At midnight, on the streets of the provincial capital.
The master and apprentice, who had been sleeping in the open for two days, finally entered the city and were ready to find a place to worship at the Five Zang Temple!
The two walked towards the commercial street.
The provincial capitals of the Republic of China were dilapidated and shabby, not comparable to those of later generations, but the streets were still lively.
At a glance, several main streets are busy with traffic, including bicycles, rickshaws, and light rail trams.
On both sides of the street, people were coming and going.
There are rickshaw drivers, men and women in fashionable Chinese tunic suits, students in Republican-style school uniforms, ghost guys in suits, local tycoons in robes...
In the open space not far away, some wanderers were showing off their skills.
A skinny old man who was over sixty years old, wielding a pair of wooden hammers in his hands, danced like the wind.
There was a gray-faced, half-grown child on the side, holding a broken gong in his hand, banging it, and shouting hard.
At a glance, there are all kinds of living things, and the fireworks of the world are everywhere.
The times seem to condense at this moment, interweaving a completely different atmosphere.
"Excuse me, students from many universities in Kyoto went on strike and workers went on strike to protest against the ongoing civil war in Beiyang."
"Excuse me, the Northeast King has swept across one side, and the power of the three provinces is under his control."
This is the newsboy shouting.
Newsboy is a very contemporary profession.
Most of them are poor children who barely make a living by selling newspapers. Sanmao in "Sanmao's Wanderings" once did this.
Having stayed in Longhu Mountain all year round and with little information, Zhang Zhiwei was planning to buy a newspaper to learn about the current situation.
Suddenly, there was a commotion ahead.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out to be an old man wearing a melon cap, who had been caught by the patrol.
"Gentlemen, what's the matter?" The old man nodded and said.
The patrol team surrounded the old man: "Take off your hat. I can smell the sour smell on your head from a long distance away."
Upon hearing this, the old man knelt on the ground and kowtowed repeatedly, praying for the patrol to be spared.
"Masters, please spare your life, please forgive me, please just treat me like a fart!"
"Why are you kneeling? The Qing Dynasty is dead. You are not allowed to kneel. If you stand up, we don't want your life. We just want you to cut off your braids!"
The man from the patrol team said as he plucked the melon cap off the old man's head.
Underneath the hat, her braid was revealed.
After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, the officials of the Republic of China prohibited people from wearing boar-skin hairstyles on the grounds that their hair and skin were affected by their parents, and all pigtails were cut off.
This order was initially met with widespread resistance across the country.
The nearly three hundred years of rule by the previous dynasty made the long braid a deep-rooted necessity in the minds of many people.
When orders were given to forcibly cut braids, people could be seen all over the street shouting, kowtowing and begging for their braids to stay.
Now, the hair-shaving order has been implemented for some time. Except for some very servile people, many people have adapted to the new hairstyle.
The old man in front of me is very servile.
Kneeling on the ground, he kowtowed one after another, slapping himself while kowtowing. He looked extremely skilled.
I think that in the early years, I often kowtowed and slapped myself.
We have seen this kind of people a lot, and the patrol team members were unmoved. They grabbed the old man's braid, started from the root of the hair, and cut it with scissors with a click.
A long, dirty braid that had been left on for decades and washed once every six months fell to the ground.
The old man touched the top of his head with a desperate look on his face, confirming that he had lost his braids forever. His body went limp and he fell to the ground.
"Oh my God!"
He wailed, holding the foul-smelling long braid in his hand and sticking it to his face, tears streaming down his cheeks.
"Bah, what's the matter with urine?"
The patrol team cursed and pushed everyone away: "Let's go, let's disperse, there's nothing to see!"
After the patrol left, the remaining crowd watched for a while, touched the thick hair on their heads, and then walked away.
Only the old man was left holding his pigtails in his arms, crying and mourning, looking as sad as his dead son.
Zhang Jingqing didn't seem to be surprised by this. She didn't look at it more or comment on it. She put her hands behind her back and walked in front of her own business.
Zhang Zhiwei followed closely behind. He couldn't relate to this kind of thing.
Whether in terms of aesthetics, practicality, or other aspects, there is nothing good about boar skin hairstyles.
After this interruption, the newsboy also walked away. Zhang Zhiwei was too lazy to look for him. Eating was important.
They happened to see a restaurant on the roadside. The decoration was quite luxurious, so the master and the apprentice walked in.
"How many of you are there?" the waiter from the restaurant greeted.
Zhang Zhiwei placed a few coins on the counter: "You two, if you have anything delicious, bring it over."
Having just wiped out a group of bandits and gained dozens of oceans, Zhang Zhiwei is not short of money now and is very generous with his money.
Zhang Jingqing didn't say much about this. The Taoist priests of the Zhengyi Sect did not have as many rules as the Quanzhen Sect.
"Master Tao, look at it, the delicious food will be served soon!"
The waiter swept the money into the tray, poured the tea diligently, and then went to the back kitchen to order all the signature dishes.
Don't look at the TV series, where you can be rewarded with as many oceans as you want.
But in fact, these days, Dayang’s purchasing power is not low.
One big ocean is one dollar, which is equal to two medium oceans (five-cent silver dollar), ten small oceans (one-cent silver dollar), or one hundred copper dollars (one-cent copper).
For example, the waiter's monthly salary is only about two yuan, and the chef's monthly salary is about five yuan.
The current prices are as follows: rice is three cents a pound, millet is one cent, beef is one cent and a half, mutton is one cent and three cents, pork is one cent and a cent, sugar is one cent, cotton cloth is about one cent and two cents per square foot, and vegetables range from a few cents.
Two pieces of ocean are sixty-six pounds of rice.
In exchange for millet, it would be two hundred kilograms, enough for a family to eat and drink.
The dozens of pieces of ocean in Zhang Zhiwei's hands were nothing in the eyes of those dignitaries.
But for ordinary poor families, it is a huge sum of money, and the family can have enough food and drink for several years.
Touching the big head pattern on the ocean, Zhang Zhiwei said to his heart, it really fulfilled the old saying, if you kill people and set fire with a golden belt, there will be no corpses when building roads and bridges.
Soon, various meat dishes were served one after another.
Both the master and the disciple were practitioners and could eat a lot. It didn't take long for a table full of good wine and food to be devoured.
The dishes next to Zhang Zhiwei were piled in a thick pile.
The dishes next to Zhang Jingqing were piled higher than his.
There is a scene in "Miscellaneous Boys" where the two apprentices and the master eat plain chicken.
Hmm... I just need an apprentice.
After eating and drinking enough, Zhang Jingqing and Zhang Zhiwei stayed in this restaurant for one night, and got up and headed to the train station early the next morning.
The Celestial Master is naturally not a pedantic person. He can ride on a train, but certainly not on a horse.
In this regard, Zhang Zhiwei raised his hands and feet in agreement.
Speaking of which, he had never ridden on such a coal-fired steam train, and he couldn't help but be curious and wanted to see it.
