"Nine avenues stir with autumn smoke, a thousand plots array their earthen stalls. The temper of goods marks high and low, men's voices mingle with You and Yan~~"
Tieling's Spring festival was noisy. Peddlers and porters bustled through lively markets, filled with a smoke-and-fire human warmth that country villages did not have. The camp soldiers sold their lives at the border passes, and the elite among them became household retainers, pledging loyalty under commanders of every rank. Most followed their commanders and lived around the military city. These camp soldiers and household retainers possessed both sufficient social standing and bright white pay silver, and could, on rare occasions, receive full pay or even double pay. Their families and clans thus became the backbone class with spending power in Liaodong Garrison, bringing prosperity to the streets and markets within the city.
But once the Spring festival passed, that brief, carefree holiday slumber awoke amid the long, austere blare of military horns. Border Army cavalry in sentry detachments, bringing along able-bodied laborers driving mule carts and donkey carts, escorted army provisions, grain, equipment, and bolts of cloth sent from Liaoyang as rewards, winding out beyond Tieling's walls. The gray, hazy land of Liaodong spread open from there. Pale-brown Foxtail Millet fields blended with yellow-brown hills, stretching along the official road to the horizon. The cold wind blew past, and the harvested Foxtail Millet stubble, about a foot long, rustled in the wind. Looking out, one could faintly see figures quietly gleaning in the fields, gathering life-saving fuel for the winter. Farther away, desolate farm songs drifted over from afar, their origin impossible to tell, like wind in the mountain ridges.
"One mu of official land yields seven dou; first send six dou to the imperial prefecture. Only one dou remains for weddings