Spring, the 13th year of Hongwu in the Ming Dynasty.
The capital city of Nanjing, in the north of Yinglingfang, Chengxian Street, and Hu Family Bookstore.
"Shanwei! Hu Shanwei! Get up, you damn girl! Take out the toilet and empty it!"
Before dawn, Hu Shanwei was awakened by the sharp voice of his stepmother Chen.
Chen was six months pregnant, her belly felt like a pumpkin. She was about to give birth and had trouble sleeping. When she finally fell asleep, the uncontrollable urge to urinate forced her to get up and go to the toilet. She had to get up at least five times a night.
Originally, emptying the toilet was something that the maidservants in the family did, but Chen wanted to torture her stepdaughter Hu Shanwei. She relied on the fact that the boy in her belly would inherit the Hu family's incense and used the excuse of filial piety to order Hu Shanwei around like a maidservant.
Hu Shan surrounded the bed and lit a lantern.
The lantern lit up the girl's face, her long eyebrows flew into her temples, and her spirit was high.
Hu Shanwei walked from the west wing into the main room holding a lantern. Although it was spring, the cold was like a nail house, refusing to leave. There was a thin layer of frost on the ground, which made a crackling sound when stepped on.
When I opened the bedroom door, I smelled a strong smell of urine and couldn't help but frown.
Chen is really becoming more and more unrefined. She is too lazy to even close the toilet lid and wait for her to clean it up.
Chen, who was lying on the bed, held her stomach and groaned, "Why did you come so late? You just lie there."
Hu Shanwei opened the window to get some fresh air.
Chen cursed, "What does this damn girl want to do? It's the coldest time of spring now, she wants to freeze me to death."
Hu Shanwei closed the window.
Chen scolded again: "There is a smell in the house, when will it go away? You are so stupid as a pig! No wonder you can't get married at the age of 19!"
Hu Shanwei turned around and looked at Chen coldly.
Chen felt a little guilty and said, "Just open the window a little."
Hu Shanwei closed the wooden lid, picked up the toilet and left. When he passed by Chen's dressing table, he concealed himself with his sleeve and stole a bunch of keys.
Hu Shanwei cleared out the dirt from the toilet and fetched water from the well in the yard to clean the toilet. The cold well water splashed onto his fingers, which were covered with chilblains like strawberries.
After cleaning the toilet, it was still dark. Hu Shanwei looked around and saw no one, so he went to the accounting office of the bookstore in the dark.
She used the stolen key to open the coin box, which contained white silver and black copper coins, but she did not take any of them. She opened the secret compartment at the bottom of the coin box and took out the household registration card.
The household registration booklet is the only identity document and tax receipt in the Ming Dynasty. The adult male in the family is the head of the household. A household has only one household registration booklet, which is replaced every ten years to update the family's population and property.
Hu Shanwei hid the two-foot-long and wide household sticker in his inner pocket, then went to the well platform, returned the clean toilet to the main room, and returned the stolen key.
Fortunately, the tired Chen was taking a nap and didn't notice it.
After washing up, Hu Shanwei put the set of writing brushes and ink in her boudoir into a bamboo basket, and covered it with a layer of incense, candles, paper money and other things. At this time, the sky was slightly bright. She carried the bamboo basket, blew out the lantern, went to her father's study, and knocked gently on the door:
"Father, it's me, Shanwei."
After a while, father Hu Rong opened the door and put on his clothes. Ever since his young wife Chen got pregnant, she got up five times a night and complained of discomfort from time to time. He could not bear it anymore, so he simply slept in a separate room from his wife and rested in the study.
Chen was not restrained by her husband, so she simply vented her anger on Hu Shanwei. It was common for her to wake Hu Shanwei up in the middle of the night to serve him tea, water, and empty the toilet.
Hu Rong asked, "What's the matter?"
Hu Shanwei said: "I dreamed of my mother last night. She said she missed me. I will go to her grave today to burn some paper money."
This mother of course refers to Hu Shanwei’s biological mother, Hu Rong’s first wife.
Hu Rong said: "Okay, go early and come back early, wait for me-"
Hu Rong returned to the study and took out five taels of silver and one hundred yuan and gave it to his daughter. "Keep it well and spend it on yourself. Cut a new set of clothes, make a set of jewelry, and buy whatever you want to eat. Don't let Chen know."
Hu Shanwei was stunned and didn't answer.
Hu Rong simply put all the silver and money into her bamboo basket. "I know you've been wronged recently, but Chen is pregnant, and I'm afraid you'll bump into her and hurt the fetus. The doctor said it's probably a boy, and you'll have a brother, and you'll have someone to rely on in the future. When Chen gives birth to your brother safely, if she dares to bully you again, I won't let her off!"
Hu Shanwei smiled, said nothing, nodded and said goodbye.
Hu Rong closed the study door, crawled into the warm bed and continued to sleep. It was still early and very cold outside.
Hu Rong didn't know that the moment the door was closed, his daughter Hu Shanwei's smile stopped and her eyes turned cold.
Hu Shanwei walked out of Hu's Bookstore carrying a bamboo basket, threw the incense, candles, paper money and other items into the garbage dump, and only carried the pens, ink and inkstone in the basket to the mule and horse shop on the corner of the street.
She hired a carriage and gave the coachman half a pound. "Go to Xihua Gate of the Imperial City. Stop at the pharmacy on the way. I want to buy some medicine."
The coachman whipped the carriage and stopped at the door of a drug store halfway. Hu Shan went in and spent two taels of silver to buy a bottle of the most expensive frostbite ointment.
Back in the carriage, Hu Shanwei applied the ointment on his fingers and backs of his hands that were covered with strawberry frostbite. The expensive ointment was indeed effective, cooling his bones and relieving the burning pain in his hands.
Seeing that the girl was generous, the groom asked, "Miss, are you going to Xihua Gate to enter the palace?"
Hu Shanwei nodded: "Yes, let's go to the Etiquette House in the Imperial City."
The groom was puzzled: "What is the etiquette palace?"
Hu Shanwei said: "It is commonly known as the milk/zi palace."
The groom slapped his head and said, "Oh! I know the nanny's mansion! I heard that they are selecting female officials there today! Are you going to take the exam, young lady?"
Hu Shanwei smiled, and his long eyebrows immediately slanted into his temples, "Yes, I want to be a female official."
The row of houses with green glazed tile roofs next to the palace wall on the north side of Xihua Gate in the Ming Imperial City was the Neifu, which managed the palace affairs.
Among them there is a large courtyard with a plaque hanging on it that reads "Etiquette House". This institution was affiliated with the Embroidered Uniform Guard and was usually used to receive the ladies and female relatives who were waiting to be summoned to the palace for an audience with the emperor, and to teach them etiquette in advance to avoid misbehavior in front of the palace.
Because wet nurses were selected for the palace every season, the local government gave it the down-to-earth nickname "Nan/Zi Fu". It is generally called "Nan/Zi Fu", and only in writing is it called "Li Yi Fu".
But today, the wet/zi mansion is going to select palace ladies from outside, not wet nurses.
Zhu Yuanzhang, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty and the Hongwu Emperor, hated eunuchs because eunuchs like Pu Buhua often controlled the government and brought disaster to the country and the people.
However, the complicated palace affairs required talented people who could read and write, so Emperor Hongwu and the Ministry of Rites established a female official system, imitating the official system of the imperial court and dividing the palace affairs into six bureaus and one department.
They are the Shanggong Bureau, Shangyi Bureau, Shangfu Bureau, Shangshi Bureau, Shangqin Bureau, and Shanggong Bureau. The Shanggong Bureau is in charge of the six bureaus. The Gongzhengsi is independent of the six bureaus and is responsible for the palace discipline, rewards and punishments. It is a supervisory agency.
To put it simply, the female officials of the Five Bureaus are used to manage the palace affairs, the female officials of the Shanggong Bureau are used to manage the female officials of the Five Bureaus, and the female officials of the Gongzheng Bureau are used to supervise the female officials of all six bureaus.
There are layers of supervision and clear levels.
This year, Emperor Hongwu issued the third edict to select female officials:
"The imperial edict states that girls aged 13 to 19, and women aged 30 to 40, who are single, regardless of appearance, but not suffering from any serious illness, who wish to enter the palace as servants, will be given 60 ingots of cash for girls and 50 ingots of cash for women as travel expenses. After preliminary selection and assessment by local officials, they will be sent to the capital for selection."
In other words, appearance did not matter when selecting female officials. As long as they were healthy and had no disease, and were willing to serve the court and passed the preliminary selection of local officials, the court would give them travel expenses and settlement expenses. Young girls between the ages of thirteen and nineteen would be given sixty taels of silver, and married widows between the ages of thirty and forty would be given fifty taels of silver. They could come to the capital to participate in the female official selection examination. It did not matter if they had children, as long as their husbands were dead.
Fifty taels of silver is enough for a family to have simple meals and live a worry-free life, and even have a bowl of meat occasionally.
During the Hongwu Dynasty, the annual salary of a county magistrate was less than fifty taels of silver. This shows that Emperor Hongwu was generous and attached great importance to the candidates for female officials.
So, on the day of the exam, more than two hundred women, carrying bamboo baskets filled with pens and ink, stood in the courtyard of the wet nurse's mansion waiting to enter.
Some were tall and some were short, some were fat and some were thin, some were beautiful and some were ugly; there were pretty ladies in their twenties, some elegant ladies in their thirties, and some haggard-faced women who had been ravaged by time and life.
The only thing they have in common is the bookish air and the exam baskets in their hands. They are about to use their pens as swords to fight for a way out for themselves.
"Number 57, Hu Shanwei!"
A tall girl with long eyebrows stepped out, took out the household registration document as proof of identity from the examination basket, and handed it to the female official holding the roster to verify her identity.
She stole it from home.
The female official unfolded the two-foot-long household registration card, which was surrounded by plum blossom patterns and read:
Hu Rong, a resident of Chengxian Street, Yinglingfang, Yingtian Prefecture, a merchant, with three members
Man
Adult
I am thirty-seven years old
Women's second mouth
Wife: Chen, 18 years old
Female Hu Shanwei, 19 years old
Property
The people had ten acres and eight cents of land, a boat, a mule and a horse, and seven houses with four sheds.
The right note is given to Hu Rong for receipt. Please approve it.
January 27, the 13th year of Hongwu
Yingzi No. 436
In addition to the 436 household registration numbers starting with the character "Ying", there are also signatures and seals of the Yingtian Prefecture's Director, Clerk, and Dianshi at the bottom of the household registration card. The Ming Dynasty had strict household registration management, and it was very difficult to forge it.
The female official carefully checked each item and copied the contents of the household registration card on the roster.
To put it simply, the head of this household registration book is 37-year-old Hu Rong, who has an 18-year-old wife, Chen, and a 19-year-old daughter, Hu Shanwei. It is obvious that Chen is the stepmother.
Otherwise, how could the mother be one year younger than her daughter
This is a merchant family. They have a house and fields at home and live a happy life. They have more than ten acres of land, a boat, a mule and seven houses.
After the transcription was completed, the female official handed the household registration card and a number plate to Hu Shanwei, "Go find table number 57 and sit down. Take the seat that matches your number and wait for the examination papers to be distributed."
"Yes." Hu Shanwei put his household card and number plate into the examination basket and walked into the examination room.
This is an exam that will change her life, and she cannot afford to make any mistakes.
Thinking of this, Hu Shanwei began to get nervous. By the time she found her seat and put down the exam basket, the handle of the basket was soaked through with sweat from her palms.