Legend of Concubine's Daughter Minglan-Part Two

C201. The Ways of the World (123.1)

Lately, Minglan had been up to her eyes in preparing for the feast. The first problem was about the money.

At that time, after a few days they had got married, a distant relative of Gu family had also held a wedding. Since this relative was only distantly related to them, Minglan and Gu Tingye didn't need to attend the wedding. However, this relative's family was of high status and Gu Tingye would sometimes run into their family members on the imperial court. It was better to maintain a good relationship with them. So Minglan had sent a wedding gift to them.

Sending gifts was a custom. As long as someone whom you were related to or had a close relationship with sent an invitation to you, you would have to present a gift to him or her no matter you would attend the feast or not. As for the price of the gift, it depended.

Although Marquis Ningyuan's mansion didn't have a flourishing population, it was still a large established family with lots of relatives in or outside of the capital since the family had already existed when the country had been found. What's more, the number of Gu Tingye's friends and buddies was also quite remarkable. And that didn't include his friends who were staying outside of the capital now.

It had only been a month since they had got married and Minglan hadn't attended any feast publicly yet, she had already sent out eleven and a half pieces of gifts, including four pieces to the elders' birthday, three pieces to the weddings, two pieces to the one-month feasts for babies, one piece to an official's promotion and one and a half piece to the funerals-- The half piece was because she and the people of Marquis Ningyuan's mansion had sent one piece together.

Minglan finally understood why the people of all the large families liked to live in many family groups. If a family had three or four generations under the same roof, they could receive all kinds of gifts on every occasion such as the birthday of the Old Master or the wedding of the Great Grandson and his concubine. The weddings, the funerals just kept happening in one family. Of course, courtesy demanded reciprocity. Therefore, most of the time a large family wouldn't suffer from payment imbalance due to the gifts they had sent to others.

However, Gu's mansion suffered a great loss:

A feast for the elder's birthday? The Old Master and Old Madam of the Sheng family all lived next door.

A wedding? Gu Tingye had just married a wife. And it was unlikely for Minglan to be dead for the moment.

A wedding of their daughter? Rongjie'er had just reached the age to go to the primary school. Even in ancient times, it sounded so cruel to let her get married right away.

One-month feast for a baby? Even if she and Gu Tingye worked very hard on that, there was not enough time right now!

The income from the gifts was none. However, since they had already lived in their own mansion, they had to send gifts independently. Minglan kept gasping while facing the account book, feeling her heart broken. She finally understood the feeling of a knife piercing her heart. She nearly wanted to persuade Gu Tingye to move back to Marquis Ningyuan's mansion.

Seeing Minglan being upset for no reason, Gu Tingye asked her what had happened. Then Minglan answered him sullenly, "My dear, when you left your family and wandered at the outside, have you ever been troubled by money?"

Gu Tingye, having put his left arm on the rosewood armrest with a smile in his pretty eyes, held up the tea cup and drank the tea slowly, saying, "Of course I have. There was a time I had to eat plain noodles which only costs three copper coins for a bowl."

Minglan nodded while looking at him with a sad look and then sighed, "Honey, do you know that the gifts we have sent over these days are worth six hundred and fifty-three thousand and four hundred bowls of plain noodles? Alas... We should have attended those feasts. At least we could make the money worth."