DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷四
魚行
The city eats from three gates.
Volume IV ends at the water. Live fish came to market alive — shallow buckets, willow leaves strung through clear water — and each dawn three gates counted the city's intake in shoulder-loads: Xinzheng, Xishui, Wansheng, thousands of loads entering before the day began. In winter the Yellow River's cart-fish answered, at under a hundred cash the catty.
STAND AT THE GATES ↓The supply counted in shoulder-loads.
The entry names the three dawn gates together and counts their traffic as one figure: 如此生魚有數千簷入門 — thousands of 簷, each 簷 a load carried on a shoulder pole. The unit is labor, not fish: the gate sees carriers, and the market sees what they carry.
新鄭門
First of the three gates in the text's morning list — the landward gate of the fish run.
西水門
The water gate of the three — the name says river, and the trade follows it.
萬勝門
Third in the list, and the list ends there: three gates, one count, every morning.
Alive at the stall.
The section's method clause is a small technical marvel: 賣生魚則用淺抱桶，以柳葉間串清水中浸 — shallow carry-buckets, willow leaves strung through, clear water. Three terms, one apparatus. The page reads it as the trade's cold chain: fish kept alive in transit, not preserved dead.
The shallow carry-bucket — built to be held against the body and carried through the streets.
Willow leaves strung through the load — the text's own packing material, placed between the fish.
Immersed in clear water — the medium that keeps the catch alive until the case.
車魚每斤不上一百文 / UNDER 100 CASH THE CATTY
Winter moves the market upstream.
When the cold months came, the trade reached outward: 冬月即黃河諸遠處客魚來，謂之「車魚」 — guest fish from the far reaches of the Yellow River, arriving by cart, named for the vehicle that carried them. The price holds the entry's last figure in the volume: under a hundred cash the catty — the same cash register Entry 37's meat cases rang, applied to a catch that traveled days to reach the gate.
1. The morning run.
賣生魚則用淺抱桶，以柳葉間串清水中浸，或循街出賣，每日早惟新鄭門、西水門、萬勝門，如此生魚有數千簷入門。
Those who sold live fish used shallow carry-buckets, strung with willow leaves and immersed in clear water, and hawked them street by street. Each morning it was at Xinzheng Gate, the West Water Gate and Wansheng Gate — live fish entering the gates by the thousands of shoulder-loads.
Every clause is an infrastructure claim in miniature. The bucket and the willow keep the catch alive — a cold chain built from vegetation and water. The word 或循街出賣 makes the street itself a retail surface. And the intake is counted in 簷, shoulder-loads — the same load-word the rental trades of Entries 31 and 34 priced around. Volume IV's last trade measures its market in the same unit as its first: one person, carrying.
2. The winter price.
冬月即黃河諸遠處客魚來，謂之「車魚」，每斤不上一百文。
In the winter months guest fish came from the far reaches of the Yellow River — called cart-fish, after the carts that brought them — at under a hundred cash per catty.
The trade's seasonality arrives in one clause: winter closes the local water, and the market answers with distance. 車魚 names the fish after the vehicle — the cart enters the commodity's name, the way the shoulder-pole entered the counting unit. And the price is deliberately modest: under a hundred cash the catty, a figure of the same order as Entry 32's hired horse. The volume that opened with an empress's dragon palanquin closes with a price any caller could pay.
One character, one family.
Gutenberg prints 數千簷; the Siku transcription prints 檐 — the same pairing Entry 31 collated on the vehicle term, where the site kept 檐. Here the page keeps the Gutenberg form for the load word and records both.
The morning list is introduced with 惟 — "only these" — carried by both primary witnesses. The exclusivity is the text's own: three gates, and the entry names no fourth.
All three witnesses agree on the term. The page reads it as the entry presents it — fish named for the cart — and does not speculate on species or route beyond the Yellow River the text names.
The trade's product — sold alive, not preserved.
Shallow, body-carried buckets: the retail apparatus.
Leaves strung through the load — packing that keeps water and fish moving.
The morning intake points, named as a set.
The counting unit of the gate traffic — labor made measure.
Winter guest fish from the Yellow River, named for the cart.
Twelve entries ago this volume opened under an empress's dragon canopy and ran through the rental city — funerals priced, banquets contracted. It closes where the city actually eats: buckets strung with willow, three gates admitting thousands of shoulder-loads, and winter fish priced for anyone. Rank, rental, food — one market, read from the top down to the catty.
每斤不上一百文。Three gates, transmitted steadily.
The primary text is read against the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111) and the Gutenberg transcription #24137, with a simplified digitization as cross-check. The 簷/檐 pairing follows the Entry 31 collation; the gate list and the cart-fish term are stable across witnesses.