“Oh? She actually said that?”
In the palace at Lujinting, Ying Zheng sat upon a low couch backed by a ceremonial screen, listening as Zhang Sheng, Zuo Cheng of the Shaofu, recounted his conversation with the Wu Gongzhu.
“She is a clever and filial child.”
There was something unusual about the Qin king’s tone. It was difficult to say precisely what subtle quality distinguished it from his usual manner, but it was certainly not unalloyed delight.
The people surrounding him were all seasoned officials, men who had long since engraved the habit of divining and accommodating their ruler’s wishes into their very bones. Instinctively, they began turning his words over in their minds. Those incapable of fathoming them simply committed them to memory.
The Qin king ordered Li Si, the Shangshu Lang attending him, to draft a written command. Once the seal had been affixed, the document became the Wu Gongzhu’s authorization to leave her residence and visit the Shaofu.
“Take good care of the Gongzhu. See that no one offends or inconveniences her.”
Zao Hu and Zhang Sheng bowed respectfully.
“Nuo!”
Outside Lujinting, Zao Hu said to Zhang Sheng, “Ziteng, once you’ve delivered the royal command to the Wu Gongzhu, you may finish your shift and go home. You’ve worked hard today.”
Zhang Sheng glanced at the sky, took his leave of his superior, gathered up the hem of his zhiju robe, and strode away.
Watching his subordinate hurry off on official business, Zao Hu stroked the ends of his upturned mustache with satisfaction.
…
“Surely I don’t need to take this many things?”
Ying Yang stared blankly at her mother, who was directing the attendants until they were running in circles.
With the Qin king’s approval secured, her mother could no longer object outright. She had reluctantly agreed to let Ying Yang serve as an adviser at the Shaofu.
Her daughter’s complement of Baofu had not yet been filled. Worried that there would be no mature and experienced person at Ying Yang’s side to protect and assist her, Xia Xianshi lent her daughter Chen Jiang, a seasoned Baomu.
But lending her an attendant was nowhere near enough.
Overcome with anxiety, Xia Xianshi inspected every item her daughter might need to bring: food boxes and water jars, rush mats and woven reed mats for sitting, clothing both thick and thin, umbrellas and cloaks…
She even remembered the little chamber pot for relieving oneself, along with the toilet slips and silk cloth!
Ying Yang was utterly stupefied.
For one brief moment, she wondered whether the Shaofu was terribly far away.
Of course it wasn’t.
As the Qin royal household’s domestic administration, the Shaofu occupied the government office nearest the inner court. Indeed, it was the only government office situated within Xianyang Palace itself.
Xia Xianshi was simply suffering from separation anxiety.
Ying Yang had been born prematurely and had always been frail. Her mother had cherished her from infancy. Although the customs of aristocratic child-rearing meant that Xia Xianshi had never personally watched over her every moment, she had also never experienced her daughter voluntarily leaving her side.
Now, confronted without warning by the prospect of Ying Yang going out independently, she could scarcely settle her heart.
“My child, can’t you just stay?” Xia Xianshi asked, her voice trembling with tears. “If the Shaofu has questions, let them send someone to ask. You can answer them here.”
Ying Yang could only throw her arms around her mother, pat her reassuringly, and coax her.
“It’s all for A-Fu! I’ll come straight back after I’ve advised the Shaofu. It won’t take long!”
Xia Xianshi said mournfully, “The truth is, you only want to go out and play. You haven’t spared a thought for your poor old mother.”
“A-Mu, you’re only eighteen! How can you call yourself old?”
“From now on, whatever you want to do, A-Mu will let you do it. Just don’t go out, all right?”
“A-Mu! I’m only going to the Shaofu for half a day! It’s not as though I’m never coming back! I’ll return with A-Fu this evening, and I’ll bring you tofu to eat, all right? You can chat with Ayi, sew some little clothes for my younger brothers and sisters, and the time will pass before you know it…”
At long last, she managed to soothe her mother.
Under Xia Xianshi’s reluctant, lingering gaze, Ying Yang went out into the morning breeze and dew and climbed aboard the carriage specially bestowed upon her by the Qin king.
Its bronze wheels rolled over the elevated passageway. Their rumbling broke the stillness of the early morning.
Some consorts whose residences were poorly situated, or who slept lightly, were awakened by the noise. They asked which woman the ruler had favored the previous night.
Well-informed eunuchs replied that the person passing outside in a carriage was not Dawang at all, but the Wu Gongzhu on her way to the Shaofu.
The envy in the consorts’ eyes turned to contempt.
“She’s plainly a Gongzhu, yet she loves doing craftsmen’s work. Well, she was born on the night of a falling star…”
Ying Yang had no idea that she was once again the subject of private gossip. Even if she had known, she would not have cared.
No one could live in this world without being talked about. So long as people did not come looking for trouble to her face, she would simply pretend not to know.
The Shaofu officials greeted her with expressions of every kind. Most looked astonished or bewildered; a few showed flashes of displeasure, their brows knitting.
Ying Yang passed her gaze over them without concern. Entirely composed, she paid no attention to their reactions and felt not the slightest discomfort beneath their collective scrutiny.
First, Zhang Sheng produced a silk document and proclaimed the royal command.
Everyone bowed solemnly and acknowledged it.
With the seriousness and importance of the team’s objective thus established, the next step was to divide up the work.
The previous day, Ying Yang had casually asked Zhang Sheng how the Shaofu intended to fulfill its target of “a thousand handles and a thousand jars” within ten days.
Wasn’t he afraid they might fail?
Zhang Sheng had answered frankly.
“Afraid.”
He was not the only one.
Everyone at the Shaofu who had received the command was afraid.
Even in modern society, where people were relatively equal as individuals, many feared being scolded or fined for failing to complete some unexpected assignment from a superior.
In Qin society, with its rigid hierarchy, the consequences of failing to produce something the ruler wanted were considerably more frightening.
No one thought—or dared to think—that the Qin king’s demand might be unreasonable.
Nor did anyone entertain the question, *What if we can’t finish?*
From top to bottom, the Shaofu officials had only one idea: learn the recipes as quickly as possible, then assign more workers.
They could work through the night. They could suspend themselves by their hair to stay awake and prick their thighs with awls to keep studying. Whatever it took, there was only one answer:
Work!
Yes. Zhang Sheng’s entire management strategy amounted to this:
Work like mad!
The Shaofu had no shortage of manpower or methods.
As a traditional Qin official, Zhang Sheng firmly believed that a combination of whips, slaps, fines, rewards, and performance rankings would be more than enough to ensure that the modest target of a thousand handles and a thousand jars was met on time.
Listening to him had left Ying Yang with metaphorical black lines descending across her face.
After Zhang Sheng departed, she ordered Duan Lun to procure two larger willow-wood boards.
Then she picked up a charcoal pencil—a by-product of firing bamboo salt—and began writing and drawing upon them.
“Everyone, please look!”
At her signal, the maids lifted the cloth coverings from the two boards, which resembled enormous hand-drawn posters.
Before the Shaofu officials appeared the production process, clearly laid out in a sequence of simple stick-figure illustrations.
For a moment, everyone was stunned.
Then they began whispering among themselves.
“So these must be the recipes for the toothbrushes and tooth powder? The Gongzhu actually had someone draw them!”
“What school of painting is this? Who drew it? Those people don’t even look human! How strange…”
“Strange, certainly. Yet somehow you can understand it…”
“Worthy elder brother, do you recognize the character inside that circle? What character is it? What does it mean? Yi? Gong?”
“Why has the Gongzhu displayed the recipes openly? What if some petty villain steals them?”
“Who would dare steal a Qin Gongzhu’s recipes? Does he have a death wish?”
“Even so, suppose some audacious scoundrel secretly memorized them and made the ingenious objects in private, whether for personal use or for sale. What then?”
“Why worry about all that? Worry about the Summer Solstice gifts first! If you can’t finish them, you’d better be prepared to be sent off to build city walls!”
“Ziteng?”
Shaofu Qing Zao Hu spoke quietly to his subordinate.
“If you had such an ingenious idea, why didn’t you report it to me?”
“Ah?”
Zhang Sheng was momentarily dumbstruck by this accusation out of nowhere. Then he realized his superior had misunderstood.
“If I may inform Shaofu Zhu, these two pictures must have been devised by the Gongzhu herself, or by someone at her side. This humble subordinate is dull-witted and possesses no such ability.”
Zao Hu looked toward the elderly woman standing behind the little Gongzhu, her hair at the temples as silver as frost.
*Was this the expert?*
…The dignified old woman did not seem a likely match for such peculiar drawings, with their spare lines and wildly unrestrained strokes.
“I drew these myself, just now,” Ying Yang said. “My brushwork is weak and the pictures aren’t much to look at, so you’ll have to make do.”
She did not bother asking for everyone’s indulgence.
“As long as you can understand them, don’t be picky about anything else!”
Someone muttered about incorrectly written characters.
Ying Yang planted her hands on her hips.
“Just tell me this: can anyone with eyes understand these pictures or not?”
The words were crude.
But the argument was sound.
None of those present had ever heard of stick figures or dot eyes. Yet with only a couple of glances at the drawings, they could identify the raw materials, production methods, and finished forms of objects entirely unfamiliar to them.
Before one little stick figure stood a horse, a rabbit, and a sheep.
A few additional strokes indicated the removal of hair from their tails or bellies. Next, the hair was placed in a basin of water, with tiny dots like crushed pebbles beside the words “plant ash / lime.”
After that came a simple sun and a wooden drying rack…
Selecting, washing, soaking to remove impurities, drying, mixing, tying with thread…
Felling wood, shaving it into shape, drying it in the shade, oiling it, boring holes…
The procedures for making the bristles and the handles branched apart like two twigs growing from a single bough, before finally joining together.
One tiny stick figure threaded a needle and stitched the bristles into place. Another trimmed away the excess hair until the surface was even.
“This article looks troublesome to make, but it’s actually simple. It requires only a little labor.”
An elderly master craftsman who had risen from the lower ranks of the workshops saw the essential point after a moment’s thought.
“Nor does it consume much material.”
How much hair could a single toothbrush possibly require? How much bamboo?
Even if they made a thousand handles, the total might amount to no more than several dozen *jin* of hair and a few dozen bamboo stalks.
Perhaps it would cost less than weaving a single piece of fine brocade or woolen fabric.
“But this tooth powder…”
The old master craftsman moved closer to the illustration of the tooth-powder process, frowning at the simply drawn flames beneath a stove.
“This requires firing…”
Author’s Note
I was writing about simple drawings, but what I had in my head was that GIF of little rabbits making mooncakes that I have to watch every Mid-Autumn Festival, haha.
Translator’s Notes
– Shaofu: The royal household’s administrative office, responsible for palace finances, supplies, and workshops.
– Baofu, Baomu: Child-rearing and attendant roles.
– Shangshu Lang: An official serving in attendance on the ruler.
– Zhiju: A style of straight-hemmed robe.
– Jin:A historical unit of weight.
– The city-wall threat: A reference to punitive labor, which gives the officials’ deadline its particular urgency.