Taichang Ming Dynasty

Chapter 783 Reply to the Visiting Letter
The soldier failed to recognize the eunuch's casual attire on the donkey rider, so his attitude was not as polite as it had been towards Qi Biaojia.

However, the eunuch riding the donkey was not annoyed. He smiled slightly and reached out his hand to his attendant. The attendant immediately stepped forward and took his arm.

Using the momentum, the eunuch dismounted from the donkey. After landing, he first straightened his black gauze hat with curved legs, then adjusted the sunflower pattern on his robe before looking up at the soldier and smiling as he said, "My name is Gao Fengqiu. My godfather is Gao Shiming, the director of the Customs Administration. He is currently staying at the post station with Auditor Pang from the Imperial Household Department and Inspector Fang from the Western Depot."

At first, the model soldier wondered what the "General Administration of Customs" was, but as soon as he heard the words "Eunuch's Office" and "Western Depot," he immediately understood that they were people from the palace!

The soldier's expression changed instantly. His arrogance vanished in a flash, replaced by a fawning smile, and his previously stiff posture quickly slumped. "Oh, it's Eunuch Gao! I was blind to your greatness and have been very rude. May I ask what brings you here today?"

"It's nothing serious," Gao Fengqiu said, maintaining his composed demeanor. "It's just that my godfather and the two eunuchs, Pang and Fang, want to arrange a meeting with Governor Sun. They asked me to deliver a visiting card and inquire when Governor Sun would be available." With that, Gao Fengqiu pulled a visiting card from his sleeve and handed it over.

The model soldier accepted the visiting card with both hands, his fingertips trembling slightly. Unlike when he accepted Qi Biaojia's visiting card, he didn't turn around directly. Instead, he stepped aside to make way and gestured for him to come in: "Eunuch Gao, please come in! There's tea in the gatehouse. Please sit down and rest for a while."

"Thank you for your trouble." Gao Fengqiu nodded slightly and walked towards the government office.

The standard-bearer quickly followed and led the donkey, shouting to his companion, "What are you standing there for? Hurry up and lead the donkey to the stable in the backyard, feed it some hay, and don't neglect it!"

"Oh, okay." Another soldier quickly responded, stepped forward to take the donkey rope from the attendant, and led the donkey to the backyard.

Qi Biaojia stood at the street corner, watching all of this unfold, a faint smile gradually appearing on his lips.

"Interesting." Qi Biaojia sighed softly, flicked open his folding fan, and swayed away.

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In the signing room of the joint government office, sunlight streamed in obliquely through the window lattice, falling on the pear wood desk in the center, making even the dust in the air clearly visible.

Sun Chengzong sat hunched over in the armchair behind his desk, his brows furrowed into a deep frown. The pile of documents in front of him was like a small mountain—records of the canal transport; reports from the dredging sites; taxes from the one prefecture, one state, and three counties under his jurisdiction; reports on the reinforcement of soldiers in the three garrisons; training records of the governor's battalion; and the storage status of various warehouses. It seemed like there was never enough work to do all day long.

He raised his hand and rubbed his temples, unaware that his fingertips were stained with ink. He only felt the muscles in the back of his neck were tense, and his shoulders felt heavy.

A sudden thirst surged up, and Sun Chengzong reached for the teacup on the table. His fingertips touched the cool porcelain, and he realized that the tea had been left to cool for half an hour. Lifting the lid, he found only a thin layer of cold water inside, with a few withered tea leaves sinking to the bottom, lifeless and droopy.

Sun Chengzong let out a long sigh, put the teacup back in its place, supported himself on the table with his left hand, and gently massaged his neck with his right hand, his joints making a soft "click" sound.

A moment later, he looked towards the door and called out softly, "Someone come here."

The door was quickly pushed open, and a young man dressed in a blue yamen runner's uniform bowed as he entered. He stood by the door, clutching a gray tablecloth in his hand: "What are your orders, Your Excellency?"

Sun Chengzong gently placed the empty teacup on the table, then glanced at the two other scribes who were engrossed in copying at the other tables: "Replace my teacup, as well as the teacups of the two scribes."

"Yes." The yamen runner replied, took a wooden tray from the tea table against the wall, first put away Sun Chengzong's teacup, then walked to the two clerks' desks, took the empty cups they handed him, and was about to turn around and leave when he saw a clerk wearing a blue cloth robe hurriedly brush past his shoulder and walk in, holding two envelopes in his hands.

This was Qian Shuban, the gatekeeper, in charge of receiving and sending letters and delivering visiting cards. He walked quickly to Sun Chengzong's desk, bowed, and said in a low voice, "Minister Sun."

Sun Chengzong was rubbing his temples when he heard the voice. He stopped and looked up at him: "What's wrong, Secretary Qian? What news have you got this time?"

“Reporting to Your Excellency, it’s not news,” Qian, the clerk, stepped forward and gently placed the envelope on the table. “It’s a visiting card.”

Sun Chengzong frowned slightly, a hint of impatience flashing in his eyes: "Whose invitation is this this time?"

“Reporting to Your Excellency, there are two visiting cards in total. The first one is from a Zhejiang scholar who calls himself Qi Biaojia,” Qian, the clerk, first pushed the plain-covered visiting card on the left forward, “He said that his father is named Qi Cheng, who was also a Jinshi in the thirty-second year of the Wanli reign, and was in the same cohort as Your Excellency.”

Upon hearing the words "the thirty-second year of the Wanli reign," Sun Chengzong's brows relaxed slightly. Although he wasn't particularly close to Qi Cheng, he had met him a few times at their classmate banquet that year, exchanged a few polite words, and had some recollection of him.

Before he could think it through, Qian, the clerk, handed him another visiting card with a gold-embossed cover: "This second one was delivered by a eunuch."

"A eunuch?" Sun Chengzong was about to take Qi Biaojia's visiting card when he heard this and his hand froze in mid-air.

“That’s right.” Qian Shuban nodded. “The eunuch called himself Gao Fengqiu and said he was a seventh-rank attendant of the Directorate of Ceremonial. He claimed that Gao Shiming, the director of the Customs Administration, Pang Tianshou, the deputy director of the Audit Bureau of the Directorate of Palace Attendants, and Fang Zhenghua, the inspector of the Western Depot’s External Inspection Division, were all staying at the post station and wanted to arrange a time to meet with you.”

“I know about the Western Depot and the Directorate of Palace Attendants, but what is this Customs Administration?” Sun Chengzong asked. “That Gao Fengqiu said that the Customs Administration is a newly established government office in the palace, whose main responsibility is to set up customs and collect customs duties.” Gao Fengqiu’s statement was very vague, so Qian Shuban could only relay it in a general way.

"Where is Gao Fengqiu now? Has he already left?" Sun Chengzong asked after a moment's thought.
"He's resting at the gatehouse. I've already had the yamen runners serve him tea." The clerk, Qian, proactively asked, "Would you like to invite him in now, or..."

Sun Chengzong did not immediately respond to Qian Shuban's words, but simply raised his right hand and gestured for him to wait. Then, Sun Chengzong turned slightly to the side, his gaze passing over the pile of documents on the table and landing on Tang Shuban, who was bent over copying documents on his left. Tang Shuban was in charge of his schedule and always carried a memo book full of annotations.

“Officer Tang,” Sun Chengzong said, looking exhausted, “take a look at my recent schedule and see if I have any free time?”

Upon hearing this, Tang, the clerk, immediately put down his pen, leaned over, and took the memo book, which had only a few pages left. Tang first licked his index finger, moistened the tip with saliva, and then quickly began to flip through it.

As he read, he muttered, "Your Excellency, tomorrow you must inspect the dredging project on the Grand Canal, the day after tomorrow you must inspect the military settlements in the eastern suburbs, the day after that you must inspect the grain at the Ever-Normal Granary, and the day after that you must meet with the military officers of the Left and Right Guards of Tianjin to discuss the replenishment of military households; after that, you must also find time to review the drills of the Governor's Battalion." After finishing his work, Tang Shu simply closed the memo and shook his head, saying, "Your Excellency, your schedule is already full recently, there is really no free time."

Sun Chengzong was annoyed by what he heard, and his brows furrowed again. He sighed heavily, reached for the two visiting cards on the table, and first opened the one with a gold-embossed cover. The letter was on gold-flecked paper commonly used in the palace, and the contents were very formal, nothing more than polite remarks from Gao Shiming and others who were "on official business in Tianjin and have long admired the reputation of the Grand Secretary. They wish to pay a visit to discuss local affairs." He quickly glanced at it, casually put the letter back in the envelope, and then picked up the plain visiting card that Qi Biaojia had sent.

"Postpone anything that can be delayed or squeezed out," Sun Chengzong said to Tang Shuban while tearing open Qi Biaojia's visiting card. "Make room for tomorrow first."

"Yes, I'll adjust it right away." Tang Shuban paused for a moment, then picked up a pen and quickly wrote a sentence on the memo.

After Tang, the clerk, finished writing, Sun Chengzong looked at Qian, the clerk: "Go to the gatehouse now and tell Gao Fengqiu that I can meet with the three eunuchs tomorrow. Today I am busy with many matters, so I will not invite him in to sit down."

"Yes," Qian, the clerk, bowed in response, but did not immediately leave. Sun Chengzong was looking down at Qi Biaojia's visiting card, his fingertips lightly tracing the edge of the letter, seemingly still pondering it. The signing room fell silent for a moment, with only the occasional rustling of the windowpane from the wind outside.

Sun Chengzong hadn't originally planned to meet Qi Biaojia. A scholar visiting his door was merely an attempt to gain recognition through his father's connections, offering little practical benefit to his official duties. However, when he unfolded the visiting card and saw the letter stating, "My father, Qi Cheng, has been promoted from Prefect of Suzhou to Assistant Minister of War, and will soon be going to the capital for his new post, possibly passing through Tianjin," he felt it necessary to give this fellow scholar some face. Although Qi Cheng's promotion from a local official to a capital official wasn't of high rank, he was still a fellow scholar from the same cohort of the imperial examinations. Refusing his son outright would make him seem cold-hearted.

He placed the visiting card on the table and asked Secretary Tang, "Secretary Tang, do I have a dinner engagement coming up soon?"

Tang Shuban quickly flipped through the memo and found it: "Reporting to the Prime Minister, three days from now, you have arranged to have dinner with the owners of various businesses in Tianjin Zhongwei at 'Jinmenlou', mainly to discuss the matter of changing commercial tax to invoices. Several commanders from the Shen Temporary Office will also be present."

Sun Chengzong nodded, having made up his mind. He turned to Qian Shuban and said, "Send a letter to that young master Qi, saying that I am busy with affairs recently and it is inconvenient to meet him alone. Three days later, I am having a banquet with the owners of various businesses, and I invite him to attend."

Qian, the clerk, breathed a sigh of relief and quickly replied, "Yes, I will draft the letter right away." With that, he took the two visiting cards and quietly left the signing room.

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As the sun gradually sank behind the eaves of the houses on the west side of the city, it dyed the sky a deep orange-red.

At the Pillow Moon Pavilion in the south of the city, the main hall was packed with more than a dozen square tables. Porters in short clothes, merchants wearing square scarves, and travelers carrying bundles gathered around the tables, chatting and joking, each one louder than the last.

The waiter, Ah Zhu, wore a faded blue cotton jacket and had a greasy cloth draped over his shoulder. He moved back and forth between the tables and chairs. "Master Zhang, your braised pork knuckle is here!" "Mr. Li, the pot of strong liquor you ordered is warmed up for you!" His voice was clear and loud, and with each call, a customer responded with a smile.

Behind the counter, the elderly shopkeeper, Mr. Wang, was working on his abacus. Every now and then, he would glance up at the main hall and call out to Ah Zhu if he saw any empty bowls and plates on a table: "Quickly clear the bowls from the third table on the east side!" After finishing a calculation, he would get up, scoop half a spoonful of wine from the wine jar, pour it into a rough porcelain bowl, and serve it to a regular customer at the next table, chatting for a bit along the way.

Just then, a peddler carrying a bamboo basket walked in. He wore a straw hat, his trousers were splattered with mud, and several silk sachets hung from his basket. The hall was really crowded, and he circled around twice without finding an empty table. Finally, he spotted a table near the door that seemed to have an empty seat, so he went over. Three sweaty porters were sitting at that table, engrossed in eating steamed buns. When they saw him coming, they only glanced at him before moving aside to make room.

The peddler put down his basket and had just sat down when Ah Zhu quickly came over, draping a cloth over his shoulder: "Sir, what would you like to order? We have noodles, braised meat, stir-fried vegetables, scallion pancakes, and we also have sorghum and rice wine. Please feel free to order!"

The peddler rubbed his hands together, his voice a little hoarse: "Give me a bowl of shredded pork noodles, a plate of stir-fried vegetables, a pot of strong liquor, and a plate of salted beans to go with the liquor."

"Alright!" Ah Zhu shouted in response, then turned and yelled towards the kitchen, "One bowl of shredded pork noodles! One plate of stir-fried vegetables! One bottle of strong liquor!" A voice quickly came from the kitchen, "Understood!"

Hearing the commotion, Manager Wang took out a rough porcelain wine pot from behind the counter, along with a small dish. He scooped out a handful of salted beans from a jar, put them on a tray, and called out to Ah Zhu, "Bring the wine and beans to the customer first!"

Ah Zhu hurriedly ran over, picked up the tray and placed it on the peddler's table, smiling as he said, "Sir, please have some wine first, the hot dishes will be here soon!" The peddler nodded, picked up the wine pot, poured himself a cup of wine, pinched a bean and put it in his mouth, slowly chewing it.

Just as A-Zhu was about to turn back to the counter to return the tray, a man dressed in a blue yamen runner's uniform lifted the curtain and entered. This man had a knife hanging from his waist and a somewhat serious expression on his face; he was none other than Zhao Er, a yamen runner working for the governor's office. A-Zhu recognized him and quickly went to greet him, his face beaming with a smile: "Master Zhao, are you here for a meal today, or do you have official business?"

Zhao Er waved his hand, his gaze sweeping across the lobby without lingering on the customers, and walked straight to the counter: "Looking for your manager." Zhao Er's voice wasn't loud, but it made the customers at the nearby tables subconsciously lower their voices, and the noise in the lobby immediately subsided. The peddler from before also quietly cast his gaze over.

(End of this chapter)