A Good Landlord in the Tang Dynasty: Starting from the Village Chief

Chapter 111: Medicine King's Thousand Gold Bath Beans
The sky is filled with mist,

The setting sun is like blood,

In late autumn, on the north tower of Leyouyuan, Du Shiniang had been standing there for a whole day like a woman waiting for her husband.

From sunrise to sunset, from joyful anticipation to the loneliness and helplessness at this moment.

"Shi Niang, the closing bell has rung. It's time to go home."

Du Shiniang wore a red feather-covered crane cloak, but it couldn't block the cool breeze from the north tower.

She wore a veil on her head, which concealed her carefully dressed face in the morning and also hid two lines of tears.

"Wait a little longer, Li Lang might be delayed by something." Shi Niang whispered.

Shuying's hands were shaking with anger. "Shi Niang, I've already sent three letters to Pingkangfang. The servants who delivered the letters said they handed the letters to him personally, and he was at home with his daughters by his side. How could he be delayed by something?"
He just refused to come. He is a coward. He is afraid of the old lady and A Lang."

Du Shiniang seemed to have finally found a reason, "Yes, it's all because of grandma. Grandma must have sent someone to find Li Lang again. Last time, she asked the Wei family to steal the recipe from Li Lang's workshop. I heard that now the Wei and Du families have opened several tofu skin workshops and are suppressing prices to steal Li Lang's business.

My second brother brought me to Chang'an, so Azu must have blamed Li Lang again. When Li Lang returned from the war, Azu must have sent people to look for Li Lang again, even threatening him, and perhaps he had done something bad again.
That’s why Li Lang didn’t come to see me. It must be like this.”

Shuying looked at her like this, feeling very disappointed. She was beyond help.

"Shi Niang, how can you think like this? No matter what the reason is, if he is really a man, he should overcome all difficulties and come to see Shi Niang bravely. But he retreated and avoided seeing her. He is a coward. Why should Shi Niang stay with such a person?"

"You two are not a good match. He is just a peasant, and you are the daughter of a wealthy family."

Du Shiniang seemed to have figured it out.

Wipe away the tears and burst into laughter.

"Come on, go home."

"Shi Niang, how can you still laugh!"

Du Shiniang said, "Li Lang was only forced by A'zu's opposition, not because he didn't have me in his heart. If he didn't come today, I will go to him tomorrow. No matter what others object, as long as we are willing, it's fine."

"Shi Niang, what kind of magic potion did that Tian She'er give you? How could you do this?"

"Shuying, you don't understand. You don't know how it feels until you fall in love with someone."

"How does it feel?"

"Just like the warm sunshine in winter, like sweet brown sugar water, even more like a dream and a song. A day without seeing you feels like three years, and every time we meet, it feels like a spring breeze..."

Shuying didn't understand at all, how could this be possible?
"Then Li Yi must have learned some sorcery and cast a spell on you, causing you to lose your soul!"

"Shuying, you don't understand. One day, when you meet a man you like and you two fall in love, you will be like this too."

"Shi Niang, you two have been in love? How come I didn't know?"

"You don't understand, really, you don't understand anything."

The master and servant argued, then left the North Tower and boarded a carriage back to Anminfang.

"Wait a moment,"

Du Shiniang got off the carriage again, picked a bunch of beautiful chrysanthemums, and called a servant, "Take this bunch of chrysanthemums to Li's house in Pingkangfang."

Li's house in Pingkangfang,
At dusk,
Li Yi had nothing to do, so seeing that the wood ash lye had already settled, he simply continued making soap.

He specially boiled some ginger juice, took some mugwort and mashed it into juice, put a piece of brown sugar in the ginger juice and boiled it into brown sugar ginger seeds, and also boiled some lard and let it cool.

Grind with some more salt.

Everything is ready,
The Silla maid and Ji looked at the pots and pans on the ground and wanted to leave on their own initiative, not wanting to see the final secret method of making the product.

"Don't leave, watch carefully, learn carefully, and prepare the recipe. You can do it later. I, Alang, don't want to deal with this stuff every day."

"Ah Lang, this bath bean recipe is extremely valuable. Every family keeps it a secret, and even passes it down to men, not women."

"It's not a rare thing. Besides, I don't trust you for anything. Come on."

They both stood beside each other excitedly.

"I'll tell you what to do, and you guys do it. First, scoop out the top layer of the precipitated lye."

"Pick out the fascia from the pounded pig pancreas paste, then put it into our lard, pour in the lye, add it little by little at first,"

Li Yi didn't know the specific formula, so he figured it out slowly.

"Okay, now divide this into a few more portions, and we'll add some more things to test the ratio."

Add ginger juice, mugwort juice, and brown sugar ginger water respectively, and mix two or three portions of each ingredient in different proportions.

Finally, three kinds of fragrance were made, with three proportions of each, for a total of nine.

"Add a little fine salt to each portion, and then stir in the same direction."

Stir constantly to allow the lye and lard to fully blend, and slowly wait for the saponification reaction.

The core technology of soap making is the saponification reaction of oil and alkali, so you can use pig pancreas, lard directly, or even vegetable oil.

If there is no alkali, alkali solution can be extracted from wood ash, and lime can be obtained by burning shells, which will have a better effect after being added.

Master this key,
As for the others, it's just a matter of slowly finding a better ratio.

Adding other herbs and spices simply adds some special characteristics, but its most basic function is definitely cleansing.

"Oh, it's changed,"

"It's becoming thicker and thicker, like a paste."

"Stir it for a while and then put it into the mold."

It was my first time making it, and I didn't prepare any special molds. I just took the bamboo tube and sawed it into sections of tube rings.
"Okay, put this paste into the bamboo tube, fill it up and smooth it out."

"Is this okay?"

"After drying in the shade for three days, it will be set, but it cannot be used immediately. It is best to place it in a bamboo basket and let it saponify naturally for a month."

"How long does it take?"

The two of them just did it themselves and found it amazing. The pig pancreas, lard, wood ash water, shell powder, salt, and mugwort juice actually became a delicate paste in the end. After a month or so, it can become solidified bath beans.

"Is it necessary to use lard? Lard is very expensive now." Ji said.

“You can also use only pig pancreas, but the result won’t be as delicate.”

Li Yi knew that some of the cheaper bath beans sold now were actually not as finely made as his. They simply mashed the pig pancreas into a paste, then added bean powder and kneaded it directly. After kneading evenly, they rolled it into a bean shape to make bath beans.

The more high-end ones will also use chrysanthemum leaves and osmanthus stamens for fumigation. This is called mung bean face, which is very similar to the production process of jasmine tea in later generations. The flowers and tea are mixed evenly. High-end jasmine tea also requires the nine scents.

And the more advanced one is to add a lot of spices.

Various precious spices and medicinal materials were piled in, such as cloves, agarwood, diamond milk powder, jade chips, and even pearls and musk. Some even added 17 or 18 kinds of flowers.

After mixing and grinding it thousands of times, and then storing it in a sealed container, the bath beans will become very fragrant. They are even claimed to have effects such as skin care, whitening, removing sores and acne.

However, without adding alkali, the pig pancreas cannot undergo saponification reaction, and the cleaning effect is definitely not as good as Li Yi's current one, and it may even be worse than ordinary people using soap beans directly.

There is a folk story about Wang Dun, a handsome man from the Wang family, the most wealthy family in the Eastern Jin Dynasty. He was chosen as a son-in-law by Sima Yan. When Wang Dun first married a princess, he went to the toilet and a servant brought him a golden bathtub filled with water and a glass bowl filled with bath beans.
Wang Dun actually poured the bath beans directly into the water and ate them, thinking they were dry rice, which made the princess's maids all laugh.

This story shows that during the Eastern Jin Dynasty, the richest family in the south had never seen bath beans, which means that bath beans were a luxury at that time and were probably only available in the palace of the Central Plains.

But now, bath beans have become a must-have item for the nobility, on par with facial creams, hand ointments and perfumes.

Although it is now popular, it is still a luxury item like spices.

This was also the new business opportunity that Li Yi discovered after trying many bath beans from the Tang Dynasty and being greatly disappointed.

The bath beans that Li Shimin rewarded him with were said to be the royal bath beans worth a thousand gold coins, and came from the recipe of the Medicine King Sun Simiao. However, Li Yi was only shocked by the various spices and flowers used in them, and was not very satisfied with their effects.

His pomegranate soap can completely kill it instantly.

Now let's experiment with the recipe and find a suitable ratio. If we want to upgrade it later, it will just be a matter of adding some spices, flowers, herbs, etc.

The Tang people pounded pig pancreas, flowers, spices, pearls, mixed jade chips, and shook bean flour, but they did not seem to have mastered the most crucial secret.
It is saponification by adding alkali solution.

Therefore, the Tang people only had bath beans, which were small and a bit loose, and there were no large, well-solidified ones.

Although Li Yi also used pig pancreas, it was only for cost considerations. One pound of pork fat cost 160 coins, and one pound of pig pancreas cost 30 coins, which was cheap.

Nowadays, vegetable oil is more expensive than lard.

Of course, if we can open up sales in the future, making some vegetable oil soaps will be inevitable.

First make soap and study the technology well, then you can upgrade to perfumed soap or even make medicated soap. This market is huge and has much more prospects than making bean curd sheets.

Looking at the packed bamboo tubes, Ji and the others were full of anticipation.

Li Yi didn't care at all. "Put it here to dry in the shade for three days. Come back and check it out after three days."

"We have to guard it. What if someone steals it? It's all made with lard, and it costs a lot of money and effort." The Silla maid said that she used to be a maid in General Guo's mansion, and the mansion also used bath beans. There really was a maid who stole it.

Because the ingredients used in bath beans, such as pig pancreas and bean flour, are all edible, and spices are added, they are very fragrant and delicious.

"You guys must not eat it. This thing has been saponified and cannot be eaten. It will cause abdominal pain, diarrhea, and vomiting."

"Ah? It's poisonous? Then can it still be used to wash hands and face?"

Wang Dun used to eat bath beans, so how come ours are poisonous?

“It’s very effective in cleaning and decontamination, but it’s not edible.”

"Then let's take it back to the house and dry it in the shade. We can't let any foolish person steal it and eat it. Otherwise, he will be poisoned and we will lose a slave." The Silla maid said quickly.

"At most, he'll have vomiting and diarrhea, but he won't die," Li Yi said with a smile. "If someone is poisoned, pouring soapy water over their body to induce vomiting could actually help detoxify them."

The two maids were busy taking all nine kinds of soap back to their room to prevent anyone from eating them secretly and getting poisoned.

"Ah Lang, Du Shiniang has sent another servant."

Li Yi felt a headache when he heard this. He now knew that he was wrong before and did not grasp the sense of boundaries, which led to misunderstandings. Although he admired Du Shiniang very much, he did not want to get married now. The other party was only fifteen years old, especially since the Du family was so opposed to it.

This is going to be troublesome.
He did not accept the invitation today, but Du Shiniang sent people to invite him three times, and now it is the fourth time.

It’s so late, and Du Shiniang is still waiting for him?
He sent Liu Heizi to meet the servant of the Du family. After a while, Liu Heizi brought a box containing a bunch of Leyouyuan chrysanthemums in full bloom.

Li Yi looked at Juhua and felt a little at a loss.

(End of this chapter)