Chapter 3

Life went on as usual after Sister left.

Farmers knew no idle month, and in May their labor doubled.

Crops needed tending; cooking smoke needed stirring away at dusk. When mountains and roads placed enough distance between people, even pain could fade.

Mother changed and treated me twice as well.

It seemed she poured every ounce of guilt toward Sister onto me.

She wove day and night until embroidery needles made her fingers bleed.

She made me new clothes and bought flowers for my hair.

The person she wanted to adorn would never return, so she clutched desperately at what remained and tried to make amends.

But I was not my sister.

If you failed to show kindness while someone was present, kindness after she left meant nothing.

When Mother brought a third new outfit, I gently stopped her.

“Third Aunt Fang, I am not your little Jin. I am my mother’s little Jin.”

She panicked. “Child, what are you saying? You are flesh that fell from my body. Even before the King of Hell, you must call me Mother!”

I shook my head. “The debt of birth is lighter than the debt of nurture. When you threw me away, you ceased to be my mother.

“My mother is Ye Qing.”

The immortals above and below had no interest in mortal affairs.

In the genealogy, Fang Jin followed Ye Qing’s name. I was Ye Qing’s descendant and should support her in old age and see her to her grave.

My birth mother wept again.

She had always been strong. I had seen her cry only a few times, but now her tears fell quick and fine as Huizhou rain.

“I know. I know,” she said. “This is my sin—the sin I made in this life!”

A light rain began.

Huizhou had many plum rains. To its common people, rain was dew that nourished all things.

I knelt and bowed my head to her several times.

“My debt for birth is repaid in this life. If you ever need Fang Jin, I will pass through fire and boiling water for you.

“Mother, this is the last time I will call you that. From now on, do not disturb us again.”

Spring thunder rolled. Immortals sent dew from heaven; a mortal knelt in gratitude below.

Mother lost a daughter, and then lost another.

I told Sister-in-law Qing I no longer wished to study.

“Did your sister’s fate pain you too much?” she asked.

I shook my head. “It simply seems pointless.”

“Pointless?”

“The teacher says women study the Classics in vain. We may gain wisdom, but cannot take the examinations.”

She fell silent.

“Then what do you want to do?”

“I—I want to do business.”

I hesitantly revealed my idea.

It had recently been the Qingming ancestral rites.

“A thousand-year tomb for the forebear, a ten-thousand-member hall for the sacrifice, a hundred-generation genealogy for the ancestral tablets.”

No people valued native soil and ancestral graves more than those of Huizhou.

They wandered the realm and traded so that one day they might return in glory and stand proudly before their ancestors.

Merchants had returned from every direction, including the great traders of Zhuangyuanping.

Since the grain-for-salt-certificate system began, capable men had prospered everywhere: Second Hu of Jixi, Fifth Bao of She County, Fourth Zhan of Wuyuan.

Zhuangyuanping had good feng shui. A century ago it produced a top imperial scholar; now it had produced successful merchants.

Fourth Uncle Fang was one.

By family rank, I should call him Fourth Uncle.

Yet at Qingming, I soaked his clothes with water and ordered him away from my ants.

Over the years, Benevolence, Righteousness, Propriety, Wisdom, and Trust had died and been replaced many times, but I still delighted in counting ants.

My companions knew and left me alone.

Only Fourth Uncle watched for a long while, then raised an eyebrow.

He was in his thirties, with a narrow face and short beard.

He looked somewhat like Father, so I was not afraid.

When his foot nearly came down on “Trust,” I snapped, “What mad fool are you? You are about to crush my Trust!”

He laughed and pinched up the tiny ant.

“Little one, do you know what matters most when Huizhou merchants roam and trade everywhere?”

“Trust!”

I had no time to argue and snatched back my ant.

“Of course I know. Huizhou people value honesty in business. Whether dealing with kin by marriage or friends, one must keep one’s word!”

Fourth Uncle threw back his head and laughed, then slapped the top of mine.

“Small child, clever head!”

Later, he told the Fang elders, “This child is promising. I will take her into trade.”

The patriarch hesitated. “B-but she is so young.”

“So what? Jiangsu and Zhejiang celebrate prodigies. We say in She County that a person should leave to trade at sixteen. She is six now—an excellent age to begin from nothing!”

“But she is a girl!” the patriarch blurted.

In the Fang genealogy, I was recorded as heir to Fang Desheng.

The clan pitied that branch for lacking descendants and summoned me to the rites so there would be someone to count.

Meeting Fourth Uncle had been an enormous coincidence.

His smile vanished and his expression grew grave.

“What of it? Can women not trade?

“My aunt fed me spoon by spoon from the money she made selling Guanyin tofu. Everyone praised her business. You swallowed her earnings and have forgotten?”

The elders fell silent. Before the ancestors, no one dared lie.

They said the matter required long consideration.

Fourth Uncle found me privately and repeated his offer.

“Your father once brought me to the pawnshop north of town as an apprentice. That gave me my first contact with the salt trade. He was my benefactor. Though he is gone, I must repay the debt.”

“My father?”

“Oh, I forgot you were adopted.” He chuckled. “No matter. Remember only that you are Sister Qing’s daughter and Desheng’s child.”

He produced a tael of silver and told me to buy marbles.

Unable to refuse, I took it.

At home, I recounted everything to Sister-in-law Qing.

She was silent for a long time. “He truly said that?”

“Little Jin can swear.”

“No need.” Her rough hand smoothed my temple. “I believe you.

“But my husband died on a merchant journey. Do you truly have the resolve to wager everything for a future?”

It was the first time she had mentioned her husband.

She never spoke, and I knew not to ask. That silence was our understanding.

People often suffered alike. If one did not tear open a scar, the pain might not pour out again.

But did I possess the courage to trade?

I thought, then said, “Sister, Fourth Uncle told me a story.

“We children of Huizhou grow among steep mountains, hungry from birth and unable to support wives or children even as adults. Day after day, people lived trapped on this poor land, and at first no one would leave. Then one day, someone heard a voice beyond the mountain.

“It asked, ‘Will you come out?’ At first no one answered. Finally a young man from beneath a gingko tree stepped forward and told the mountain, ‘I will go.’ Axes felled trees, ships were built, and people sailed down the Xin’an River toward every land under heaven.

“If no one had been the first to leave, perhaps the endless generations after him would never have gone.”

“Little Jin.” Sister-in-law Qing drew me close and rested her forehead against mine. “You never met him, yet you are so much like him.”

I did not know whom she meant.

Perhaps Uncle Desheng.

Perhaps some Huizhou ancestor who once looked up at the peaks.

From that day, however, she again stood unreservedly on my side.

Huizhou merchants followed five paths: peddling, hoarding, opening shops, pawnbroking, and exchange.

A humble peddler could travel a thousand li and turn the smallest capital into a thousand taels.

Fourth Uncle specialized in long-distance transport.

The south had many waterways that twisted so greatly that people on the same land rarely met.

Rice had one price in Huguang and another in Suzhou and Yangzhou.

Merchants gathered capital, bought goods where prices were low and supply abundant, then carried them where prices were high.

Silk and cotton from the Five Prefectures; salt from Yangzhou; porcelain from Jingdezhen; bamboo, timber, tea, lacquer, paper, ink, and inkstones from Huizhou.

The Grand Canal and Yangtze rolled onward, bearing countless goods throughout the realm.

“It is bitter work,” Fourth Uncle said, “but profitable.

“Even in peaceful times there are barren mountains, bad rivers, bandits, extortionate patrolmen, and officials protecting one another. The road is not easy for Huizhou merchants.”

Merchants from Shanxi, Shaanxi, Fujian, and Guangdong competed close behind.

Competition for profit made everything harder.

“So in the sixteenth year of Zhaoqing, I chose another path.”

“The sixteenth year?”

“The year you were born.” Memory stirred in his eyes. “That year the court decreed that merchants who delivered grain to the frontier could receive salt certificates and trade salt. It was called the grain-for-salt-certificate system.

“Salt is fundamental to all people. It seasons food, and boatmen traveling between Wu and Liang must consume it. Without salt, people become weak until even strong laborers cannot walk under the sun. The new system offered enormous profit.”

“Salt.” Something seemed to root and break soil inside me.

Fourth Uncle laughed and clapped my shoulder. His broad palm was like a fan opening the cramped world allotted to a Huizhou girl.

“Entranced? Do not think too deeply. Dealing with government is no pleasant task. Salt interests from the Lianghuai region down to She County are exceedingly tangled. Best not touch them lightly.

“Even I have maneuvered for years without understanding it all. Ordinary trade remains the safer livelihood. Begin there.”

The law despised merchants, yet merchants had grown rich.

Huizhou revered Confucian learning, and prominent families placed their hopes in sons who might pass the examinations and protect the clan.

But passing was never easy.

County, prefectural, provincial, metropolitan, and palace examinations—selection after selection, until only the finest talent stood before the emperor.

How many failed the first barrier? How many sat examinations into white-haired old age?

Most Huizhou people traded simply to live.

Merchants ranked low, but feeding a family drove them into commerce.

Those without power united after making money.

I heard that great Huizhou merchants often entrusted part of their capital to promising clansmen.

Fourth Uncle meant to do the same for me.

But the elders would not yield.

I heard them quarrel outside the ancestral hall.

Red-faced, one elder cried, “The clan has so many boys. Why fix on a little girl who will marry out?”

Fourth Uncle replied lazily, “If the boys were useful, I would not trouble a child. Wouldn’t I rather let her live easily?”

“Wensheng and Wenmo have promise in their studies!”

“Let them prove it. Besides, traveling with me is harder than studying safely at home. Ask whether they are willing.”

The elder seemed to question my brother.

In a thin voice, Brother said, “This student has not mastered his books and must study carefully with his teacher.”

Fourth Uncle roared with laughter. “See? Even he refuses! Seventh Fang did not return from Liaoyang this year. Ask him when he comes home in winter.”

He turned and left.

Later, Sister-in-law Qing told me he had still lost to the elders and given capital to another household.

“They say that boy is clever too. Two years ago he apprenticed with a bamboo craftsman, and the patriarch values him. Little Jin, perhaps…”

She hesitated, wanting to persuade me.

Holding the silver Fourth Uncle had given me, I shook my head.

“I have met him. He cannot read and even gets the teacher’s arithmetic wrong. How can such a person do business?”

By weak candlelight, I looked steadily at her.

“Sister, do you believe me or him?”

Her eyes clouded as if she looked through me at someone else.

“I… believe you.”

Her voice was faint.

It seemed she still did not.