Chapter 5: The Guizhi Hall Medicine Shop

Seeing that her brother had not squandered their money, Huixiang breathed a sigh of relief and took the purse back from him.
“Come on, little brother. The sun’s going down. If we don’t leave now, we’ll be walking home in the dark.”
Zuo Shaoyang lingered over the musk pod a little longer, reluctant to put it away. At last he tucked it safely inside his clothes, shouldered his basket of herbs, and started back.
“Could that girl be mute?” he asked as they walked. “All she did was smile. I never heard her say a single word.”
“Mute? She spoke to me earlier. She’s probably a country girl, shy around strangers. A young man like you would make her bashful.”
As though to prove Huixiang’s point, a clear voice came drifting towards them from far away. It was the girl who had been carrying the firewood, singing a mountain song:
The sun is sinking,
The water hurries past the shoal.
Whose waters flow across the shoal?
I’ll go west and hold the sun.
Zuo Shaoyang stopped and looked back. The girl was already out of sight, but her song still lingered among the mountains. For a moment, he stood listening, entranced.
“What a lovely song! Sis, did she tell you her name?”
“No. When I saw you fall onto that ledge, I tried to climb up, but I couldn’t. I was crying at the foot of the cliff when she happened to come past with her firewood. She asked what was wrong. I told her, and she climbed straight up to rescue you. That was the only thing she said.”
“Really, Sis! She saved my life, and you didn’t even ask her name?”
“You were unconscious. I was frightened out of my wits. How could I think of asking questions like that?” She gave a little laugh. “Why? Have you taken a fancy to her?”
“Of course not. But she did save me. We ought to know her name.”
“I know what’s on your mind. You’re old enough to marry. But don’t take offence at what I’m going to say. We may be poor now, but Father prides himself on belonging to a scholarly family. He has very high standards for a daughter-in-law. He’d never approve of a country girl like her, so don’t get your hopes up.”
Zuo Shaoyang knew enough history to understand how much family standing mattered in an ancient marriage. However poor a scholar might be, he generally looked down on farmers with mud on their legs—with a few unusual exceptions, such as Tao Yuanming.
Mencius had said, “Those who labour with their minds govern others; those who labour with their strength are governed by others.” Even Liu Yuxi, the great Tang writer who lived in poverty in a thatched dwelling, disdained the company of ordinary people. In his Inscription on a Humble Dwelling, he had proudly written: “I laugh and converse with learned scholars; no unlettered men come and go.”
And in former times, most physicians had been scholars who turned to medicine after failing to make their way in learning. As the saying went, “If I cannot be a good minister, let me be a good physician.”
His new father, Zuo Gui, was hardly unusual in holding such views.
Still looking back as he walked, Zuo Shaoyang said, “Listen to you, Sis! I’m in no hurry. There’s nothing wrong with staying a bachelor—ow!”
Too busy talking to watch his footing, he slipped and nearly fell. Fortunately, Huixiang was close behind and caught him at once.
“Careful! There’s snow everywhere. Watch where you’re going and stop thinking about that girl. Walk slowly! Keep off the snow—use the muddy patches. Dirty shoes can be washed. If you get them wet in the snow, you’ll catch cold and fall ill!”
Listening to her stream of admonitions, Zuo Shaoyang could not help smiling.
“Sis, there are an awful lot of mulberry roots in our baskets. Why did you dig up so many?”
“To strip off the mulberry root bark—sang bai pi.”
He knew that mulberry root bark was a commonly used medicinal herb for relieving coughs and wheezing.
“But even if we’re gathering medicine, shouldn’t we collect a variety of herbs? Why so many mulberry roots? They take up more than half the baskets!”
Huixiang sighed without answering.
He did not press her. Life in this ancient world interested him far more, and he soon began asking one question after another: what they ate, what they used, who their relatives and friends were, how many people lived in the prefecture and county, what everyone did for a living. All his curiosity came tumbling out at once.
To Huixiang, these were astonishingly childish questions. She had no idea that her brother had truly died, or that the young man beside her had come from a modern world more than a thousand years in the future. She thought the fall had injured his head and robbed him of his memory.
Her worry deepened, though she dared not show it. Patiently, she answered everything he asked. Fortunately, whatever she told him, he remembered at once. Perhaps helping him recall things like this would bring back his old memories. The thought gave her a little comfort.
Along the way, Zuo Shaoyang noticed many broad, level stretches of fertile land overgrown with thorn bushes. They looked as though they had lain abandoned for years.
“Sis, why isn’t anyone farming those fields? What a waste to leave them idle.”
“You need people and oxen to work the land. There’s been fighting everywhere these past years. The young men were taken away to serve as soldiers, and so many were killed that there weren’t enough hands to bury them all. They were strong young farmers, too. Most of those left are old people, women, and children. How can they work so much land? All they can do is watch it go to weeds.”
Zuo Shaoyang knew the broad outlines of history. After the collapse of the Jin dynasty, rival powers had fought for two or three centuries, with few stretches of peace. The population could hardly have grown under such conditions. In a farming society, everything depended on human labour. With so many people dead and so few hands remaining, it was only natural that the fields should lie idle.
Looking at all that wasted fertile land, he sighed.
As they walked and talked, he learned from Huixiang that the mountain where they had gathered herbs was called Mount Qianren. It had many peaks, most of them towering cliffs that rose into the clouds, hence its name. Their home was in Shijing County, whose town was also the seat of Hezhou Prefecture.
They reached Shijing just before sunset.
Seen from a distance, the city walls were not particularly imposing. A moat ran outside them, its green water flowing gently along. The drawbridge was rather dilapidated, suspended by iron chains as thick as the rim of a bowl, but wide enough for two horse-drawn carts to pass abreast.
At the gate stood several armoured soldiers with spears in their hands and curved swords at their hips. They watched the people coming and going closely, pulling anyone who caught their attention aside for questioning.
Zuo Shaoyang looked around with great curiosity, stealing several glances at the guards. These were the first soldiers of antiquity he had ever seen. They looked much like their counterparts in television dramas, though rather more alert.
The guards paid the siblings no attention, and they entered without trouble.
His first sight of an ancient town was a bitter disappointment.
It was far worse than the sets in historical television dramas such as Water Margin and Romance of the Three Kingdoms. Everything was shabby, and in many places only broken walls remained. The Zhenguan era had begun, but this was merely its first year. The blessings of that celebrated reign had yet to reach the people, and the wounds of war were far from healed.
Their clothing was just as poor. In the bitter winter weather, many wore garments so thin that they shook with cold.
Zuo Shaoyang found this strange. Almost everyone’s winter clothing seemed to consist of a single layer of coarse kudzu or hemp cloth. He saw no cotton-padded coats.
He did not know that, although cotton was cultivated during the Tang dynasty, it was still far from widespread. Few ordinary people had ever even seen it.
Ragged beggars lined both sides of the streets, curled up against the walls with broken bowls before them. Their dark, hollow eyes gazed blankly at the passing pedestrians.
Occasionally, he saw someone who had eaten and drunk his fill, staggering along and singing. Even these people wore drab clothing, nothing like the bright colours of television dramas.
Huixiang led him through streets and alleys until they stopped before an old wooden house. She turned to him with a smile.
“We’re home.”
Zuo Shaoyang looked up.
It was a three-bay house with a tiled roof and a hall in the middle. All four leaves of the wooden entrance doors stood open. On either side hung peachwood door talismans. Simple as they were, the boards had been planed smooth, and the couplets written on them had an archaic vigour that showed considerable skill. Naturally, the characters were in their traditional forms.
Above the doorway hung a signboard, likewise made from a plain, smoothed peachwood plank. Three large characters proclaimed:
Guizhi Hall
The writing matched that of the couplets and had plainly been done by the same hand. It had faded so badly, however, that anyone standing farther away would scarcely have been able to read it.
Just inside the hall, near the entrance, stood two long benches. Farther back was a long wooden table, so worn that its original colour could no longer be made out. Beyond it, the evening gloom concealed the rest of the furnishings.
The threshold had worn into a downward curve and was covered with chop marks. People had probably found it convenient to cut and shave things on it.
Following Huixiang over the threshold, Zuo Shaoyang saw an old man seated behind the long table.
He was thin and dry-looking, with a futou headcloth, a deeply wrinkled face, and a wisp of greying goatee beneath his chin. His black robe was far too large for him, spreading out on every side like a dark pyramid. At its peak protruded a small, weather-beaten head with a goatee.