Fetching the bride was strenuous work centered on socializing-this was something new Liu Acheng had learned.
Of course, this was merely his own particular experience, and the only one across his two lifetimes at that. It hardly qualified as a universal truth.
After collecting the bride, Liu Acheng theoretically had only two specific duties: entertaining the second-tier gentry and assorted young gentry scions from Jiankang, and managing the various families' Slave Retainers, whose numbers were already approaching a thousand.
It sounded easy enough, but in reality, each of those gentry members and scions was more eccentric than the last. There were only a few dozen of them, but put them in a later age and they could easily have formed an Association of Oddballs.
One wanted bamboo outside his window when he slept; another could not go a day without wine and drank himself half to death, and, to ensure he could sleep comfortably during the day, adamantly refused to ride in an ox cart, insisting instead on being carried in a sedan chair every day;
Several would gather for pure conversation, their discussions growing ever more abstruse, while a few who detested such talk would sit there giving long, ringing cries, deliberately choosing the very moments the others were conversing, until the conversationalists could only wait with darkened faces;
Not to mention how one followed Daoism and another believed in Buddhism, how I considered my family's standing higher than yours while you considered mine an upstart house, before everyone turned around and freely mocked someone whose ancestors had commanded troops for being a military brat-only to suddenly remember that the Xi Family had risen after crossing south precisely because Situ Xi had led troops as a Refugee Commander, and become restless in their seats again;
As for scrutinizing Liu