Chapter 104: Still Remembering Chang'an Water-Basin Mutton

The bright sun blazed overhead with no shade anywhere, and stranger still, there was not a breath of wind today.

A bowl of grape wine went down, and though it was cool and thirst-quenching, the secretary felt as if a fire were burning in his chest.

Why was it that the grape wine that normally quenched thirst and relieved fatigue so well only made him feel hotter and more restless today?

Still, though this wine was a little odd, it did have a distinctive flavor!

And if he, dressed in a hemp-cloth long robe, felt this way, the soldiers in their chain mail and lamellar armor had it far worse — every one of them sweltering and uncomfortable, and drowsy besides!

Of course they were drowsy! Red wine plus white liquor — that is the combination most likely to get a man drunk — and on top of that, the high-sugar pastries made one all the more sluggish and sleepy.

"General Hamiro, there are no enemies here, and since we'll be waiting a while before we move on, why must you wear such heavy armor? Even if there are a few bandits along the road, would they dare set their sights on you men of the Askar?"

Askar is an Arabicized Turkic word meaning "gray wolf." The standing army garrisoning the major cities of the Karakhanid Khanate was called the Askar — that is, the Gray Wolf Army.

Historically, the term was later taken up by the Seljuk Empire, where Askar was the name for the Seljuk elite troops.

The word was also later used in names by many people from Egypt to Xinjiang — the founding president of Kyrgyzstan was called Askar.

This flattery from Wu Yuan'er immediately delighted the Uyghur called Hamiro beyond measure.

In truth, the real core military strength of the Karakhanid Khanate was the Ghulam Guard established by Satuq Bughra Khan and the Iqta cavalry made up of various lesser lords. These men of his, who were not even qualified to besiege Balasagun, were no elite force at all.

"Then let's do as Zhaibek says — take off our armor too and have a good feast!"

"Now that's the spirit! Come, come! I've still got some dried meat here. Let's roast it up — wine without meat won't do!"

Ma Yaozi watched the Karakhanid soldiers stripping off their armor, his grin stretching nearly ear to ear. They themselves wore no armor, and if these Askar had not removed theirs, they would truly have been hard to kill.

Another bowl of grape wine was served, and Ma Yaozi smiled all the more happily. This grape wine had been mixed with the black millet liquor brewed by the young lord — one bowl packed more punch than three bowls of the usual stuff, and it was sweet enough that one hardly noticed. Anyone who had never drunk it before would be thoroughly drunk after a bowl or two.

The so-called black millet liquor was in fact sorghum liquor. People of the Tang dynasty called sorghum "black millet" — a rather odd-sounding name.

The wines of this age were all low in alcohol. Even the world-famous Persian sanlejiang, for example, was only about twenty-one or twenty-two proof, and it was already called the strongest liquor under heaven.

As for the black millet liquor Zhang Zhao brewed, its strength could not be measured, but by Zhang Zhao's own sense of it, it was very likely around thirty-two proof, and might even reach thirty-eight.

His original intention had been to make medical alcohol, but no matter how he tried, he simply could not brew the high-proof spirits of later ages, so he had to give up.

Moreover, given the grain harvests of this time, high-proof liquor of fifty or sixty degrees was simply too extravagant. Even this thirty-something-degree stuff basically required four jin of sorghum to produce one jin of liquor.

The brewing equipment, sorghum varieties, and yeast of this era could not compare with later times. To reach fifty degrees by repeated distillation would probably take seven or eight jin of sorghum to produce a single jin of liquor, and the labor involved would be incalculable.

So even this thirty-something-degree sorghum liquor — Zhang Zhao had brewed less than two hundred jin of it.

And what shocked him most was that after the liquor was brewed, it did not, as he had imagined, instantly win fame across the land, with drunkards everywhere drooling over it and falling into raptures at a single sip. On the contrary, it was thoroughly unpopular!

He took some to Li Shengtian to drink, and had Li Shengtian not seen Zhang Zhao take a sip with his own eyes, he would almost have thought Zhang Zhao was trying to poison him — and then he flew into a rage.

"What are your intentions? To brew such strong liquor — one bowl and I am drunk. How then am I to match a hundred poems in a drinking bout?

Besides, if this recipe were to spread, and some noble house took to imitating it, the price of grain would surely soar, and the harm would be far-reaching. Where is your distillery? I shall send the Palace Guard at once to smash it to pieces!"

Well! The wine was not accepted, and the distillery was gone too. So Zhang Zhao slunk out of Li Shengtian's presence, and then, unwilling to give up, he took some to his aunt and cousin Cao Yuanxin to drink.

Cao Yuanxin's verdict was: "What sort of pig-dog piss is this? So vile! It burns the stomach and chest!"

This one was even more of a... er, sharp-tongued.

In the end, however, he did find people who looked upon it with favor — rough fellows like Ma Yaozi and Dunzhu.

They found grape wine too weak, and sanlejiang too expensive, so the black millet liquor Zhang Zhao brewed became their favorite. Those two or three hundred jin were almost entirely divided up between the pair of them.

Sure enough, after two bowls of liquor, the eyes of these soldiers, who ordinarily could not afford any decent wine, grew hazy, and the secretary was staggering about, unable even to speak clearly.

Wu Yuan'er and Ma Yaozi exchanged a glance, both wearing expressions of mingled amusement and exasperation. They had originally planned to kill these men and hurry back to catch up with Zhang Zhao.

As it turned out, before they could even draw their blades, two bowls of wine had settled the matter.

"You barbarians are lucky indeed!" Ma Yaozi sighed, for if these fellows had not been drunk, they would have had to taste the knife.

But now that they were drunk, there was no need for bloodshed. Otherwise, if they overreacted and alerted Shule city, that would be trouble!

North of Shule city, in a little unmarked food stall, there appeared a strange traveling merchant — at least, that was what Li Qilang thought.

Every time this merchant came to the stall, he ate nothing else but a few sesame cakes and a plate of mutton, then asked for a large bowl of the broth the mutton had been boiled in, tossed the mutton into the broth, and ate one sesame cake with each sip of mutton soup.

And he did this three days in a row, each time sitting for a very long while, not speaking to anyone, just listening to the idle chatter around him.

"Sesame cakes with water-basin mutton! That is the favorite food of Chang'an folk. The man you've been waiting for — he's here!"

Just as Li Qilang was beginning to feel something was off, a burly figure walked in — none other than the big bald man who had been splitting firewood that night.

But now he wore a leather cap on his head. In Shule at this time, going about bald was a considerable danger.

"Putting mutton in mutton soup makes it water-basin mutton? How is that different from what my mother told me? She said water-basin mutton was the finest delicacy under heaven! Brother Huitong... er, Brother, are you sure you're not mistaken?"

Li Qilang scratched his chin, instinctively doubting that mutton tossed into mutton soup could count as the finest delicacy under heaven.

The big bald Huitong shot a contemptuous glare at Li Qilang, who had nearly called out the wrong name.

"What your mother said? You think your mother ever tasted real water-basin mutton?"

These words stunned Li Qilang. True! His mother had never seen real water-basin mutton either!

"Then... Brother, how do you know?" Li Qilang, after his momentary daze, sharply caught the key point.

If even his mother had never seen real water-basin mutton, then where had Huitong, who was only a few years older than him, learned that water-basin mutton was like this?

"Of course I know. I always tell you to read more, but you won't. Not just water-basin mutton — even the city of Chang'an is recorded in books!"

Huitong was quite pleased with himself. Back in the old camp, he had been the most diligent reader of all, only there had been too few books — never enough to read.

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