DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷四
肉行
Cut to order.
The meat trade is the shortest section in the volume and one of the most exact. Every lane and bridge market kept open cases, three to five knife-men to a stall, raw and cooked sold to call — and the whole trade compressed itself into four cutting formats. The knife, not the cut of the animal, decided what you bought.
READ THE CUTS ↓Four formats, transmitted without definitions.
The entry names the cutting formats and nothing more — no illustrations, no glosses. The readings below are the page's cautious handling of the four terms, marked as reading, not as the text's own words.
闊切
The wide cut — breadth as the product, the format behind the big-flavored dishes.
READING / WIDE CUT片批
The slice-shave — the blade drawn across, producing thin sliced pieces.
READING / SLICE-SHAVE細抹
The fine shave — work at the smallest scale the case offered.
READING / FINE SHAVE頓刀
The heavy chop — the downstroke that ends the sequence.
READING / HEAVY CHOP列三五人操刀
Meat cases stood in every lane and bridge market — 坊巷橋市，皆有肉案 — three to five knife-men to a bench, raw and cooked sold from the same board, strictly to the buyer's call.
生熟肉從便索喚 / RAW + COOKED, TO CALL燠爆熟食上市
At evening the trade changed state: roasted and flash-fried cooked meat came to market — the day's raw trade followed by the night's cooked one, on the same boards.
至晚即有熟食上市 / THE EVENING SHIFT1. The case, the crew, the call.
坊巷橋市，皆有肉案，列三五人操刀，生熟肉從便索喚，闊切、片批、細抹、頓刀之類。
In the lanes and at the bridge markets there were meat cases everywhere, three to five men to a bench handling the knife; raw meat and cooked were called for as the buyer pleased — wide cuts, slice-shaves, fine shaves, heavy chops, and the like.
Distribution first: 皆有 — the cases were everywhere, not zoned to a market district. Crew sizes are given as a range, which makes the stall a small firm, not a solo trade. And the product is defined twice over: by state (raw or cooked) and by cut. The buyer's verb — 索喚, to call and summon — recurs across this volume's trades, from banquet bureaus to hiring pools.
2. The evening shift, and the arithmetic of small change.
至晚即有燠爆熟食上市。凡買物不上數錢得者是數。
Come evening, roasted and flash-fried cooked foods came to market. Whatever you bought for no more than a few cash, you got in just that amount.
The second sentence is the trade's retail claim. 不上數錢得者是數 — a few cash buys an exact quantity — describes a market fluent in small change: meat cut to the coin, not the coin cut to the meat. Read together with the four formats, the case offered precision at both ends: the knife defined the shape, the cash defined the weight. The page resists the stronger claim (standard weights, licensing) because the text makes none.
A rare case: the witnesses agree.
All three witnesses print this section identically at every textual point checked — the stablest text in the batch. The collation panel records the agreement instead of manufacturing doubt.
The price sentence compresses buyer, coin and quantity into five characters after 不上數錢. The page translates it as small change buying an exact amount and does not expand it into a claim about weighing standards.
行 marks a trade, as in the fish trade of Entry 39 and the hired-labor usages collated across Volume IV. The section title names the trade; the text never describes an institution behind it.
The open meat board — the trade's entire premises.
Three to five to a stall, the text's only headcount.
Wide cut, slice-shave, fine shave, heavy chop — named, never defined.
The evening shift's cooked offerings.
The buyer's verb — the same summons used across the volume's service trades.
The retail unit: exact amounts against small change.
Entry 37 spends three sentences on the meat trade and leaves nothing out: where the cases stood, how many men worked them, what the knife could do, when the cooked shift came on, and what a coin bought. Most sections in this volume earn their length; this one earns its brevity — and the page keeps it.
凡買物不上數錢得者是數。Three witnesses, one voice.
The primary text is read against the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111) and the Gutenberg transcription #24137, with a simplified digitization as cross-check. For this section the three agree at every point; the cut formats are transmitted without definitions and the page does not supply them as fact.