Buying Grain and Finding Work

Kong Tie was not in fact very clear on the matter himself. After talking for a long while, he finally gave only two answers. The first was Xie Weidian, registrar of the Sea Route Grain Transport Myriad Household Office, a man from Qara-Khoja—present-day Turpan—a region the court was gradually losing its grip on. The second was Nasir al-Din, superintendent of the Maritime Trade Branch Office, of whom nothing was known. After Kong Tie left, Shao Shuyi thought it over carefully and could make no sense of it. But one thing was certain: the superintendent of the Taicang Maritime Trade Branch Office held a high post and great authority, and it was hardly likely he would be seconded to supervise grain distribution. On the other hand, most of those buying grain were boat households, with few ordinary commoner households among them, so it was quite normal for the Transport Office to send a rank 7b registrar to sit in charge. The only question now was whether that Semu official from the other day had really been Xie Weidian. Kong Tie had only ever heard of these two men, but that did not mean these were the only two Semu officials in all of Taicang. Of course, even if the man matched, there still seemed to be no good way to act. Shao Shuyi sighed inwardly. He could not even manage to meet the man once—so what use could all the knowledge of a modern man in his head be put to? At this point, it seemed the only thing to do was—eat first. As usual, he pulled a few small greens from the vegetable plot, rinsed some rice, carefully added a few grains of salt, and boiled it all together into a pot of congee. When he had finished, the sky was gradually darkening. Shao Shuyi looked at the straw, the mat, and the blanket on the bed in the east room and frowned. He had slept on straw for over a month now, but he still could not get used to it. He missed the soft mattresses and clean cotton quilts of modern society terribly, to say nothing of its rich and varied food and entertainment. There was no going back to any of it. Just as the last sliver of light was about to vanish from the western sky, he came out into the courtyard. In the neighboring courtyard to the east, wisps of cooking smoke had just begun to rise. Two children were playing in the yard, laughing and shouting, carefree. A frowning old woman was cleaning out the cattle pen. She swept with great care, carrying out basket after basket of dung and soil and piling it in the corner. Then she found a quantity of fine sandy earth from somewhere and spread it carefully over the pen floor, and only after that drove the cow back inside. A young wife finished drawing water at the well and headed toward the kitchen. When she saw Shao Shuyi looking her way, her face reddened and she quickened her steps. The six-foot-tall fellow Tieniu was splitting firewood in the yard. His strength was great, and his hands were steady. The wood burst apart under the axe blade and scattered across the ground. Just as Shao Shuyi was about to go back inside, an old man hurried out. "Father—" the young man began, then stopped. "Nearly everyone's arrived over at the shrine hall. If I don't go now, I'll be late." The old man waved his hand and quickly disappeared beyond the courtyard. "That old coffin, rushing off to his death." The old woman came out of the cattle pen cursing loudly. "He pays no mind to anything at home, and the moment it gets dark he burrows into that shrine hall. The Heavenly Consort sees it all—will she still protect my son?" The young man sighed, said nothing more, and went on splitting firewood. The old woman chattered on and on, as if cursing her old husband, and as if cursing her own bitter fate. Shao Shuyi was equally at a loss for words. Taicang had originally been nothing but a coastal village. It had risen because of sea transport, and by now it could be said that the great majority of its people had everything to do with the sea. But that did not mean there were no other faiths—a person might even hold several at once. Somewhere southeast of the city, a White Lotus Sect shrine hall called Yiliao Hall, funded by local wealthy households, stood proud and tall. Almost every night the faithful gathered there, sometimes a few dozen, sometimes more than a hundred, shouting and clamoring until dawn. Shao Shuyi had once entertained the idea of joining the White Lotus Sect, but they did not feed you, so he had let the notion drop. Of course, it really was not a good place to go. People of this time did not know what the White Lotus Sect would become—but surely later generations did? Han Shantong came from a White Lotus family, after all. As a modern man, he truly did not want to get mixed up in such things, because if you were not careful you would be swallowed by the tide of the times. The ideal state of affairs would be to find a relatively safe place and lie low, waiting quietly for the situation to settle. If along the way he could also improve his social standing and economic condition, so much the better. Counting carefully, there seemed to be time left, but not a great deal of it. After thinking it over for a long while, Shao Shuyi finally decided to go look for work the next day. One big reason was to get some money—it might come in handy if he had to run one day. The other reason was that there were only two dou and five sheng of rice left at home. Even at one sheng a day, that would last only a little over twenty days. In the Yuan dynasty, a dan was both a unit of weight (120 jin) and a unit of volume (a little over 100 sheng), equal to two hu, ten dou, or a hundred sheng. A dan measured by volume weighed different amounts depending on the goods, since densities differed, so no single figure could cover them all. And besides, rice and vegetables alone, with no protein to supplement them, were a problem in themselves. He was only fifteen, just at the age for growing. Without meat, eggs, or milk to supplement his diet, eating only carbohydrates, no amount would ever be enough, and his body would develop poorly—when he had been hauling sacks at the docks a while back, his lack of strength had been obvious. ****** The ninth day of the fourth month. Clear. At first light, Shao Shuyi boiled a little congee. After eating, on a sudden whim, he took the rust-speckled firewood chopping knife from the woodshed and practiced chopping and cutting earnestly in the courtyard. But he did not practice for long before stopping. There was no other reason: he felt that if he kept at it, his stomach would start growling. The bit of vegetable congee he had eaten that morning would probably be gone with a single piss—his nutrition could not keep up. If he forced himself to train, he might end up pissing blood, and it was not worth it. After leaving the house, Shao Shuyi headed east and came again to the vicinity of the Thirty-Li Embankment. A great crowd of idle commoners had gathered here, nearly all of them looking for work. Shao Shuyi mixed in among them, feeling like one of those "Sanhe gods," drifting about in search of day-labor jobs. If he found one, with luck he might work ten days or half a month; if his luck was poor, he might get only a single run, not even half a day's work. To tell the truth, longer-term jobs were generally passed around among acquaintances, and rarely found their way out to strangers. He squatted there for half a day and saw not a single damned job. Even when one appeared, someone else snatched it up. Just as he was about to leave, shouting and weeping suddenly broke out in the distance. Shao Shuyi walked forward a stretch and saw a girl clinging to her mother's leg, wailing loudly. Her mother's face was full of grief, and she too wept without stopping. Beside them was a simple, honest-looking fellow muttering on and on: "Last winter, in the eleventh month, the authorities summoned and hired boats to stand by for grain transport. At the time they paid no freight, yet they forced me to repair my boat. I had no choice but to borrow money and buy tung oil, hemp fiber, lime, timber, and other materials in advance, and hire craftsmen to repair the boat. At the end of the third month I finally saw a little of the freight payment, but I still had to provision the boatmen's rations, and it was spent to the last coin. Today the corvée officers came to my door and said I was behind on my kechai tax—they demanded four ding of paper money, and if I don't pay they'll seize my house. I truly have no way out. I truly have no way out..." He said a great deal, his eyes on the onlookers, his lips trembling, his voice somewhat choked. It was less a speech for the crowd than one for himself, to ease the guilt in his heart. "On and on, and none of it makes sense!" A middle-aged man in silk sneered, pulled out a stack of paper money, and flung it in the fellow's face. "If your daughter weren't pretty, you could look forward to a beating and rotting in jail. Here's eight ding. Take it." With that, he waved his hand. Several men darted out from behind him, pulled mother and daughter apart, and dragged the young girl away by force. The fellow instinctively cupped his hands to catch the baochao, then scrambled clumsily to bend down and pick up the notes that had fallen to the ground. "What wickedness—the Xia girl is only thirteen, and she's been sold," one of the onlookers said with a sigh. "The child's pretty. Maybe Squire Zhang bought her to be a concubine?" "And what of it? She could have found a good family." "Eight ding is quite good. For an ordinary family's girl, could you get five?" "Xia Er really is pitiful. Who knows who he offended—three years running out to sea. A solid, well-off household, and now it looks ready to be broken and destroyed." "He's a boat household newly registered a few years back, with no connections—so of course they bully him hard." Shao Shuyi listened from the side, chilled to the heart. In truth, he had always deliberately or unconsciously overlooked one point: this was ancient times—and the Yuan dynasty at that, with extremely loose governance and local governments enjoying great latitude. If you were caught owing taxes, was a beating so strange? Seven strokes, seventeen, or twenty-seven—all were normal. Prefectural and county officials had enormous discretionary power; it depended entirely on their mood. When the plank came down, skin split and flesh opened. Whether it led to infection was another matter—in any case, the authorities most likely would not give you any medicine. He had no relatives in Taicang either. There was no one to bribe the jailers into bringing him food, water, or medicine. And the conditions in the jail would surely be dreadful. Dark and damp, cramped and narrow—those were the least of the problems. Infectious disease was the real trouble. Once you went in, the risk of catching something was extremely high. Shao Shuyi quietly slipped away from the crowd. It seemed that even finding work would not help much now. It would only barely keep him alive, keeping body and soul together so that he did not starve. But this world had too many ways to do you in, and he could not even be sure which one he would meet.