Chapter 773 Hongtaifang
After Su Xing and He Xu got off the boat, they continued to stroll around the ancient town.
Until the aroma of roasted fish came out from a carved wooden window, making people unable to move.
He Xu looked at the time and it was already past eleven o'clock.
He smiled and said, "Lunch first?"
Su Xing nodded immediately, "Okay!"
He Xu took his girlfriend's hand and walked into the small restaurant that was filled with fragrant food.
The restaurant is not big. It is a small shop run by an elderly couple in their fifties or sixties. The old man is the chef and the old woman is busy greeting customers in the front hall.
Su Xing and He Xu ordered a lot of dishes.
The proprietress said, "You two can't finish all these dishes, right?"
He Xu smiled and said, "We can finish it. We have a good appetite."
The proprietress stopped trying to persuade them and placed the order for them.
He Xu told the proprietress, "We can't eat spicy food very well, so all the dishes should be less spicy, thank you."
"Ok, I see."
As soon as the proprietress heard the accents of the two young men, she knew they were from outside the province. People from many provinces cannot eat spicy food as well as people from Hunan.
She went to the kitchen and asked her husband to reduce the amount of chili by half.
Soon, the dishes were served one by one.
Roasted fish is a local specialty. The aroma aroused my appetite right after I woke up. Now that I have tasted it, it is indeed salty, crispy, spicy and flavorful. It is delicious and goes well with rice.
Both of them were full of praise.
The boss came out of the kitchen and said proudly, "My family has been making this kind of fish since the Xianfeng period. The traditional method is to smoke it with rice bran for three days and three nights. Back then, some soldiers who went to war loved to carry our dried fish as military rations."
Su Xing and He Xu both laughed.
While they were eating, they occasionally chatted with the old couple and learned some history and legends of Jinggang Ancient Town.
After lunch, they took a short rest, paid the bill and left.
In the afternoon, they visited some historical sites in Jinggang Ancient Town, such as Yangsimiao, Bayuantang, Guanyin Temple, etc.
At 2:30, they headed to Hongtaifang, the main attraction they were going to visit this afternoon.
This is a brothel built in the tenth year of Yongzheng's reign in the Qing Dynasty. It is also the last brothel of the Qing Dynasty in Xingcheng, with a history of more than 300 years.
Today, Hongtaifang has been converted into a brothel history and culture museum.
Su Xing knew that they would not be in a very happy mood when visiting Hongtaifang, so they had avoided this place before, first took a tour of the ancient town, and then visited here.
When Su Xing and He Xu turned the corner of Baojian Street, a three-story brick and wood house came into their sight.
On the door lintel with mottled vermilion lacquer, the three large gold-plated characters "Hongtaifang" are clear and eye-catching.
On the brick wall next to it, there is a wax figure of a woman covered with glass, trying to escape through the wall.
The sound effect sounded: "Sir, are you here? Come on, come on, please come this way..."
Then, there is another sad monologue by a woman, "This is where my mother tortured me... Sisters, my heart is broken... This brothel is haunted... In the dead of night, I can always hear the miserable cries of my sisters here..."
The sound was so creepy that Su Xing got goosebumps.
He Xu shook his girlfriend's hand.
Su Xing took two photos of the wax figure on the wall, then took a deep breath and walked through the door.
There are more tourists here than on the streets of the ancient town. Many of them come here out of curiosity, but in the reflection of a carved window lattice, they encounter half of the blood and tears history of women in the feudal period.
This is a paid attraction.
He Xu went to the window and bought two tickets.
As soon as they entered the courtyard, they smelled a complex mixture of mold and agarwood.
The house in front of us is a two-story structure, the main part of which is built entirely of wood. Most of the carved wooden windows on the walls that had been pried open have been repaired.
The two followed the crowd and went into each room to have a look.
The wax figures in the restored scene are forever frozen in an ambiguous moment.
The girl in the moon-white shirt is pouring tea for the guests, and the rouge on her face is smudged just right.
The accountant in a long gown was using an abacus. The price list behind him read, "Listening to music for two cents, staying overnight for five taels."
The most horrifying thing was that in a room at the corner of the stairs, a man who looked like a eunuch was torturing a young girl.
The girl's shrill cries made people's scalps tingle and their hearts tighten.
In front of the display cabinet of the "Famous Prostitutes of All Ages" exhibition are Su Xiaoxiao's ivory comb and Chen Yuanyuan's gilded nail covers.
These women, who have been written about thousands of times by literati and poets, have personal belongings that are so ordinary, as ordinary as the sewing needles in the tailor shop next door.
Until I found the data on a display board: there were 247 registered prostitutes in Jinggang during the Daoguang period, with an average life expectancy of 29 years!
Su Xing's eyes were sore and his smile was bitter.
Those legends praised as "peerless" are nothing more than the regrettable candles among tens of millions of premature lives, and are also embers full of regrets.
Walking up the creaking wooden stairs to the second floor, there is a sign reminding tourists: No entry for persons under 18 years old.
Many tourists thought they would see some erotic scenes, but instead they saw walls covered with yellowed indentures of sale.
"Li Wang, a clerk, is willing to sell her daughter Li Xiu'e, 14 years old, to Hongtaifang as a prostitute because her husband died of illness and she has no money for funeral...."
"In the third year of the Guangxu reign, Zhang's daughter was sold seven times and finally committed suicide by jumping into a well. The local government paid her ten taels of silver to settle the matter..."
The most shocking thing was the exhibition of torture instruments in a wing room: barbed rattan sticks, finger-clamping twisters, iron chains and shackles to prevent escape - it turned out that the cruelty in "The Flowers of War" was just a daily occurrence here.
In an exhibition room decorated as a wedding room, above a carved bed wrapped in bright red satin hangs a plaque with the words "Pure as Jade and Ice".
This is a ritual performed on the eve of a prostitute's losing her virginity. The madam would invite an opera troupe to sing "Dream in the Garden" and give the girl ginseng soup to refresh her, so that she could be sold for a few more taels of silver the next day.
The sunlight leaked in through the diamond-shaped window panes and shone on the pair of mandarin duck pillows that had never been used, looking like solidified blood stains.
Su Xing felt very depressed and her heart was blocked. She couldn't help but take two deep breaths.
He Xu opened the bottle of mineral water he carried with him and handed it to his girlfriend.
Su Xing drank a few sips of water, but his chest was still stuffy and didn't feel much better.
She knew that she was suffering more from psychological discomfort.
He Xu didn't feel very good either.
There were many scenes that he couldn't bear to watch.
There is also an exhibition hall on the second floor, which is the "Sex Culture Exhibition Hall". The two of them went in, took a few looks, and then came out with red faces.
Although the two felt that sex was nothing to be ashamed of, seeing those explicit images, instruments and models still gave them a great shock.
Especially since they are in a relationship, it is a bit too stimulating for them to visit such an exhibition hall with their lover.
The two went downstairs.
After resting for a while on the first floor, we left this attraction.
Coming out of the back door of Hongtaifang, you will see the Linhe Stage built in the 10th year of the Republic of China.
The image of a magpie on a plum tree carved on the granite railing is no longer clear, but the doggerel on a stone pillar is still faintly discernible: "The black-sailed boat is rocking, the big brother at the bow is hugging the slender waist, I earn five dou of rice today, I will buy silk for my sister tomorrow."
He Xu took Su Xing's hand and sat down at the tea stall opposite the stage.
There was an old man in the tea stall telling stories to a few out-of-town tourists.
He said: "In the past, the black-sail boat bosses from Ningxiang always liked to bring their 'boat wives' to watch the show here. Most of those girls were bought at the age of fourteen or fifteen, and it was common for them to be twenty years older than the boat boss. During the day, they helped unload the cargo and do the accounting, and at night they had to sleep with the boat boss. If they did not live past the age of thirty, they would be thrown into the Weishui River..."
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I won’t post any pictures of Hong Tai Fang, for fear that they might give you nightmares.
There are two sound effect videos, which I will post on TikTok later. If you are interested, you can go and take a look.