Hanlin Academy, Luan Jia Ku, Shang Lin Yuan Jian, Zhan Shi Mansion and Nan Tong Wen Guan gathered almost 80% of the central institutions of the Ming Dynasty.

It guards a lot of government departments, and the people who work there are not only officials but also civil servants. In other words, they are all civil servants. Their income must be high and stable, they must have strong spending power, and they are all high-quality customers.

After working all day, it is very convenient to go shopping at the nearby Qipan Street when I get off work. It is very convenient to bring some snacks and buy some daily necessities for my parents, women and children at home. Or you can go to the bookstalls on Qipan Street with your colleagues from the 3rd and 5th classes during your lunch break. It’s also an elegant thing to browse through a few books whether you want to buy them or not.

You said you are an official from out of town. That doesn't matter. Officials from out of town also go to Beijing on business trips. No matter which government office they go to, is it okay not to carry some gifts in their hands?

As for what to buy, no one is worse than asking the shopkeeper on Qipan Street. They receive this kind of guests all year round. As long as you tell them which yamen you want to go to and which adult you want to see, they will definitely let you spend the least amount of money to buy the most suitable gift.

Many of these shops are even opened by family members of officials. There are many people in the workplace and it is inconvenient to take them around, but it is much safer and more secure to send them to the store and let the shopkeeper collect them on his behalf. Some of the filial piety that I didn’t like so much were simply sold in the store.

Qipan Street was particularly lively today, with many people arriving early in the morning. But instead of wandering around the shops in the alleys on the east and west sides, or picking out the stalls in the square, groups of three, five, and one crowded at the intersection of Xijiangmi Lane and the square, looking up with their necks raised.

The shop being watched was quite grand, with three bright and open facades, pillars as thick as the waist, three levels of bluestone steps, polished bricks on the floor, and exquisitely carved wood trim on the doors and windows. It looked like the fine craftsmanship of Suzhou and Hangzhou. If you look carefully, most people will be shocked. What is pasted behind all the window edges is not a clear tile, but a layer of crystal clear stuff. It looks like crystal, but there is no trace of splicing. There are so many and such large crystals that even the emperor may not be able to find them.

Glaze, transparent glaze! There is a saying that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, there are many talented people in Qipan Street, and soon someone recognized it. The thing that replaced the clear tiles to seal the windows was not crystal, but transparent colored glaze.

Don't ask, it's most likely from Liuguangzhai, and most likely it won't be cheap. If silver were broken into pieces of the same thickness, it would probably be impossible to buy such a large piece of transparent glass of the same size, flatness, clarity and thickness.

Liuguangzhai is still making money. It has been selling transparent glass wine sets and tea sets for nearly ten years, and the price has just come down. It allows ordinary people to have the opportunity to buy them and take them home to enjoy themselves. Well, it has been changed to playing with doors and windows. .

Does anyone need it? Too much. In the past, wealthy families used open tiles made of shells to stick to their windows. They were expensive but had poor light transmittance. If you change it to transparent glass, you don't have to imagine it, you will have a ready-made model room in front of you. Looking at the inside from the outside, and then looking at the outside from the inside, two words, transparent!

Can you afford it? Whoever asks this question underestimates the spending power of the wealthy class in the Ming Dynasty. Not to mention just putting it on the window to keep out wind and rain, even if you build a house entirely with colored glass, there are still people who can afford it, and there are more than one or two.

Being able to open a store in the most prosperous area of ​​​​the capital, and also being the first to use colored glass on the windows, the owner of this store is not only wealthy, but also has a very reliable backstage. Otherwise, if you open in such a ostentatious manner in the morning, you will get into trouble in the afternoon.

It's hard to tell who the owner of the shop is, but it should be easy to tell who does the business. But something strange happened this time. Except for the four characters "Sun and Moon Bank" on the plaque at the door, no one could figure out what this store was about.

There are armchairs, coffee tables, desks, and vases on both sides of the door. It doesn't look like a businessman, but more like the front hall of a wealthy family. But the second half of the room was separated by a long counter. Inside, three young clerks were sitting, with paper and pen abacus in front of them. They looked like accountants.

"Brother Wang, you live nearby. Do you know where the bank is?"

Among the crowd of onlookers, there were many officials who were on holiday, and they were also attracted. Due to their inconvenient status, they squeezed to the front to inquire, but they were also full of curiosity and could not bear to leave. I might as well stop shopping now and invite my familiar colleagues to the nearby tea stall for a pot of fragrant tea and some dried fruits, and chat while sipping tea.

"My dear brother, it's not that I'm ignorant, it's that the changes are too fast and I can't cope with them. Well, I haven't figured out what the regulations of the Army Governor's Yamen and the General Staff's Headquarters across the street are. There's a bank here. I'm not sure. Use it!"

The official who was questioned was only in his early fifties, far from old, but when faced with the Sun and Moon Bank, he really couldn't say anything. The last time I came here, this place was still a famous silk and satin shop. After not seeing it for a few days, it quietly underwent a complete makeover.

(End of this chapter)