DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷八
是月巷陌雜賣
Ice, fruit and parasols.
The sixth month as a street inventory: cold rice, roast meat, fruit with places of origin, ice drinks under blue-cloth parasols, two silver-vessel ice shops outside Old Song Gate, and the dog days that fill the festival gap.
READ THE STREET ↓1. Where the goods stand, and where they come from.
是月時物：巷陌路口，橋門市井，皆賣大小米水飯、炙肉、乾脯、萵苣筍、芥辣瓜兒、義塘甜瓜、衛州白桃、南京金桃、水鵝梨、金杏、小瑤李子、紅菱沙角兒、藥木瓜、水木瓜、冰雪涼水荔枝膏。皆用青布傘，當街列床凳堆垛冰雪。
Seasonal goods of this month: in the lanes and at street corners, at bridges and gates and in the markets, they all sell big-grain and small-grain millet in water, roast meat, dried meat, lettuce stalks, mustard-pickled melon, sweet melons of Yitang, white peaches of Weizhou, golden peaches of the Southern Capital, water-goose pears, golden apricots, small Yao plums, red water-chestnuts and sand-horn cakes, medicinal quince, water quince, and iced lychee-paste drinks. All use blue-cloth parasols, setting out benches and stools in the street and heaping up ice and snow.
The unit is one long list with a single verb and almost no description. It runs from grain and meat through vegetables to fruit and then drinks, and three of the fruits carry a place of origin: Yitang, Weizhou and the Southern Capital. The street itself is given as a recipe: a parasol in a single color, benches and stools set in the road, ice heaped on top. Meng names no prices and no sellers; the stall is a standard form, repeated at every corner and bridge.
2. Two shops, all in silver.
惟舊宋門外兩家最盛，悉用銀器：沙糖菉豆、水晶皂兒、黃冷團子、雞頭穰、冰雪細料餶飿兒、麻飲雞皮、細索涼粉、素簽成串、熟林檎、脂麻團子、江豆碢兒、羊肉小饅頭、龜兒沙餡之類。
Only the two shops outside the Old Song Gate are most flourishing, and they use silver vessels throughout: sugared mung bean, “crystal” soap-pods, yellow cold dumplings, euryale kernels, ice-and-snow fine-ingredient dumplings, hemp drink and chicken-skin, fine-strand cold jelly, vegetarian skewers on strings, cooked crabapples, sesame dumplings, river-bean dumplings, small mutton buns, tortoise-shaped sand-filled pastries and the like. (Many of these dish names are obscure, and the translations are provisional.)
After a street of identical stalls, the text isolates two shops and says what makes them different: silver vessels. Where the shops stand is the only place the text uses to identify them; their owners are not named. The menu that follows has thirteen items, most of them cold or sweet, and again carries no prices. The marker of quality the text offers is a material, silver, and not a taste.
3. Why the heat counts.
都人最重三伏，蓋六月中別無時節。往往風亭水榭，峻宇高樓，雪檻冰盤，浮瓜沉李，流杯曲沼，苞鮓新荷，遠邇笙歌，通夕而罷。
The people of the capital set most store by the Three Fu, for in the sixth month there is no other festival. Often, in wind-swept pavilions and waterside halls, in lofty buildings and high towers, with snow-chilled railings and ice platters, floating melons and sinking plums, cups drifting along a winding pool, wrapped fish pickle and fresh lotus, with pipes and song near and far, they keep on until the night is over.
Here Meng gives the reason for the whole entry: the sixth month has no festival of its own, so the heat takes its place. The text then shows the same products at a higher address. The street’s ice and fruit become a platter of ice, a floating melon and a sunk plum in a pavilion. The vendors and the pavilions sell and serve the same cold, and the sentence ends in music that runs all night.
Three places where the list or the sentence is open.
The reference edition ends the sentence at 堆垛 and begins the next with 冰雪; the page instead takes 冰雪 as the object of 堆垛 (“heaping up ice and snow”) and begins the next sentence at 惟舊宋門外. Both are possible.
The reference edition prints 素簽成串熟林檎 without a break; the page separates “vegetarian skewers on strings” from “cooked crabapples.” Several names in this menu (皂兒, 碢兒, 沙角兒) are obscure, so their renderings are provisional.
In a Northern Song text 南京 is not modern Nanjing but the Southern Capital, the Song name for Yingtian Prefecture, in modern Shangqiu. The page renders it “the Southern Capital.”
The hottest stretch of summer, the “dog days”; the text says the capital’s people prize it because the sixth month has no other festival.
The Song secondary capital (Yingtian Prefecture), here the origin of a golden peach.
Sold among the iced drinks; the name means “lychee paste,” and the text adds nothing further.
The shade every vendor uses; the text treats it as the common sign of a summer stall.
The place-name that identifies the two best ice shops; the shops’ owners are not named.
Cups of wine floated along a winding channel or pool; the text lists it among the pleasures of a pavilion.
Entry 64 has no ritual date, only a month, and the market does what a festival does elsewhere: it fixes a color, a shade, a roster of food and a place to go. The same cold goods appear in the street and in the pavilion, so the season is what the vendors and the pavilion-goers have in common. The next entry returns to the calendar with the seventh night.
浮瓜沉李，流杯曲沼，苞鮓新荷，遠邇笙歌，通夕而罷。The sequence is Meng’s. The punctuation is editorial.
The primary text is read from the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111, 卷八); punctuation and the standardization of Siku variant glyphs are editorial. The ice-and-snow clause is punctuated against the reference edition; several dish names remain obscure.