The 4th Tang Dynasty Wheelchair

  The sunshine came in through the window, shining brightly and warmly on the flowers that the crown princess had just watered after waking up from her morning sleep. The flowers were nourished and looked even more beautiful, tender and delicate!

  Li Chengqian is a bit of an optimist, whenever he encounters difficulties, as long as he sleeps on it, he'll think of a solution by himself.

  Look at him, sitting on the bed eating his breakfast, making loud noises, causing Su He and the palace maid below to secretly cover their mouths and giggle. But he still doesn't care, he eats his food while they laugh at him!

  After finishing eating, she pushed the bowl to the palace maid and said:

  "Bring me a wheelchair."

  Wanted to go on a day trip to Donggong yesterday, but didn't make it, making up for it today!

  Su He and the palace maid were stunned: "Huh?"

  "Wheelchair, can't take care of disabled people or what?"

  Su He hesitated and said: "Your Highness, what is a wheelchair?"

  When she asked him like that, Li Chengqian only then realized that in this era, there was no such humanized civilized tool as a wheelchair! "You ancient people are really backward, the disabled can't even get hurt!" he muttered softly.

  Su He's ears were sharp and she heard it: "Huh?"

  "No." Li Chengqian waved his hand, thinking to himself that this disabled person couldn't live without a wheelchair. Although it didn't exist in this era, could he really take care of himself? It wasn't made because no one thought of making it. As the crown prince, I have access to all the vast resources of the Tang Dynasty, so why worry about not being able to make a wheelchair? "Xiao Gu, where is there a carpenter? Help me find one. And bring pen and paper too."

  Su Hei ordered the palace maid to find a carpenter, and when she returned, she saw Li Chengqian with two paper balls at his feet. His hand was in a claw-like shape holding a brush, drawing something on the paper. After only two strokes, he became annoyed and tore up the paper, crumpling it into a ball and throwing it to the ground.

  One after another, he tore five or six pieces, Su Hong curiously asked: "Your Highness, what are you going to draw?"

  Wheelchair.

  "What's the use of a wheelchair? It's just something made of bamboo, isn't it?" Su Hong pointed at the scribbled bamboo on the paper and asked.

  Li Chengqian's face turned red, and he tore up the bamboo branch painting that had just made progress, crumpled it into a ball and threw it far away. However, the quality of paper in this era was poor, too brittle, and it flew piece by piece in the air.

  He glared fiercely at Su Hong.

  Su Hong pursed her lips, with an expression of wanting to smile but not smiling.

  At this time, the carpenter arrived, wearing a light blue official uniform, standing and bowing: "Lu Mou has seen the Crown Prince, has seen the Crown Princess. I don't know what orders the Crown Prince has?"

  Li Chengqian did not go to great lengths to wonder why this person, upon seeing the heir apparent, did not kneel down or address himself as a slave. The etiquette and customs of the Tang Dynasty were not something that he, a modern man, could speculate about or point fingers at! He had a good understanding of his own limitations.

  I was going to draw a wheelchair diagram just now, but I was interrupted by Su Biao. Although the most basic reason is attributed to Li Chengqian's rotten painting skills, he overestimated himself and thought that whatever he thought of could be painted. In fact, most people think they are familiar with something and can vividly paint it, but the result is often appalling.

  Forget the wheelchair blueprint, even if the carpenter came, he couldn't show it to him. Li Chengqian's eyes fell on a low stool below. In this era, there were only such stools, very short and without backrests. But when Li Chengqian saw it, it was as if he had seen the prototype of a wheelchair!

  Li Chengqian beckoned to Lu Mujiang, letting him come closer, and said: "I have a foot disease, you make me a wheelchair. You don't know what a wheelchair is, right? I'll tell you, it's a chair with wheels that can be sat on by people like me who are disabled in the feet. What does a wheelchair look like? Come, take a look at this stool, widen and heighten it, replace its four legs with wheels, then there's a handrail here, and a push handle at the back that allows someone to push... here... there... did you understand?"

  The people around stared blankly with wide eyes as Li Chengqian explained, with the prototype in front of him, Li Chengqian gestured and modified it with gusto. As for Lu Mujiang, one of the main characters now, he listened in a daze. It wasn't until Li Chengqian asked him that he came to: "Your Highness, I didn't quite understand everything, but I roughly guessed it. However, this..."

  Lu Mujiang was confused by this thing, the prince said it was a chair, but the wheels were for a carriage, and it was so wide and high, wasn't it a bed? If it's made like this, is it a chair, a carriage or a bed?

  Li Chengqian also felt that even if he explained it clearly, these ancient people might not understand, so he nodded: "Well, you can make it as you imagine, and I'll tell you if there's anything wrong."

  Lu Mujiang went down, Su Hong stood beside him with a curious face, but didn't ask actively. Li Chengqian said in a bad mood: "What's wrong with you, if you want to ask, just ask!"

  Su Hong smiled awkwardly: "Your Highness, are you talking about a carriage?"

  Li Chengqian's face turned black, and the wheelchair became a horse-drawn carriage! "No, having wheels doesn't necessarily mean it's a horse-drawn carriage. The wheels are for making the chair convenient to move around, it's much smaller than a horse-drawn carriage, only one person can sit on it...... Uh, of course, if you want two people to sit, that's also possible, one person sits and the other hugs."

  He glanced at the crown prince's consort and imagined himself sitting in a wheelchair, holding the crown prince's consort... Wow, even people with disabilities have spring!

  "Oh, so it's a miniature carriage!" Su Hong said with her chin tilted upwards, after thinking for a moment.

  I'd rather be a cart!

  It seems that ancient people had poor imagination and could only think of horse-drawn carriages!

  However, the efficiency of ancient people was very high. Lu Mujiang brought a "wheelchair" to see Li Chengqian in two hours.

  Li Chengqian almost collapsed when he saw this Tang Dynasty version of a "wheelchair".

  Its chair is over a meter long and wide, with four wooden wheels of the same size installed under the seat plate. On what should be the backrest of the chair, a vertical wooden stick was nailed to form a push handle. This... is simply like taking a table and cutting off four legs, installing wheels underneath, with the upper half of the wheel serving as a handrail for the wheelchair, and then installing a push handle like that on a unicycle behind it.

  "Your Highness......" Lu Mujiang asked timidly and fearfully: "Was it wrong for me to do that?"

  Su He pulled Li Chengqian's sleeve, and he finally closed his mouth, which had been wide open in surprise, and said to Lu Mugong: "You did the right thing."

  He can make the wheelchair that Li Chengqian said to this extent, which is already quite impressive. "The craftsmanship of Lu Mujiang is really superb, it's a masterpiece! I have a small suggestion, I'd like to discuss it with Master Lu."

  Lu Dashi was flattered and delighted, cupping his ears in a gesture of eager listening.

  "This technology needs to be continuously innovated and reformed, this product needs to be continuously upgraded, we need to upgrade towards humanization and simplification. Look at this wheelchair, I think the wheels floating on top of the chair will get tangled with hands or clothes, so you can think of a way to hide them under the chair, and the two front wheels, you can replace them with smaller ones, and the backrest, don't use a single stick, replace it with a wooden board, so people can lean against it..."

  Lu Dashi had already practiced with the first wheelchair and had further prototypes to refer to. After listening to Li Chengqian's words, he immediately understood and showed a look of surprise and joy as if he had suddenly enlightened.

  "Your Highness..." At this time, a small eunuch ran in from outside the door and hastily shouted.

  "Who are you? Can't you see that Master Lu is inventing high-tech products?" Li Chengqian shouted rudely.

  Xiao Huangmen was startled and wanted to say something but didn't dare to.

  Li Chengqian asked Lu Dashi: "Master, did you understand?"

  "I understand, I understand. The Crown Prince is indeed highly learned, and Lu certain admires him to the utmost. I will go and create it for the Crown Prince right away!" With that said, he hastily rushed out.

  That delighted expression made Li Chengqian laugh.

  Su He stood beside the small yellow gate, asking him what was going on. Su He's face showed a look of urgency as he walked back to Li Chengqian's side and said: "Your Highness, the Empress is critically ill, let's hurry over."

  "Empress?" Li Chengqian said he didn't know her.

  "The empress is the emperor's mother, your birth mother." Su He had already arranged for palace maids to dress Li Chengqian, and then went to arrange for eunuchs to prepare things.

  As soon as he heard that his biological mother was critically ill, Li Chengqian's heart became anxious.

  He thought back to the time when his mother was hospitalized for a serious illness in the middle of the night, and if it wasn't for the timely rescue, he would have almost missed seeing her for the last time when he rushed back from Guangzhou. Since then, he has always been afraid of what might happen next, so after his mother was discharged from the hospital, he paid more attention to her health and tried not to work overtime or stay out late at night.

  Now that the queen, who is now his biological mother in this body, is critically ill, Li Chengqian's emotions have resurfaced. For a moment, he couldn't figure out whether to treat her as his real mother or not, but anyway, he was anxious and didn't want a dying mother to miss seeing her son for the last time.

  "Hurry up!" he shouted.

  The palace maid obviously sped up her movements, and others also quickened their pace under Li Chengqian's influence.

  Li Chengqian asked Su He as he walked back, and also put on an extra outer garment: "Where does my mother live?"

  His mother's title was not popular in Chang'an, but Su He knew what it meant. Given that Li Chengqian is now a mentally disabled person, he didn't think much of it either.

  Here, the author Wu wants to provide some historical materials. At that time, Chang'an called mothers "niang", and calling them "ma" seemed to be a southern custom. This "ma" is our own Chinese one, many readers may think that "ma" is translated from English and is an imported product, but actually it's wrong, we had "ma" in ancient times.

  "Ma", also means "mother".

  "The Guangya" is China's earliest encyclopedic dictionary, completed during the Tahe years of Wei Ming Emperor (227-230 AD). When foreigners were still calling their mothers "mom" or something like that, we already called our mothers "mama" with correct pronunciation. Classmates, do you feel the profoundness and vastness of Chinese culture from this? I, as the author, am proud of our culture; are you proud too?

  Su He replied: "Your Highness, the Empress Dowager is residing in the Taiji Palace's Lizheng Hall."

  Li Chengqian didn't know, but with Su He leading the way, he wasn't afraid. "I said, why are you making me wear so many clothes? These two pieces are enough!" he suddenly shouted at the palace maid who was adding more clothes to him.

  The palace maid was scolded by him and was so frightened that she knelt down on the ground. Su Hong wanted to say something, but Li Chengqian covered her mouth with his clothes and pulled her hand, saying: "Hurry up, go see my mom!"

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