As they traveled toward Hejia Village, the view opened wider and wider. Unlike Chongzi Village, which was hemmed in by steep mountains and dense forest, this area was divided into stretches of water by pond embankments running every which way. Sunlight glittered across the surfaces, and the ponds seemed to extend beyond sight.
The scenery was pleasant. The ox cart was not. He Yi felt as though every jolt was driving his tailbone straight into the top of his skull. He had never been prone to motion sickness, yet now his throat felt blocked and he badly wanted to vomit. Even so, he had to cling tightly to the cart rail or one careless bounce might throw him off.
“Grandpa, why is this road so terrible?” He Yi asked, his face deathly pale.
“This road’s not bad. It’s only a little worse than the one into town.” Grandpa Cen looked at him and shook his head with a laugh. “If you want a smooth road, you’ve got to take the official road. An official road does pass through Hejia Village, and plenty of people use it to come buy fish. Trouble is, it’s on the other side. It’s not on our way, and I’ve never driven that route.”
“I see…” This counted as a good road? Bouncing violently from side to side, He Yi began to question his life choices.
After traveling for more than two hours, they finally reached the entrance to Hejia Village.
He Yi hurried down from the cart and asked Grandpa Cen to wait at the village entrance while he went to see whether he could arrange to buy pond mud. If he found some, he would come back and have Grandpa Cen drive the ox cart over. There was still a fair distance to walk before reaching the villagers’ homes, but He Yi truly did not want to sit in that cart another moment. He would rather walk.
After taking a moment to recover, He Yi reminded himself not to waste time and headed into the village. As he went, he looked for households that might be clearing ponds or drying mud.
Strangers passed through Hejia Village often, so when the villagers saw an unfamiliar face like He Yi’s, most merely looked at him twice before going back to whatever they had been doing.
Before long, someone from one household actually called out to him. “You’re only coming now to collect pond mud? It’s almost time to prepare the fields. If you take it home now, you’ll still have to dry it for eight or ten days!”
“Something held me up. Have you all already started preparing your fields?”
“More or less. We’ll be doing it in the next couple of days. We don’t have much land, so we can finish in a day.”
No wonder so many people were heading out carrying hoes and rakes. They were probably going to the fields.
He Yi walked quite a distance and asked several households. Some said their fish fry had already been stocked, making it unsuitable to dredge the pond bottom. Others would not stock fish until the middle of next month, but they had already cleared their ponds during the winter dry period and composted the silt into fertilizer. The season when villagers worked together to clear ponds had already passed, and more than one person laughed at how late He Yi had come.
He Yi smiled bitterly. He had expected pond mud might not be easy to gather, but he had not realized his timing would be this unfortunate. He asked whether anyone had pond-mud fertilizer they could sell, only to be told that most of what could be sold had already been bought and the rest was needed for their own fields.
A little under an hour passed before He Yi stopped going deeper into the village, since even walking back would take quite some time. Just as his spirits were sinking, his gaze wandered toward the water. Someone was rowing a small boat, while another person aboard held a long-handled implement whose end resembled either a freshwater mussel or two winnowing baskets closed together. The man lowered it into the water and worked the two long handles apart and together like the grips of a pair of scissors. After a while, he lifted the tool. The moment its end fully broke the surface, he bent his knees and stamped down on the opposite gunwale, swinging the implement onto the boat in one smooth motion before opening the end and dumping out what it had collected.
A closer look showed black clumps of sticky mud. Wasn’t that the pond mud He Yi had been searching for all this time?
Delight spread across He Yi’s face, and he went over to ask, “Brothers, may I ask what you’re doing?”
“Dredging mud. Never seen a mud dredge before?” The young man who had been using the tool turned around and gave him a broad, hearty grin. “Want to try?”
Several villagers had mentioned dredging mud earlier, but He Yi had not understood what they meant. Now he did. Using this mud dredge to scoop pond silt from the bottom was what they called dredging mud.
The other man, who was poling the boat, also encouraged He Yi to give it a try. His laughter was warm and infectious, so He Yi nodded, climbed aboard, and learned how to use the dredge.
The mud dredge itself was light, but even with the edge of the boat acting as the fulcrum of a lever, digging into the pond bottom took a tremendous amount of strength. Swinging the basket jaws back onto the boat with forty or fifty jin of mud clamped inside was harder still. He Yi nearly got dragged into the water with it.
The two men hurriedly caught him before he lost his balance completely and laughed. “You haven’t learned how to tilt the boat. Of course it’s hard to save any strength that way.”
It was a skill every man in Hejia Village was expected to know, and they did not mind teaching outsiders. Using the dredge was easy; learning how to use less effort was difficult. Plenty of people in Hejia Village only ever learned the technique halfway and ended up relying on brute strength to dredge mud anyway.
He Yi understood the mechanics well enough. He could see that swinging the dredge aboard depended on catching the moment of greatest buoyant support and borrowing force from the tilted boat. But knowing the principle was one thing. In practice, he still needed several attempts before he could find the right timing.
Aside from struggling at the beginning, He Yi became proficient after only two or three more tries. Soon he was handling the mud dredge quite convincingly and bringing up load after load of pond mud.
The two men, Daqi and Xiaoqi, watched in amazement, praising how quickly he had learned. When they asked why He Yi had come, they suggested, “Isn’t this perfect? Our family just finished harvesting tender lotus roots. For a few reasons we’re planning to grow something else here now, so we came to clear some mud out of the lotus pond.”
“Could you sell this pond mud to me?” He Yi asked.
Daqi said, “We’ve just finished preparing our fields, and we used fertilizer composted last year. This year’s new fertilizer is already being composted too. If you want this pond mud, just take it!”
He Yi had not expected to find someone genuinely willing to part with pond mud, but taking it for free would be too much. He hurriedly said, “No, I can’t take it for nothing. I asked about prices earlier. Pond-mud fertilizer in your village usually sells for around thirty copper coins per shi, and plain pond mud seems to be twelve copper coins per shi. Why don’t we use that price?”
Elio’s Notes: Shi (石) is a traditional bulk measure used here for pond mud. Its exact size could vary by place and period, so SL retains the source unit rather than forcing a modern conversion.
Daqi and Xiaoqi had never tried selling pond mud outside the village before. Their family did not have many ponds but did have quite a lot of farmland, so every year they used all the mud they had and never had any extra to sell.
Calculated that way, it could be a considerable source of income. But the brothers were too straightforward. They had offered to give the mud away without thinking much about it, and now they were too embarrassed to change their minds and ask for money. Their faces went red as they kept insisting He Yi should simply take it.
He Yi said, “How about this? I’ll help the two of you clear the pond, and you give me a discount. Twenty copper coins for two shi. Does that work?”
He Xiaoqi was better at arithmetic, though even he had to calculate for a while. After discussing it with his elder brother, he finally nodded and agreed.
What followed was pure physical labor. Even after learning the technique that saved effort, clearing such a large pond still left He Yi’s arms so sore that he could barely lift them.
After they had worked hard for quite a while, Daqi sent his wife to the village entrance to fetch Grandpa Cen and have him bring the ox cart in. They then emptied boatload after boatload into baskets and carried basket after basket to the back of the cart, loading a full eight shi of pond mud.
Grandpa Cen estimated that his ox could not pull any more than that and told He Yi they should stop.
He Yi paid eighty copper coins. When Daqi’s wife heard, she insisted that He Yi stay and eat something before leaving. She hurriedly prepared a bowl of cold-dressed fish skin and brought it out to him.
The fish skin was translucent, mottled in black and blue, and set off by the vivid green of cilantro. A light layer of sesame oil and amber-colored sauce pooled underneath, making the fish skin glossy and fragrant.
He Yi was thoroughly defeated by the family’s hospitality. Unable to refuse, he thanked them repeatedly and began eating the fish skin under everyone’s watchful eyes.
The fish skin was crisp and springy with a satisfying chew. It tasted savory and briny, with a clean hint of sourness. Curious whether the dressing contained vinegar and soy sauce, He Yi asked.
Daqi’s wife, An Cui, answered, “It’s vinegar and fish sauce. Our village has a big fish-sauce workshop. Every household likes using it for stir-fries and steamed fish!”
Fish sauce was a salted, fermented condiment made from small fish or shrimp. It served a role quite similar to soy sauce but had an especially intense savory saltiness, making it the seasoning of choice in Hejia Village.
Even after He Yi finished, the fragrance seemed to linger in his mouth, leaving him wanting more. An Cui clearly noticed and wanted to toss another serving for him, but He Yi truly could not accept any more hospitality. He hurriedly said his farewells and headed back toward the ox cart.
Yet just as he climbed aboard and prepared to leave, he failed to escape the family’s insistence on pressing two dried mud carp into his hands. There was nothing he could do but thank them over and over before waving goodbye.
What a warm and kind family.
Later, He Yi thought that since he had already come all this way, he might as well stop by the fish-sauce workshop and buy some fish sauce as a visiting gift. It would be useful for himself too, since it really was delicious. Grandpa Cen looked at the sky and seemed about to say something, but in the end he remained silent and drove He Yi there.
Fish sauce was not cheap. A small jar held only a little more than one and a half jin, yet cost forty copper coins. The shopkeeper even said that was not expensive, since this was where it was produced. In town, it would cost far more.
He Yi thought about the favors he owed, gritted his teeth, and bought two jars. He simply decided he would not keep either one for himself.
The road back was not as bumpy, perhaps because the load in the rear of the cart was so heavy. The downside was that the ox cart moved exceptionally slowly. The return trip took more than twice as long as the journey there.
By the time they neared Chongzi Village, dusk had already fallen. Fortunately, Grandpa Cen knew the roads around the village extremely well, so nothing went wrong. He Yi made it safely back to the Tang residence, where they spent quite a while unloading all eight shi of pond mud.
He Yi handed Grandpa Cen the rest of the copper coins he owed him. Grandpa Cen cheerfully patted his shoulder and left.
He Yi had spent so long dredging mud, then ridden in the ox cart for so long, and still forced himself to keep going long enough to unload the mud after getting back. He felt half dead with exhaustion. Once Grandpa Cen left, he collapsed onto a haystack and lay there for a long time before recovering enough strength to go inside.
The pond mud still needed to dry. There was no sun at night, but airing it out in advance would still help, so He Yi planned to take a rake and spread out the heap of foul-smelling mud.
When he entered the residence, Madman Tang was nowhere to be seen and not a single lamp was lit. He Yi felt his way through the darkness toward the West Courtyard, only to spot a long-missed figure in front of the chicken enclosure.
A snow leopard whose fur gleamed silver beneath the moonlight lay on the ground with its left forepaw crossed over the right, staring intently at the chicks He Yi had penned inside.
With its excellent hearing, the snow leopard had noticed He Yi’s return long ago. Yet it remained absolutely still, watching the chicks with bright, shifting eyes that made it look as though it were contemplating something naughty.
“Why are you down here too?” Seeing the snow leopard whole and unharmed, He Yi could not help sighing in relief. It seemed the tiger on the mountain really could do nothing to it. Its same old habit of appearing and disappearing at will made that obvious enough.
He Yi was exhausted. The moment he saw the snow leopard, all he could think about was its fluffy, soft fur, so he walked over and tried to pull it into a hug.
But as He Yi approached, the snow leopard sprang lightly backward and once again dry-heaved, “Aow-yeow…”
Only then did He Yi realize his clothes were reeking of pond mud. He simply took them off and tried approaching the snow leopard again. When it still backed away, He Yi took off his trousers too.
“…” This was starting to look a little perverted… But he was honestly too tired to think much anymore and simply followed his instincts. “Is this okay? Don’t dislike me.”
It was too dark for him to make out the snow leopard’s expression, and even if he could, He Yi did not know how to read animal faces. This time, however, the snow leopard came toward him of its own accord, and He Yi finally managed to hug it.
Man and leopard sat together on the cool stone paving. Being naked at this hour was a little chilly, but once He Yi sank into the snow leopard’s fur, he was surrounded by an impossibly soft texture and an endless flow of warmth. He would not say the exhaustion of the entire day vanished completely, but at least more than half of it seemed to melt away.
He Yi slowly rubbed the snow leopard’s cheeks and occasionally scratched beneath its chin. The snow leopard narrowed its eyes in bliss, shook its head, and settled its powerful, almost chubby body beneath He Yi like a cushion.
The peaceful, harmonious moment flowed quietly onward. It seemed to last a very long time, and yet perhaps only a little while.