DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷八
立秋
Autumn begins in the hair.
The first day of autumn as a catalpa leaf cut into flowers, four grades of jujube, and a euryale-seed seller whose single grade, a lotus-leaf wrap and a name are what the street remembers.
READ THE ENTRY ↓1. A leaf, four jujubes and one family.
立秋日，滿街賣楸葉，婦女兒童輩皆剪成花樣戴之。是月，瓜果梨棗方盛。京師棗有數品：靈棗、牙棗、青州棗、亳州棗。雞頭上市，則梁門裏李和家最盛。中貴戚里，取索供賣；內中泛索，金合絡繹。士庶買之，一裹十文，用小新荷葉包，糝以麝香，紅小索兒繫之。賣者雖多，不及李和一色揀銀皮子嫩者貨之。
On the first day of autumn, the streets are full of people selling catalpa leaves, and women and children all cut them into flower shapes and wear them. In this month melons, fruit, pears and jujubes are at their height. The capital has several grades of jujube: spirit jujubes, tooth jujubes, Qingzhou jujubes and Bozhou jujubes. When euryale seeds (“chicken heads”) come to market, the Li He family inside the Liang Gate is the most flourishing. The senior palace eunuchs and the imperial in-laws send for supplies; the palace itself makes occasional requisitions, gold boxes coming and going in a steady stream. Gentry and commoners who buy them pay ten cash a wrap, wrapped in a small fresh lotus leaf, sprinkled with musk and tied with a little red cord. There are many sellers, but none equal Li He, who sells only one grade: selected, silver-skinned and tender.
The first thing sold on the first day of autumn is a leaf, an object with no use other than to mark the date, which women and children trim into flower shapes and wear. The text then moves to food, and gives its single classification: four jujubes, of which two are named for prefectures (Qingzhou, Bozhou). The only named business in the entry shows the supply running both ways. Upward, eunuchs, in-laws and the palace send gold boxes in a steady stream; downward, a wrap costs ten cash and comes with a lotus leaf, musk and a red cord. Meng explains the lead over the competition in one sentence: many sell, but Li He sells “one grade” only, the tender, silver-skinned seeds. The ten-cash price, set beside the thirty to fifty strings for a pair of early vegetables in entry 61, shows the range of prices Meng quotes in this volume.
Three places where the text bends.
The Siku scan writes 槮, a tree-name graph; the sense, “sprinkled with musk,” and the reference edition call for 糝. The page reads 糝.
The Siku text does not mark who sends and who supplies. The page reads the eunuchs and in-laws as sending for goods (取索) and the shop as supplying and selling them (供賣); the parallel 內中泛索 supports this.
The name means “chicken head”; in context it is the euryale seed, a late-summer water-plant food. The page glosses this and leaves the name in quotation marks.
Sold in the street on the first day of autumn and cut into flower shapes to wear.
The first of the four named jujube grades; the text does not describe any of them.
Literally “chicken head,” the common name of the seed the Li He family sells.
The one business named in the entry, located inside the Liang Gate.
A single quality only; what Li He sells and the others do not.
The containers in which the palace’s requisitions arrive and leave, “coming and going in a steady stream.”
Entry 67 begins with a leaf and ends with a business that sells exactly one thing well. The seed supply reaches both the palace and the ten-cash buyer, and one seller is remembered for refusing to mix grades. The next entry turns to the autumn altar festival, where food again crosses the lines between families.
賣者雖多，不及李和一色揀銀皮子嫩者貨之。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 Siku 槮 is read as 糝 after the reference edition.