After dinner, Gu Boyuan carefully leafed through the contents of the box Li Long had brought out and said:
"These... must be the legendary Gold Pages, right?"
"Gold leaves?" Li Long paused. He had read plenty of martial arts novels, in which heroes and heroines paid with Silver Sycees and gold leaves. He had assumed gold leaves were pieces of gold shaped like leaves, easy to carry and worth a good deal.
Who would have thought gold leaves looked like this?
Was that something the novels had dreamed up, or had Gu Boyuan guessed wrong?
"Yes, Gold Pages. Look, don't they look like pages in a book, one after another?" Gu Boyuan pointed at the sheets of gold. "You don't see these often. I only happened to hear a teacher mention them when I was in school. Very few survive in this country, mainly because they aren't easy to preserve."
So the novels had meant gold leaves, while Gu Boyuan meant "Gold Pages."
Li Long understood now. Looking at these "Gold Pages," each like a page from a book but clearly much thicker and heavier than gold foil, he recalled what people said in later years: antiques with writing were worth many times more than those without, because writing meant a documented history.
Some objects without writing could only be called antiques; those with writing could be called cultural relics.
Gu Boyuan solemnly put them back in the wooden box, closed the lid, and told Li Long, "Keep these safe. They can be passed down through the family."
For Old Gu to call them family heirlooms meant they really were something special.
Li Long thought, Could those gold plaques I got be passed down as heirlooms too?
As for the other things, what about that primitive idol he had brought