He moved over to the table and brought the brush and inkstone[1]An inkstone is a writing tool used with water and an inkstick to prepare ink for brush calligraphy. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_1').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_1', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); to his bed.
That single trip left him panting and drenched in cold sweat.
He wrote on the back of a sheet of white paper, placed it beside the scroll, then sat waiting for a reply from the person on the other side.
No one noticed the ripples stirring in his usually calm eyes.
After all, he was still a young man, and naturally curious about such a strange occurrence.
He was going to seek death that night anyway, so he might as well spend the afternoon chatting with the person on the other side.
When the paper appeared on the table, Su Jin’s cheeks flushed with excitement.
She snatched it up. The first thing she saw was her own writing.
Light shone through the sheet, revealing black characters on the other side. She immediately turned it over.
The back was written in traditional characters: “Shen Yubai, from the Dayue Dynasty. Your handwriting and mine seem rather different?”
Dayue Dynasty?
Dayue Dynasty!
Dayue Dynasty?!
There really was a Dayue Dynasty?!
Su Jin stared, dumbfounded.
Then she sprang up and cheered.
There really was a Dayue Dynasty!
Their research had been worthwhile.
She was about to uncover a buried stretch of history—and make those Western scholars shut up!
Only after she was breathless with exhaustion did Su Jin sit down.
She read the words on the paper again. No mistake: Shen Yubai of the Dayue Dynasty.
His handwriting was quite nice, too.
A scholar, then.
There weren’t many scholars in ancient times.
She was incredibly lucky.
Su Jin tore off a fresh sheet and was about to write when she remembered the person on the other side wouldn’t be able to read it. So she typed the words on her mobile phone, converted them into traditional characters, and copied them onto the paper.
She could read traditional characters, but she couldn’t write them.
Even copying them felt awkward, as if each character had been pieced together from strokes.
She picked up the paper to look it over. Well, it was ugly, but legible.
Swallowing her pride, Su Jin placed the sheet on the scroll. The paper disappeared again.
The Dayue Dynasty.
A farmhouse courtyard.
This time, Shen Yubai had to wait a little longer. There were more words on the note, and they were in traditional characters now.
“I’m from five thousand years in the future! Are you really from the Dayue Dynasty? This is incredible!”
Five thousand years in the future?
A ripple stirred in Shen Yubai’s dark eyes.
Such a strange and supernatural occurrence had happened to him!
The clear glass cup, the strange black brick, the extraordinarily fragrant food, and the white, fine paper—
All these bizarre things, unheard of by him, came from the future!
Shen Yubai pressed his lips together. His picturesque features were full of curiosity.
Before long, a shadow of gloom settled over his eyes.
Everyone else had a future. He, Shen Yubai, did not.
What meaning did anything have, then?
The trace of delight in his heart was suppressed, and Shen Yubai’s expression turned cold.
His long, pale fingers gripped the brush. He dipped it in the poor-quality ink, wrote a line of small characters on the back of the note, and placed it near the scroll.
“Forgive me. I have already contracted tuberculosis and am bedridden. I can’t help you.”
Now that the person on the other side knew he couldn’t help, they probably wouldn’t write again, would they?
A faint sense of loss welled up in Shen Yubai.
He couldn’t quite explain it.
On the last afternoon of his life, he was still curious about—and hopeful for—the future.
What would life be like five thousand years from now?
What sort of person was the one corresponding with him?
She could drink from a glass cup, and the food was so delicious. She must be of high status.
What was that black box?
As Shen Yubai pondered, another note drifted down.
He immediately picked it up. The words on it left him stunned.
How could this be?
Uncertain, he read the message again.
“Are you sure it’s tuberculosis? I’ll go buy you medicine at the pharmacy right now. You’ll get better once you’ve taken it.”
Tuberculosis… could be cured?
Shen Yubai’s hand trembled. He read the note over and over.
The characters looked as if they had been pieced together, but the meaning was clear: the person on the other side was going to buy him medicine.
Could he really be cured?
Another note came through.
“What you call tuberculosis is called pulmonary tuberculosis where I’m from. You can be cured with just six to nine months of medication, so don’t worry. But you have to promise me one thing: once you’re better, you have to help me! My graduation depends on you!”
Shen Yubai found himself shamefully hoping.
Suppressing a cough, he wrote four characters on the back of the note: “It’s a promise.”
Su Jin was delighted when the note came through.
If she cured Shen Yubai’s pulmonary tuberculosis first, information about the Dayue Dynasty would come pouring into her lap.
There was a pharmacy just outside the university. Su Jin bought a box of rifampin—100 pills for only 27 yuan.
It would last Shen Yubai a long time.
Su Jin wrote the dosage instructions in traditional characters and sent them over with the medicine.
Shen Yubai had waited only two incense sticks’ worth of time[2]Burning incense was sometimes used as an approximate measure of elapsed time; the duration depended on the sticks used. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_2').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_2', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); before a strange object arrived from the other side.
He read the note first to learn how to take the medicine, then picked up a strange, pure white bottle.
It wasn’t porcelain or wood.
It was very light.
Shen Yubai tugged hard at the cap. It wouldn’t open.
He knocked it against the edge of the kang[3]A raised platform bed, traditionally made of brick or earth and sometimes heated from underneath; common in parts of northern China. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_3').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_3', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. The bottle only dented a little; it didn’t crack at all.
Such a light bottle, yet so hard and sturdy.
Shen Yubai’s last trace of hesitation vanished. The medicine the person on the other side had given him really might cure him!
The gloom lifted from the young man’s face, and his eyes shone.
“How do I get the medicine out and take it?”
Su Jin was at a loss when she saw the question.
How could she tell him to just twist it open?
Teach him face-to-face?
They couldn’t even meet.
Send a video?
He didn’t know how to use a mobile phone.
Su Jin could think of only the simplest method: a diagram.
She drew the entire bottle on a sheet of paper, marked the top of the cap, and added a curved arrow to show it turning.
In the second drawing, the bottle was the same, except the mark on the cap had turned 90 degrees.
After drawing five bottles in a row, Su Jin figured that should be enough.
If he still didn’t understand…
Then she’d have to take the medicine out and send it to him wrapped up in paper, one day’s dose at a time.
Right—why hadn’t she thought of pouring the pills out and wrapping them in paper for him?
She had no experience with this at all.
The Dayue Dynasty.
Shen Yubai studied the diagram on the paper for a while, then tentatively gripped the cap. It took all his strength to twist it open.
He pinched up one of the long, narrow objects and held it up to the light, growing even more curious.
Could such a tiny pill really cure an illness?
Still, he didn’t suspect he was being tricked.
He wasn’t worth tricking.
If he wasn’t afraid of dying, what reason did he have to fear fake medicine?
After taking the medicine according to the instructions on Su Jin’s note, Shen Yubai looked at the strange white bottle.
It was too conspicuous. That wouldn’t do.
Shen Yubai poured all the pills into a sheet of bamboo paper[4]Traditional handmade paper made with bamboo fibers, used for writing and other everyday purposes. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_4').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_4', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });, wrapped them up, and hid them in the cotton batting beside his bed. Then he sent the bottle back to Su Jin.
“We have nothing like this in the Dayue Dynasty. Keeping it with me would draw too much attention. Please keep it safe for me.”
Of course it was better to send it back. A plastic medicine bottle appearing in the Dayue Dynasty five thousand years ago—how would that make any sense?
Su Jin was very curious about Shen Yubai’s circumstances.
As she and Shen Yubai sent notes back and forth, Su Jin gradually learned the details of his situation.
The person on the other side was a seventeen-year-old boy from a farming-and-learning family[5]This describes the traditional ideal of supporting a family through agriculture while educating descendants for scholarly advancement. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_5').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_5', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], });. One of his ancestors had been a third-rank official[6]Traditional Chinese bureaucracies often numbered official grades, with the first rank the highest. The exact duties of the third rank in fictional Dayue are not specified. jQuery('#footnote_plugin_tooltip_3717530_1_6').tooltip({ tip: '#footnote_plugin_tooltip_text_3717530_1_6', tipClass: 'footnote_tooltip', effect: 'fade', predelay: 0, fadeInSpeed: 200, delay: 400, fadeOutSpeed: 200, position: 'top center', relative: true, offset: [-7, 0], }); and had bought vast tracts of farmland, which he entrusted to the clan to manage. The harvests funded the education of gifted children in the clan, in the hope that more of them would become officials and bring prosperity to the family.
Su Jin immediately wrote all this down in her notebook.
It was a typical example of clan culture. By learning about such things, she could gradually piece together the customs and social life of the Dayue Dynasty.
The thought of the uproar this information would cause when she made it public only made Su Jin more excited.
Tearing off sheets of paper again and again was too much trouble, so Su Jin wrote directly in her notebook. She sent it over, and Shen Yubai continued writing beneath her words.
In a single afternoon, the two of them filled more than twenty pages.
When Su Jin learned that Shen Yubai was about to have dinner, she had an idea. “What are you having for dinner?”
“Porridge made from sorghum.”
Su Jin frowned in distaste. “That’s not nutritious. You’re in poor health; you need something good to build you up. I’ll buy you dinner.”
When Shen Yubai saw the words, he pressed his lips together.
He couldn’t help thinking back to the food that had been far too delicious.
Even so, he refused. “Rice and stir-fried dishes are too expensive. I’d feel unworthy accepting them.”
A reply came from the other side almost at once: “In our time, everyone can afford rice and stir-fried dishes. If they want to, they can eat them at every meal.”
Shen Yubai was astonished.
In the Dayue Dynasty, even landlords could only eat rice and stir-fried dishes during festivals and holidays.
Five thousand years in the future, even ordinary people could eat such delicacies at every meal?
What a glorious age that must be!
References[+]