Chapter 53: A Walk Through the Market

Shaoyang continued through the eastern, southern, western and northern quarters. Shijing was a small county town; in less than two hours he had covered its streets and lanes.

He saw delighted children setting off crackers and brightly dressed men and women out enjoying the holiday. More often, however, he saw beggars, people selling their sons and daughters, and frail homeless children lying at street corners.

He knew that in the first year of Zhenguan, warfare remained unsettled in many parts of the country and famine was widespread. Life was hard, and many had lost their homes. Compared with them, Guizhi Hall’s troubles were ordinary enough.

At the yamen he found no one outside. He peered in. It looked almost deserted; naturally the first day of the year was a holiday. Just inside stood a screen wall covered with papers of various sizes, some bearing pictures.

Curious, he remembered that his brother-in-law worked here as a clerk. Surely there was no harm in looking. He stepped inside.

There was a gatehouse facing him. An old man in a lined robe was dozing within. At the footsteps, he opened his eyes and smiled.

“Young Zuo! Something you need?”

Only someone familiar with him would use that address. Emboldened, Shaoyang bowed.

“Happy New Year! Nothing in particular. Just walking about for the holiday.”

“I see. Take your time.”

The gatekeeper closed his eyes and resumed his nap.

Shaoyang studied the papers on the screen wall. They were official notices and judgements. Those with portraits were wanted notices. These interested him, though wind and rain had ruined most of them. Only one appeared newly posted and remained legible.

He read it slowly. A thief nicknamed Flying Rat was wanted for arrest. The reward was one hundred taels of silver for capturing and delivering him, fifty for information that helped secure his arrest.

One hundred taels—five hundred thousand yuan in modern terms! He must have committed serious crimes.

The portrait showed a man with a full beard, thick brows, large eyes and a heavy, fleshy face. A vicious-looking fellow, Shaoyang thought. He looked like a villain.

Leaving the yamen, he continued to the market.

The market occupied a square divided according to the goods sold: vegetables and meat; oil, salt, sauces, vinegar and household wares; clothing, cloth, old garments and remnants; medicinal materials, and so on. Customarily it closed on New Year’s Day, but plenty of vendors were working through the holiday to earn the first money of the year.

He wandered into a grain shop stocking both rice and flour. The price cards startled him.

Dark flour cost two hundred wen per dou. Even ordinary unpolished rice was over three hundred, never mind refined flour and white rice. A Tang dou held a little over ten modern jin. That meant twenty wen for a jin of dark flour and thirty for unpolished rice.

Allow twenty jin per person a month: a household of five would need a hundred jin, costing three thousand wen—or fifteen thousand yuan in modern money—each month. Their income would have to exceed three thousand wen, three taels of silver, just to afford inferior unpolished rice.

Sighing over the figures, he went to look at meat and vegetables. Those were available too, but at alarming prices: pork forty wen a jin, beef fifty, even a head of Chinese cabbage two wen.

For a household of five to eat rice and a little meat, the monthly income would need to be at least five thousand wen, equivalent to twenty-five thousand yuan. How could ordinary people afford such a standard of living? No wonder most ate dark flour mixed with wild greens. Even moderately comfortable households dared not eat white rice and pork every day.

Further on came a great din of hawking, laughter and applause. Groups of people stood in rings. Peering over them, he saw monkey handlers, martial performers with swords and staves, players on a makeshift stage, conjurors and more. Their skill was nothing remarkable, but the spectators watched with relish. At New Year, perhaps the excitement was enough.

Shaoyang squeezed into the conjuror’s audience and watched with his hands in his sleeves. He was grinning at the tricks when someone lightly tapped his shoulder.

He turned, surprised and delighted.

“Miss Peilan!”

It was the woodcutter girl. She smiled faintly, beckoned and walked away. He hurried after her.

“Have you come to enjoy yourself in town? On New Year’s Day?”

She shook her head and pointed towards the firewood sellers.

“To sell wood.”

“You’re selling firewood even today?”

She smiled again, took out her purse and tipped out the coins. After counting them, she offered him the lot.

“These are fees from the people you and your father treated in Laohuai Village. They asked me to bring them down. I meant to come to your shop after selling the wood, but then I happened to see you. Twenty-three wen altogether.”

She told him how much came from each household.

He accepted the money happily.

“How did they know you knew me?”

“Brother Li told them. Yesterday morning we carried Auntie Li back to the village. Everyone you treated last time has recovered. They all say how skilled you are. They were afraid you might need money for New Year. When they heard I was coming down to sell wood today, they asked me to bring it.

“And my mother asked me to thank you. Such fine physicians—you cured her without even using medicine. She’s much better.”

“Your mother?” he asked in surprise. “Was she one of the patients we saw?”

“Yes. The woman whose nose your father pierced with a chopstick to let blood. She got better.”

He remembered at once: the poorest household of all, with nothing inside, little naked children sitting on stone slabs sucking their fingers. The patient had been a middle-aged woman with a limp.

“That was your home? The lame woman was your mother?”

“Yes.”

“There were four little children outside, all quite young. The eldest couldn’t have been ten. Your brothers and sisters?”

“Yes. Three younger brothers and a younger sister. I’m the eldest.”

“And your father?”

“He died… of illness.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

She gave a strained smile.

“When will you come again? Everyone’s heard that you’re skilled and only charge once the treatment works. They all want to see you.”

“My brother-in-law’s family is visiting tomorrow, so we’re busy. The day after at the earliest. How is Auntie Li’s stroke?”

Auntie Li was the old woman who had quarrelled with her daughter-in-law and suffered wind stroke. Because the treatment required expensive ginseng, the clinics had seen the family’s poverty and claimed they could not cure her. Shaoyang had used Antelope Horn and Uncaria Decoction with Purple Snow. After taking it, she had opened her eyes and recognised people.

“She improved a lot that day,” Peilan said. “She could still recognise people when we took her back. Only…”

“What is it?”

“Before I came down this morning, Brother Li said she’d fallen unconscious again. They couldn’t wake her.”

Shaoyang was startled. That should not have happened. Had something changed?

Treating wind stroke demanded accuracy and speed at its onset. Only prompt, appropriate medicine could minimise the harm. There was no time to lose.

“I’ll tell my father at once. We’ll try to go to Laohuai Village now!”

Peilan had not understood how serious it was. At the change in his face, she grew anxious too, glanced back at her firewood and nodded.

Shaoyang ran home and told his father.

Zuo Gui was startled as well.

“Wasn’t it the old travelling physician’s prescription you gave her?”

Shaoyang nodded awkwardly.

“But wasn’t that old physician… wasn’t he…”

He had meant to say, Wasn’t he an immortal? Then he realised that had been his own belief. The physician had never claimed it, and neither had his son. He could hardly blame anyone else.

After repeating “wasn’t he” twice, he could think of nothing to add.

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