DONGJING MENG HUA LU / 卷九
立冬
Winter is stored.
Beginning of Winter as a logistics entry: a palace garden presents the winter vegetables, a cold city stores them from palace to household, and the roads fill with carts and pack animals.
READ THE STORE ↓1. Storing the winter.
是月立冬。前五日，西御園進冬菜。京師地寒，冬月無蔬菜。上至宮禁，下及民間，一時收藏，以充一冬食用。於是車載馬駝，充塞道路。時物：薑豉、子、紅絲、末臟、鵝梨、榲桲、蛤蜊、螃蟹。
In this month comes Beginning of Winter. Five days before, the Western Imperial Garden presents the winter vegetables. The capital is in a cold land, and in the winter months there are no greens. From the palace above to the households below, everyone lays in stores at once, to fill the whole winter’s eating. At that time, carts load up and pack animals haul, and the roads are crowded and blocked. The foods of the season are: ginger and fermented beans, “… zi,” red threads, “mo zang,” goose pears, quinces, clams and crabs.
The entry opens with the court, since the Western Imperial Garden is the first to present the winter vegetables, and then explains the practical reason in one sentence: the capital is cold and has no greens in winter. Everyone from the palace to the household stores the vegetables at the same moment, and the traffic of carts and pack animals fills the roads. The city is the main actor, and the court is only the first mover. The entry also closes a volume otherwise full of ceremony with the plain labor of storage. The list of seasonal foods runs from preserved and processed items to fruit and shellfish, without comment or price. One name in it is damaged in the witnesses, and the page keeps it as it stands, rather than guessing.
A name that does not survive.
The Siku scan has an unreadable glyph before 子 in the list of foods. The modern edition prints only 子. The page adopts that reading and does not reconstruct the lost character, so one food name remains incomplete.
The Siku writes 榅桲, the quince. The page standardizes to 榲桲, a variant of the same word.
A food name, kept as written. Both witnesses agree on the characters, but neither explains the item, so the page leaves it untranslated.
The palace garden that presents the winter vegetables five days before the season begins.
Vegetables laid in at the start of winter, to last the cold months.
Storing the vegetables, at every level of the city at once.
The list of seasonal foods and fruit that closes the entry.
The first item on the seasonal list.
A pear variety named in the seasonal list, alongside the quince.
Entry 74 ends the volume on the thing the earlier entries take for granted: the city has to be fed through a cold season. The palace garden goes first, the households follow, and the roads are the evidence. After the nine cups of the previous entry, the volume closes on carts.
上至宮禁，下及民間，一時收藏，以充一冬食用。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 single-character item 子 stands as printed in the modern edition; the lost glyph before it is not restored.