DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷九
十月一日
The stoves are lit.
The first day of the tenth month as a hand-off of warmth: the state issues winter clothes and charcoal, the city goes out to the graves, and households answer with wine at the stove.
READ THE DAY ↓1. Jackets, graves, charcoal and wine.
十月一日，宰臣已下受衣，著錦襖。三日（今則五日），士庶皆出城饗墳。禁中車馬，出道者院及西京朝陵。宗室車馬，亦如寒食節。有司進暖爐炭。民間皆置酒，作暖爐會也。
On the first day of the tenth month, the chief ministers and those below them receive garments and put on brocade jackets. On the third day (nowadays the fifth), townspeople and officials all go out of the city to make offerings at the graves. The palace’s carriages go out to the Daoists’ courts and to the tomb visit at the Western Capital. The carriages of the imperial clan are as at the Cold Food festival. The proper offices present charcoal for the warming stoves. Households everywhere set out wine and hold what is called a warming-stove party.
The entry is a chain of hand-offs, each taken up by a different body. Clothing is issued from above and worn by the ministers; the city goes out to the graves on its own date; the palace and the clan send carriages; the offices supply charcoal; and only then do households act, with wine. The state supplies warmth, and the city turns it into a party. The clan’s procession is not described but sent back to the Cold Food entry (“as at Cold Food”), so Meng treats the tomb season as one template that recurs in autumn. His parenthetical “nowadays the fifth” shows him correcting the old date against current practice without saying when or why the custom moved. The text also leaves out what the stove party consists of beyond wine, and who is invited.
Three small decisions.
The Siku witness has the small-print gloss “nowadays it is the fifth.” A modern edition prints only 今; the page keeps the fuller 今則 and the gloss in parentheses as Meng’s own.
The Western Capital (西京) is named, but the text gives no further location for the tomb visit. The page keeps the name and does not specify it.
Read here as making offerings at the graves, in line with the Cold Food parallel two sentences later. The text itself says nothing about the offerings.
The issue of winter clothing to ministers at the start of the tenth month.
The padded jacket the ministers put on after the issue.
The whole town, from the educated and ranked to the ordinary household.
Daoist establishments to which the palace sent carriages on this day.
The departments responsible for supplying the charcoal.
The household drinking party at the stove, the day’s named custom.
Entry 71 is brief, but it already shows the pattern of the winter volume: the court issues clothes and fuel, and the city builds a gathering on top of them. The next entry turns back to the palace itself, to a birthday festival that begins a month ahead with the rehearsal of music.
民間皆置酒，作暖爐會也。The sequence is Meng’s. The punctuation is editorial.
The primary text is read from the Siku-family witness (Kanripo KR2k0111, 卷九); punctuation and the standardization of Siku variant glyphs are editorial. The entry is read in one unit, with the 今則 gloss kept as the Siku prints it.