Chapter Forty-Seven: The Tavern

Outside the county office, dusk gradually fell. When Liu Chengzong emerged, Chengyun, who had been waiting outside, ran up to him with a face full of joy and asked, “Brother, how did it go?”

“Clerk Zhang is willing to stamp the papers, but there’s a new order from the prefecture: to buy a hundred acres of land, you need to take in some registered vagrants from outside the city to serve as tenant farmers. In the end, it seems we’ll still have to figure out a way to secure grain,” Liu replied. “It was already late when we left the city today, so I arranged with Clerk Zhang for a yamen runner to take us outside the city tomorrow morning to pick out some vagrants.” As he spoke, Liu Chengzong noticed that Chengyun was stamping his feet from the cold and asked, “Have you been waiting for me out here this whole time?”

Chengyun shook his head repeatedly. “You don’t know, Brother. While you were inside the yamen, I ran all over North Street in the west part of the city. After you went into the county office, the others and I discussed that if we set out tonight, we’d have to sleep in the wild, so we might as well find a place to stay in the city. But lately there have been bandits outside the city, so merchants from all over are afraid to travel and are staying in town. All the guest rooms in the west city inns are booked, even the rooms in the monastery inns are gone.”

He pointed to a distant street corner. “There are no official rooms left, and not even common rooms available. The manager of the Watchtower Inn over there is my father-in-law’s sworn brother, so he cleared out a communal room for us. Right now, Brother Cao and the others are across the street at the tavern, drinking wine. There’s no need to go anywhere else tonight; we’ll just sleep there.”

In the Ming dynasty, inns and taverns generally fell into four categories: regular taverns, wine shops, guest inns, and monastery inns. Taverns were eateries that served wine and cooked foods; wine shops sold only loose wine, much like small bars. Guest inns provided lodging, while monastery inns specialized in certain “special services.”

Terms such as “official room,” “common room,” and “communal room” referred to accommodation standards. Ming officials, when traveling, usually stayed in the best rooms, which innkeepers called official rooms. Common rooms, also known as humble chambers, were ordinary accommodations; the communal room was the cheapest, little more than a place with wooden planks for sleeping.

These categories could be understood as luxury suites, standard rooms, and dormitories in modern terms. However, in the prefecture of Yan’an, the price difference between the three types was not significant, as even the official rooms were not especially luxurious.

Wealthy merchants who needed regular accommodations typically rented houses long-term in commercial centers, furnishing them to their liking and hiring staff for housekeeping. Since property was cheap in the Ming era and renting costs were low, and because there were many legal restrictions on out-of-towners buying property, buying and selling houses was far from easy. In fact, the cost of furnishing and maintaining a house often exceeded the rent.

Buying a house, much like buying land, was not a simple matter of having money; under Ming law, these transactions were treated as inheritance transfers and required thorough consultation with the neighbors.

When selling a house, the owner had to ask first among his elders, peers, and juniors within the family; only after all had declined could he ask the neighbors, and only after all had refused could an outsider purchase it.

For Liu Chengzong, who was used to sleeping in the wilderness and army camps, a comfortable bed was nice, but a poor one did not bother him; after all, nothing could be worse than a pit of hot sand. He chuckled and said, “A communal room is good—it’s warm. How much did you give the doorkeeper?”

Chengyun replied, “A tenth of a tael in broken silver, just a small piece. You gave me plenty of poor-quality silver before we left.”

Liu knew that silver—taken from the White Hawk—came easily, but he still pondered aloud, “That’s a fair amount. What’s the current exchange rate for silver in the city?”

Silver was measured by weight: one tael was 37.5 grams, with ten candareens to a mace, ten maces to a tael, and sixteen taels to a catty. Among the common people, copper cash was the usual currency. Officially, one tael of silver equaled a thousand copper coins, but in practice, one rarely got that many; typically, one tael fetched six or seven hundred copper coins. The gold-silver exchange rate hovered around one to eight.

Chengyun patted his waist with a grin. “Today, one tael of silver exchanges for 992 coins. That tenth of a tael I gave the doorkeeper is enough for him to buy three jin of braised lamb’s feet and have a feast at the market.”

He looked quite pleased, raising his eyebrows. “This is what I’ve learned over the years: normally, three candareens would be enough to have the doorkeeper run an errand. But buying land is a matter that concerns the whole clan’s livelihood, so I gave seven more to ensure he doesn’t make trouble.”

“But you can’t give too much, or he’ll get greedy and that won’t do. Letting him have a good meal is enough.”

In the northwest, silver fetched a high price; tax collectors would take only silver, not copper. Since farm households produced no silver, merchants traveling southeast from the northwest made a fortune exchanging silver as a side business. Now, with the world in chaos and trade routes unsafe, silver should in theory have dropped in price, but the wealthy, seeking to safeguard their assets, prized silver and gold even more for their high value, low weight, and portability, so prices had risen higher than ever.

A tenth of a tael was no trifle. For most ordinary Ming households, annual income for a family of three ranged from eight to forty taels—a hundred-entry fee would be quite a sum for a family with an annual income of forty thousand.

Still, in these times, with limited commerce in northern Shaanxi, money did not hold the same importance as it would in later generations.

Liu Chengzong had little regard for money. He neither praised Chengyun for his skill nor scolded him for extravagance, only shook his head in wonder. “They still sell lamb’s feet in the city at this hour.”

Fushi City, backed by the Cool Mountain and flanked by the East and West rivers, was far more prosperous than the northern counties. Droughts had little effect here; even when chaos reigned north and south, the city’s people wanted for nothing.

Yet such things were beyond the knowledge of country folk. For an ordinary village family, a single visit to the prefectural city was a story for old folks to savor for a lifetime.

As the two spoke, they arrived at the Watchtower Inn. From afar, they could see Cao Yao and Lu Bin leaning against the tavern counter, pouring themselves cups of warm, sweet, thick wine. In the countryside outside the city, families would brew this kind of wine with leftover grain for New Year’s—delicious stuff.

It wasn’t expensive either: just thirty coins a pot.

Lu Bin, who was visiting the prefectural city for the first time, was already excited; with sweet wine to drink, he was beside himself with joy.

Cao Yao was even more uninhibited. Perhaps weary from carrying his saber, he’d undone his belt and set it, along with Liu Chengzong’s saber, on the counter, scaring away the poor drunks who’d been drinking there. The two of them took over the entire counter, leaving the innkeeper no choice but to fawn on them.

The innkeeper dared not protest, but the young wine boy, not knowing better, did. After a few complaints, the innkeeper slapped him hard and sent him outside, then bowed and apologized to Cao Yao.

Why provoke such a burly, scar-faced man?

As Liu Chengzong entered the wine shop, the wine boy was storming out, lashing out at the beggars at the door, driving them off with curses—his anger from being slapped now directed at them.

But glancing back, Liu Chengzong suddenly noticed that one of the beggars wore a jacket he recognized.

It was a mandarin duck battle jacket.

—

Note:

The silver-to-copper exchange is based on rates in Sanyuan County, Xi’an Prefecture, in the second year of Chongzhen:

“On the intercalary April 24th, seventy-four taels and eight mace of silver were exchanged for 69,271 copper coins.” — from the Zhongtong Daily Record.