CHAPTER 642: [636] QING CHUAN CHENG WANGFEI 5 (3 MORE UPDATES)

The sky in May of the lunar calendar was truly hot. At noon, Xiyuan tasted the master chef’s vegetarian mixed cold noodles at Prince Manor, which could be considered a traditional delicacy of old Beijing.

She had eaten them in future times as well, yet she had not expected that upon time traveling back to the Qing Dynasty, she would taste an even more authentic and genuine version. It must be said that although her position as Princess Cheng was not significant, the mansion was indeed a place filled with hidden dragons and crouching tigers!

She didn’t eat much, only requiring two dishes for every meal. The cold noodles were one of the dishes, and for the other, she asked for braised beef slices. Such a nutritional combination was indeed balanced, and to top it off, she drank a bowl of mushroom tofu health soup, which tasted absolutely wonderful.

In the morning, her visit to the kitchen had actually been a setback. She had wanted to ask the master chef to teach her how to cook, but was met with a rejection: "This servant relies on culinary skills to make a living. Traditionally, we pass our skills to men, not to women, and furthermore, Princess Consort and this servant have a master-servant relationship, not that of teacher and student. Therefore, I ask for Your Highness’s forgiveness and regret I cannot comply."

She quickly added, "Just the ordinary dishes would be fine, I wouldn’t be able to learn anything too complicated. For instance, stir-fried potato shreds, or maybe a soup, surely that can be done, right?"

Because her request was indeed modest, the master chef found it hard to refuse, so in the end, he indeed taught her the mushroom tofu health soup.

Why only soup, you might ask? She had not practiced her knife skills, and the chef was afraid of any potential incidents, so he settled on teaching her a simple soup recipe.

The counters in the main kitchen were too high for her, and she truly couldn’t reach them. And even if it was only for learning how to cook, once surrounded by a crowd of maids and nannies, she couldn’t even watch properly, let alone the master chef.

Therefore, even if she changed into more appropriate clothing and genuinely intended to learn, she ended up being disdained, criticized for merely going through the motions.

Xiyuan was certainly capable of cooking, but learning culinary skills, beyond self-study, relied more on instruction. Hence, it wouldn’t be too much to take on many chefs as teachers. Since the master chef of the mansion wasn’t easy to work with, she had the steward look outside for a full-time "teacher" who could teach her both in the morning and afternoon and ideally arrange sessions around lunch and dinner, so that the ingredients prepared would not go to waste.

Her idea was indeed quite good, but she seemed to forget that apart from being the Princess Consort of Prince Cheng’s Mansion, she also had to manage diplomatic relations.

In other words, women also had their periodic tea parties for social interaction, where they could exchange feelings. While the men maintained political power over drinks, the women sat together, chatting idly. It seemed inconsequential, but at critical moments, its role could not be ignored.

Of course, before you sought to maintain these relationships, it was essential to know which faction you belonged to. Otherwise, mistaking one camp for another would only bring trouble to your own man.

Xiyuan herself always found such gatherings a nuisance, believing that the women did nothing but compete in beauty and nurture envious feuds without engaging in any meaningful affairs. Fortunately, the original owner had been competitive, had been injured, and hence, those who had sought to mock her while pretending to visit the sick had all been turned away; she saw no one.

Not having returned to her parents’ home, she left them with no legitimate reasons to criticize her.

Xiyuan felt quite diligent herself. In the morning, she had learned to make a health soup, and she didn’t idle in the afternoon either, pulling out the manor’s ledgers to review.

She discovered that their accounting books were divided into two types: one for payments and one for receipts—profits were to be received and costs to be paid. They seemed to record each transaction meticulously, but the books weren’t clear at a glance, and there was no specific categorization, which made record-keeping cumbersome and auditing all the more difficult to discern any reasoning.

Having studied accounting in previous lives—of course, only to the extent that she could understand ledgers and work as a bookkeeper, not yet qualified to file taxes—she felt that her knowledge was sufficient to handle such situations.

Therefore, Xiyuan had her subordinates buy many blank ledgers, and using the extra time afforded by her "space," she spent three days, actually a week, re-registering the reported ledgers using her method.

Afterward, she invited all the accountants of Prince Cheng’s Mansion to the estate, arranged tables and a blackboard for them, and prepared to act as their teacher with chalk in hand.

The blackboard was a smoothly ground wooden board painted with black lacquer, which had been available in that era, made from natural plant varnish. However, it tended to fade with use and was not very durable.

As for the chalk, it was made by grinding limestone into powder and pouring it into molds.

"All of you are seasoned accountants. The reason I stand before you today to display my modest skills is because I have been confused by the ledgers these past few days and realized that your method of bookkeeping is overly complicated. Take our Shengyun Building, for example; the bookkeeping is divided into detailed daily records and monthly summaries. The detailed account records what is purchased each day, what expenses there are, and how much money is earned. Then, the monthly summaries involve copying these daily totals into the monthly records, so if one wanted to find a day’s detailed transactions for a particular month, they would have to sift through all these daily entries."

"Princess Consort is correct. Not only Shengyun Building, but our other shops also follow this method of daily, monthly, and yearly accounts, with daily entries summarized into monthly ones, and monthly into yearly."

"Yes, but what if I want to know how much was spent on vegetables, rice, or oil for this month? Wouldn’t you have to add up each item for me one by one?"

At this point, the Shengyun Building’s Shopkeeper stood up and said, "Reporting to Princess Consort, regarding the various types of accounts, we also have a summary. In the monthly books, there is an additional ledger specifically for detailing expenses like monthly salaries, vegetables, oils, rice, flour, tables and chairs, pots and pans, and all sorts of categorized monthly details."

"Yes, I have indeed seen that you do, but with just a bit of scrutiny, I found entries that were either duplicated, overstated, or understated, resulting in totals that don’t match the actual monthly expenditures. Can you even call that a ledger? Can a ledger with discrepancies still be called a ledger?"

The Shopkeeper was stunned, turning to look at the accountants who, in turn, blushed in embarrassment. "We are indeed ashamed. Some categories are difficult to divide properly, and it’s easy to make mistakes when categorizing them. Sometimes, I can’t remember where exactly to add the details, and the more I calculate, the more confused I become, leading to a mismatch in the results. I had not expected Princess Consort to be so astute and pinpoint the issue immediately. I am truly ashamed."

"No, it’s not just you. The other shops are the same, so starting today, I will instruct you on how to categorize. Even my dowry’s Shopkeeper and accountant have been invited here. From today on, let’s all discuss together a more practical method. I will temporarily call our previous method the Single-entry Accounting Method, and now, I am going to teach you the double-entry bookkeeping method. What is the double-entry bookkeeping method? Let me give you an example to explain. Listen carefully now..."