Chapter 53: The Mistress of Zhiming Tower
Everyone was taken aback. Let alone six hundred thousand taels, even raising three hundred thousand taels now would require a great deal of wrangling with the Guangdong provincial treasury. As for the Guangxi provincial treasury, the garrison in Guangxi itself relied on subsidies from Guangdong, so there was no hope at all.
Seeing the atmosphere was a bit low, Lü Yizhong quickly changed the subject. “As for how many men, ships, and cannons to use, it must be decided after His Excellency the Governor-General discusses it with His Excellency the Governor and General He. Let’s put this matter aside for now and discuss other things.”
Then, the advisors discussed which troops to deploy, how to advance, how to cross the sea, how to contact the local garrisons, and so on. But Lü Yizhong’s mind was not on this. After some perfunctory discussion, he made an excuse of having urgent matters to attend to, entrusted the meeting to Li Xijue, and left first.
As soon as he left the governor-general’s office, he felt a sense of relief. He was in a very happy and excited mood, because the opportunity he had been waiting for had finally arrived.
He had been secretly planning this for a long time, just waiting for such an opportunity to come. Although he had anticipated that the opportunity would come soon, he had not expected it to come so quickly.
At this moment, he appeared calm and unhurried on the surface, but he was still a little anxious in his heart. When he got into his four-man sedan chair, he impatiently stamped his foot on the floorboard:
“Zhiming Tower.”
Just as the sedan chair bearers were about to lift the chair, Lü Yizhong felt it was inappropriate and stamped his foot again. “Back to the official residence!”
He felt it was inappropriate to go to Zhiming Tower at this time. The news of the impending attack on Lingao had not yet spread. After the meeting was over, it would naturally spread. When Miss Pei and Proprietor Guo were in a state of panic, they would naturally come to invite him.
Thinking of this, he was very pleased with his idea. Let this Proprietor Guo be in a state of anxiety for a while. When the city was full of rumors, he would naturally understand.
Besides, although this Guo Yi had only been in Guangzhou for two or three years, he had a wide range of contacts. He had basically made connections with all the powerful gentry and high officials in and out of Guangzhou city. If he had any powerful backers who had not yet shown themselves, this move of “beating the grass to scare the snake” would be enough to make them show their hand. It would also prevent him from sticking his neck out too early and hitting a wall in vain.
The noon sun shone on the carved window lattice, and the glass embedded in it reflected the light onto the white-washed walls. The room was furnished with rosewood tables and chairs, a magnificent gold-painted screen with flowers and grass; a Guangzhou’s most luxurious piece of furniture—a full-length crystal mirror mounted on a finely carved rosewood frame, covered with a brocade mirror cover; two sets of immaculately kept thread-bound books; a Western enamel censer decorated with animal figures, from which wisps of sandalwood smoke were curling, and a faint, ethereal fragrance floated in the room.
On the wall hung a scroll painting by an unknown landscape painter, which seemed to express the owner’s unique taste. Below the painting was a simple and elegant guqin. From its simple and unadorned pattern, one could tell it was an authentic Tang or Song dynasty guqin, another object of great value.
This clean and comfortable boudoir, decorated with silk, satin, gold, and jade, looked luxurious and magnificent. At this moment, the owner of the room, the mistress of Zhiming Tower, Pei Lixiu, was leaning against a moon-gate-style canopy bed with tassels and thin gauze, sleeping soundly against a soft pillow of white satin with red flowers.
The noon sun shone on the wall, and the originally dim and comfortable light in the room gradually became brighter. Finally, she opened her eyes, seemingly unaccustomed to the bright light in the room. She closed her eyes again for a moment, then slowly stretched out a snow-white arm from under the big red cloud-patterned satin quilt, then another, and lazily stretched her body.
The skin of her arms was snow-white, but a bit too plump. Two twisted silver bracelets were tightly clasped around her wrists. Small emeralds hung from the bracelets on thin chains.
“This annoying sunlight,” Pei Lixiu grumbled, slowly sitting up from the bed and yawning without any ladylike grace.
According to the rules of a large family in the Ming Dynasty, as soon as a mistress like her got up, without being summoned, as long as there was a slight sound, her personal maids would immediately appear, saying some pleasantries while helping her dress and wash. But Pei Lixiu’s boudoir had a strict rule of “no entry without being summoned.” No servant or maid was allowed to enter her boudoir without being summoned.
She sat on the bed in a daze for a long time before she seemed to suddenly wake up. She lazily got off the bed, dragging a pair of embroidered slippers, and slowly walked to the bathroom.
The bathroom was decorated in a completely modern style. Except for the lack of shiny stainless steel—but what was used here was much more luxurious than stainless steel, all the plumbing fixtures were made of bronze.
She hastily took off her clothes, took out a much-used plastic hair cap from the drawer, carefully coiled up her black hair and put it on. She checked in the mirror repeatedly to make sure no hair was exposed before stepping into the bathtub.
The pointer of the copper bell, which looked a bit like a ship’s engine order telegraph and was used to show the status of the rooftop water tank, was at 70%. There was enough water in the tank for her to take a comfortable shower. Otherwise, she would have to pull the handle of the copper bell. The servants below would then quickly bring out the ox and drive it to run, powering the animal-powered treadle to pump water. This water-pumping process would take at least fifteen minutes. Although she had modern bathroom equipment, the supporting facilities were still too backward.
After her bath, she sat in the dressing room outside the bathroom. Looking at herself in the dressing mirror, her eyes were swollen—yesterday, she had only socialized a little in the various private rooms, and she was already drunk. It was all because the rum cocktails at Zhiming Tower were too successful. Rum, mixed with kvass, plus various fruit juices and distilled flower, fruit, and herb liquids, made this fashionable drink ever-changing and immediately captivated the officials and nobles of Guangzhou city. Everyone who came to Zhiming Tower was proud to have a drink.
Fortunately, her head no longer hurt. The hangover soup was still effective. Pei Lixiu noticed some fine wrinkles at the corners of her eyes—she secretly frowned and reminded herself to do a cucumber or fruit mask at night, or, as Su Ai—Gao Shunqin’s favorite concubine—had introduced to her, to use egg white mixed with pearl powder as a facial mask.
Pei Lixiu considered this problem for another ten minutes, until the mahogany grandfather clock in the room struck eleven times. She suddenly woke up. Today was the day for the “salon,” or as it was called in this era, the “elegant gathering.”
This elegant gathering was specially held for the female relatives who came to Zhiming Tower for entertainment. Pei Lixiu had made friends with the concubines of many local officials and dignitaries. Most of these concubines were famous courtesans from Guangzhou, and many were famous courtesans that their masters had brought back from Jiangnan with great expense. Whether in terms of appearance, bearing, or talent and knowledge, they were a hundred times better than ordinary women. These women were mostly clever and quick-witted. They had also seen all kinds of situations. Staying in the mansion for a long time, although they were dressed in fine clothes and ate delicacies, and had servants at their beck and call, they were very empty inside. Zhiming Tower, a place full of novelties, became a magnet for them.
Pei Lixiu used the opportunity of “making connections” and “finding ways” with Guo Yi to get to know many such women. Although Pei Lixiu was clueless about poetry and music, she still won the favor of many people with her identity as the mistress of Zhiming Tower and her frank and generous personality. Over time, she established relationships with the concubines of many families and became their close friends.
The connection to the inner chambers was very useful for the Guangzhou Station. First, it was to attract deposits. The concubines of large families had some private savings and hoped to deposit them in a reliable firm to make money. Pei Lixiu used her connections to attract a lot of deposits for the Delong Guangzhou branch. When the Guangzhou Station encountered any difficult matters, Pei Lixiu would ask her close friends to find opportunities to whisper in their masters’ ears, and it was almost always successful.
Because her work was so effective, Guo Yi basically granted all her requests. Zhiming Tower had an endless stream of novelties—many of which were specially made in Lingao and Zizhenzhai. The “elegant gathering” that Pei Lixiu held also gradually became more and more famous, so much so that recently, the official wives and daughters of some families, in order to make connections for their husbands and fathers, were also trying to squeeze into the invitation list.
However, Pei Lixiu knew that it was not enough to attract them with just an endless stream of modern gadgets and the like. They were all well-informed and would naturally get tired of these little tricks and gadgets over time. Generally speaking, they were very similar to the literary young women of the 20th century. There had to be something that could make them feel superior to ordinary “vulgar people” to attract them.
Poetry, music, chess, and calligraphy were of course the weapons that enabled them to look down on most women of this era, but this was Pei Lixiu’s biggest weakness.
Pei Lixiu knew that if it weren’t for her mysterious identity as an “Australian woman” and the mistress of this Zhiming Tower full of novelties, this group of talented women would probably not even spare her a glance.
Pei Lixiu knew that her knowledge was limited, and it was probably impossible for her to achieve much by cramming these things. She had to work on things that they didn’t know or couldn’t do.
What she was most confident in was, first of all, dressing, makeup, and maintenance. But in terms of dressing, she was already at a disadvantage because she could only follow the local customs and wear the women’s clothing of the Ming Dynasty. Modern women’s clothing, whether it was a skirt or jeans, could be considered “boudoir fun,” but if she really wore it out, it would be “indecent.”
As for the secrets of makeup and maintenance, the ancients were no less skilled in this area than modern people—almost every woman in a large family had her own secret methods of makeup and maintenance. They were just more limited by materials: some cosmetics had toxic ingredients, and some were not very effective. And the biggest bottleneck of ancient makeup and maintenance products was that they were inconvenient to use and easy to spoil. The lipstick sticks, eyebrow pencils, perfumes, and other things sold by Zichengji, which were made with modern methods and craftsmanship, were very popular largely because of their convenience.
After much consideration, Pei Lixiu decided to start from this aspect and hold a beauty salon or something similar, focusing on pure natural beauty and maintenance. The transmigrator group had a large amount of information available in this area. In particular, someone’s computer even had a full set of video tutorials from a beauty salon. Besides a full set of beauty and maintenance courses, there were also things like ear candling, uterine maintenance, full-body massage, medicinal baths, aromatherapy baths, breast massage, and even beauty enemas.
After watching them, she felt more confident and immediately began to purchase equipment, train personnel, and order various new things from the Ministry of Light Industry. And the arrival of Zheng Shangjie made her even more powerful. Zheng Shangjie was eloquent and more resourceful than her, but she was already a married woman, and her age was on the older side by Ming standards. It was difficult for her to make a name for herself again, so she had to provide support from behind the scenes, giving her advice and ideas. If necessary, she could also help with socializing.
But the things had not yet all arrived. It was really difficult to communicate with the people in the Ministry of Light Industry, because they were all men, and they were all men who studied science and engineering. It was difficult for her to specifically explain to them what she needed, because she knew neither the composition nor the structure of these things. She could only use some emotional words to describe them. The result was either that the other party didn’t know what she wanted, or the samples they made did not meet the requirements at all.
A few days ago, Zheng Shangjie made a special trip back to Lingao and listed the things she wanted. Zheng Shangjie said that as soon as she returned to Lingao, she would go to the Great Library to check the materials and find the pictures and structures of each item. If necessary, she would go directly to the workshop to describe them.
“I wonder how things are going?” Pei Lixiu muttered, lazily changing her clothes. Today, she chose a peach-colored thin silk dress with a purple lining, and a white skirt with eight panels and a purple floral border. She was dressed very elegantly. Only her hair, she did not style it according to the custom of the Great Ming, but used a low-profile, antique-style hairstyle often seen in historical dramas.
After dressing and grooming, she pulled the bell rope. Her personal maid, Chun Liu, tiptoed in from outside the door. This girl had been bought by Guo Yi from the human market a few months ago. Because she was very beautiful, she had almost fallen into the hands of a procuress. Also because she was outstandingly beautiful and “clever and good at conversation,” she was assigned to the intelligence study class. She had recently been transferred back from Lingao to serve as Pei Lixiu’s personal maid and secretary.
All the maids, servants, and stewards who had previously been in close contact with the Guangzhou Station had, according to the regulations of the Political Security General Bureau, all been replaced by people transferred from the quarantine camp in Lingao. The former personnel had also been transferred back to Lingao in batches to undergo political review. Only those who were confirmed to be honest and reliable could continue to serve in Guangzhou. Those who were considered to have potential were temporarily enrolled in various short-term training classes to learn various professional skills. For example, Sun Chang had studied administration and personnel management in Lingao. The native personnel of the Guangzhou Station had not yet been absorbed into the native personnel system of Lingao, but the Civil Affairs Committee was already preparing their personal files.
The concubines of Guo Yi and others did not enjoy this treatment. They were only strictly reviewed to confirm that they were not dangerous. There was no place for them in the future native personnel system.
Chun Liu brought her mistress breakfast. On the lacquer tray was only a bowl of white congee and four small dishes. Although it was noon, she still prepared it as breakfast. This mistress seemed to have a fear of eating, and she was meticulous about everything she ate.
Chun Liu smiled and curtsied. “Madam, you are awake. Did you sleep well?”
Pei Lixiu did not answer. She glanced from afar at the rosewood desk by the window. A piece of Xue Tao paper had been placed on it at some point.
It was not a poem on the Xue Tao paper—no one here would exchange poems with her. Everyone knew that Miss Pei did not understand these things. On the Xue Tao paper was her daily schedule.
“Has Xia He been in?” Pei Lixiu was still a little grumpy from waking up and asked in a bad mood.
“How would I dare?” Chun Liu said cautiously. “It was sent in before you went to bed last night. Perhaps you didn’t see it because it was dark at the time.”
The schedule was written by Xia He, who was in charge of her writing materials, and sent in every night. Xia He had also recently been transferred from Lingao. She was originally the only daughter of a xiucai. A bandit raid had killed both her parents, and her clansmen had forced her to sell herself to pay for their burial. That was how she ended up in the hands of the Guangzhou Station. After being sent to Lingao for quarantine, she was enrolled in the administrative secretary training class because she was well-versed in literature. This time, she was transferred back to Guangzhou to be Pei Lixiu’s secretary. Pei Lixiu’s handwriting was not only not presentable, but it was also a bit ugly to even show to people. Xia He specialized in writing letters and invitations for her, and if necessary, she would also translate literary letters for her. The administrative secretary training class now also taught some accounting knowledge, so Xia He also served as Pei Lixiu’s cashier. When she went out to visit guests, Xia He also had to accompany her to prevent Pei Lixiu from making any mistakes in etiquette.
“Summon her.”
Because her tasks were heavy and it was her duty, someone at the Guangzhou Station jokingly called her the “pen-holding maid,” and some called her the “Zhiming Tower’s case-handling maid.”
Xia He was not pretty, and even a bit clumsy—her father was just a poor xiucai living in the countryside. She walked into the room cautiously, curtsied properly, and greeted her mistress.
“You don’t have to be so polite. What’s on the agenda for today?”
Xia He began to explain the day’s schedule.
Most of Pei Lixiu’s schedule was spent on socializing. She had to socialize not only with the guests of Zhiming Tower, but also with the various important figures who had connections with the entire Guangzhou Station. The marriages, funerals, taking of concubines, and birthday celebrations of these families all had to be prepared with gifts according to the closeness of the relationship, or she had to visit in person or send someone. This was originally one of the most important things for the wife of a large family.
Guo Yi did not have an official wife. Since Pei Lixiu was his concubine, she had to handle all these matters.
In the past, the Guangzhou Station had a limited social circle, and there was little need to worry about this aspect. Now, it had become a heavy burden for Pei Lixiu. Every few days, there would be a matter of etiquette waiting for her to handle.
…
“The third son of the Nanhai County magistrate is starting school in his hometown. We need to prepare a gift to congratulate him.”
“An aunt of Master Qiu has passed away. We need to send a funeral gift.”
“Master Zhou of the circuit is holding a Daoist ceremony on the eighth.”
“Master Liu’s house has caught fire. We need to send someone to offer condolences.”
…