Chapter 2108 Flower Struggle (16)

The whole of March seems to be used for sacrifices. This month is not only Mazu’s birthday, but also a solar term called "Qingming". During this time, Chinese people will use it to worship their ancestors, and some people will also go out and have fun.

When Nick was in Macau, he met a funeral procession. They would hold an umbrella called a "soul-shielding umbrella". The purpose seemed to be to protect the soul of the deceased from being harmed by the sun. Under the umbrella stood a man holding a memorial tablet for his parents.

The "filial son" who cried bitterly.

There are also many people making sacrifices after arriving at the cemetery, but these tributes to relatives will not be eaten like the tributes to Mazu. They will be left there after the sacrifices are done, and will be eaten by hungry wanderers soon.

Already.

Children will play with a toy called a paper kite, and they will not learn to cry like people visiting graves in the story of "Meng Mu's Three Moves."

Mencius is not as famous as Confucius. He appeared on the historical stage more than 70 years after Confucius's death, and he always respected Confucius as his teacher. Like Confucius, he came from a humble background, and he also received a good education under the meticulous care of his mother.

.

His works "Shangmeng" and "Xiameng" collect dialogues between him and the monarchs of various vassal states, which outline his moral concepts and political opinions. He spoke sharply and dared to speak out, and did not deliberately introduce a program for governing the country.

, but the origin of public opinion government.

"The Doctrine of the Mean" is a moral system based on which morality maintains an impartial state between the two extremes. According to Confucius, "Zhong" and "Harmony" are the source of all order and moral concepts. The book

While some passages in it are very telling, including one that describes what a gentleman should do, as the sage Confucius understood it, The Doctrine of the Mean can feel extremely tedious to read.

The priest decided to treat the Admiral with a homeopathic remedy, Belladonna, to relieve the Admiral's pulsating headache and high fever. It was used as a mydriatic in Spain and women believed that it could give them beautiful and deep eyes.

The admiral's doctors disagreed. They believed that the admiral's illness was caused by "anxious fire attacking the heart" and should be treated with acupuncture.

We cannot ignore the role of Chinese doctors and their valuable medical experience. The method of vaccination was introduced to Europe from China. The method is very simple, which is to prick the patient's nostril with a cotton swab dipped in virus. Acupuncture is also used.

To inoculate with cowpox, prick the skin of your arm with a needle and drop the vaccinia herpes liquid on it.

However, the priest insisted that the Admiral should be given some sedatives.

The Admiral's illness is acute, and as long as Guangzhou is safe and sound before he leaves office, he won't be so worried.

The admiral finally accepted treatment from the priest and Chinese medicine. He fell asleep after being pricked with silver needles like a hedgehog. At this time, Nick and the priest left the admiral's mansion. The admiral's second concubine escorted them out and invited them

Come again tomorrow.

Immediately afterwards, Nick went to find Cao Xi, while the priest returned to the hospital.

The current gunpowder in China is almost the same as when it came out in the Southern Song Dynasty. The gunpowder contains a lot of sulfur, and the unpleasant smell confirms this. In order to ensure that the ignition of the front-mounted smoothbore fire door can proceed smoothly, they have to use a more delicate gunpowder.

Ignite the gunpowder, and then use paper twist to ignite the fire, but this type of gunpowder still accounts for a large proportion of saltpeter. After the paper twist ignites the gunpowder, the gunpowder begins to make a crackling sound, and the artillery keeps moving back and forth for nearly a minute. If at this time

The artillery shells are fired only after the artillery shells are fired. The round shells or cobblestone shells used in the artillery are often incompatible with the smooth bore of the artillery, and the shells can only be fired a few meters away.

They didn't know bombs or grenades, and sometimes they would only fire old-fashioned rockets to burn the sails of sailing ships. Their muskets were actually heavy iron blunderbuss, 7-8 centimeters long, fixed on a wooden bar, and had no use for cleaning the guns.

There is no purge bar and no bolt plate. Due to poor maintenance, the appearance looks dark.

The paper was twisted to ignite the gunpowder in the medicine pool, and the gunpowder in the medicine pool was open. It is not difficult to imagine why the soldiers would rather use bows and arrows, machetes or sharp halberds than so-called firearms.

The British smuggler could provide flintlocks as long as Cao Xi was willing to pay, but Cao Xi rejected Nick's suggestion.

The reason given by Cao Xi is that the soldiers have become accustomed to the existing fighting methods, and new weapons need time to adapt, otherwise they will accidentally injure their companions.

"Do you believe what he said?" Georgiana asked Bonaparte. "I heard that French recruits can go to the battlefield after three days of training."

Bonaparte seemed to be listening attentively, but her sudden question interrupted his thoughts, so that he looked at her with a terrible look.

So she stuck out her tongue and continued reading.

The governor has always been dissatisfied with the supervisory censor, and the pronunciation of the supervisory censor's name is very similar to a toy that Chinese children like to play - paper kites. After hearing the argument between Nick and Cao Xi, he also thought that a new one should be used now.

The firearm was inappropriate, which left Nick stunned.

"Why?" Georgiana asked in confusion.

"The admiral is about to leave office. Do you know how greedy the British are?"

She looked at him angrily.

He took the book directly from her hand and continued reading.

Mencius believed that human nature is good, and even if there is a tendency toward evil, it is due to external influences.

But in Nick's view, these people do not lack insight, but are afraid of being teased by their political opponents.

Nick stopped trying to persuade them, lest it appear that he was taking advantage of the opportunity to make a sales pitch.

There is a Chinese proverb that says, "When a tree falls, the bird will fly away." Admiral is a big tree with deep roots and lush leaves, so he dared to leave everything behind and follow Nick out of Guangzhou.

He was going to hold a feast in the admiral's palace, so he built a simple stage in the open space of the palace, 6-8 feet high, made of bamboo slats. The three sides of the stage were simply surrounded by red curtains, leaving only a small area near the background.

Give the actors a hiding spot, which can be used as a small lounge, separated by a large curtain.

The stage is also equipped with two doors, one door on the right, serving as the entrance to the stage, and the other door on the left, serving as the exit. There is also a trap door on the stage, which is the entrance for ghosts and gods to enter the stage.

Some people call this the "Ghost Gate".

Of course, this simple stage cannot be compared with the theaters in the old streets of Guangzhou. Frankly speaking, it is difficult for Europeans to appreciate Chinese music. They are not good at composing music and have no concept of harmony and counterpoint, even if there are two hundred people.

Playing at the same time, they will still make drums, suonas and various plucked instruments into a deafening ensemble, which is completely different from the profound thoughts in the ordinary words of their sages.

This is difficult to understand, just as Europeans cannot understand why they spend more money to redeem the bones of the dead than even the living.

"The Classic of Filial Piety" itself is not a work, nor is it an enlightenment reading, but many writers in later generations have annotated it, including even Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty himself annotated the book.

Nick believes that this is a set of moral principles similar to "The Doctrine of the Mean", which means that based on "filial piety", Wan Ning will marry anyone arranged by the admiral, even if she doesn't like him.

Bonaparte suddenly stopped reading.

"What?" Georgiana asked.

"Does political marriage require love?" he asked.

"Of course." Georgiana replied without hesitation.

"Why?" He looked at her with his blue eyes.

Georgiana didn't know how to answer.

Just like Emperor Jiaqing, if Qianlong didn't love his concubine, would he ignore the tradition of ordering elders and younger ones and make Jiaqing the emperor?

Perhaps it was because Qianlong still refused to delegate power when he became the Supreme Emperor. He needed an obedient and filial son, but love still played a certain role. After all, Qianlong did not lack obedient and filial sons.

"Do you still want to read?" asked Georgiana. "Or do you want to listen to the violin?"

He turned over the pages of the book, and the next page was an illustration. It showed a man and a woman. It was a very real-life scene, but it looked very formal. The woman held the tray with food and the rice bowl and raised it to the level of her eyebrows. The man

then it looks like it's about to take it.

"I tried to translate the opening text of "Elementary School" into French to give everyone a general understanding of the book. A woman should not leave the boudoir under the age of ten. A nanny will teach her. Her speech must be soft, her appearance must be modest, and everything

She had to listen and obey, and she had to learn how to weave, sew and make clothes for people to wear. When watching the sacrifice, she had to pour wine into the wine vessel and put the pickles and meat sauce in.

Sacrificial utensils are used to help the elders and offer sacrifices according to the etiquette. By the age of fifteen, they have reached adult age and can participate in the ceremony. When they get married at the age of twenty, if their parents are mourned during the wedding period, they must observe mourning for three years.

A person who gets married at the age of twenty-three and is married to a man after the man has paid a dowry is called a wife; a person who is married to a man without a dowry is called a concubine. What does this have to do with this painting?"

Georgiana looked at his confused look and gently took the book away from his hand.

"This painting depicts an idiom called 'raise the case to raise eyebrows', which means the couple respects each other and is affectionate."

He looked at her and said nothing.

"One more thing, have you done makeup on Josephine?" Georgiana put down the book and asked.

"What do you want to do?"

She smiled at him, pulled him up, walked to the dressing table, handed him the rouge, and then walked to the well-lit window.

"Help me paint." She closed her eyes and said, "My exclusive painter."

"What does it mean?"

"There is also an idiom called Thrush Zhang Chang. You can help me draw while I tell the story."

After saying that, she waited quietly until she felt a wiping sensation on her face before telling him a story about a man from the Han Dynasty.

There was a Jing Zhaoyin in Chang'an named Zhang Chang. He doted on his wife very much and would draw her eyebrows every day, which made her look particularly charming. The women in the capital were extremely envious, and the men wrote letters saying,

This kind of "privacy in the boudoir" was too much. Emperor Xuan asked Zhang Chang, but Zhang Chang said that there were many more things than drawing eyebrows, so why did he only point to the matter of drawing eyebrows?

Emperor Xuan laughed after hearing this and did not punish him, but felt that he lacked dignity and did not promote him even though his political achievements were good.

Later, painting my wife's eyebrows became a harmonious and admirable thing.

When we were going down the mountain, the master told the young monk that the women at the foot of the mountain were tigers, and you should avoid them if you encounter them.

The question is, does the little monk listen?

She thought Nick had left long ago, but now she knew why he almost couldn't come back.

Once you enter reincarnation, it will be difficult to achieve nirvana.

This kind of nirvana is different from the phoenix nirvana. It means detachment. In other words, don't think about running away once you're here. It's still too late to turn around before you get too deep into the mud.

After all, there is no limit to the sea of ​​suffering, and turning back is the shore.
Chapter completed!