An autumn morning. In the east the sky had only just begun to show a faint glow, milky white mist drifted through the ancient city, and painted pleasure boats moved slowly along the Qinhuai River, half hidden among the patches of thick fog like jade palaces floating at the very edge of the sky.
In the thick fog of late autumn, Ning Yi ran along the road by the Qinhuai, humming a song as he went. This morning exercise had long since become a fixed routine—time, after all, was one thing he had in abundance. As he ran on, the old brick-and-timber houses lining the road grew dense and then sparse, trees of every kind stood along the way, painted boats drifted on the Qinhuai, and now and then a boatman or a weary courtesan would appear at a prow.
This stretch of the day was the most interesting hour of Jiangning's metabolism: the night's clamor and splendor had all scattered, and new vitality was only just beginning. The city gates were already open; vegetable growers and peddlers coming in for the early market filed through one after another, heading for this market or that.
You didn't meet many people, but all of them gave off a feeling of greenness and life. Now and then you might see someone walking hurriedly along the roadside, face worn out, clothes even askew—nine times out of ten a man who had spent the night in some brothel and, having business by day, was slipping away early.
Half the shops had opened; the beggars weren't up yet.
Happiness often comes from unhappiness, and splendor always comes from contrast. To Ning Yi, who had seen modern metropolises, Jiangning for all its prosperity was nothing much. But there was no point in being particular about it—the old, natural flavor of the place was genuine, and the people who lived here were, after all, easily satisfied sorts: enough to eat and wear, and their faces split into smiles.
Ning Yi sometimes talked about such things with Old Qin. Jiangning counted as a very good city, yet in truth beggars walked everywhere in gangs and crowds, and selling one's sons and daughters was no rare sight.
Of course, there were wealthy households here in plenty; if a child could be sold into some decent mansion as a page boy or a maid, then food and clothing would never be a worry again, and it counted as merit laid up by the ancestors.
Thanks to the thriving pleasure quarters along the Qinhuai, pretty girls from poor families had one more way out: if in time they learned poetry, song and music, and the madam knew her business, they might sell their art without selling their bodies and become famous courtesans; with a little more luck, one might even marry into some great house as a concubine.
But the great majority, who had no luck, could only sell their bodies for life; when age took their looks, a kindhearted madam would set them free. Fortunately, with so many such places about, customs took shape, and a woman who kept to the rules could always muddle through this life, neither good nor bad.
Of course, good and bad here were relative too: an old prostitute without money would mostly be kept on by the brothel to do odd jobs and sweeping for the rest of her years, not thrown straight out into the street. After long acquaintance, that much conscience and welfare still existed.
If it weren't in a city like Jiangning or Yangzhou, then not even that was guaranteed.
There were also those who raised "slim horses." The Yangzhou slim horses would become famous the world over in later ages, beginning in the Ming, but in fact a similar trade already existed in this time—small in scale, but an investment that always grew up alongside the pleasure quarters.
A girl raised as a slim horse had a better fate than girls simply sold into a brothel, and something to look forward to, because at least she had the chance to learn the qin, Go, calligraphy, painting, poetry and song, and so was all the more likely in later years to rank among the famous courtesans.
Every flood season brought refugees. In a better year there were fewer, but there were always some; in a bad year—say, when the Yellow River overflowed every few years, or other natural disasters and man-made calamities struck—the city would be tense for a while.
Soldiers would hold the gates and refugees would not be let in; the prefect would summon the rich merchants to discuss matters, which in practice meant launching a donation drive, everyone scraping together what they could to set up gruel and rice kitchens…
People froze to death every winter, and that too depended on the year: in a good year fewer died, and in a bad one it went without saying. Beggars had a hard time of the winter; if it snowed, the next day you would always see some who had frozen to death in each other's arms—no rare sight at all.
Seeing such things often enough, one got used to them, though now and then Old Qin would say, "These are not good years."
There were good years too; in the first years of the Wu dynasty it could fairly be called an age of song and dance, with Emperor Heng of Wu and Emperor Hui of Wu being men of grand talent and grand strategy, and so on—Ning Yi's head swam whenever he heard it, but every dynasty has its years of song and dance.
The Wu dynasty of this time was very like the late Northern Song: away from the relatively rich land south of the Yangtze, several peasant forces were in open rebellion, and bandits and brigands were by no means few; in the north the state called Great Liao, ruled by the Yelü clan, had several times raided the border—raid, make peace; raid, make peace—and a few years ago a treaty had been signed, each calling the other a brother state.
Liao the elder brother and Wu the younger, of course; and even after signing they were still fighting, and small-scale raids along the border had never stopped.
Ning Yi didn't worry about any of it. The Jingkang humiliation hadn't arrived yet—the emperor was a different man, so if it did happen it would surely play out differently—and His Majesty had not yet moved the capital to Jiangning. The country still had strength in it; if it came to fighting, it could always keep fighting.
And even if the capital were moved and the Wu dynasty plugged into the Southern Song pattern, hadn't the Southern Song held out for a long stretch? If the Jin came invading again, he would most likely have finished out this life of his by then.
"Four hundred and eighty temples of the Southern Dynasties—how many towers in the mist and rain."
Which shows that the Southern Song—uh, pretty sure that one isn't about the Southern Song. He turned it over in his mind, got nowhere, and tossed it aside. Whatever. Life in the Southern Song was perfectly comfortable, anyway.
He had no intention of saving the Chinese nation, or of founding some eternal monument of achievement now that he had landed in the ancient past. He was tired, long since tired—as though he had set down the burden of hot blood—and injustice and darkness in abundance had long ago become familiar.
Modern society was dark too; the sorrows of the world could no longer stir his sympathy or his resonance—not that it wasn't there, but it wasn't enough. As for eternal achievements like making himself emperor—a man who could live only sixty years thinking about a hundred and twenty years was simply childish.
Still, in other idle moments—say, standing by a quiet bend of the Qinhuai just after a run, sweating all over and resting—Ning Yi would irresponsibly turn over things that, in other eyes, might look a little more constructive.
For instance, if he really meant to do something, the status of a live-in son-in-law was a nuisance, but not a large problem—business opportunities were everywhere in these years. There was no MSG in the food. He knew more or less how MSG was made—it sounded simple, but was actually rather complicated—yet in about a year he could probably get it into mass production; then, adding a few new dishes and some modern ideas about cooking, he could put together a food court and be sure of turning a profit.
There was no music in these years. Anyone who had lived in a world where you could download unlimited music and listen to it endlessly every day could more or less imagine how boring that was.
The performances in the brothels were not necessarily good to watch, the famous courtesans' singing not necessarily good to hear—but if you could hear none of it at all, then a single passable tune would strike you as heavenly music. An entertainment complex would have great prospects: songs, dances, any number of diversions.
The lyrics of modern songs mostly couldn't be used, but there would be no problem localizing the melodies and vocal styles, or the idea of a subtler kind of dance in keeping with the style of the times—or copying out a few poems and having people sing them.
It was only because he had been bored so long that his thoughts kept running to food, drink and amusement.
As for anything beyond food, drink and amusement—spending decades producing guns and cannon to lay the groundwork for an industrial revolution, or raising a rebellion and making himself emperor so that people two hundred years later could ride in flying machines and so on—whatever came of it, he would not be there to enjoy it. Thinking about it was simply foolish. A food court and an entertainment complex were more meaningful.
The morning wind was cool. He stood at the edge of a river bend walled in stone, tossing pebbles into the water while these schemes turned over in his head.
In fact, for the time being, none of it could be done.
A man who had married into the Su family could forget about opening a brothel; that could be put off for later. The Su family ran a cloth business, and setting up his own tavern would be troublesome as well.
For instance, he could first offer the Su cloth shop a few ideas, prove his value, and then… oh, then he would be packed off to manage the cloth shop or some such, and if he proved himself a little more, the result would be the same profession as in his last life; then he could put up his own money to open a tavern, and under their puzzled gazes tell them it would be very profitable; and after that he would have to find people to build a whole line of equipment, rack his brains over all kinds of experiments, and set up an assembly line—and the reason for all of it was simply that he missed having less than a gram of MSG in every meal.
Wasn't that a pain in the balls for nothing…
Humming the tune of "Blue Caribbean Sea" under his breath, Ning Yi couldn't help laughing at himself. Doing it might not be so troublesome, but thinking about it was just funny. Better to simply buy a few hundred jin of kelp, boil it down and dry the crystals—kelp was easy enough to buy, but if he set up experiments in that line, on one hand they would say he was wasting money, and on the other, someone would probably tell him that a gentleman keeps his distance from the kitchen…
He hummed the opening of "Blue Caribbean," forgot the rest, and switched to "Two Tigers"; by the second time he reached "Two tigers, running fast," a chicken's cackle came from the road behind him.
"Brother, brother, brother…"
"Cluck, cluck, cluck…"
Two sounds: one a woman's, one a hen's. He looked back. In the drifting fog a hen was running for its life among the road and the trees over there, and then a woman in a gray-white cotton skirt appeared, a cleaver in her hand, relentlessly hunting the bird down. Woman and hen spun madly about in the fog, appearing and vanishing by turns.
Ning Yi stood under a tree by the river, chin propped on his hand, watching the spectacle.
Theoretically, imitating a chicken's call is supposed to make the hen feel safe and coax it over. But the poor thing's scared out of its wits—what good is calling "brother, brother" now? Calling "sister" wouldn't help either.
Thinking this, he watched the human-versus-chicken battle for a while, and just when he had decided that the woman had a nice figure, the hen suddenly veered and came racing toward him, shot past Ning Yi, and resolutely threw itself into the river.
The woman came right after it, her face frantic. The morning fog was thick, and Ning Yi standing under a tree was hardly conspicuous; she had probably not noticed the man beside her. Seeing the riverbank straight ahead, she chopped down with the cleaver with all her strength—she even let out a "hmph!"—but the blade hit nothing at all; instead the cleaver flew out of her hand and splashed into the water.
Ning Yi was startled by the decisiveness of that swing; only then did he realize that the woman's body had already tipped forward, arms flailing, about to go over into the river. Without thinking he shouted, "Hey!" and reached out, catching one of her hands. She twisted around, her other hand instinctively grabbing at him; Ning Yi was just about to heave her back when the stone under his feet shifted…
A short, cut-off cry: "Ah—glub—"
Bam—
Then violent thrashing in the water, splash-splash, splash-splash, and the river surface beneath the thick fog churned.
In his last life Ning Yi had been a decent swimmer; unfortunately, swimming isn't the sort of thing that carries over. This body had belonged to a frail scholar to begin with, and was no good in the water either; its constitution was weak, and it had taken an injury besides.
Ning Yi had nursed it along for a few months and exercised it as well, but a few months can only improve a body so much. The woman, it seemed, was no better in the water.
The two of them thrashed desperately in water that wasn't very deep, and every time Ning Yi collected himself enough to try to speak, she dragged him back under.
"You—glub, glub…"
"Hey—glub, glub…"
"Don't—glub, glub…"
They say many a strong swimmer who goes to the rescue is dragged down to die with a panicking drowning person.
How long it went on, he couldn't say; at last Ning Yi dragged the woman out onto the stone steps of the bank several dozen meters away. Soaked through and thoroughly bedraggled, he lay on his belly at the water's edge and spat out several mouthfuls of water before he came back to himself, then turned to look at the woman he had saved. She had drunk her fill of river water and was unconscious, perfectly still.
"Hey!" Ning Yi slapped her face a few times. Her long hair lay about her like waterweed, and she looked utterly forlorn. No response.
"Three lotuses float in the emerald pool… You live on the Qinhuai and you can't swim?" Ning Yi sighed a few helpless breaths, then laid her body out flat and began the first-aid steps he had learned before.
Even if the one you were saving was a woman, this rescue work was no plum assignment. She was no beauty in a swimsuit; her clothes were sodden and wrinkled, and with that tangled hair she looked like one of the legendary drowned water ghosts—a thoroughly wretched sight. Ning Yi was anxious. He did several rounds of chest compressions in a row and made her cough up a good deal of water, then patted her cheek and found she still did not respond, so he pinched her cheeks apart and began mouth-to-mouth.
After a while the woman came dazedly awake. Ning Yi was just bending down to her again when a slap cracked across his face—in the morning wind that slap rang out crisp and clear. Her voice was tearful and desolate: "You lecher… you… cough… what do you think you're doing…" She clutched at her chest and scrambled backward with all her strength, her soaked clothes clinging to her limbs, her long legs pushing against the ground. Wretched and thin as she was, there was something rather pitiable about her.
If any other passerby had come along just then, they might well have given Ning Yi a beating on the strength of that scene alone.
"I knew it…" Ning Yi turned his face aside for a good while, slumped his shoulders, let out a long breath, and then sat down on the roadway behind him. The two of them stared at each other by the river for a long moment, and then Ning Yi lifted a hand. "You're all right, then?"
She glared at him and said nothing.
"All right is all right, then." Answering himself, he pushed himself up off the ground, curled his lip, and turned to walk back the way he had come. The cool wind blew over him; it really was cold.
Behind him, the woman sat huddled where she was, watching his figure dwindle and vanish at the far end of the road…
Poor woman—lost her hen and her cleaver into the bargain. Walking home soaked to the skin, Ning Yi thought so with a certain malicious glee. Being out in the cold wind like this was a miserable business, but the thought that somebody else was worse off eased his misery a little.
In small matters he had always had his own openhearted way: since a thing couldn't be changed, this was the only method left—to make himself a little happier for the time being.