It’s the Chinese New Year, you have to go to the grave to worship your ancestors first.

However, my father’s ancestral home is in Yangzhou, a very beautiful place, but it is too far away.

"Wait for the next spring next trip to Yangzhou and go back to visit the grave during the Qingming Festival." My father was carrying a bamboo basket containing various offerings. Li Chao carried a basket of paper money and gold foil ingots and incense candles, and the father and the other went out and went to the Han River in Yuliangkan to the east of Xiangyang.

Yangzhou is too far away and cannot go back during the Chinese New Year, so my father said to go to the Han River to burn paper threads, and ask Hanshui to take the paper money to Yangzhou to give it to his ancestors.

When I arrived at the Han River, I found that many people were worshiping on the riverside, some heading south, some heading north, some heading east and some heading west. Because of the wars over the years, too many people left their hometowns and were in a foreign land, so I could only use this method to worship their dead relatives during the New Year, and could not go to the grave to personally pile up a handful of soil and put a few incense sticks.

The offering basket contains pig ears, whole chickens and a few crucian carp, which symbolizes the sacrifice of three animals. There are also a bunch of tall rice, a pot of rice wine, and a bowl of buns in the basket.

My father held a wine pot and looked at the river wine, then raised the basket and toasted three times to the east. After three times, after a pot of yellow wine, the riverside was filled with the fragrance of wine.

Li Chao squatted on the ground, took out his lighter and started lighting paper money and incense candles. The two of them also prepared a lot of gold foil ingots, etc.

"It must be burned thoroughly. If you leave a corner but don't burn it thoroughly, the money will be short of it and it will not be used." The father took a branch and spread the paper money and let him burn it thoroughly.

Li Chao laughed in his heart when he heard this, but on the surface, he couldn't say that his father was superstitious. Sacrifice to ancestors is not entirely superstitious. Chinese people have always had the custom of worshiping ancestors. At the earliest, this was even a religious ceremony and a belief. Gradually, although Taoism and Buddhism were introduced, the Chinese worship of ancestors was not something that many people from other ethnic groups did not have.

This is the importance of Chinese culture on its own origins and roots.

The Han people pay attention to bloodline and family and roots.

"We burn more than 100 gold ingots this year, and we will definitely be able to use them. We also burn so much paper money." Li Chao said to his father with a smile, and at the same time, he suddenly thought in his mind that his printing factory could get some new business.

He remembered that in later generations, there was a company that specialized in printing paper money for tomb sweeping, and it went public and had a prosperous performance.

You have a paper mill and a printing factory. You can also make some simple straw paper money or some exquisite paper money, such as building a money house in the underworld, issuing some silver notes, and printing 120 billion taels, thousands or million taels...

You can even print houses, carriages, servants furniture, etc. directly.

A gust of wind blew, and the smokey Li Chao's eyes burst into tears, retracting his random thoughts.

After burning the paper money, my father was reluctant to leave, so he knelt down and kowtowed to the south. Li Chao also knelt down and kowtowed there. For the values ​​of this era, it was quite unfilial to not be able to sweep the tombs and worship our ancestors. People in this era have a very strong sense of rurality. Even when they are old, they must pay attention to returning to their roots. When they die, they must be buried in the family cemetery.

However, the war since the end of the Sui Dynasty has caused countless wives like fathers to be separated and leave their hometowns. The father has done well like this, and now he has achieved success and fame. He can still go back when he has time. Even though Li Chao and his son have never returned, they have arranged a housekeeper to maintain the cemetery of the Zhang family’s ancestors two years ago. They also set up several villages there next to the cemetery, and the village also arranged people to be responsible for the care of the village. The income from the village is basically used to maintain the cemetery there.

On New Year's Eve, the sun is shining.

Looking at the Han River surrounded by people worshipping ancestors, it is a pity.

"Let's go, go home!"

Dad sighed.

The housekeepers and servants in the distance came with horses, and many people were surrounded by them.

Li Chao knew that these people were ordinary people, and most of them were local people and were not used to worship their ancestors by the river. They came today, but in fact, for everyone's sacrifices.

Although the imperial court distributed a sum of New Year’s food for the New Year, nowadays, everyone has dishes.

Today, many people come here to worship their ancestors and prepare a lot of sacrifices. After the sacrifice, these things will certainly not be taken away, and they will usually be scattered to the people next to them. Therefore, when they come here, they are actually here to share some sacrifices.

"Take it to everyone!" Dad handed the offering of Lanzi to the servants.

Li Chao also told the servants behind him, "Give us all the rice cakes, sticky bean buns, bean crumbs, dumplings, dumplings and dumplings in our car, and each person will send one."

Before Li Chao came, he knew that this would happen, so he came prepared and specially pulled several trucks of these foods to send them to the people who came.

The manager and servant went to greet the people who were surrounding him and told them to line up loudly, each serving was one serving for each. Each serving was quite rich, and there would be several rice cakes, which would probably be two pounds in total.

Everyone was queuing up excitedly. When they saw that they were so rich, they knelt down and kowtowed to Mr. Li Chao. Two pounds of food were just two kilograms of food, but it was extremely precious to these people.

Riding on the horse, Li Chao and his father sighed and walked back.

They don't want to have such gratitude.

"In the first year of Zhenguan, the passing years is unfavorable. Can everyone survive next year?" asked the father.

"It's certainly possible. In fact, although the disaster next year may be even worse than this year, the most important thing is this year. If not many people starve to death this winter, then people will not starve to death next year. The court has taken so many measures, and the treatment measures in the disaster areas are in place. Now there are very few people in the disaster areas, and most young and strong people have concentrated on working for relief, so the situation will not be messy. It will be easier to provide relief."

"That's good, that's good. To be honest, it's really rare. There are very few people who starve to death with such a big disaster. If it were in the past, it would be very common for no roosters to crow a hundred miles and no one to be in the crowd."

Li Chao nodded. This incident was a lesson for the monarchs and ministers of the Tang Dynasty. Although the Tang Dynasty defeated the rebellion of the kings and unified the world, it seemed very powerless in the face of God's natural disasters.

This famine also completely allowed the monarch and ministers to see the background of the Tang Dynasty.

If the court had more empty family assets, then such a famine would not have caught the court off guard. At the same time, it was also the heavy disaster this time that made the court realize that moving the capital was imperative and urgent.

Now the prime ministers are discussing and stepping up the construction of a new capital. At the same time, we must build large-scale transfer granaries and storage granaries in all walks of life, especially along the Yangtze River, Yellow River, Huaihe River and the Grand Canal. In addition, local governments should standardize and formalize charity warehouses and social warehouses to allow grain in the warehouse. At the same time, once there is another disaster in the local area, these important transportation granaries can immediately transport grain and open warehouses to release grain.

In this era, many times, some local small-area disasters will also cause great harm. The key is that the food is poorly allocated. In addition, when there is a disaster, wealthy grain merchants will stock up on grain, which will intensify the food famine.

Now the prime ministers are discussing that a regulation is required to stipulate that after a famine occurs, an emergency rescue system for local relief can be exempted from reporting and waiting for approval, which is a waste of time. At the same time, this regulation also contains a special provision, which is to comprehensively control the grain market after a major disaster, such as the government's purchase of grain, grain price limit, quantitative supply, etc. With these specific regulations, the harm of the disaster can be greatly reduced.

Back to the mansion.

The group of women, Qiniang and Cui Yingying, had already prepared the offerings for sacrifices in the family ancestral temple.

The family's offerings were prepared even more abundantly, including whole cows, pigs, sheep, chickens, ducks, geese, and several big fish. It was just a few camels, black bears, and so on, but there were actually some hump and bear paws.

This is probably the case for royal sacrificial sacrifices.

Li Chao had no objection to such a rich offering.

Chinese people have always attached great importance to these things. Even if the family is poor, if their parents die, they will have to borrow money to buy a good coffin no matter what. Then they have to invite them to promote, place mats, invite neighbors, relatives, friends and others to come here.

It can be said that white weddings are as important as red weddings.

The worship of ancestors is also very sacred and grand.

The emperor would build the Taimiao, and ordinary wealthy families would also build family ancestral temples. Local tyrants would also raise funds to build a ancestral temple. However, even if the poorest families would build a place, an altar table, and a ancestral tablet at home.

Regardless of wealth, the ancestral tablets in the family are only for five generations. The earliest one is the first one, then the newly deceased four generations of ancestors, and the middle one is not allowed. Each generation is passed, the previous one is removed and the other is added.

The Li family now worships the ancestors of the founder of the father's family, then Li Laoqin's father, great-grandfather, and Gaozu, and then the ancestors are the ancestors. As for the ancestors of the heaven, ancestors, Taizu, and distant ancestors who go up, they are not on the altar table.

There were only those five who were in the corpse.

Of course, if the father hung up one day, then Li Chao would put the father's tablet on it and then remove the father's Great Master tablet. In this way, it will be the fifth generation.

Although the sacrifices were prepared by women, they could not enter the ancestral temple. It was like the genealogy compiled by my father for the Li family. The women on it were not qualified to leave even the names, and only recorded a certain family. For example, Cui Yingying only wrote that in the fourth year of Wude, the Cui family, the fifth family in the Qinghe family, married the Cui family in Zhengzhou.

Later, Li Chao read it and felt that this was not good. After discussing with his father for a long time, he compiled a new genealogy, which also recorded information such as Cui Yingying's name rankings, and the newly born Xia Huaniang also recorded the genealogy.

But they still cannot enter the family sacred temple.

Last year, only Li Chao and Dad were sacrificed, but this year there were more people.

Li Chao’s little brother, and Li Chao’s five sons and two daughters.

Cui Yingying held her son and followed Li Chao, and was very nervous. According to the rules, women could not enter the family ancestral hall, but Li Chao asked Cui Yingying and the others to hold their children to worship their ancestors and could come in too.

When they entered the clan temple, they felt extremely honored and extremely sacred.

But a few little guys looked around curiously.

My father and everyone knelt down, burned incense and worshiped the tablets of the ancestors.
Chapter completed!