fake gentry

Famous scholars of the Jin Dynasty both preferred to live in seclusion and cultivate their reputation.

The purpose was not true seclusion, but rather to gain fame.

For commoners without prominent figures, cultivating one's reputation was an exclusive activity within the aristocratic circle, serving as an important marker distinguishing ordinary scholars from top-tier celebrities.

To live in seclusion, one must build a hut, but building a hut is both simple and complex.

Aristocratic families of high status only needed a thatched hut to invite friends and attract many people to come and visit, leaving behind various beautiful stories.

People like Xie Hong must find another way.

If you don't have the resources, you can make up for it with the facilities. Building a garden is obviously nonsense, but you can create a villa that is refreshing, captivating, and hard to leave.

Over the next few days, the refugees divided into groups of four and worked hard to harvest rock honey, reaping two to three hundred catties every day.

Chen San went down the mountain every day to trade with the Dong family, and gradually exchanged his earnings for bamboo, wood and fodder.

Xie Hong then mobilized his financial resources, offering artisans fifty coins a day and laborers twenty coins a day. Dong Xuan selected more than thirty construction artisans from his clan to come to Taoping to follow Xie Hong's instructions.

Now that the farming season is over, in addition to the able-bodied men responsible for guarding the fortress, nearly a hundred self-cultivating farmers have come to work as laborers to earn money.

After selecting the location of the villa, Xie Hong immediately presented several pre-designed sketches.

Those sketches not only stunned the craftsmen of the Dong family, but also left Dong Xuan and Chen San dumbfounded.

Architectural drawings of that era only had two-dimensional views, but Xie Hong drew them using three-dimensional views.

By following these blueprints, craftsmen can achieve twice the result with half the effort, not only saving a lot of materials but also speeding up the construction process.

Anyone who can thoroughly understand Xie Hong's drawings can be called a master architect and even make a name for themselves in history. Unfortunately, they don't understand what a three-dimensional view is.

Chen San increasingly felt that Xie Hong was no ordinary person. He looked at him like a monster, but in reality, Xie Hong only had this much knowledge. If you really asked him to explain something, he would be completely clueless.

However, he still marked the key points on the design drawings.

For example, the walls should be hollow partition walls, and the floor should be made into a continuous heated kang (a traditional Chinese bed-stove).

Although Mount Lu has always been a popular summer resort, it is damp in summer and cold in winter.

During this era, heated kang beds had already appeared in the north. Li Daoyuan's "Commentary on the Waterways Classic" records relevant descriptions of heated kang beds in the north during the Jin Dynasty, but this type of heating system did not spread to the Jiangzuo region.

So how did people in the Eastern Jin Dynasty keep warm in winter?

Top-tier noble families would build special heated rooms for warmth, ordinary noble families would use incense burners, while poor families would use hearths.

As for ordinary people?

Firewood costs money, and we simply couldn't afford it, so we had no choice but to tough it out.

Without a heated kang (a traditional heated brick bed) and without partition walls, even the emperor would freeze to death in winter.

Xie Hong vaguely remembered the construction methods of modern Northeast China kang (heated brick bed) on Douyin (TikTok). He could simply copy how to build the kang and how to make the partition walls. As for the specific operation, that was the job of the craftsmen.

But he wasn't idle either; he called in two craftsmen to repair his bathroom, which was the real focus.

In modern times, we're used to showering every morning and evening, and it's really unpleasant to go two days without showering.

Lushan has no shortage of water; all we need to do is divert the stream water down from the mountain ravine using bamboo poles. Now that we have the materials and manpower, we must build a decent bathhouse.

Moreover, the weather is getting hotter and hotter. Even if you're not doing any work, you'll be covered in sweat. Taking a cold shower is fine, but it's not worth it if you catch a cold, get pneumonia, or something and die.

There are no antibiotics in this era.

The bathroom should be connected to the kitchen so that it can be easily connected to the heated kang (a traditional heated platform bed), thus avoiding waste of firewood. It doesn't need to be very large, but it must be divided into three rooms.

The outer room is used for changing clothes and storing miscellaneous items, while the middle room is a separate bathroom. For the time being, we couldn't get a hot and cold water system, so we could only build a bathtub.

He wanted to set up a sauna in the inner room. This thing was super simple. All he needed to do was connect a small bamboo tube to a stream to make a small pool, build a stove, fill an iron pot with stones and dry-heat it until it was red-hot, then splash water on it.

"The inner room has no windows, but the middle room has wooden windows for ventilation and defogging, and the floor is connected by a hidden drain for easy drainage."

After Xie Hong finished speaking, the people surrounding him stared at him blankly.

Liu Chong frowned slightly, staring at Xie Hong's sketch, scratched the back of his head, and muttered, "Does taking a shower really need to be this complicated?"

Xie Hong glared at him: "You'll find out when the time comes."

After saying that, he led the craftsmen to select pine wood from the timber sent by the Dong family.

Bathrooms must be made of pine, and it must be old pine, because old pine has more resin, is more resistant to water soaking and less prone to rot. Saunas especially need freshly cut old pine, as the wet wood will release a strong pine fragrance when steamed.

Ah Heng chattered on the side: "Once the bathroom is built, the young master can ask the clan chief to go to the county to buy bath beans for him. Only those with added fragrances are worthy of the young master's status."

Xie Hong's heart suddenly stirred. He paused for a moment, stunned.

The most commonly used cleaning product among the gentry at that time was bath beans, the main ingredient of which was soybeans or mung beans ground into fine powder, combined with soapberry and pig pancreas. Some high-end formulas also added angelica, atractylodes, and spices. It was included in Ge Hong's "Elbow-Side Emergency Prescriptions".

He definitely couldn't handle cement or gunpowder, but soap was a simple thing to make.

Alkali water can be extracted from wood ash, and when slaked lime is mixed with alkali water, it can undergo a saponification reaction with oils.

I'm a fucking genius.

He immediately found Chen San: "Master Chen, how much profit is left from the transactions these past few days?"

After considering it in his mind, Chen San bowed and said, "My lord, there are about 500,000 coins left, all of which are stored in Dong's Fortress."

Xie Hong turned to Liu Chong and said, "Brother, I have a very important matter for you to handle. Do you dare to go?"

Liu Chong's expression immediately hardened, but he pretended to be indifferent: "I am not a slave to be driven around at will."

Xie Hong found it amusing and turned to A Ling, instructing her, "A Ling, you can go now."

Before A-Ling could speak, Liu Chong became anxious and blurted out, his face flushed, "I didn't say I wasn't going."

Chen San watched from the side and secretly shook his head. Zhuo Zhi was no match for Xie Langjun at all.

Xie Hong pulled Liu Chong aside and gave him some instructions, then had a handyman from Dong's fortified village follow him. Liu Chong then drove the oxcart down the mountain to find Dong Xuan.

After seeing Liu Chong off, Xie Hong then greeted Li Shi and the two young girls.

Fill a large urn with water and then pour in the wood ash.

"My lord," Ah Heng finally couldn't hold back any longer, "what is this for?"

Xie Hong didn't even look up: "Take a shower."

"Take a bath?" Ah Heng's eyes widened in surprise. "How can you use ash balls, my lord? Aren't there soapberries?"

Xie Hong smiled, then turned to Li and asked, "Is the cloth ready?"

Li nodded and began filtering the water in the large vat according to Xie Hong's instructions. She rinsed the water three times, poured the filtered water into another large vat, and finally set it aside to settle.

After a night, the water in the jar turned into a transparent light brown. Xie Hong smelled it and found that the alkalinity of the water was not too strong, but it should be enough for making soap.

Three days later, Liu Chong returned with a few men in an oxcart, and said to Xie Hong with an arrogant look, "I have done everything you asked me to do."

There were four pieces of pork, two large earthenware urns, and two burlap sacks on the oxcart.

Don't assume that pork from the Eastern Jin Dynasty was unpalatable because of its strong smell. Castrated pigs existed as early as the Shang and Zhou Dynasties. The term "豮" refers to a castrated pig. The Book of Fan Shengzhi from the Han Dynasty clearly records castration techniques, and this technique was fully popularized by the Eastern Jin Dynasty.

The Dong family raised pigs in their fortified village. A large, fat pig could sell for about a thousand coins. Xie Hong had Liu Chong buy two pigs. The meat would last them for several days, and the rendered pork fat would be stored in those two urns.

The sack contained snail shells that Liu Chong had collected over the past three days. There were plenty of them in the rice paddies and ditches. They were sold for one coin each, and the women and children of Dongshi Wubao had earned the most easy money of their lives.

"Take it off."

Following Xie Hong's instructions, the refugees unloaded the lard and sacks, and then lit a fire.

Once the fire was burning, both sacks of snail shells were poured in and placed on the charcoal fire to be roasted.

The calcined snail shells were put into a stone mortar and pounded into powder. Then, alkaline water that had been settled was added, stirred, and allowed to settle.

Finally, filter it through a cloth.

"Brother Liu, it's up to you now."