Chapter 61: Growing Medicinal Herbs

Shaoyang knew that unless he named a price, Peilan might refuse his treatment and take her brother elsewhere.

“I’d charge anyone else twelve wen. For you, just the cost—seven.”

“Charge what you charge everyone else,” she said with a smile. “Come inside.”

“No, thank you.”

He looked at the sky. It was still some time before noon. The billhook remained at her waist. Last night she had said she cut four or five loads a day; that meant at least two in the morning.

“Are you going up to cut more? Could I come?”

“What would you do?”

“Gather a few medicinal herbs.”

“All right. Come.”

“Where shall I leave the medicine chest?”

“Give it to me. I’ll put it in my room.”

She took it inside and soon returned with a small hoe and a carrying basket for him.

He thanked her, put the hoe in the basket and followed her out of the village, down the mountain. Laohuai Village stood only a few hundred paces from the summit, where steep bare rock offered few trees. Woodcutting meant going downhill.

As they walked one behind the other, he asked, “Have you ever been to school?”

She shook her head.

“Would you like to learn? I could teach you. At least to read.”

She stopped and looked back, delight filling her eyes. Almost immediately it faded. She gently shook her head, lowered it and walked on.

“You don’t want to?”

She shook her head again with a bitter little smile.

Then he understood. It was not lack of desire. Her family could not afford it—not merely in money, but in time. They depended on her labour alone. If she went to study, who would work the fields and run the household? How would they live?

He sighed inwardly.

“How much land do you farm?”

“Three mu. Rented from Master Jia.”

“Three mu? How much does it yield in a year?”

“Sixteen dou per mu. About fifty altogether—five shi.”

“And how much rice does that make?”

“Thirty-odd dou.”

“Thirty-odd…”

As a child in modern times, food had simply appeared before him. At university he had used a meal card in the canteen. He had little idea how much rice one person ate in a year, still less when calculated in ancient measures.

“Is that enough for the six of you?”

She glanced at him and smiled.

“If only we had all of it. There’s rent to pay.”

Of course. She had just told him they rented Master Jia’s fields. Thinking of rent, he remembered old films: landlords with abacuses, henchmen and wolfhounds forcibly collecting grain. Now he was living in that world and had slept in a landlord’s house the night before. Master Jia had not seemed so fierce. Could he be a smiling tiger?

“Why rent fields? There’s so much waste ground. Why not clear some? I hear the first few years can be exempt from tax.”

“Newly cleared land isn’t fertile enough for crops. It takes years to build it up.”

He knew even less about farming and only half understood. Apparently, for her family, renting was better than reclaiming land.

“But I’ve seen plenty of cultivated fields lying empty. Couldn’t you work those?”

“No. Fields left when a family dies out without heirs belong to the court. Farm them without permission and you’ll be beaten.”

“Damn it. They’d rather leave land idle than let people grow food? What’s the yamen thinking? How much rent do you pay?”

“One shi for each mu.”

Shaoyang knew that a Tang shi, also called a dan, equalled ten dou. A dou was 5.9 kilograms, nearly twelve modern jin; a shi was thus about a hundred and twenty jin.

“How many jin of grain are left after rent?”

“That depends on Heaven. In a good year, twenty-odd dou of paddy, making about fifteen dou of rice. In a bad year, we’re lucky to have ten.”

“The rent’s fixed?”

His head was beginning to ache.

“Yes. Good year or bad, the amount stays the same. Everyone pays that way. Master Jia is one of the more humane landlords. In droughts or floods, when the harvest is poor, he will reduce it.”

“Is he?” Shaoyang smiled. “He seems a decent man. He’s been generous over his son’s treatment—two thousand wen in all.”

“Two thousand?”

She clicked her tongue in amazement.

“That could buy a mu of excellent farmland!”

Decades of warfare had devastated production, leaving land very cheap in the early Tang.

In these few days, Shaoyang had earned nearly five thousand wen, enough for more than two mu. Of course, he had been lucky to encounter two cases involving wealthy families, both generous with fees—the woman with the undelivered dead child had herself been generous. He did not know whether such luck would continue.

He counted on his fingers.

“Even in a good year, that gives your six people little more than a dou of rice a month—less than twenty jin. How can that be enough?”

“It isn’t.”

“What do you do?”

“Cook it with rice bran and wild greens.”

She said it lightly, as though there were nothing remarkable in it.

Compared with her family, his own life might actually be easier.

“Farming three mu by yourself must be hard.”

She only smiled.

Wanting to help, he said, “If the work is so hard and barely keeps you fed, why not try something else? Growing medicinal herbs, for instance.”

She stopped and turned. Her large eyes shone; the freckles beside her nose looked very pretty.

He knew more about medicinal plants than crops. The idea had slipped out casually, but once spoken, it seemed a good one. Grown well, herbs could earn more than grain. With cultivation knowledge a thousand years ahead of this age, surely he could succeed.

“Trust me,” he said with an encouraging smile. “Use one mu for herbs and try it. I’ll teach you.”

She smiled apologetically and shook her head.

“Why not?”

“Master Jia won’t allow it. Rented paddies can grow only rice. Nothing else, in case it damages the soil’s fertility.”

Shaoyang murmured an uncertain acknowledgement. He almost offered to speak to Master Jia, then reconsidered. They were not so close, and a matter affecting his fields might not be easy to negotiate.

“I’d like to clear some land for herbs myself,” he sighed. “They don’t all need rich cultivated soil. Slopes or waste ground would do. And the tax exemption for the first few years makes it worthwhile. Only I don’t know how to farm.”

His main purpose was to grow common later medicines that the early Tang did not yet recognise. There was nowhere to buy them. He suspected that proposing a partnership directly would fail: unfamiliar with growing herbs, Peilan would be reluctant. But if he sounded pitiful and said he wanted to do it but could not, she might offer to help.

She had given all her wood money to Auntie Li’s family when they could not afford medicine. Clearly she was warm-hearted.

Sure enough, she smiled.

“I can help you clear the land.”

“Really? But you’re so busy. Will you have time?”

“Outside the busy farming season, I can find some.”

“That wouldn’t be fair. It would take time from your work. You can cut four or five loads of wood a day in the slack season—forty or fifty wen. A day lost means a great deal.”

“If only it paid as well as you think,” she said with a rueful smile. “So many people sell wood. Sometimes I can’t sell a single load for days. I earn very little.”

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