Chapter 1

Chapter 1

My father was the only xiucai for miles around. On ordinary days, he taught a few students and repaired genealogies in exchange for a couple of coins and a few words of thanks from the villagers, along with an awkward, half-hearted bow.

My father was too proud to make a living by doing manual work, so our family relied on Mother to herd cattle, farm the land, and weave cloth. We managed to maintain a respectable appearance, barely.

But once famine struck, genealogies and respectability were worth no more than cow dung.

At home, all the food was saved for Father. My younger sister and I barely managed to fill our stomachs.

It was only when Father became so hungry that he no longer had the strength even to recite the simplest classical phrases that Mother finally could not sit by any longer.

The next day, Mother used the last of our thread to carefully weave two bolts of cloth, then took my hand and left the house.

She said that the grandaunt of a distant cousin had entered Prince Zhong’s Mansion as a housekeeper, and that she wanted to claim kinship with her.

Father was so starved that his chest nearly met his back. He scolded Mother, “What kind of propriety is there in going to sponge off poor relatives? The Sage said, ‘A gentleman remains steadfast in poverty, while a petty man becomes reckless when poor. Poverty and lowliness cannot sway him…'”

Mother sighed and placed four balls of mud and wild grass in his hands.

Father said, “If you insist on going, be sure to return early. Under no circumstances must you become enamored of wealth that does not belong to you.”

On the road to Prince Zhong’s Mansion in Jingzhou, we passed countless refugees and corpses strewn across the land. The floods had washed away the crops, and the war against the Tatar people required yet another grain levy.

When Mother and I arrived at Prince Zhong’s Mansion, the residence was grand and magnificent. Even the eaves gleamed with gold.

Its nobility and majesty only made us seem even more lowly.

Mother never expected the grandaunt to invite us inside so promptly and politely. She hurriedly presented the two bolts of cloth with both hands.

When the grandaunt saw our tattered clothes, she gave us one tael of silver and ten strings of cash.

Mother was so excited that she kowtowed.

Without realizing it, I wandered into the outer courtyard. The vegetation grew thick, golden bricks paved the ground, and the luxury was beyond anything I had ever imagined.

Amid all the riotous flowers, I saw Zhao Manzhu.

She wore a jacket that glittered with golden thread and sat in a chair like an exquisitely beautiful jade doll. Beneath one eye was a red beauty mark that gleamed like a jewel. Four maids surrounded her, waiting on her hand and foot. One moment they brought her delicate tea cakes; the next, they brought her cages of crickets and other toys.

When she saw me, she asked in a clear, bright voice, “Where did you come from?”

“Outside.”

Her eyes lit up. “What is it like outside?”

I wanted to tell her that outside, corpses and people who had starved to death lay scattered across the land, while cries of misery filled the sky without end.

But all I said was, “There are mountains outside. There are blind bears in the mountains, and wild fruit.”

Excited, she grabbed my hand and pulled me inside. “Tell me about it.”

She led me into a dazzling wonderland.

I told her about planting and plowing the fields, about herding cattle and catching cicadas. I even did somersaults on the ground for her.

She laughed so hard she nearly doubled over, asking again and again, “And then what happened?”

Then I nearly starved to death, and now I was standing before her.

Then the resplendent Second Madam Qiao entered. She praised me for making her Zhu’er so happy and called me clever.

Right there on the spot, she rewarded Mother with eighty taels of silver.

Mother was so delighted that she fainted on the spot.

When the woman learned that Mother had fainted from hunger, she said, “Oh, the poor thing,” and ordered four servants to deliver a cartload of grain to our home.

So I happily fainted too.

When I woke, I saw tears hanging on Zhao Manzhu’s face. She had thought I was dead, and when I came back to life, her tears turned to laughter.

I felt confused and frightened. How could a life as insignificant as an ant’s be cherished so deeply?

If my lowly life was worth so much concern, then why did no one care about the people starving to death outside? Why were they treated like livestock?

As we were leaving, Zhao Manzhu gave me a Golden Phoenix hairpin.

“What’s your name?” she asked, gazing at me eagerly. “When will you come again?”

“My name is Ying’er. It means ‘little bug.'” I nervously clutched the golden hairpin.

“Come find me again. I have lots of good things. I’ll give them all to you.” She was incredibly generous.

I wanted to touch the hem of her clothes, but I did not dare approach the densely woven, dazzling golden thread.

When the cartload of grain was delivered to our home, the servants from Prince Zhong’s Mansion cautioned us not to draw attention to it.

“The human heart is the most frightening thing.”

Smoke curled from our cooking fire. By the next day, elderly women with the loosest of connections to our family were already crying and pleading at our door, each carrying a child who was nearly dead from hunger.

Father ate a bowl of rice and went outside to greet them. One of the women, skin and bones, knelt there sobbing as she pointed to the child who was barely clinging to life.

With the sorrowful, concerned air of a scholar who grieved for the country and its people, Father looked tearfully at the suffering old mother and child, then at our broken land.

He let out a long sigh. “When poor, one should cultivate one’s own virtue; when prosperous, one should benefit the whole world. Madam, shall we share our grain with the villagers?”

Whenever Father spoke, Mother always said yes. She loved his talent for quoting the classics, his ambition to govern the world and aid its people, and his moral character and magnanimous heart, which he regarded as the responsibility of a sage.

I watched as more than half the cartload of grain was hauled away from our home. The villagers, so hungry that stars danced before their eyes, surrounded us.

They knelt and kowtowed, loudly hailing Father as the “Great Philanthropist Wang.”

Half a cartload of grain was nowhere near enough. Before long, the villagers were kneeling outside our home again, crying and begging.

Father told Mother to exchange all the silver for grain. Mother hesitated.

“Human lives are at stake! The people are suffering!” Father cried. “Long sighs to conceal my tears.”

Amid the repeated cries of “Great Philanthropist Wang,” the eighty taels of silver Mother had brought home were spent down to the last coin.

Yet before long, a rumor began to spread through every street and alley.

The cartload of grain Mother had brought back had been exchanged for her body.