Chapter 45: Verses for Remembering Prescriptions

Shaoyang ground some nut juice for the baby squirrel, fed it, then raised the lamp wick and began writing prescriptions.

First he brought out his father’s handwritten books. They contained formulas from pre-Tang works such as *Supplementary Records of Famous Physicians* and *Treatise on Cold Damage*, interspersed with passages from *Plain Questions*, *Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica*, *The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic* and *Treatise on Cold Damage*. There were many omissions and mistakes.

He knew the important passages by heart, but could not recall every ordinary passage or all the formulas, particularly the less commonly used ones. He therefore corrected and supplied only what he remembered.

In fact, these complete texts had existed already. Printing had been too rudimentary for wide circulation, so only a few physicians possessed such full versions. Most had scattered handwritten copies.

Unaccustomed to a writing brush and obliged to use traditional characters, he worked slowly. By the time he finished filling the gaps, it was deep into the night. His hands were numb with cold. He could only put down the brush and go to bed.

At first light the next morning, he woke and scrambled up. In the nest beside his pillow, the squirrel was already awake, its little head tilted towards him, eyes darting and whiskers trembling.

“Yellow Ball! You’re awake?”

He lifted it into his robe and climbed down the ladder. Without stopping to arrange his hair, he carefully opened the door, fetched the buckets from the kitchen and hurried out. He ran all the way to the river.

Breathless on the steps, he looked down at the deserted well. None of the women who usually washed clothes by the river were there either. He stood alone on the empty bank, a pair of empty buckets hanging from his pole.

Today was New Year’s Eve. Every household was busy preparing its reunion dinner. Who would come to fetch water now?

Only him. And he had not really come for water. The jar at home was nearly full, enough to last beyond the third day of the first month. He had brought the buckets at dawn to wait for Xiaomei and explain.

He descended slowly to the well and began filling them with the gourd dipper. However slowly he worked, the buckets eventually filled. Xiaomei still did not come. Nor did anyone else, though a few passers-by looked at him curiously.

He ignored them and kept craning his neck, hoping to see her. She had offered so kindly; it would be wrong to seem ungrateful.

The little squirrel appeared anxious on his behalf. It poked its head from his robe, met the winter wind and hastily withdrew, leaving only its tiny eyes peering out.

He waited almost an hour. By the usual time, Xiaomei and the young woman would long since have arrived. If they had not come now, they probably would not come today.

Disheartened, he remembered that his mother would be getting up. He could wait no longer, or she might think he had vanished. Reluctantly, he shouldered the water and went home.

“Why are you fetching water on New Year’s Eve?” Madam Liang said crossly. “Even a beggar has his New Year’s Eve! Beggars don’t go begging today, and you… Oh, put those buckets down!”

He emptied the water into the jar, set down the buckets and silently went to open the shop.

“No need to open. It’s New Year’s Eve. Haven’t I just told you? Even a beggar—”

“Has his New Year’s Eve! All right, I won’t open.”

He shut the door again.

“Then what do we do today?”

“Tidy up, prepare the altar for Heaven and Earth and the ancestors, change the peachwood charms, put up paper-cuttings, make the reunion dinner…”

Remembering that they did not even know where they would spend the holiday, she sighed.

“But there’s no hurry. Wait until Madam Zhao comes at noon. We’ll ask her again whether she can give us longer. If she won’t, we’ll have to move. I wonder whether your sister has found a place.”

“May I open one door for some light?”

“Leave the doors. Open the windows!”

Their shop had three doorways, a window on each side and windows in the doors themselves. There should have been plenty of light, but the elaborate latticework blocked some, and the white paper covering the windows admitted far less than glass. Despite their number, the room remained rather dim.

Shaoyang opened both side windows. The room brightened, but the cold wind swept in as well. Fortunately, the hardships of these few days had begun to inure him to discomfort.

With nothing else to do, he untied his hair and combed it, then tried to put it into a topknot. It had looked easy when Xiaomei did it the day before. In his own hands it proved remarkably difficult.

Madam Liang sighed. “Zhong, how have you forgotten even this? Let Mother do it.”

Taking the comb, she explained and demonstrated. At last he learned to arrange his own hair, by which time his arms ached from holding them up.

On that score alone, modern life was better. A close-cropped haircut did not even require a comb. How convenient.

With his topknot secured and his headcloth on, he was idle again. His father had risen and washed. Though the shop was closed, he sat as usual behind the long table, silently drinking the tea Madam Liang had made.

Shaoyang set the corrected medical books before him.

“Father, these are the omissions and mistakes the old travelling physician pointed out in your copies. I’ve put them right.”

“Oh?”

Zuo Gui leafed through them in surprise.

“He told you all this?”

“Yes. He asked which books I’d read, so I showed him the ones you gave me. He pointed out many errors and missing passages. I remembered them.”

“Mm. Let me look through them slowly.”

“All right. I’ll carry on writing.”

“What? You remembered so much after a single day?”

Shaoyang froze. He had previously said the old physician taught him for one day. The additions he had just made would scarcely have fitted into a day’s teaching.

“Actually… he taught me secretly for more than half a year before he left.”

“Did he?” Zuo Gui was astonished and delighted. “What good fortune to have such an opportunity! Go on, then. Just the prescriptions. My memory isn’t up to learning all the rest.”

Shaoyang sighed inwardly. Memorising prescriptions alone would never produce sound medical skill; systematic theoretical study was needed. But at his father’s age, without a modern education, subjects such as *Basic Theory of Chinese Medicine* or *Chinese Medical Diagnostics* might be difficult to explain. Beginning directly with the formulas would at least be simple and clear.

“He taught me some verses for remembering prescriptions. I’ll write them down for you.”

“Verses? Good!”

Verses were easy to recite and remember.

After feeding the squirrel more nut juice, Shaoyang took up his brush and began copying *Verses on Decoctions*.

The work had been compiled by the famous Qing physician Wang Ang. It selected more than three hundred commonly used formulas, arranged in twenty categories such as supplementation, exterior release, interior purgation and emesis. Each was condensed into seven-character verse, with brief explanatory notes to help beginners learn it. Later, it had become required memorisation for students entering Chinese medicine. Shaoyang knew it thoroughly.

Outside, everyone was busy with New Year’s Eve. The streets were noticeably quieter as households prepared offerings and reunion meals. Children passed in laughing groups, carrying firecrackers and fireworks, snacks in their hands. Children were always the happiest at New Year.

The verses were long. He did not finish until noon.

Zuo Gui read through them, nodding repeatedly.

“Excellent. These verses are profound, and the prescriptions finely chosen. There is plenty here for me to memorise and study. Leave it at this until I have understood it.”

He tucked the manuscript into his robe. At that moment, however, he had little heart for medical books.

Shaoyang put down the brush and leaned at the window, watching the street.

A little later, Huixiang arrived in a hurry. One glance at her parents’ sorrowful faces told her the money had not been found.

“Father, of the places Hou Pu has looked at these last few days, the one near the west gate is relatively cheap. It’s a little out of the way. If we must, shall we move there for now?”

Zuo Gui and Madam Liang exchanged a look, sighed together and slowly nodded.

Madam Liang and Huixiang began packing. The medicinal stock had to stay behind, so there was little else to gather.

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