The room where official documents were signed at the Jiangning government office was warm with the glow of red-hot beast-gold charcoal.
Xu Youde, whom no one had seen for quite some time, was reclining against the back of his chair.
In his hands were several reports on the state of the people, submitted by various prefectures and counties. He flipped through a few pages.
“Tsk! What florid prose.”
“The four corners of the realm are peaceful, benevolent instruction has spread far and wide, all trades are thriving, and the people have embraced the Way!”
“First-rate parallel prose!”
Xu Youde’s fingers loosened around the papers.
He tossed the three memorials straight onto the desk, where they fanned out in opposite directions.
“I’ve been reading these things for years, and they still trot out the same few stale lines.” Xu Youde tugged open the collar of his crimson official robe to let in some air, a trace of cold mockery at the corners of his mouth. “Pages upon pages praising a golden age, yet you couldn’t scrape half a copper from between the lines in taxes. Utter rubbish.”
A thunderous rumble came from his stomach. Hunger had finally caught up with him.
Since noon, he had drunk only two cups of tea, having spent all his time checking and calculating several secret ledgers the Ministry of Revenue kept in Jiangnan.
The old servant Xu Ji, who had been standing nearby replenishing his tea, immediately hurried forward with a stoop.
“My lord, I’ll go to the main hall and give the order at once. We can prepare the official sedan and have a squad of yamen runners escort us. Shall we dine at one of the famous establishments on the front street?”
Xu Youde raised a hand to stop him.
He swiftly undid the jade belt around his waist, removed the official robe that marked him as a second-rank grandee, and draped it over the back of his chair.
“What do we need a sedan for? Sitting inside that great eight-bearer wooden box, all you see when you lift the curtain is a crowd of muddleheaded officials bowing and kowtowing. How could I see Jiangning’s true face?”
He strode around the large desk and went behind the folding screen at the side.
Several sets of ordinary clothes hung there for everyday use.
Xu Youde pulled down a half-worn blue cotton robe, washed so often that it had lost its luster, and slipped it on. With practiced ease, he tied the cloth sash around his waist.
In an instant, he looked exactly like an ordinary old bookkeeper wandering through the water towns of Jiangnan, checking accounts and doing sums.
“You stay here and keep watch. There’s no need to follow me.” Xu Youde gave his instructions in an unhurried voice. “I’ll go take a walk through the streets myself.”
Before Xu Ji could reply, Xu Youde had already pushed open the rear window of the document room.
He slipped through the side gate of the back courtyard and, alone, melted into Jiangnan’s damp, chilly night.
The southern outskirts had once been nothing more than a desolate stretch of marshland. Now Emperor Tiansheng had filled it in and transformed it into a continuous expanse of workshops.
Looking at all this, Xu Youde’s thoughts drifted back to Xu Qinghuan, nearly a year earlier.
He remembered how the entire city had been shrouded in purple smoke that year.
Xu Youde followed the stone road southward.
From the distant Bell and Drum Tower, the deep, muffled drum announcing the hour sounded three times.
Oh? It was already the hour of the Boar.
In the capital—or in Jiangning as it had once been—once the second watch of the night arrived and the ward gates were shut, you could walk the streets without seeing so much as a ghost.
But the long street in Jiangning’s southern outskirts was now bright as day.
Countless vendors pushed wooden carts, their wheels creaking over the stone paving. Oil lamps and torches were mounted on the carts, their flames weaving together and spreading over the entire, seemingly endless street like mercury poured across the ground.
The sizzle of food dropped into hot oil, the vendors’ drawn-out cries, and the loud laughter and jeers of diners playing drinking games all rushed into Xu Youde’s ears.
Xu Youde did not slow his pace.
His eyes lingered naturally on the flashy juggling and variety acts, but what he was really searching for were the practical food stalls.
As he walked, however, he could not help calculating the figures.
A wonton stall could serve fifty bowls in half an hour.
With a net profit of three coppers per bowl, that meant three hundred coppers in a single night.
There were more than a hundred stalls along this street.
After factoring in the cost of ingredients and charcoal, more than ten thousand copper coins changed hands here every night.
Where did all that money come from?
The wages paid by the workshops!
Wealth poured into this county like a raging flood, bursting through the ancient rhythm of rising with the sun and retiring at sunset.
When he passed a miscellaneous stall selling large meat buns, Xu Youde’s steps slowed. He stopped before a mottled mud wall.
Several battered wooden boards hung on the wall, their prices written in charcoal.
Xu Youde stared at the first board.
Beneath the four large characters “white-flour meat bun,” the original price had been written as “three coppers.”
But the character for “three” had been slashed three times with a sharp blade, the cuts deep enough to turn up splinters.
Beside the gouges, someone had used a piece of fresh, pitch-black charcoal to write a crooked new number.
Five coppers.
Xu Youde stood still before the mud wall.
Two coppers was a small amount…
But as a director in the Ministry of Revenue, he naturally had to think about it a little more.
Money! Jiangnan had grown wealthy!
Xu Youde was just considering how many buns it would take to fill his stomach when a bare-chested man strode over, a filthy black sweat towel draped around his neck.
He had probably just finished unloading timber at a distant wharf or shipyard.
“Shopkeeper, four large meat buns!” the man boomed.
He reached into the pouch at his waist, pulled out a handful of copper coins, counted out twenty, and slapped them onto the wooden counter.
He picked up the buns, fresh from the steamer and scalding hot. Without even bothering to blow on them, he took a huge bite, and rich grease ran from the corner of his mouth down to his chin.
He paid without the slightest hesitation.
As for the extra eight coppers caused by the price increase, he did not utter a single unnecessary complaint.
Xu Youde calculated the man’s finances in his head.
Those who worked as laborers at the shipyards used to earn ten wen a day. Now, with the great surge in maritime trade, the workshops were desperately short of hands, and even the least a laborer could make was thirty wen a day.
Prices had indeed risen, but the copper coins in the hands of these working folk had risen even faster.
With nothing but their own labor, the people at the bottom of society had managed to swallow this frightening inflation whole.
“Excellent, excellent! This is a good thing!”
Xu Youde shifted his gaze and continued deeper into the street.
Up ahead, a crowd had gathered around a stall selling cooked meat. The crowd consisted of several women dressed in coarse cotton clothing.
Xu Youde took a couple of extra glances.
The fabric of their clothes was rough to the touch, but it had been washed perfectly clean. Not one garment bore a patch, and the women’s hair was neatly tied up with wooden hairpins.
They were female workers from the workshops—textile workers and women who did other kinds of fine work—just getting off their shifts.
“Boss, I’ll take half an ear of pig! Slice it thin, and pour on two extra spoonfuls of the braising sauce!”
The woman leading them was not tall, but her voice was surprisingly crisp and clear.
Xu Youde could not see even the slightest trace in her of the shyness and timidity that Jiangnan women of old had displayed when standing on the street and encountering strange men.
“Coming right up!” The butcher, as boisterous as ever, wore a broad, eager smile. He called out loudly, “Ladies, please wait a moment! I’ll have it sliced and wrapped for you in no time!”
The butcher raised his sharp cleaver.
Before long, half a braised pig’s ear had been chopped off and landed on the cutting board.
“Twelve wen in all. Here you are, miss.”
The butcher swiftly wrapped it in oiled paper and handed it over.
The woman in charge reached into her sleeve and pulled out a little coin purse sewn from floral fabric.
She pinched the bottom of the purse and shook it. Then she took out a small piece of silver and tossed it into the wooden box in front of the butcher.
The butcher picked up the silver and weighed it in his hand.
He reached into the cloth pouch at his waist, took out several copper coins, and returned them with both hands. “Here’s your change!”
Spanish silver.
The smile at the corners of Xu Youde’s mouth did not fade as he continued on his way.
Suddenly—
From the direction of the Grand Canal’s lock in the distance came a long, deep chant.
“Heave-ho—pull!”
The shouts of more than a hundred trackers, their voices drawn out in unison, drowned out the clamor of the entire street.
Xu Youde turned his head and looked toward the canal through the firelight.
Two enormous government vessels, riding extraordinarily deep in the water, were passing through the lock under cover of night with the current.
Their gunwales were nearly level with the surface, and lashed tightly across their decks with hemp ropes as thick as a man’s wrist were towering ancient logs, each a century old.
Every single one was large enough to require several people standing arm in arm to encircle it.
Amid the thunderous roar of the churning water at the lock, an angry voice rang out from beneath the eaves of a wind-sheltered house at the street corner.
“What is the world coming to…? This is truly outrageous!”
Two old examination candidates wearing square scholar’s caps stood side by side beneath the eaves.
They wore shabby, faded robes and clutched folding fans in their hands.
The candidate on the right snapped his fan shut viciously in his palm.
He glared at the female workers, who were carrying their paper-wrapped food and laughing as they walked.
“Men and women keeping no distance, women showing their faces in public!” The candidate on the left spat out the words through clenched teeth, trembling with rage. “Just look at what they’re wearing. Those are fine-cloth blouses! The distinctions between high and low have been thrown aside, and the regulations governing dress and rank have been thrown into chaos!”
He pointed toward the butcher’s stall, his voice edged with despair. “That crude butcher actually called a mere woman ‘master’! Outrageous and immoral—the world is going downhill! The teachings of the Sage, the rules established over a thousand years, have all been ruined by these merchants obsessed with copper and these lowborn rabble!”
Standing several paces away, Xu Youde heard every word and gave a cold snort.
What a pair of fossils! Xu Qinghuan would make sure to record every one of these men for punishment in the future!
Yet Xu Youde could not help sighing inwardly.
They had spent their entire lives studying the commentaries of the great masters, with their heads full of subtle doctrines and grand principles. And yet the copper coins in their pockets were not enough to buy even a packet of offal with a little minced meat in it.
Meanwhile, those female workers who had never spent a single day studying were using the silver they had earned themselves to buy real pig’s ears—something tangible to satisfy their cravings and fill their stomachs.
Xu Youde could not be bothered with the two old candidates ranting about the decline of public morals.
He strode forward, heading straight for the end of the lane.
At the lane’s end stood a noodle stall with a massive iron pot. White steam billowed upward, carrying the rich fragrance of wheat and bone broth.
Xu Youde walked up to the stall.
He tugged at the hem of his half-worn blue cotton scholar’s robe and pulled out a long bench covered in greasy black grime.
Then he called out to the stall owner as the man came over to serve him.
“Boss, a bowl of noodles in soup!” Xu Youde tapped the table. “And add an extra egg!”
