Chapter 2930: Tianjin Wei (9)

The flower hall was not large, but it was the most presentable room in the whole residence. Its furnishings were elegant. On a red-sandalwood side table stood a bronze censer, a thread of blue smoke curling upward, breathing out the faint scent of sunken aloeswood. Above the table hung a landscape by Dong Qichang, the brushwork sparse and pale; between the far hills and the near waters it left great fields of blankness, an air of empty spirit. On the side walls hung several pieces of contemporary calligraphy, gifts gathered over the years from Li Luoyou's friends in officialdom — none by famous masters, but the strokes had sinew and vigor, no little presence in them.

At the center of the hall stood a rosewood round table, four grand-tutor armchairs set about it. The chair cushions were Suzhou kesi silk, woven with interlocking lotus scrolls, warm and smooth beneath the hand. By the window a small stand had been placed, and on it a pot of orchids, the leaves long and slender, green enough to drip, the plant just at its season of flower: a few small plain-white blooms hidden among the leaves, breathing out quiet fragrance.

Chen Yujie was standing before the Dong Qichang landscape, hands clasped behind his back, head tilted slightly upward, as if savoring the brushwork within the painting. Today he had changed into a clean dark-blue cloth robe of the straight cut, black cloth shoes on his feet, a gray cloth belt at his waist; there was not a breath of furnace smoke anywhere about him — he might have been some schoolmaster come calling. Only his hands gave him away — black and chapped, thick with callus and crack.

"Erudite Chen." Li Luoyou stepped through the door and saluted with clasped hands. "Word came early that you had graced us with a visit — I failed to come out to welcome you. Forgive me, forgive me."

Chen Yujie turned, hurriedly returned the courtesy, and said with a smile: "You do me too much honor, Venerable Sir. It is I who came upon you unannounced — it is I who should be begging pardon."

"Where would such talk come from?" Li Luoyou made an inviting gesture. "Please be seated, Doctor. Tea!"

But Chen Yujie had no heart for tea: "My thanks for the host's kindness, but let the tea be. Your junior has come today to carry a message from Grand Secretary Xu."

Li Luoyou's heart gave a small check; he leaned forward slightly. "Pray speak, Doctor."

"The Grand Secretary says that his affairs press thick upon him these days, and his health runs somewhat feeble besides; it seems he cannot return to Tianjin for the present," said Chen Yujie. "He begs the Venerable Sir to make the journey to Gegu — he awaits you respectfully at the farm station."

Li Luoyou's brow creased faintly.

He knew something of Xu Guangqi's condition. In the sixth year of Chongzhen the Grand Secretary, then two years past seventy, had fallen gravely ill and been bedridden, very nearly breathing his last; word afterward was that he had been pulled through only by Western medicine brought by the missionaries. Li Luoyou, however, knew the medicine he took was the Australians' — for it had gone to him by way of the missionaries in Hangzhou. And of the entanglement between the Church and the Australians no man alive had a clearer view than he.

The uncanny efficacy of Australian medicine he had felt upon his own person. Only — once that medicine was begun, it could never be laid down... At the thought his face shifted slightly. He had half a mind to ask; then, reflecting that the Grand Secretary might not care to have the matter shown to others, he swallowed the question back down.

"If it is inconvenient for His Excellency Xu, then I shall simply come over. Happily the road is no great distance," said Li Luoyou. "Do you go back and tell the Grand Secretary that I set out at once."

He had meant to press more tea upon him and coax a little more out of Chen Yujie's mouth; but Chen pleaded urgent business at the cannon bureau and took his leave in haste.

Li Luoyou returned to the rear court and instructed Concubine Guo: "Pack my luggage for me — I am going out to pay a visit."

Concubine Guo gave a small start. "Where does the Master go? For how many days?"

"Gegu. I shall be back in three days, or five." Li Luoyou looked at her. "Just a few changes of clothes, nothing extravagant. And take along my squirrel-fur gown — Gegu sits by the sea, the wind is keen there, cooler than Tianjin city. The medicine chest must come too, and those letters lying under the paperweight on the study desk — pack them all safely."

Having instructed Concubine Guo, he called for Saoye and ordered a boat made ready at once.

Gegu lay some sixty-odd li from Tianjin Wei: out the West Gate and southeast along the coastal high road, a fast horse needed two shichen; by sedan chair, better than three. That was more jolting than Li Luoyou cared to purchase. Happily the two places were joined by the Haihe waterway, and with wind and current both fair his boat reached the Gegu wharf inside a shichen and a half.

Gegu stood on the south bank of the Haihe, at the river's tail, barely ten-odd li from the Dagu estuary. Though its town walls did not run down to the gray sea itself, it bore the river on its back and girdled the sea at its feet, commanding the choke point where river met ocean — from of old the southeastern gate of Tianjin. The land was old sea-bottom long retired from the waves; it was first named Hagu, after the clams, and later, its waters abundant and its grasses rank, renamed Gegu. From Song and Yuan times it had thrived on fishing and salt; now it had grown into a place of weight where four concerns were carried forward together: coastal defense, canal transport, salt administration, and military farming.

East of the town the salt pans stretched to the horizon, seat of the Fengcai works of the Changlu salt fields, where they boiled the sea and seethed the brine and salt stacks stood like a forest — the very heart of the northern salt moving south. Along the Haihe the wharves ran unbroken; grain junks, seagoing ships, and fishing boats wove in and out; the rice of the south going north all passed this way, open alike to water and to road. Early in the Ming the Gegu Coastal Defense Camp had been raised here, built in the same year as the walled city of Tianjin Wei itself, to garrison the estuary and hold off the Japanese pirates.

Within the town the waterways wound like ribbons and nine bridges mirrored on the waves; the houses were built along the rivers, and the local temper partook of both river and sea. The people were mostly salt-boiler households, boat households, soldier households, and merchants, and the market streets thronged and prospered.

The boat eased in to shore. The boatmen heaved the mooring lines ashore; hands on the bank caught them and took a few turns about the bollards. The gangplank went across; the hull swayed once, then sat fast and steady.

"Master, we are arrived." Saoye's head appeared at the cabin door.

Li Luoyou answered, rose, and put his dress in order. He was about to tell the servants to unload his traveling chair from the boat when a man came running toward the wharf.

The man wore a half-new padded battle jacket of the mandarin-duck pattern, a leather-buckled belt at his waist, black cloth boots on his feet that went flap-flap as he ran. By his dress he was a junior officer, some such creature as a petty captain — twenty-odd years old at the most, round-faced, heavy-browed, with a patch of sun-peeled skin across the bridge of his nose. His eyes, at least, shone bright as lamps, full of quick-witted energy.

He reached the gangplank and pulled up short, puffing hard; he wiped a hand across his brow, straightened the saber that had slipped askew at his waist, and only then clasped his fists toward the boat and bawled out:

"May I ask — is the Master aboard this boat one Li Luoyou, come from Tianjin Wei?"

The voice was big and carrying, with something of the Tianjin mouth in it, the tail of every phrase curling upward — the voice of a man long used to bawling commands.

Saoye stood in the bow, looked the man over from cap to boots, and called back into the cabin: "Master — someone has come to meet us."

Li Luoyou walked to the bow, steadied a hand on the cabin doorframe, considered the man, and said: "I am he."

The captain hastily clasped his fists again, deeper this time, bending near double: "Your humble servant, charged by the Grand Secretary, has kept watch for the Master here this age past. Erudite Chen said the Master would arrive this afternoon, and bade your servant wait at the wharf from first light — I dared not slack."

Li Luoyou nodded slightly and asked: "Where is the Grand Secretary now?"

"The Grand Secretary is in council at the farm station and cannot get away for the moment; he has instructed your servant to bring a chair to carry the Master over." With that the captain beckoned behind him. "Bring it up here — quick!"

On the wharf stood a sedan chair with hangings of blue cloth, its roof wrapped in oilcloth against the rain. The carrying poles were elm, worn to a shine; its four bearers were sturdy fellows in matched blue-cloth short jackets, cloth belts at their waists, straw sandals on their feet, every one of them broad of shoulder and thick of waist, solid-looking men. Beside the chair stood four or five soldiers besides, sabers slung at their hips.

Kindness so pressing could not well be refused; Li Luoyou boarded the chair and had the windows on either side opened — he could not abide a stuffy confinement.

The chair wound sedately on its way. The farm station lay no more than three or four li from Gegu town; following the riverbank eastward one soon came upon stretches of barracks and farmland mingled together.

Where now was the salt-alkali mudflat of his memory? Field-paths ran crisscross, ditches spread like netting; sheet after sheet of paddy water shivered under the morning light, like a thousand mirrors laid out upon the earth. Willows stood planted on the bunds, their new shoots tender green and gosling yellow, swaying gently in the wind. In the paddies laborers were at their work, bent over setting out seedlings, row upon row, rank upon rank, clean and even — as if writing characters upon the land.

Farther off, great fields of cotton had already broken into leaf, green and glossy, running out beyond the reach of the eye. On the bunds beans were planted here and there, standing high and low by turns — plainly a scheme of rotation and fallow cropping.

"This..." Li Luoyou murmured the single word, and could get no farther.

Years of trading in the north had shown him any number of those barren alkali wastes — a blank of white, not a blade of grass, skies even the birds declined to cross. Yet what lay before him was unmistakably rich fields and good farmland, throbbing with growth, yielding nothing even to the farmland of his native Guangdong.

"Master, what a change has come over this Gegu," said Saoye at his side. "Manager Qiao was saying the Grand Secretary has been at work here all these years, and turned salt waste, by sheer force, into a land of fish and rice."

Li Luoyou nodded, his gaze falling on the crisscrossing ditches along the roadside. They were cut to a strict and visible method: main channels broad, lateral channels fine, branching downward rank upon rank, like some great tree stretching out its roots. The banks were faced with stone against collapse, and every so often stood a small sluice, its wooden gate half open, half shut, governing the flow of water.

This, then, was the polder method.

Though no farmer's son, Li Luoyou had traded up and down the land for years and seen much; works of farming and water were no strangers to him. North of the river he had seen polders such as these — dikes thrown up to hold the water, trenches opened to drain off the alkali, the river led in for irrigation. A dozen years and more ago, when the Grand Secretary bought twenty qing of land at Tianjin for military farming and spoke of improving the soil and trialing rice, Li Luoyou had thought little of it. Who could have dreamed that not only would the thing take, but that it would swell to a scale like this!

"Stop a moment!" he ordered.

The captain at once had the chair halted and lifted the curtain. "What are the Master's orders?"

"My limbs have gone wooden. I shall get down and walk a little."

Li Luoyou stepped down from the chair, drew several deep breaths of the sea-carrying air, walked to one of the sluices, and crouched to study it. The gate was of first-quality pine, planed smooth, its joints fitted so close that not a drop of water could find its way through. On the stone wall beside the gate several characters were carved — "Cross Polder, Renzi Polder, Sluice Bing" — the strokes neat and even, the paint still fresh.

"Cross Polder." Li Luoyou repeated the name under his breath, rose, and lifted his eyes to look abroad.

In the distance, faint among the fields, earth dikes could be made out running line after line, carving the broad farmland into neat square parcels. About each parcel ran its embankment; willows stood upon the dikes; beyond the dikes ran the channels; the channels gave into the river, and the river into the sea. This layout was the very "Cross Polder" that Xu Guangqi had once spoken of to him.

(End of chapter)