EVENING / 入夜處處擁門，各有茶坊酒店，勾肆飲食。
Tea houses, wine shops, entertainment and food sit repeatedly along the street fabric.
DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷三
馬行街鋪席
The city eats late.
Meng returns to Mahang Street and reveals an urban routine built around bought prepared food, long retail hours and people coming home deep into the night. Entry 21 is the first full Song-book aesthetics pilot in Galok Reading.
OPEN THE NIGHT CLOCK ↓
宋版書PAPER + INK
官窯青灰CELADON
朱砂SIGNAL ONLY
01 / NIGHT CLOCK
The market closes. Then it starts again.
The source gives watches, not modern clock times. The sequence preserves that historical time language and treats the interval as a reset, not a precise number of minutes.
THIRD WATCH / 三更夜市直至三更盡。
Meng marks a closing point for the night market in historical watch-time.
RESET / 更闌AN INTERVAL, LEFT UNCONVERTED.
No universal modern clock conversion is imposed. Season, night length and watch practice matter.
FIFTH WATCH / 五更纔五更，又復開張。
Retail restarts before full daylight: a short commercial night with another opening already approaching.
THROUGH DAWN / 通曉如耍鬧去處，通曉不絕。
In the busiest places activity could continue through dawn. A common electronic witness reads 「如要鬧去處」; the variant is kept visible below.
02 / PREPARED FOOD
A household can lean on the street.
Meng makes a specific claim about commercial households. The page keeps that scope intact: it is strong evidence for dependence on purchased prepared food, not a citywide participation rate.
市井經紀之家往往只於市店旋置飲食不置家蔬
GALOK READING
THE CITY
EATS OUT—
WITH A LIMIT.
EATS OUT—
WITH A LIMIT.
“The city eats out” is useful as an editorial shorthand only when the original sentence stays beside it. Meng writes about 市井經紀之家 — households engaged in urban commerce — and says they often obtained food from shops as needed.
北食 / NORTHERN FOOD南食 / SOUTHERN FOOD
03 / NIGHT INVENTORY
Even the quieter edges keep selling.
The food strings are preserved as witness-sensitive clusters. A slash marks a place where transmitted punctuation or segmentation differs; it is deliberately not promoted into a secure modern dish boundary.
燋酸豏 · 豬胰 / 胡餅 · 和菜餅 · 貛兒 · 野狐肉 · 果木翹羹 · 灌腸 · 香糖果子
𠝝子 / 薑豉 · 抹臟 · 紅絲 · 水晶膾 · 煎肝臟 · 蛤蜊 · 螃蟹 · 胡桃 · 澤州餳 · 奇豆 · 鵝梨 · 石榴 · 查子 · 榲桲 · 糍糕 · 團子 · 鹽豉湯
04 / VISUAL WITNESS
Read the street beside a scroll — carefully.
《清明上河圖》 independently preserves shops, signs, food service and dense commercial frontage in Northern Song urban visual culture. It helps us see the kind of street economy Meng describes. It does not identify this painted stretch as Mahang Street, and the page never uses it as a literal illustration of Entry 21.
Entry 20 spread religious institutions across the city. Entry 21 returns to one of its most active commercial corridors and changes the question again: how does ordinary urban life keep feeding itself after dark?
1. The street provides food as a household service.
馬行北去，舊封丘門外祅廟斜街、州北瓦子，新封丘門大街兩邊民戶鋪席外，餘諸班直軍營相對，至門約十里餘。其餘坊巷院落，縱橫萬數，莫知紀極。處處擁門，各有茶坊酒店，勾肆飲食。市井經紀之家，往往只於市店旋置飲食，不置家蔬。北食則礬樓前李四家、段家熝物、石逢巴子；南食則寺橋金家、九曲子周家，最為屈指。
WORKING TRANSLATION
North from Mahang Street, past the old Fengqiu Gate area and toward the new Fengqiu Gate avenue, households, shopfronts and military compounds extended through a vast web of lanes and courtyards. Tea houses, wine shops, entertainment and food appeared repeatedly. Households engaged in urban commerce often obtained food from shops as needed rather than keeping all food preparation at home. Meng then names prominent northern- and southern-style food sellers.
GALOK READING
The economic point is dependence on purchased prepared food among a named group of urban households. The passage supports a service relationship between household life and street retail. It gives no defensible citywide percentage, and the named sellers should not be turned into a modern restaurant ranking.
2. The market has a reset built into the night.
夜市直至三更盡，纔五更又復開張。如耍鬧去處，通曉不絕。
WORKING TRANSLATION
The night market continued until the third watch ended; by the fifth watch it opened again. In especially busy places, activity continued through dawn without interruption.
GALOK READING
The striking fact is the rhythm: late trading, a compressed reset, then predawn reopening. Historical watches stay as watches here. Turning them into one fixed pair of modern clock times would create precision the source does not provide.
3. Night trade reaches the edges — and survives winter weather.
尋常四梢遠靜去處，夜市亦有燋酸豏、豬胰胡餅、和菜餅、貛兒、野狐肉、果木翹羹、灌腸、香糖果子之類。冬月雖大風雪陰雨，亦有夜市：𠝝子、薑豉、抹臟、紅絲、水晶膾、煎肝臟、蛤蜊、螃蟹、胡桃、澤州餳、奇豆、鵝梨、石榴、查子、榲桲、糍糕、團子、鹽豉湯之類。至三更方有提瓶賣茶者。蓋都人公私營幹，夜深方歸也。
WORKING TRANSLATION
Even in quieter outlying districts there were night-market foods of many kinds. In winter, despite strong wind, snow or rain, Meng still records night trading. Tea sellers carrying bottles remained until the third watch, which he explains by noting that people occupied with public and private business returned home late.
GALOK READING
The final sentence ties retail time to labor time. Late tea sales are presented as a response to people whose work or business keeps them out late. The market clock is therefore part of the city's service infrastructure, not merely nightlife spectacle.
The menu has witnesses, not one clean typeset list.
COMMON / CTEXT段家熝物
↔SIKU FAMILY叚家爊物
COMMON WIKISOURCE如要鬧去處
↔CTEXT / SIKU如耍鬧去處
COMMON WIKISOURCE公私榮幹
↔CTEXT / SIKU公私營幹
PUNCTUATED WITNESS豬胰、胡餅
↔UNSPLIT STRING豬胰胡餅
The reading text follows the CText/Siku-aligned forms where they agree, while materially useful alternatives remain visible. Food-string punctuation is treated as editorial evidence, not as proof that every modern-looking comma marks a secure historical dish boundary.
Source register
Chinese Text Project / Volume III — working comparison text.
Wikisource / common text — punctuation and variant comparison.
Wikisource / Siku text and Kanripo / Siku — comparison witnesses.
Yuan-period printed witness / Commons — public-domain visual and textual witness.
National Palace Museum / close reading of 《清明上河圖》 — independent visual context for Northern Song urban commerce.
STAYS AWAKE.
Prepared food has shown the demand side. Entry 22 turns toward the physical machinery that moves weight through the city.
22 / 般載雜賣QUEUED / HOW THE CITY MOVES WEIGHT