With the social changes brought by the ergence of the steam engine, Langton City has expanded its urban area several tis over in less than a hundred years.
A considerable part of these newly expanded city areas was spontaneously built by new citizens who were once landless farrs. These areas lack effective municipal planning and also lack adequate living facilities.
Dirty and chaotic. That’s the first impression these new districts give.
After all, the expansion of Langton’s municipal departnt has not kept pace with the city’s developnt. Ensuring the environntal hygiene and social order of the noble and wealthy districts already required their full effort.
As for these civilian areas? Having a managent departnt set up in each district, a water supply point on each street, and arranging for carts to transport away accumulated waste and excrent instead of piling them up on the streets was all they could manage.
This was only because the noble lords felt that having the outskirts of Langton City, the capital of the Empire, appear overflowing with sewage and waste was damaging to the Empire’s image, and thus allocated special funds for this purpose.
However, with Langton’s developnt, so older districts that were established earlier have sowhat improved.
After all, those who caught the wave of change early enjoyed the benefits of the era’s transformation, earning a bit of money and planning to refurbish their shops and factories, improving the business environnt to attract more custors while also enhancing their living conditions, which was only expected.
So these places are relatively not as dirty and chaotic. There are sidewalks made of brick alongside the streets, and the road surfaces are paved with gravel, preventing them from turning into mud ponds whenever it rains.
The buildings along the streets have also been replaced with sturdy brick structures, instead of those drafty piles of stones from the past, or even worse, wooden shanties.
Even the cleanliness of the streets is handled by specialists hired by the shop owners, giving them so semblance of the rich districts.
However, they lack foundation. The windows of buildings lining the streets are still wooden barriers, not the glass windows of true affluent areas. The difference between these is enough to reveal the gap between these so-called new districts and the actual rich districts of Langton.
Not to ntion comparing them to the truly wealthy noble districts of Langton.
Yet even so, for the petty rchants and middle-inco individuals with respectable formal jobs living here, this place distinguishes them from the "lower classes" in the civilian areas, allowing them to self-proclaim as the so-called middle class.
They begin to mimic the consumption and lifestyle of high society, gritting their teeth to purchase expensive fashionable clothes and luxury items which might take them a year of savings to afford—a lifestyle in the na of "taste," believing they have set foot on the threshold of high society.
However, in reality, they are insignificant to true high society, or rather, high society has not accepted them.
Their so-called "taste" is nothing more than self-entertainnt.
The reason is simple: for the truly wealthy and noble, they never feel significant just because of a piece of clothing.
Clothes beco fashionable because they are worn by them, not because they put them on and are then called high society.
Moreover, the luxury items that take the so-called middle class a year to afford are just daily expenses for the nobility.
One can’t say soone who can buy a piece of clothing every year is on the sa spending level as soone who can buy a hundred pieces a month, right?
Despite the fact that for nobles and wealthy rchants, living truly luxurious lives is also a matter of the past few decades, it doesn’t stop them from looking down on these so-called middle classes wearing monkey crowns, to put it bluntly.
But existence is reasonable; the middle class and new areas will not disappear just because of the disdain from nobles and the wealthy.
On the contrary, they have been gradually increasing in Langton City, even showing a trend of forming a new class.
To the extent that Jas arranged the eting with the exploration team in a café in the new district rather than the more presentable rich district or the noble district more befitting Perfikot’s status.
But Perfikot didn’t mind this at all. Although she ca from a noble background, she wasn’t particular about these so-called extravagances.
Even though, for the sake of comfort, all her underwear was made from luxurious silks from the East, and her frequent clothing consisted of velvets and high-count wools, with a unique to Langton alchemic carriage at her disposal.
But rely observing Perfikot herself, one wouldn’t feel her luxury.
Although the cane she carried was embedded with the Philosopher’s Stone, and the watch hanging from her chest could buy up a whole street in the new district.
"My respects to you, Lady Brandelis," a middle-aged gentleman, dressed appropriately, wearing glasses and looking scholarly, greeted Perfikot.
Perfikot nodded amicably in return and accurately called out his na: "Hello, Dr. Henry Jones. I’ve read your articles on Eastern civilization, and I must say, they are excellently written, although there are so minor errors in them."
At this point, Perfikot smiled slightly with an intentional implication as she addressed Dr. Jones: "I assu you haven’t actually visited the Eastern Realm, and that the content in your articles ca from those so-called adventurers who claid to have been to the East?"
"Ah, indeed, I haven’t been to the East. Is it so obvious?" Dr. Jones raised an eyebrow slightly, feeling a bit embarrassed but still smiling.
It wasn’t Perfikot exposing his shortcomings, but a thod to foster closeness through conversation.
"It’s simple. When you visit soone’s ho in the Eastern Realm, you usually wouldn’t be entertained by the hostess. Seeing female mbers of the household, in the East, is called ’close family ties’," Perfikot smiled as she pointed out minor flaws in Dr. Jones’s articles, then continued, "Of course, there are exceptions, but generally speaking, seeing the won of other households is very rare.
Especially having dinner with soone’s family like Victory is really uncommon. If I rember correctly, according to Eastern customs, won generally don’t appear at the dining table unless you are sufficiently intimate with the host, and it’s a private visit, not a formal one."
"Is that so? It seems that I do indeed need to conduct a field survey next ti I write an article," Dr. Jones responded magnanimously, then got to the main point of the eting: "I wonder if Your Ladyship would be willing to sponsor?"
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