Chapter 2

Back home, I put down my purchases and returned to tidying the courtyard.

My father had been a licentiate scholar. After repeatedly failing the provincial examinations while raising me on his own, he had given up on advancing further and opened a small school in the village.

Pei Yizhi had come to Willowleaf Village while fleeing famine elsewhere, taking shelter at the foot of the wall outside our courtyard.

My father found him and asked him a few questions. He said the boy had the makings of a fine scholar and it would be a shame to waste his potential, so he adopted him and raised him as my future husband.

As time passed, my father became increasingly convinced that he had an extraordinary gift for learning, and devoted more and more effort to him.

Every day, he urged him to study hard.

At first Pei Yizhi helped sweep the courtyard, tend the fire, and chop wood. Later, my father wouldn’t even let him do those things; all he wanted was for him to study.

I could still hear the promise Pei Yizhi made as he knelt before my father. “For as long as I live, I will never forget the kindness you’ve shown in raising and teaching me!”

By the time my father died, Pei Yizhi had passed the provincial examinations and was only one step away from the metropolitan degree. He also indulged my every wish, so my father had felt completely at ease entrusting me to him.

What he hadn’t known was that Pei Yizhi had deceived us all.

The moment he achieved success, he forgot every kindness he’d received.

How was he any better than an animal?

Sadly, I hadn’t fully understood that until my death.

Now that Heaven had given me another chance, I wanted nothing more to do with him.

I would start living my own life!

On this trip to the city, I had bought brushes, ink, paper, and inkstones, intending to reopen the school.

I had thought about it for a long time. The only skill I possessed was the reading and writing my father had taught me since childhood. Becoming a woman teacher and giving children their first lessons was the only path I could think of.

I put up a notice outside the gate announcing that Three Mountains School would reopen in three days.

Over those three days, I brought out my father’s old desks, chairs, and rush cushions, scrubbed them, and set them out to dry. I cleaned the rooms and roof beams, my heart full of joy.

It felt as though my new life was about to begin!

But three days later, not a soul came.

“What could a young girl possibly know? Setting herself up as a teacher! Doesn’t know her place!”

Butcher Ge from next door sang out those words as he passed with a pig-slaughtering knife in his hand.

The other neighbors began pointing and whispering too.

“Ning’s father was a licentiate. She isn’t. What could she teach my Ergou?”

“Exactly! A girl ought to find a good family and get married. What business has she teaching? So foolish!”

“Shh! Keep your voice down. Have you forgotten about that top scholar of hers? Poor thing!”

“What would my two girls need to read for? Better they help me with the work!”

“I wouldn’t trust her with my boy either!”

So I followed my father’s example. I went to the ruined temple outside the village and brought home a little beggar.

The difference was that mine was a girl.

Erya was a young beggar who had wandered into the village asking for food. The villagers were kind, and the harvests had been good these past two years, so from time to time they gave her something to eat or drink: cold leftovers, perhaps, or bones their own children had finished gnawing.

It had kept her alive, at least. All this time, she had been living in the ruined temple.

“Erya,” I asked, “would you like to come home with me?”

She looked up at me with eyes as big and black as grapes in her smiling, grimy little face. “Will there be food if I come home with you, big sister?”

I smiled. “Food and drink, and a bed to sleep in. I’ll teach you to read too.”

Erya jumped for joy. “Yes! I’ll go home with you! Home!”

I took her home and washed her, discovering a remarkably pretty little girl underneath the dirt. Her complexion was sallow and her hair coarse, though, probably from going hungry for so long.

My father had named me Wang Yining, hoping I would live in peace and happiness, cherish virtue, and respect myself.

So I gave Erya a name too: Wang Qingning.

I hoped her heart would stay as clear as spring water, and that she would never lose sight of who she was.

Qingning was delighted with her new name. She spent the whole day bouncing around the courtyard in excitement.

While I made supper, she brought a little stool to the stove and sat tending the fire, murmuring the name over and over. She couldn’t have loved it more.