Chapter 24: Making Medicine in the Quiet Night

“No,” Madam Liang insisted. “Your father agreed to buy it. A quilt doesn’t cost much.”

“We can’t waste a single wen now. Let’s get through this first. I don’t want to be turned out in the depths of winter.”

“What is there to fear? We can stay with your sister.”

“Father said he’d rather die than depend on Hou Pu.”

Zuo Shaoyang smiled ruefully.

“Let’s not buy it, Mother. I can endure it. You two manage with one quilt, and I’m younger. Surely I’m not weaker than both of you? Even if you buy it, I won’t use it. That’s settled. Let’s go home.”

He tucked his hands into his sleeves and hunched into the cold.

She sighed and followed.

Back at Guizhi Hall, she told Zuo Gui and Huixiang that Madam Zhao would allow no further time beyond New Year’s Eve. Their hopes collapsed.

“It’s already the twenty-seventh!” Huixiang said miserably. “Three days to find three thousand five hundred wen. Where?”

“We could try borrowing again,” her mother murmured, then sighed. “But we’ve borrowed from every friend and relative. They hide when they see me now… Huixiang, could you ask Hou Pu to try his colleagues at the yamen?”

“Borrow more?”

Her daughter was close to tears.

“Hasn’t he borrowed enough for us? He’s asked everyone he can. These past few days they’ve been hinting and asking for repayment every way they know. He hardly dares show his face there!”

Madam Liang sank onto a stool in despair.

The room fell deathly quiet.

At last Zuo Gui’s bleak voice broke it.

“Eat.”

They sat without speaking, chewed their hard mulberry-bark buns and filled themselves with salty wild-vegetable soup. Supper over, Huixiang helped clear up and went home in silence.

The others retired without even washing.

Zuo Shaoyang climbed into bed in his jacket and curled beneath the quilt, shivering too hard to sleep. His bold assurances had been easy to make. Enduring a winter night was another matter.

This would not do. By midnight he would catch cold again.

He sat cross-legged against the wall and wrapped the quilt round himself. Sitting kept him warmer than lying down, though it was no way to rest. Warmth mattered more than sleep now.

Huddled in the corner, he listened to the stillness and watched the grey light beyond the paper-covered window: snow reflecting the night.

His heart was heavy. He had come from the modern world with more than a thousand years’ advantage in knowledge, yet could not rescue his family from poverty. It was shameful.

What could he do?

He searched his memory, every book he had read since primary school, for some skill that could make them rich. After a long while, he still had no means of earning money quickly.

His mind worked on, but his body paid no attention. Even sitting wrapped in the quilt, he was freezing. He would surely fall ill if he stayed like this. Sleep was impossible anyway.

He scrambled down the ladder and exercised in the open part of the workroom, bending into a horse stance and moving his arms and legs.

Tomorrow he must earn enough for two quilts: one for his parents and one for himself. These nights were unbearable.

After a while, he was still cold. Then he remembered the wine left on the counter after the woman’s treatment. The family had given it to him.

Why not drink some to warm himself?

He eased the door open and crept into the hall. Feeling about, he found the flask and pulled the stopper. The harsh smell of poor liquor struck his nose and made him shudder.

In their circumstances, he could hardly expect good wine. Having any at all was something.

He took a small sip. It burned down to the spleen and stomach in the middle burner, and warmth soon rose through him.

That did drive out the cold!

He tipped back his head and swallowed twice more. It tasted dreadful. Something to eat with it would have helped, but all they had was a dwindling supply of pickles needed for meals. He could not bring himself to steal those.

He drank it neat.

As the heat spread, the chill eased considerably. Delighted, he shook the flask. A little under two liang remained.

He stole back to his room, closed the door, took another sip and set it on the processing stove. Then he resumed his exercises.

The drink warmed him and, as the alcohol went to his head, stirred his nervous system into wakefulness. Since he could not sleep, why not do some work?

The room stored raw medicines and served as the shop’s processing area. Everything stocked in the drawers was here too, along with stoves, pots and tools.

If they were evicted on New Year’s Eve, Madam Zhao would seize the medicines. Why not use the time to prepare some pills commonly used in modern practice? They would come in useful for patients later.

The idea cheered him. He decided on emergency remedies such as Supreme Treasure Pills, Zhi Bao Dan. Their preparation was too involved to leave until a patient arrived. They had to be made in advance.

His father must not find out, so he would work in secret.

Fired by the alcohol, he set to it. He had learnt to strike the fire steel. After some effort he lit the lamp and began searching the storeroom.

But one essential ingredient for Supreme Treasure Pills—hawksbill turtle shell—was nowhere to be found.

Discouraged, he thought it through. As he recalled, turtle shell had not been used medicinally in the Tang. Its first appearance as a medicine was in the Song’s *Newly Revised Materia Medica*. It came from the sea too. Naturally this shop would not stock it.

Without that ingredient, he could not make the remedy.

He chose another: Purple Snow Pills, Zi Xue Wan.

Purple Snow, Supreme Treasure Pills and Palace-Tranquillising Ox-Bezoar Pills formed the “three treasures” of cooling medicines for clearing heat and opening the orifices. They were especially effective for heat-closure patterns and often used for severe pneumonia, Japanese encephalitis and children’s high-fever convulsions, where fever, impaired consciousness and spasms occurred together.

Purple Snow appeared in the Tang’s *Arcane Essentials from the Imperial Library*. Its inclusion as a formula indicated that the ingredients had already been used in practice for a considerable time and their effectiveness established before they entered a formula collection.

The old preparation used gold to calm the heart and spirit—up to a hundred liang of it. That was utterly beyond Zuo Shaoyang’s means.

Fortunately, the modern version had been improved. It no longer used gold or rhinoceros horn, the latter also difficult to obtain. The other ingredients were common, and the process had been greatly simplified, without any essential difference in effect from the old formula.

He soon found what he needed and lit the stove.

The empty hall separated this room from his parents’ bedroom. With the door shut, little sound carried. They had spent the previous night sitting awake in the cold after giving him their quilt; exhausted, they slept deeply now. He kept his own noise as low as possible. They heard nothing.

Sipping the wine, he prepared not only Purple Snow but also Canopy Powder, Hua Gai San; Inula Powder, Jin Fei Cao San; Extraordinary Merit Powder, Yi Gong San; and other pills and powders. He made common preparations for cleaning wounds, disinfecting them, removing damaged tissue and promoting healing as well.

He worked until the fifth watch. At last the pills were ready and the wine finished.

He put out the fire. The stove had warmed the room considerably. After the long night’s labour, he climbed into bed and was soon snoring.

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