Chapter 67 Mill at the Yudao River

Yudao River really deserves its reputation.Springs rush down from the mountains, mills are built beside mountains and rivers, and valleys are full of poplars, pagoda trees and tall and low shrubs.The mottled tree shade, the gurgling stream and the thick stone mill wall seem to keep the hot summer out of the mountain. After settling down, Huiyin and Sicheng walked along the stream while familiarizing themselves with the surrounding environment. Near the upstream, there is a mill named "Qingheyi".They went in.When the miller saw the two gentlemen from the city coming, he stopped what he was doing and came to say hello.He smiled kindly, with specks of flour on his face and head, and some of them could understand Shanxi dialect with jerky syllables, while others could not.

Sicheng is very interested in the structure of the mill: the impact of spring water from the mountain pushes the large wooden wheel outside the mill, and the wooden wheel drives the rotating stone mill inside the mill to grind wheat into flour.Due to the continuous vibration of the mill, the house cannot use the common way of issuing coupons in the local houses, but adopts a particularly thick beam frame.In order to keep the flour clean, smooth wooden floors are laid inside the mill.Such an elegant structure is naturally suitable for a comfortable and cool summer house. The guy told Huiyin that the business here was booming in the early years. More than 5,000 bags of flour could be produced a year, and the price of each bag was about two yuan. People's lives were very easy.These years have failed, the mills have been rented out to foreigners to build villas, and only this one "Qingheyi" is left, and it seems that they can't sustain it.Although the stage in Guandi Temple is quite big, the village has not come to sing opera for four years.

Huiyin told the man that he lived in a mill below.The man narrowed his eyes with a smile, and said: Everyone in the village recognizes the foreign missionary, he is quite nice. It turns out that there is a Tieduo in the Guandi Temple in the village. The elders say that it was given to the descendants of Queen Qingcheng in the village by Emperor Wanli.Somehow this Tieduo fell into the hands of an antique dealer and was bought by this missionary.He thought Tieduo was fun, and played it at night when he had nothing to do.The villagers heard the bell and discussed that it was an ancestral treasure of the Lu family in the village, and that it should not fall into the hands of foreigners; they found the missionary and sincerely offered to buy Tiduo back at the original price, but the missionary did not expect it. He readily returned Tieduo to the villagers without asking for anything, and now that Tiduo is still being offered in Guandi Temple.

Huiyin was a little confused, and asked: "How can the descendants of King Cheng of Ming Dynasty be named Lu?" Mentioning the history of this village made the narrator more interested.He said that King Cheng of Ming Qing was the direct younger brother of Emperor Yongle.Everyone in this village knew that their surname should be Zhu.During the Yongzheng period, the imperial court ordered them to change their surnames from Zhu to Lu.There are records in their genealogy, and the method of ranking them strictly according to the generational number makes them not mistaken about the genealogy of the descendants of this line.

Huiyin and Sicheng walked back slowly.Hui Yin said: "Don't look at her working in a mill now, she is a royal nobleman. And the woman we hired to help fetch water and wash clothes may also be the daughter-in-law of a prince or grandson." "I didn't expect this," Sicheng said with a smile. "After hearing so much from him, I just thought that since there are princes from the Ming Dynasty here, there must be buildings from the Ming Dynasty." After returning to the villa, they took out the map and circled it, planning to start from the Yudao River and focus on the temple buildings in several neighboring counties. It is estimated that it will take about a month.

Fei Zhengqing and Fei Weimei brought Chinese textbooks, English-Chinese dictionaries and boxes of square characters from Beijing, and Weimei also carried a picture clip and paints.They originally planned to spend a quiet summer vacation in Yudao River, but Ke Sicheng and Huiyin's plan attracted them.Fairbank was already interested in Chinese history and culture, while Fei Weimei liked Chinese art more. Without much hesitation, they accompanied Sicheng and Huiyin to participate in the inspection of ancient buildings.