On the day of your birthday, congratulations come from all directions.
The archway outside the Chao Mansion was filled with firecrackers and gongs and drums. The dragon and lion dances were trembling bravely and vividly, as if the beasts from heaven came down to earth to congratulate.
Only one side door is open all year round. On Mr. Chao’s birthday, all three rooms were finally opened. The wide open door allowed guests to file in.
Celebrating a birthday in a high-level courtyard is completely different from that of a rural family.
For a small family, a banquet is prepared for a birthday, and the children and grandchildren kowtow to each other, which is considered complete.
No matter how big the scene is, financial resources and relatives will not be able to support it.
The Chao family has been rich and distinguished for many generations, so the 60th birthday of Chao Bingzhong is naturally extremely grand.
When a distinguished guest comes to visit, the concierge will first hand over an invitation with a name card, and the concierges on the left and right will register the visitor's name and family members.
When the guests put down their congratulatory gifts and walked out of the porter's room, an old servant would naturally raise his voice and try his best to shout out the guest's name and the amount of the congratulatory gifts.
At this time, if the guests give generous gifts, they will naturally win applause from those around them.
But what if the gift is too shabby?
For the host family, the visitor is just a guest, and sending goose feathers from thousands of miles away, but the return gift is light and affectionate. Naturally, such a generous family has nothing to say!
However, the host has no control over what other guests say.
As the old saying goes, saliva drowns people, but this guest is just here to join in the fun, and watching the fun is not a big deal at all.
The shabby congratulatory gift naturally became the talk of the town. If you were shy, you would make fun of it a few times behind your back. But if you were thick-skinned, you might have to complain about it on the spot, leaving the slutty guests in disgrace.
Now that this is done, the roll call is over, and the guests are hurrying to the screen wall.
Male guests go to the left and female guests go to the right.
Despite the different directions, after passing the dozens of meters long screen wall, the two of them decided to meet behind the screen wall.
Behind the screen wall of Chaofu is naturally unusual. There are cloister rooms on the east and west sides of the 100-meter-wide square, surrounded by hand-curved verandahs. The floor is paved with huge bricks, the path is made of white stones, and a five-meter-wide red cloth stretches straight into the second entrance gate.
Here, as soon as you enter the front yard, is the place where the host family entertains guests and discusses matters.
The so-called "no exit from the main door" and "no step forward from the second door" refers to the second entrance door in front.
When you get here, don't rush in. The thousand-year-old welcoming pine behind the screen wall is green, dense and vigorous, and its knots stretch out like a sacred tree.
Originally, this was just an ordinary old tree, but green pines have always been long-lived. When the old lady’s birthday comes, the welcoming pine will have auspicious meaning.
Under the tree here, there are dozens of baskets of steamed noodles and longevity peaches.
Each one is made of white jade, fragrant, round, with red tips and green leaves. There are also auspicious red cloth strips hanging from the roots of the leaves such as longevity as Nanshan, blessings as the East China Sea, longevity and a smile.
Don’t eat this thing with your hands. The original intention of longevity peach is to increase longevity and happiness!
Guests must pick up the longevity peaches with their own hands and hang them up on a high branch, euphemistically called to increase the longevity of the old man.
The higher it is hung, the happier the owner’s family will be.
Within an hour, the originally green welcoming pine tree turned out to be full of fruits and fragrant. The red and pink longevity peaches swayed in the wind, just like the flat peach trees on the Yaochi!
The congratulatory gifts are given, the auspiciousness is obtained, and the guests have to move on.
As soon as you enter the courtyard, the imperial palace is bounded by the central axis of the house road, with three cross-courtyards in the east and west.
Renkuanyuan, Wenhuayuan, Chongliyuan, Rongshoutang, Guangdeyuan and Gongyiyuan, the six spans are symmetrically distributed in the shape of a field. The young master and the maidservant are with you...
The clothing, food, housing and transportation of nearly a thousand people are all in these six courtyards. They have strict rules and regulations. Although there are many people, there is no chaos.
Go to the end of the road to the house, and after passing the last five entrance gates, you will find the backyard and the Business Hall Pier that depend on the Songjiang River.
Stop talking and get down to business.
Needless to say, there are sets of courtyards in the cross-courtyard. When guests come to celebrate a birthday, the doors of the other courtyards are closed. If you want to leave, you can only go through the cross-courtyard verandah.
There is only one courtyard with a wide open door, which is the Rongshou Hall located in the middle on the east side!
Rongshou, Rongshou, Rongshou, Rongshou, this place looks like the place where the old man of the imperial family retired.
Many guests followed the red cloth into the Rongshou Hall, passed through the Futang in the outer courtyard, and then entered the inner gate before arriving at the Rongshou Hall.
Mr. Chao is currently sitting in the hall with a plate full of fresh fruits, wearing a birthday coat and wedding boots, happily congratulating guests and their children and grandchildren.
Yue Guanchao and Song Siyuan acted as chief attendants and followed Lou's master and apprentice. After going through all kinds of difficulties and dangers, they finally breathed a sigh of relief when they saw their true master.
"Oh, Mr. Chao, you live a long life. I am here to congratulate you."
The grandfather of the Chao family is named Bingzhong. He is sixty years old. He is neither deaf nor blind. He has white hair with silver threads. He wears a satin longevity gown, a light gray robe and long boots, and a bag of paste in his hand. The walnuts are so kind.
It’s just that at the age of sixty, why do you have so many wrinkles and wrinkles as if you were seventy or eighty?
"Hey, Xiaolou, you are getting old too. Look, you have gray hair."
When the leader of the building heard this, he recalled the feeling of studying in the theater troupe when he was young and meeting the head of the Chao family. Then he touched his temples and felt a little dazed for a moment:
"That's right, those of us who travel around the world and are very old because of the weather and the sun, how can we compare with the old man, who can live for thousands of generations and live a hundred years."
Chao Bingzhong waved his hand:
"Hey, there's no such thing as a thousand-year-old person. Those are all lies. My old man has stopped taking care of things. He just wants to live a few more years by not doing heavy work."
He looked at Lou Yunxian with clear eyes:
"This kid is your apprentice?"
