Chapter 1

Chapter 1

At my most wretched as a beggar, I once fought a vicious dog for food.

The dog belonged to the owner of Drunken Fragrance Pavilion.

Drunken Fragrance Pavilion was the largest restaurant in Capital City. It entertained not only the sons of wealthy families, but even princes and nobles.

The owner had a face made for fawning, and the waiters could rattle off a string of auspicious words the moment they opened their mouths.

Those highborn patrons were far too picky. This fish had torn skin from the pan? Throw it out.

This bowl of soup had been stewed seven or eight minutes too short? Throw it out.

Every beggar for several li around knew when they dumped their kitchen slops, but none of us ever got anything solid.

Because all the fish and meat those nobles refused to eat went to the owner’s dog.

Beggars like us could, at most, say a few lucky phrases to curry favor and get a bowl of pot-scrubbing water thinner than rice gruel.

But even that was good enough. At least a few drops of oil would touch our bellies.

One day, I came down with a high fever and missed the hour when they handed out the slops.

A kitchen hand glanced at me sideways and kicked my cracked bowl far away.

Then he turned around, all smiles, and poured a steaming crock of clay-pot chicken into the dog’s basin.

The dog was enormous. Its jaws opened and closed, smacking loudly as it ate.

My stomach was so hungry it churned with bitter bile, and my fever had burned my mind into a daze. I stared for seven or eight minutes until, in a trance, I felt as if I had become that dog.

By the time I came back to my senses, the chicken leg was already in my stomach.

The dog bared its teeth and barked madly at me. The kitchen hand chased me for two streets with a cleaver.

“Stinking beggar! If you try to steal food from Big Yellow again, I’ll chop you to death! Shameless thing, you’re worse than a maggot in the gutter!”

I licked my lips, savoring the taste endlessly, wishing I could swallow even my own tongue.

Chicken legs were truly delicious.

As for shame?

That sort of thing only mattered if you were alive. Once you were dead, you were nothing but dry bones and a pile of rotting flesh.

Staying alive was actually very easy.

But surviving day after day was not.

And being a beggar was harder still.

How many beggars were there in Capital City?

The authorities had posted a notice, but I couldn’t read.

The scholar who wrote letters for people on the street corner said there were more than three thousand.

Most of them were refugees from all over the country.

When the imperial court wanted to wage war, the local governments levied taxes. Then landlords collected rent. When the common people couldn’t pay, they had no choice but to flee.

Capital City was rich, and public order was good. Everyone wanted to come here and beg for a mouthful of food.

Originally, a little beggar like me could sit on a street corner and look pitiful, then stop passing young misses and young masters to say a few auspicious words. That was enough to get by.

But now, there were too many beggars in Capital City.

The good begging spots, where people came and went, had been seized by those strong refugees. I could only clutch my bowl and shrink back into the end of an alley.

But when the young misses and young masters of wealthy families went out, they traveled by sedan chair or carriage. Naturally, they took the broad official roads.

Why would they ever pass through here?

I sat there blankly for two days and didn’t beg even half a copper coin.

Fortunately, Master Zhao of Tongxin Alley in the east of the city was generous and charitable. On the first and fifteenth of every month, he gave out porridge.

If you wanted porridge, you had to get there early.

Before the sun had even risen, while the moon still hung high, I carried my chipped porcelain bowl and went to wait by the porridge shed.

The moonlight was cold as water, and the whole street was full of beggars sleeping on the ground.

In the pitch-black night, they looked like wolves with green light in their eyes, waiting only for the porridge shed to open so they could surge forward and fight their way in.

I clutched my bowl and squeezed in too.

I was small, so it was easy for me to slip between their armpits. In just a few moves, I had wriggled all the way to the very front.

Today’s porridge was thick, with little specks of mung beans mixed in. The fragrance burrowed straight into my nose.

I held out my bowl, desperate to fill my stomach.

Just as the ladle was about to tip into my bowl, someone kicked me out.

The cracked porcelain bowl in my hand rolled across the ground with a clatter, spun a few times, and fell into the stinking gutter.

The man held his own bowl, gulping down porridge like a wolf while squinting at me with a smile. “Little girl, your uncle here is about to starve to death. You’re young and strong. Let me have this one, all right?”

I looked at his sturdy body, then lowered my head to look at my own arms, thin as hemp stalks, and fell silent for a moment.

By the time I crawled back up, that bucket of porridge had already been snatched clean. The woman handing it out was so frightened she jumped, then hurriedly hugged the empty bucket and shut the manor gate.

The refugees swallowed without chewing. The scalding porridge burned their mouths, making them bare their teeth and grimace.

The gutter flowed toward the west of the city. My cracked porcelain bowl had long since disappeared.

I suddenly remembered there had still been a few grains of rice stuck to the bottom of the bowl.

I had deliberately left them there from the last time porridge was handed out.

There were only a few grains, but if I poured hot water over them, they could still become a thin bowl of gruel to fill my stomach.

I felt a little sorry.

I was so hungry.

I thought, I don’t want to be a beggar anymore.