The snow and wind in the Twelve Wards of the capital grew ever fiercer. Before long, the smell of ink followed the bitter wind from the bustling markets beyond the city walls and made its way into the deep courtyards of the great residences.
The side gate of the Xie estate opened a narrow crack, and an old maid responsible for purchasing supplies slipped inside with her head lowered.
She carried a basket. Beneath several bunches of greens still crusted with ice lay, tightly concealed, a stack of sheets whose ink had not yet fully dried.
Those few sheets of coarse paper, sold for only a handful of copper coins, passed through winding corridors and, without a sound, found their way into the inner residence of the Xie estate.
Inside Xie Yunwan’s room, the biting chill of midwinter was kept firmly outside the windows.
She undid the clasp at her collar, slipped off her brocade cloak embroidered with gold thread, and casually draped it over the nearby huanghuali wood screen.
Then she walked slowly to the writing desk.
The precious editions once mounted on Chengxintang paper, filled with the rhymes and verses of celebrated poets singing of romance and moonlit flowers, had all been pushed to one corner of the table.
Occupying the center was a single work: Records of Long Street.
“What is the fundamental substance? The answer: The Great Void is qi.”
Xie Yunwan read those words three times.
A trace of vexation rose in her heart. Why had Xu Zijin stopped writing to her?
Hmph!
She shook her head and turned to the report the manager of the Xie cloth shop had sent to the capital.
Xie Yunwan opened the folded document. The tiny regular script on it did not record poetry or essays, but actual accounts and the latest developments.
“On the third day of this month, three newly built weaving workshops south of the city began operations simultaneously. More than fourteen hundred female workers from the various prefectures and counties of Jiangnan have been hired.”
“All labor contracts are for three years. At the end of each month, the owner pays three taels of full-purity silver directly into the workers’ hands, counted and verified on the spot, with no delays or defaults. Two plain meals a day are also provided.”
“The areas around the workshops were once plagued by local ruffians and troublemakers. Since the Southern Zhili authorities began sending constables to patrol day and night, more than thirty men have been arrested and paraded in cangues as a public warning. No one in the streets now dares to make lewd remarks.”
Xie Yunwan stared at the figures—more than fourteen hundred women, three taels of silver each month—and her brow furrowed as her mind began calculating rapidly.
Three taels of silver.
Among the tenant farmers and peasant households under Jiangning Prefecture, a strong laborer might toil in the fields all year and, after paying rent and the countless levies and taxes, be left with no more than ten taels in ready money.
Now, a woman need only sit at a loom in one of these workshops and work the treadle to earn, in a single month, enough to feed an entire family for more than half a month.
In a year, she could bring home thirty-six taels in hard silver.
Xie Yunwan closed her eyes.
Since childhood, the admonitions instilled in her day and night by family elders and household tutors now surged through her mind like a rising tide.
“A woman’s lack of learning is her virtue.”
“She must not venture beyond the main gate or the inner door. Serving her husband and raising her children is the proper path for a woman.”
“A woman’s foremost virtue is obedience. She must never interfere in worldly affairs or have contact with unrelated men.”
In the past, Xie Yunwan had believed these words were ironclad laws, walls that could never be crossed.
But now, when these weightless rules of orthodox tradition were set against the fourteen hundred women in Jiangning who received real silver every month and used it to support their families, such grand principles seemed laughably flimsy—pale as a sheet of paper that could be pierced at any moment.
Xie Yunwan opened her eyes again. Her gaze was clear and lucid.
“Miss.” The maidservant’s quiet voice outside interrupted her thoughts. “Shang Jia, the Shang family's eldest daughter, and Miss Su Wan'er from the residence of Assistant Director Su have arrived. They have already passed through the front hall.”
Xie Yunwan’s hands stilled, and delight immediately spread across her face.
“Show them in.”
The door to the heated chamber opened, and a gust of cold wind swept inside.
Shang Jia and Su Wan'er hurried in, snowflakes not yet melted clinging to the fox-fur cloaks around their shoulders.
The maids quickly stepped forward to remove their cloaks, then took the hand warmers from the brazier and passed them to the two guests.
Seated behind the writing desk, Xie Yunwan raised her head and studied them.
Shang Jia’s face was flushed red from the cold, but her eyes burned with barely suppressed indignation.
Su Wan'er gripped her hand warmer tightly, her face ashen and her lips pressed into a thin line.
“Yunwan!” Shang Jia had no patience for pleasantries. She crossed the room in a few strides and sat down in the armchair beside the desk, her voice brimming with anger. “How can you still have the leisure to read reports here? The sky outside is practically falling!”
Su Wan'er sat down on the other side and hurriedly added, “My elder brother went to the East City Guildhall this morning, but he came back after less than half an hour with a face like thunder. Even my father was pointed at and denounced in the Imperial Academy by those mad, lowest-rank licentiates for being hidebound and backward.”
Shang Jia struck the armrest hard. “Those penniless scholars have gone completely mad! Carrying around some wretched pamphlet printed God knows where, they run through every street and alley. Whenever a carriage carrying the sons of an eminent family passes by, they shout insults from the roadside, saying we only know how to memorize dead texts and understand nothing of truth! My brother was so furious yesterday that he nearly vomited blood. He hasn’t even dared leave the house since!”
Xie Yunwan listened in silence, her gaze passing over their furious faces.
“And then?” she asked.
“What do you mean, ‘and then’?” Shang Jia stared at her in confusion. She then pulled a roll of exquisitely mounted gold-flecked paper from her broad sleeve and placed it directly beside Xie Yunwan’s hand.
“The elders of our clans have issued strict orders. No matter how chaotic things become outside, the women of the inner residence are forbidden from involving themselves with those heretical and subversive notions. But the Jiangnan families will never swallow this insult!” Shang Jia tapped a finger on the roll of gold-flecked paper. “Yunwan, you are acknowledged as the foremost talented woman of Jiangnan. Your calligraphy and poetry are so accomplished that even the great scholars of the capital have praised them.”
“Wan’er and I have come today to ask you to step forward. Use that incomparable regular script of yours to write a grand fu honoring family law and the authority of our teachers, a piece that will steady the foundations of orthodox morality! We’ll have the finest printing house in the city carve and print it, then shove it right in that Xu fellow’s face! With the pure voice of the inner chambers and your brushwork, you can help the sons of our great families reclaim the dignity that has been trampled!”
Xie Yunwan lowered her gaze to the roll of gold-flecked paper, its faint sandalwood fragrance rising into the air.
Seeing that Xie Yunwan remained silent, Su Wan'er grew anxious. She leaned forward and quickly echoed, “Yunwan, you don’t venture outside, so you have no idea how badly the world has deteriorated!”
A deep look of disgust appeared on Su Wan'er’s face. “It isn’t only those penniless scholars who have gone mad. I heard from my family that even Jiangning Prefecture in the south has fallen into chaos! Apparently, quite a few crude village women have stopped staying home to serve their parents-in-law like proper wives. Instead, they’ve run off to some sort of workshop and started working alongside men!”
“Just listen to that! It’s utterly scandalous! Showing their faces in public, shamelessly mingling with men—such behavior tramples all over feminine virtue and the moral order. If this spreads, won’t the respectable women of families like ours be dragged into the disgrace as well? It would besmirch our spotless family reputations for no reason!”
The more Su Wan'er spoke, the more righteous she felt. “That is why you must write this grand fu, Sister! You must denounce this perverse trend in the strongest possible terms and let the people of the world know what rules and propriety truly are!”
The heated chamber fell silent save for the crackling of the charcoal fire.
Slowly, Xie Yunwan reached out and lifted the teacup beside her. Steam rose in delicate curls, obscuring her expression.
Shang Jia and Su Wan'er kept their eyes fixed on her. As Xie Yunwan’s long silence continued, the excitement that had animated them gradually faded away.
The two exchanged a glance, and unease rose in both their hearts.
Xie Yunwan immediately set her teacup down with a heavy thud.
Bang!
Shang Jia and Su Wan’er both jumped.
“Your fathers and elder brothers.” Xie Yunwan lifted her eyes, her gaze cold and sharp. “They took the finest resources the clan had to offer, spent their entire lives studying the Confucian classics, claimed the best positions at the Imperial Academy, and held the power to select candidates in the examinations.”
Her voice was icily cold. “And what came of it? On the main street, a few questions left them speechless. Now the students of the New Learning have cursed them so thoroughly that they don’t even dare show their faces. All they can do is hide in the guildhall like a pair of frightened tortoises, worrying themselves sick!”
Shang Jia hurried to argue, “Yunwan, the other side was simply being unreasonable…”
“Shut up!” Xie Yunwan cut her off with a furious shout.
“If what they said was sophistry, why didn’t your fathers and elder brothers refute them in front of everyone on the main street? Why did they hide?” Xie Yunwan rose to her feet and looked down at the two of them with an imperious air. “The men lost the battle outside and couldn’t explain the truth of heaven and earth. And now they have the shamelessness to retreat into the women’s quarters and expect a woman whom they have long instructed never to meddle in outside affairs to write some grand fu poem for them?”
Xie Yunwan tore into them without mercy. “They want to use the cloying, feeble voice of a sheltered lady to save face for a bunch of men outside who have lost even the courage to stand up for themselves? Don’t you find that humiliating? Instead, you’re proud of it?! I find it utterly disgraceful!”
Su Wan’er’s face flushed scarlet. “How can you speak like that? We’re defending the traditions of the great houses!”
“Traditions?” Xie Yunwan sneered.
She snatched up the report from Jiangning lying on the desk and thrust it into Su Wan’er’s hands.
“Open your eyes and read it yourself!” Xie Yunwan pointed at the writing. “You claim that the women who go to work in the workshops are exposing themselves in public and bringing shame upon their families? Do you know what the price of rice in Jiangning was last year? Do you know how many poor families, unable to afford food, sold their own daughters to brothels and pleasure quarters to pay off their debts?”
Su Wan’er stared at the characters on the memorial, crushed into silence by Xie Yunwan’s commanding presence.
“They don’t have your good fortune. They have no warm chambers to live in, no charcoal fires to warm themselves beside!” Xie Yunwan pressed her finger hard against the report. “Xu Zijin was right! Truth is found in the affairs of the world. One seeks the Way through practical things! Those female workers weave cloth with their own hands, earning three taels of silver a month—clean money that supports their entire families! That is the Way they seek!”
“The Way of supporting one’s family with one’s own hands has nothing to do with whether one is male or female, noble or lowborn! Women can take part in the livelihoods of the world just as men can, and they can establish a place for themselves in it!” Xie Yunwan snatched up the scroll of gold-flecked paper and threw it straight back into Shang Jia’s arms. “My brush, Xie Yunwan’s brush, will not write a eulogy for the Old Learning!”
Shang Jia clutched the gold-flecked paper, damp from the spilled tea. Her face went white, then green.
“You… Have you been bewitched by that demon’s lies as well?” Shang Jia rose to her feet, her voice trembling.
