The Ancient Ship

Not until three days after his ferocious drinking bout did the old man finally wake up. Even then he spoke gibberish and kept tripping over his own feet. So he propped himself up against the window and informed anyone who would listen that a large ship had pulled up to the pier, with Zheng He himself at the tiller, and he wondered why he was still in the town of Wali. Jiansu and Baopu watched over him; Han-zhang cooked for him three times a day. When Baopu began sweeping the floor and removing cobwebs from the window, his uncle stopped him. “No need for that. I won’t be here long. I’m getting on that ship. Come with me, and we’ll sail the seas together. Or would you rather die in a dead-end town like this?”

Nothing Baopu said could change his uncle’s mind, so he told him he was sick. “I’m sick?” the old man shouted, his tiny gray eyes opening wide. “It’s this town that’s sick. It stinks. Can’t you smell it?” He crinkled up his nose. “At sea we deal in nautical miles, which equal sixty li, although some stupid bastards insist it’s only thirty. To test the depth, measured in fathoms, you drop a greased, weighted rope into the water, it’s called a plumb…” Baopu stayed with his uncle and sent Jiansu to get Guo Yun, a doctor of Chinese medicine.

Jiansu left and returned with Guo Yun.

After feeling the old man’s pulse, Guo Yun left a prescription that would bring him around in three days. Hanzhang sat at the table watching, and when Guo Yun stood up to leave, he turned, spotted her, and froze. Her brows looked penciled on, two thin black lines. Her dark eyes shone, though her gaze was cold. The skin on her face and neck was so fair, so snowy white, it was nearly transparent. The elderly doctor stroked his beard, an uncomprehending look on his face. He sat back down on the stool and said he’d like to feel Hanzhang’s pulse. She refused.

“You’re not well, I’ll bet on it,” he said as he turned to Baopu. “In nature growth is inevitable, yet moderation is essential. Without growth there can be no maturation, and without moderation growth is endangered.” Baopu could make no sense of that, but he urged Hanzhang to do as the doctor said. Again she refused. Guo Yun sighed and walked out the door. They watched his back until it disappeared.

THREE (#ulink_1a27eff8-25ba-5501-ab3a-d0caefcc4f54)

In the end Sui Jiansu quit his job at the factory, surprising many people, since a Sui had never before given up the calling. For him, however, it was an easy decision. After visiting the commerce office and checking with the Gaoding Street Party secretary, Li Yuming, and Luan Chunji, the street director, he received permission to open a tobacco and liquor stall. A month later he found an empty building just off the street, ideally located to expand his business into a shop. He went to the mill again to talk his brother into joining him in the venture, but Baopu shook his head. “Well, then,” Jiansu said, dejected, “since your calligraphy is so good, will you paint a shop sign for me?”

The old millstone rumbled. Baopu took the writing brush. “What’s it called?”

“The Wali Emporium.”

So Baopu laid a sheet of paper on the stool, but his hand shook uncontrollably when he dipped the brush into the ink, and he could not write the sign.

Ultimately, Jiansu was forced to ask the elementary school principal, Wattles Wu, to write it for him. The principal, a man in his fifties who had layers of loose skin on his neck, refused to use bottled ink; instead he had Jiansu make traditional ink on his long ink stone. It took Jiansu an hour to liquefy the ink block, after which the principal picked up a large, nearly hairless brush, soaked it in the ink, and began writing on a sheet of red paper. Jiansu watched as three thick veins rose on the back of the man’s slender hand, and when they retreated, the words “Wali Emporium” appeared on the paper. The characters for the word “emporium” were truly unique and, for some strange reason, conjured up the image of rusted metal. After Jiansu pasted it over the doorway he leaned against the door frame to look up at the sign. This was going to be an unusual shop, he was thinking.

The first week he was open, Jiansu sold only three bottles of sesame oil and a pack of cigarettes. Sui Buzhao was the first customer to step through the door of his nephew’s shop, but he merely looked around. On his way out, he recommended that Jiansu sell snacks to go with cups of liquor straight from the vat. He also urged him to paint a large liquor vat on the wall. Jiansu not only accepted his uncle’s suggestions, he went further by pasting posters of female movie stars on the outside wall. All Wali elders had been in the habit of going over to the local temple to drink, and the painted liquor vat invited nostalgia. As a result, most of his early customers were older, but the younger folks weren’t far behind. The place quickly became a hub of social activity.

One day, after business had started taking off, an elderly woman, Zhang-Wang, who coupled her maiden name with that of her deceased husband, entered with a request for him to begin stocking her handicrafts.

By “handicrafts,” she meant things like homemade sweetened yam-and-rice balls on sticks, clay tigers, and tin whistles, things she had been making and selling for decades, even during difficult times. She also told fortunes, some openly, others on the sly, to make a little extra money. Already in her sixties, she was a chain-smoker; the corners of her mouth were sunken, making her look older than her years. She had a thin neck and a pointed, turned-down chin, and her face was forever dirty. Her back was bent, her legs shook, and she made constant noises even when she wasn’t speaking. But the things she made were of the highest quality. Take, for instance, her clay tigers. She fashioned them so they had the same down-turned mouth as she, giving them an elderly yet proud, kind and gentle appearance, like their maker. And she kept making them bigger and bigger, until some were the size of pillows, toys that needed to be shared by two children at a time. She suggested that they be displayed on top of the Wali Emporium counter on consignment.

With a broad smile, Jiansu stared at the dust that had gathered on her thin neck and chatted with her casually, while she removed cigarettes from a rack and smoked them one after the other, never taking her eyes off Jiansu. He was by then in his mid-thirties, with slick black hair and a pimple here and there. He possessed a long, handsome face, an alert, vigilant face that showed a bit of cunning. Needless to say, he was a favorite of the women. But he was still unmarried, primarily a result of his clan’s situation; no one wanted to marry their daughter to either of the Sui brothers, him or Baopu. Baopu had once been married to the daughter of the family’s handyman, but she had died of consumption early on. He had not remarried.

Zhang-Wang, who knew that Jiansu was neither as open nor as guileless as his older brother, smirked as she looked at him, revealing blackened teeth. He blushed and urged her to say what was on her mind, even jokingly calling her an ugly old woman. When she took a few clay tigers out of her pockets and placed them on the counter, the similarity of their faces made him laugh. Reaching out to touch his bicep and chest, she said, “Aren’t you the strong boy!” When he wouldn’t stop laughing, she reached around and spanked him lightly. With a frown, she said, “You should be more serious when you’re talking to your old grandma!”

“Um,” Jiansu grunted, and stopped laughing. So they began negotiating the price and split for the handicrafts, and while they hadn’t reached an agreement by the time he lit the lamp, the deal was struck before she left.

From then on, Zhang-Wang came to the shop every day to move her clay tigers around on the counter. Sales were up: Many women bought the toys for their children, and if the children themselves came, she taught them new ways to play with them, with a little tiger attacking a big one by banging its head. But, they said, that would quickly lead to cracked heads. “Then what?” “Come buy new ones,” she’d say. As time passed, there was more business than the two entrepreneurs could handle during the day, so they started lighting a lamp and staying open longer. One night a group of old men sat beside the liquor vat drinking and snacking till the middle of the night.

Jiansu often slept with his head down on the counter, and Zhang-Wang delighted in blowing cigarette smoke at his red lips. In his eyes, she was a good assistant, and part of the shop’s success was her doing. “The tigers are our protectors,” she said. He gave the clay figurines, with their downturned mouths, a doubtful look. “Tigers are mountain spirits,” she added. When business was slow they talked about all manner of things, but his uncle, Buzhao, was one of her favorite topics. She’d laugh and show her dark teeth. “That old man is skin and bones, but he still won’t behave himself. When he was younger plenty of pretty girls got their taste of those old bones, including me. He’s never had an unskinny day, but he’s always been good at what he does.

“Do you know why he and Shi Dixin are mortal enemies?” she asked one day. Jiansu stared at her curiously and shook his head. So she took a cigarette from the rack, lit it, and told her story.

“Well, it was all on account of something really small. Back then, before your time, there was a lot more going on in Wali than now. And whenever you find a lot going on you’ll also find men who behave badly. Keep that in mind. When they’re ill mannered, they expend what energy they have on women’s bodies, leaving none for the things they ought to be doing. Men like your uncle, for instance, couldn’t even carry a lump of bean flour weighing three catties; they’d trip all over themselves and drop it, turning it into a pile of snow. Everyone always had a big laugh over that. And those sailors, well, the minute they stepped ashore they were like wolfhounds, their eyes bright red, throwing a fright into anyone who saw them, but once you got to know them they were all right. Your uncle learned how to treat people from those sailors, and that means that the Sui clan has at least one man who doesn’t follow the straight and narrow. That said, he did wind up doing one thing that benefited the people in town. What was that? He brought a dirty, black object to town from a ship. It had a smell somewhere between fragrant and stinky. Some people said it was from a musk ox, with something added. If a local girl’s belly started to grow, your uncle held whatever that was up to her nose a couple of times, and she immediately lost fluids from both ends, which restored her to the way she was before. You can see how much trouble that saved. But damned if Shi Dixin, that big phony, didn’t find out about it and take out after your uncle, who ran straight to the pier, with Shi on his heels. One fleeing, one chasing.”

Zhang-Wang lit another cigarette and blew the smoke out through her nose. “Shi ran like crazy and still he couldn’t catch him. So heaven intervened. Just as your uncle was about to reach the pier, his legs got all tangled up and he crashed to the ground. Weird old Shi ran up and twisted his leg. Your uncle threw sand in Shi’s face and received a second twist in return. Back then there was more sand on the riverbank than there is now, and your uncle’s face was all bloody from scraping on the ground. Curses flew from his mouth, but Shi didn’t say a word. He just picked up a rock and smashed your uncle’s hand with it, which gave him the chance he was looking for to grab that thing. Now, that’s when the real fighting started. They were both covered in blood. Shi Dixin predicted that sooner or later that thing would bring down the town of Wali, but the town’s young men all thought it was great. A knock-down, drag-out fight was inevitable. But then, when Shi felt his strength about to go, he flung the damned thing into the river, and that brought the fight to an abrupt end. The two men, battered and bloody, just stood there glaring at one another…”

Jiansu didn’t make a sound for the longest time after Zhang-Wang had finished telling her story. He’d been mesmerized by a fight that had occurred decades before. If he’d been around at the time, he was sure that the only thing that would have wound up in the river would have been Shi Dixin himself

Workers from the noodle factory often killed time in the shop, the older ones drinking straight from the liquor vat, the younger ones eating Zhang-Wang’s homemade sweets. After holding them in their mouths awhile, they’d pull them out into long, thin threads. The sweets alone attracted young men and women to the shop. They’d chew and pull and giggle, and if Jiansu saw one of the girls chewing a piece, he might just grab hold of it, pull it into a long thread, and wrap it around her neck.

One day Naonao came in wearing her white work apron, her arms exposed. Having just learned how to disco, she couldn’t wait to put on a show. Sticking out her hands, she ah-ed and ooh-ed a couple of times, under the hypnotic stare of Jiansu, who was clutching the twenty fen he’d just been given. He went up to her when she began to chew one of the treats. Her dark, shining eyes rolled as she surveyed the items on the rack and slowly moved the wad around in her mouth. Jiansu was just about to reach out and pull it when Naonao poked him in the chest. He stumbled backward, feeling a numbing sensation—she’d probably hit an acupuncture point. He sat down and looked up with cold eyes at the fireball that was Naonao, rolling around in front of the counter and from there out the door. He took a deep breath.

It was Duoduo’s first spoiled vat since opening the factory.

It lasted five days, and even though the losses were lighter than those from the spoiled vat of years before, Duoduo was frantic. Feeling helpless, he went several times to the mill, begging Baopu to come to the factory as a technician, but Baopu refused each time, preferring to feed the saturated beans into the eye of the millstone with his wooden ladle and then sit on his stool to watch the stone turn. Duoduo would curse him as he left the mill, vowing to shoot the woodenheaded man one day. “His head’s made of wood, why not shoot him?” As commander of the Gaoding Street militia during land reform, Duoduo had already shot several people, and he couldn’t think of a better candidate for a bullet than this member of the Sui clan. But Duoduo was getting on in years, and he no longer had a rifle. So he returned to the factory, where he was asked why he hadn’t brought Baopu with him. “He’s too busy sitting like a block of wood in the mill!” he replied, turning livid with rage.

Back and forth he paced, finding it impossible to control his nerves, until another member of the Sui clan came to mind. Without a second thought, he went to the Wali Emporium and asked Jiansu to take over as technician. Jiansu said no. Duoduo smiled and said, “There’s never been a member of the Sui clan who wasn’t born to this calling. Give it a try. I’ll pay you top wages. There’s always been someone who could right a spoiled vat.”

Jiansu laughed to himself, knowing that Duoduo had actually set his sights on Baopu. While Jiansu was thinking the offer over, Zhang-Wang joined the conversation, urging him to take what looked to be a fine opportunity; just how good he wouldn’t know until he gave it a try. “What about the shop?” Jiansu asked.

The dark folds on Zhang-Wang’s neck jiggled as she gave him a hard stare and said, “The shop will still be yours, I’ll just run it for you. I’ve been taking care of business all along, haven’t I?” Jiansu looked out the door into the sky and smiled.

So Jiansu returned to the factory, leaving the Wali Emporium in the hands of Zhang-Wang, who sat behind the counter for two hours every day. Business did not suffer a decline. Without telling anyone, she added orange peels to the liquor vat and diluted it with cool water. She carefully organized the rest of her day, her early-morning hours with household duties and, when the sun was up, massaging Fourth Master’s back. All these she handled easily, though the man’s back caused her a bit of apprehension. Only two years away from his sixtieth birthday, he was still healthy and energetic. But there was a noticeable thickening of his back. She had massaged that back for decades with hands and fingers that had grown dexterous from fashioning her clay tigers. Her massages brought Fourth Master unparalleled pleasure, but in recent days she had begun to feel her strength ebb. One day, while she was kneading his back, she told him that Hanzhang, his foster daughter, ought to take over. He responded by shifting his rotund body, which was covered only by a towel for modesty’s sake, and snorting. It was the last time she brought up the subject. The red, round sun would be making its way into the sky when she left Fourth Master’s house and went to the shop to sit behind the counter, slightly out of breath.

As for Jiansu, who found the factory more to his liking, he stayed away from the shop, going back no more than once a month to attend to the accounts. The factory, big as it was, was still run more or less as a workshop; only the name had changed. But many of the former workers, unwilling to work for Zhao Duoduo, had left, and the majority of their replacements were women. Two shifts kept the factory running around the clock. As the nights grew longer, the heated air had a soporific effect on the workers, and the sight of all those women nodding off beside the starch vat and under the water basin was a delight. As technician in charge, Jiansu was not required to keep to a rigid schedule; he could check on the work any time he wanted.

After the sun went down, he changed into a light purple fall jacket and a pair of straight-legged indigo pants that he tucked into shiny high-topped rubber boots. Thick black hair made his face appear unusually fair. One after the other, he studied how each of the women looked as they slept, a trace of derision at the corners of his mouth. This turned his face even paler and lit up his eyes. After he’d stood there awhile, they would wake up, one after the other, and yawn.

A chubby woman by the name of Daxi started coughing any time she saw Jiansu and did not stop until her face was red. She was not one of the better workers, and when she washed the noodles, they often fell to the floor in front of the cold-water basin. Once, while she was coughing, Jiansu walked up and kicked the gooey mess, which stopped the coughing fit. She belched and stared at him, but he strode past her, his rubber boots making squishing sounds. At that sound the yawning women got to their feet and went back to work sifting the noodle mixture. Their white aprons fluttered in the room’s heavy mist; the unique fragrance of the shop began to spread like perfumed rouge.

An iron strainer full of holes hung above them, and when the sticky bean starch was poured into it, silvery threads of glass noodles streamed through the holes and into a steamy pot, where they turned clear. Sitting up high working the ladle was a swarthy man who, on this particular day, had just awakened when Jiansu entered. With a shout, he pounded on the strainer ostentatiously, his head swaying, filling the room with a rhythmic banging sound. Jiansu sat down to smoke, eyes sparkling behind a patch of hair that had fallen over his forehead. For half an hour he didn’t say a word; then he jumped to his feet and ran out, not looking back, passing by the women like a flash.

Jiansu ran out onto a tall concrete platform, where he stopped to catch his breath as he looked up at the moist stars in the sky and listened to the sounds of water flowing in the Luqing River. The millstone was still turning, still rumbling; he turned toward the row of small windows on the riverbank, through which light shone weakly. Baopu would be behind one of them, sitting on his stool and tending the millstone. Jiansu wished the window would open to let the light out, if only briefly. With a sense of disappointment he stepped down off the platform and walked to the building around the corner from the processing room, stopping just outside. Light emerged from inside, as did the sound of snoring, and he knew that the factory manager, Duoduo, was sleeping in there. Taking hold of the handle, he held his breath and opened the door slowly. Once inside, he quietly closed it behind him and turned around. Duoduo was on his back, warmed by the heated kang, wearing only a pair of black underpants. Made of thick, hard material, and shiny, they were disgusting. The older residents of Wali, with the exception of Sui Buzhao, were all getting fat. Duoduo’s fleshy belly was distended. His beard was graying, the skin on his face was sagging, and there were strange purple splotches on his cheeks. His slightly green lips were parted, revealing one of his front teeth. As he studied the face, Jiansu discovered that the left eye wasn’t completely closed, and that made his heart lurch. He stayed perfectly still, except for his hand, which he passed over the slightly open eye. It didn’t flicker, and he breathed easier. Duoduo’s prominent Adam’s apple moved in concert with his loud breathing. He had, for some reason, placed a cleaver on the windowsill near him. Although there were rust spots on the back edge of the blade, it appeared to be quite sharp. The blood drained from Jiansu’s face when he spotted the cleaver. He stood there a while longer and then left quietly.

The Midautumn Festival was only a few days away, and the accounts had been settled. The factory had brought in an astonishing amount of income, especially since becoming mechanized. In a week’s time the mill went through at least a thousand more pounds of mung beans than before. Each time Duoduo came by to inspect the millstone he left in high spirits. He had his bookkeeper tally up the mechanized production and was told that at this rate profits would soar. So, since midautumn was nearly upon them, he decided to host a dinner for Li Zhichang, who had contributed so much to the mechanization process; Technician Li; Sui Buzhao; and especially Sui Jiansu. He hired the government chef, Fatty Han, the finest cook in all of Wali.

When he was in a good mood Duoduo was a generous man; this was one of those times, so he told the night workers they could come in shifts to enjoy some good food and spirits. Rumor had it that Fatty Han had 160 different tofu recipes. Maybe that rumor had influenced Zhao Duoduo, for this time the ingredients he supplied the chef included a dozen or more baskets of broken glass noodles from the previous spoiled vat. That didn’t bother Fatty Han, who merely shed the vest he normally wore, now that he had a more difficult meal than usual to prepare, and was naked from the waist up. He devised twelve dishes for each table: There were reds and there were greens; there were dishes so sour it made the guests shiver and others so sweet the room was filled with the sound of smacking lips. Not long into the meal, the diners’ shirts were soaked with sweat as they contentedly caught their breath. After the meal, Duoduo told his bookkeeper to determine how much it had cost. The dozen or so baskets of noodle pieces were not worth much, and most of the money had gone to the purchase of sugar and vinegar, plus the pepper the chef had stolen from the municipal cafeteria.

The eating and drinking continued until two in the morning, with three shifts taking part. Jiansu drank cautiously that night, keeping his eye on all the others. Sui Buzhao, who was mightily drunk, was bending the ear of Technician Li, passing on stories about Uncle Zheng He. Zhao Duoduo’s face was dark, almost purple; still sober, he toasted Jiansu. “The people of this town are too shortsighted,” he said. “They laughed at me, saying I was wasting my money by putting a Sui on my payroll. But I knew what I was doing. I figured that if I had a member of the Sui clan working with me, there’s no way this factory could have a spoiled vat.”

Jiansu drained his glass and glowered at Zhao Duoduo. “You’re good at account keeping,” he said in a soft voice before sitting down and glancing over at Li Zhichang.

“The girls are getting drunk!” someone shouted as Jiansu quietly left the table. He walked into the processing room feeling the effects of alcohol, his face turning pink. He saw that some of the giggling girls’ faces were also slightly red. But they kept working, just a bit wobbly, pulling the strands this way and that; harmony reigned. Enveloped by mist, Jiansu lit a cigarette. Daxi was the first to spot him, but she pretended he wasn’t there and pulled the noodles like a madwoman, the best she’d ever looked at work. The swarthy man with his metal strainer, sitting high above them, was singing as he worked. It was a song no one knew, but they were all pretty sure it was not for mixed company. Naonao was drunker than any of the others. At first, like them, she swayed as she worked, but then she began to spin and fell in a heap, happily chatting away. Parts of a woman’s body that ought not to be exposed were, but just for a moment, before she straightened her clothes and stood up. Now she was steady on her feet, but Jiansu began to sway and had to support himself with his hand on the wall. The swarthy man above was still banging his ladle and singing his off-color song. With difficulty, Jiansu walked out the door and somehow made his way back to where the others were still drinking. He leaned up against his uncle.

Just before he fell asleep Jiansu vaguely heard his uncle say something about “a leak on the port side” and immediately felt as if he were sailing on the high seas. That continued for a while, and when he heard his uncle say, “We’re in port,” he woke up. The first thing he saw after opening his eyes was Zhao Duoduo, neck stretched taut as he listened intently to Li Zhichang, whose voice gradually reached Jiansu. What he heard sobered him up in a flash. He was talking about buying a used piece of machinery from the prospecting team and turning it into a generator, which would light up all of Gaoding Street. He said he’d already spoken with the street director, Luan Chunji, Party Secretary Li Yuming, and Fourth Master, who had given his approval. At this point Li Zhichang grew animated, talking about how he wanted to apply scientific principles to the entire noodle factory. Pouring the starch into hot water, the sedimentation process, and sifting would all be accomplished by machines. The first step would be to install variable gears, large and small, and though others might not believe him, three or four of the gears had to be the size of peaches.

Given his experience in the old mill, Duoduo was eager to believe what he was hearing. He toasted Li Zhichang. When Jiansu coughed loudly, Li turned to look. Jiansu glared back. That had the desired effect: Li stopped talking. A few minutes later, Jiansu got up and walked off. A moment after that, Li made his excuses and left.

Together the two men stepped onto the concrete platform of the drying floor, where they were refreshed by a cool breeze. Neither spoke. They stood there for a long while before Jiansu reached out and took Li’s hand, squeezing it tight. “What do you want from me?” Li asked.

“I want you to give up your plans.”

Li freed his hand. “I can’t do that,” he said, “and I won’t! We’re buying the machinery, end of discussion. And the variable gears will be installed. It’s something I have to do. Lights will shine in Wali, you have my word on that.”

Jiansu’s eyes flashed in the starlight as he pressed forward and said in a low voice, “I’m not talking about a generator. I’m talking about putting variable gears in the noodle factory. I want you to stop that.”

“That can’t be stopped,” Li replied stubbornly, “none of it can be stopped—the mechanization plan must go forward.”

Jiansu held his tongue and ground his teeth. Li gave him a puzzled look, and when Jiansu’s hand sought out Li’s, it was feverish. Li pulled his back in alarm. Jiansu gazed at the little window far off on the other side of the river. “The noodle factory is mine,” he said, seemingly to himself, “mine and Sui Baopu’s. Listen to me, Zhichang. When the Sui clan takes back the factory we’ll go ahead with your damned plans.” Li took a couple of steps backward and gasped. “You don’t believe me?” Jiansu said. “It won’t be long. But don’t tell anyone.”

Li kept retreating and wringing his dark hands. In a quaking voice, he said, “I won’t tell, I won’t tell a soul. But I won’t give up my plans for the gears, not unless Sui Buzhao tells me to, only him.”