DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷二
宣德樓前省府宮宇
Before Xuande Tower
Meng Yuanlao begins beside the imperial forecourt, then refuses to keep government, commerce and ordinary appetite in separate boxes. Offices give way to markets, an embassy faces a jeweler, and the route south ends among tea, meat pies and wine.
WALK THE STREET ↓01 / CITY CORRIDOR
One route. Several cities at once.
The sequence below follows Meng's remembered movement rather than pretending to be a surveyed map. Government, diplomacy, trade and food keep interrupting one another.
Meng starts with institutions packed immediately around Xuande Tower, then keeps walking. The important shift is visible in the nouns: court offices are followed by shops, a foreign relay hostel, a prefectural office, residents and named food businesses. The imperial center is spatially ordered without being socially empty.
1. The forecourt begins as a diagram of state power.
PRIMARY TEXT / OPENING
宣德樓前……近東則兩府八位，西則尚書省。Wikisource / Volume II ↗GALOK READING
The opening is almost architectural shorthand. Meng uses gates and facing directions to place the Secretariat, the two administrations and the Department of State Affairs around the palace approach. “Eight seats” should first be read spatially: power has a visible address beside the imperial route.
東府
御街 / IMPERIAL AXIS西府
2. Ritual institutions extend the court into the street.
PRIMARY TEXT / SOUTHWARD
御街大內前南去，左則景靈東宮，右則西宮。Chinese Text Project / Volume II ↗GALOK READING
The route now moves south between the Jingling palace compounds, the Dasheng music bureau and the Court of Imperial Sacrifices. These names keep the ceremonial machinery of the dynasty physically close to the avenue even as the chapter begins to admit other kinds of urban activity.
3. A government district turns into a commercial address book.
PRIMARY TEXT / MARKET EDGE
南則唐家金銀鋪、溫州漆器什物鋪、大相國寺。Siku text / Wikisource ↗GALOK READING
Named businesses arrive without a formal transition: gold and silver, Wenzhou lacquerware, fruit stalls, paper pictures and medicine. Meng's memory works at storefront scale. The same sentence structure used to locate offices now locates shops.
TEXT DETECTIVE / 青魚市內行
Different digital witnesses divide this phrase differently. One reading preserves 「青魚市內行」; another gives 「青魚市、肉行」. The page leaves the uncertainty visible because punctuation changes the inventory of places.
4. A foreign hostel faces a jeweler.
PRIMARY TEXT / JUXTAPOSITION
街北都亭驛……相對梁家珠子鋪。Wikisource / Volume II ↗GALOK READING
The Duting Relay Hostel lodged Liao envoys; directly opposite, Meng remembers the Liang family's pearl shop. Diplomacy and luxury retail are placed in the same visual field. That adjacency is more revealing than a clean modern zoning diagram would be.
TEXT DETECTIVE / 百種・百鐘
Digital witnesses differ between 「百種圓藥鋪」 and 「百鐘圓藥鋪」. Galok treats this as a textual variant and avoids turning either spelling into a confident business name without a critical edition.
5. South of Zhouqiao, the state gives way to appetite.
PRIMARY TEXT / ORDINARY CITY
御街一直南去，過州橋，兩邊皆居民。Chinese Text Project / Volume II ↗GALOK READING
After Zhouqiao, the inventory becomes strikingly domestic: residents, charcoal, hotels, buns, incense, meat pies and tea. This is the chapter's payoff. The route that began beside the palace does not end with another monument; it dissolves into everyday consumption.
STATE and TRADE do not occupy separate pages in Meng's city. They occupy the same walk.