In the early winter of the thirty-second year of Guangxu, Li Lianying's mother died of illness in Beijing, this year Li Lianying was already a 59-year-old man, and the death of his elderly mother made his heart like a knife and he was full of grief. So he decided to hold a funeral ceremony for his mother. How big is that? In short: high specifications, long time, many guests, and an amazing amount of money!
Li Lianying has always been cautious in handling affairs, can her mother's funeral be handled in a big way, and how should she handle it? He must have asked the empress dowager Lafayette, who reported the news of his mother's death to Cixi and asked Cixi to give him a vacation.
After hearing this, Cixi gave instructions: "Thinking that you are a filial piety, I will reward you with a sum (480,000 taels of silver) for the purpose of curing funerals, and if it is not enough, I will find Yuan Shikai, the governor of Zhili, to ask for it." Li Lianying did not want to ask Cixi for silver, but cixi's attitude, only her old man nodded and did anything.
After Li Lianying took a leave of absence, she arranged for the fourth and fifth brothers to return to their hometown of Dacheng County to discuss with the tribesmen to organize funerals. After the two brothers returned home, they first invited 20 local squires and people with the ability to do things in the surrounding dozen villages to organize the premier for the funeral, saying that this was on the orders of the second brother Li Lianying, this time for the funeral of the mother, in the spirit of 500,000 taels of silver, if not enough to increase at any time.
Everyone is a person with a head and a face in the locality, and there have been many marriages and funerals, but no one has ever spent so much silver, and as for how to spend, dozens of people are very worried. So some people moved out what "Funeral Encyclopedia" and "Funeral Encyclopedia", according to the ancient system, one by one implementation, after more than ten days of arrangement, finally listed.
Soon, this list was sent to Beijing and handed over to Li Lianying, who said with satisfaction: As long as things are done in a pompous and decent way, don't be afraid to spend silver, the money is not enough, and it is a big deal to add 500,000 taels. Li Lianying finally stressed one point: According to the identity of our family, it is enough to take the highest title of ordinary people's families, and we must not exceed the etiquette system!
After three months of full preparation, things were finally ready in advance. In the blink of an eye, in late February of the thirty-third year of Guangxu, the mourning period had expired, and Li Lianying personally helped the coffin to Tongzhou to board a ship and transport it back to Ayutthaya by water. Li Lianying arrived home by car and carefully inspected the arrangements.
A total of 35 days before and after the funeral were held, during which the decoration of the spiritual hall, the maintenance of the curtain and other kinds of supplies needless to say, only two items of eating and drinking, the pomp is also too big to be bound. What does it look like? Two words: arrogant.
Within 35 days, all relatives came to mourn, listened to the drama and watched the lively, crowded with people. The banquet for entertaining guests, according to local customs, is actually superior, called "thirteen bowls", that is, four cold dishes, four small bowls, make wine dishes, eat as you go, and nine large bowls for meals, all chickens and ducks and fish.
Three feasts a day in the morning, middle and evening, ranging from 40 to 50 tables at a time, each table has eight people, with an average of 1340 tables per day, and at its peak, there are more than 200 tables a day.
In short, whether it is mourning, listening to the drama and watching the liveliness, you can enter the table. In order to take care of the old, weak, sick and disabled who cannot go out, there are eight large vats buried on both sides of the outside of the Li family's main gate, the meat in the jar is always full, the steamed buns are always placed in a few baskets, and the neighbors of the four townships can carry buckets of water, take as they please, and the wine is drunk casually and unrestricted.
When the villagers saw Li Lianying, they said, "Second Master, your silver can be spent without edges." Li Lianying said: "Now is the bitter spring that is not picked up and difficult, and it is considered that I am helping everywhere." ”
As for the pork, it was eaten and killed, and a large pond was dug outside the village that could accommodate three or four hundred pigs, and the pigs always had a stockpile, and four or five large carts were sent every day to buy them everywhere, and they had to weigh more than one hundred and fifty pounds. Later, the county could not buy it, so it went to the surrounding counties of Qingxian, Jinghai, Wen'an, Hejian and other counties to buy, causing a time when the price of pigs soared.
In the beginning, things didn't go as expected. In the three or five days of kailing, almost all the relatives and friends from near and far came together, but not many people from the surrounding neighbors and eight townships came to eat and drink. Li Lianying felt that the scene was cold, so she was furious and scolded her fourth brother for his bad popularity, why did the villagers around him dare not come.
The fourth brother felt wronged, and he and Li Lianying said that Yuan Shikai, the governor of Zhili, had sent three hundred elite soldiers to guard the village entrance, and the guards were tight, and when the common people saw this position, who would dare to come. As soon as Li Lianying heard fang ru's big dream and woke up, she said that the guards rested during the day and patrolled at night. He also said that anyone who came to the funeral, no matter who it was, could eat and drink for free.
In order to make the hearse run smoothly, the entire road leading to the cemetery was hired by dozens of people, renovated for more than a month, and by the first three days of the funeral, all the roads were wet with water and covered with wheat straw. Although it was only five miles away, the funeral procession slowly walked for more than three hours.
After the coffin is buried, it is buried with triad soil. After more than three months of paper work, and all of them were burned one by one, when people quipped: "Bake the sky hot." Three days later, craftsmen were hired to renovate the cemetery. Mother Li's coffin was buried deep, nine feet above the ground, and a three-foot-high wall was built on it, capped with cement, surrounded by flowers and trees, and completed after a few months.
After the big funeral, Li Lianying did not return to the capital immediately, and lived at home for a few days, waiting for the accounting office to settle the funeral and reporting various expenses to him, Li Lianying was deeply satisfied. Then the fourth brother accompanied him to each household to see it again, and when he saw that almost every household had a hoard of steamed buns and a jar or two of liquor, he said satisfactorily: "Everyone has saved something, and my heart is very happy, at least the people in our village can survive this bitter spring safely." ”
Li Lianying spent 550,000 taels of silver to bury her mother, and everyone may not have much concept of this number, and we can compare it with Guangxu's great funeral. A year later, the Guangxu Emperor died, and his funeral was done decently, but his expense was only about 500,000 taels.
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