On the eight-immortals table, the three sacrificial offerings had been laid out. Incense smoke curled from the censer. Pei Zhizhou led the prayers and made offerings to the sea deity.

Afterward, Pei Bingyuan distributed red coins to all the shipbuilders to raise their spirits.

A vessel of only two or three hundred liao — and yet Pei Bingyuan had made such an occasion of it. His purpose was to tell everyone present: the shipyard would indeed be revived.

After the keel-laying ceremony, on the way back from the shipyard, Pei Shaohuai’s mind was entirely filled with thoughts of ships — he very much wanted to understand how, in the Da Qing era where industrial capacity was far from advanced, craftsmen could build, piece by painstaking piece, those large hard-sailed vessels with their distinctive upswept sterns that could ride the wind and master the waves.

He had come here to study. How could he miss an opportunity like this — not to investigate it thoroughly?

The next day, Pei Shaohuai went to the Zou household and told Elder Zou of his plans. Elder Zou was strongly in agreement.

Elder Zou offered him this guidance: “Master Honest Studio had a verse: ‘The hidden current has reached the shore, unknown to all / Only the boatman with his pole knows the river’s flow.’ The hidden currents within the river are best known to those who pole through them every day — they know how to avoid them, how to yield to them. By the same principle, those who build ships know best which vessels are strongest and most seaworthy, best suited to fighting enemies in battle. These men with their white hair earned through decades of work — their station may be humble, but their knowledge is far from small. They are worth your time to learn from.”

He further said: “‘In all matters under heaven, those who have heard of something do not know it as fully as those who have seen it; those who have seen it do not know it as fully as those who have lived with it.’ Having now witnessed the building of ships, if in the future you enter the Board of Works and oversee construction and engineering, or enter the Board of War and take charge of naval forces and warships, you will be the better for it. The more you understand, the less easily you will be deceived or led by the nose when working with others at court.”

Elder Zou’s words aligned precisely with what Pei Shaohuai had already thought. He replied: “This junior understands.”

In the months that followed, Pei Shaohuai moved between the classroom, the shipyard, the Zou household, and home — busy, and fully alive with purpose.

At the shipyard, Pei Shaohuai came to know Wang Jiangtou, who was nearly sixty years old and could speak the official tongue. Wang Jiangtou was a short, slight old man, still vigorous in frame, who in his younger years had worked through nearly every stage of the shipbuilding process.

He no longer took on heavy physical work himself, but moved through the various sections of the dry dock — guiding the younger craftsmen as they worked, or checking the quality of each stage of construction.

Whenever Wang Jiangtou saw Pei Shaohuai arrive, his face broke into a smile that narrowed his eyes to slits. “Young Pei the Graduate is back?”

Pei Shaohuai gave a nod, and replied modestly: “I’ve come to ask Master Wang about the art of shipbuilding.”

“No need to speak of ‘asking’ a man like me.” Wang Jiangtou waved a hand in refusal. “I don’t know what you’d call learning — I only know that this is a craft handed down and improved upon from one generation of our forebears to the next. Whatever in it piques Young Graduate Pei’s curiosity, this old man will do his best to answer.”

Inside the dry dock, craftsmen moved back and forth — some planing down wooden planks, some cutting mortises and drilling joints, some bending planks over fire, each at his own station, orderly and purposeful, busy without chaos.

Pei Shaohuai followed Wang Jiangtou as they moved between the different workshops.

“Master Wang, how many stages are there in building a ship?” Pei Shaohuai asked.

Wang Jiangtou answered as he walked: “The Taicang method uses shell-first construction. There are seven main stages: first the dragon bone, then the hull planking, then the watertight compartments, then the rudder, then the deck beams and camber, then the hull ribs, and then everything above the main deck. As for the smaller steps — the caulking, the lacquering, the riveting — they are past counting. I’ve worked through all of them in my time, but I’ve never counted how many there are.”

He added: “Building a ship isn’t really so difficult once you think about it — it’s much the same as building a house. One goes up on land, the other goes up on water, that’s all. If the keel is thick and supple, laid true and straight, and the timber quality is sound — that’s half the ship built already, same as laying a solid foundation. As for the rest, it comes down to the craftsmen driving the rivets in solidly and packing the caulking tightly, with the planks well overlapped. The finer the work, the longer the ship will last.”

Passing through the timber yard, Pei Shaohuai noticed that the logs varied in girth and in the grain of their cross-sections — clearly they were different species of wood — and so he paused to study them for a while.

Wang Jiangtou stepped forward at the right moment to explain: “Seawater is salty and harsh — building a seagoing vessel puts higher demands on the timber than a river vessel. Oiled pine holds up long in water without rotting, so it does for the keel. Camphor wood resists cracking, so it serves for the cabin planking. Chinese fir is light and flexible, so it goes for the hull planking.”

Wang Jiangtou led Pei Shaohuai into a guarded storeroom and pointed out several timber logs set apart from the rest. “These are the most precious of all,” he said. “They were brought up from the far southwest especially, and they’re being kept for the rudder.”

The rudder was made up of the rudder post aboard the ship and the rudder blade at the stern. By changing the angle of the rudder blade, the water flowing beneath the vessel was directed to one side or the other, allowing the ship to turn.

This meant the rudder post and rudder blade had to be made from an exceptionally hard variety of wood.

Pei Shaohuai looked at the logs. Their wood was dense and heavy, the heartwood a warm yellow-red, with fine, close-grained patterns; when he touched the surface, it was smooth and cold, as dense as iron.

It was fine-quality iron-pear wood — also called iron-lychee wood.

No wonder Wang Jiangtou had arranged for someone to guard the timber separately.

“The rudder is to a ship as the tail is to a fish,” Wang Jiangtou said. “Command the rudder and you command the wind and waves. Whether the rudder holds or fails rests entirely on these few logs.” The importance of the timber could not be overstated.

After several busy days in the shipyard, Pei Shaohuai had been shown a world that filled him with wonder, and he could not help but feel deep admiration for the wisdom of those who had gone before. He thought to himself: in an age where materials were scarce and everything depended on human labor, their forebears had tested and tried again and again to select the most suitable materials, and had passed what they learned from one generation to the next, refining and improving, until they had built the great ships that could sail across open seas.

This was a kind of wisdom that was slow-gathered and deeply settled.

Half a month later, Pei Shaohuai came again. By this time, close-fitted hull planking had been installed over the outside of the keel, and the vessel had begun to take on its first true shape — like a great bamboo-leaf-shaped bowl, looking down into it from above, hollow and open inside.

Wang Jiangtou saw Pei Shaohuai arrive and said with an air of mystery: “Young Graduate Pei has come at exactly the right moment. The most critical stage of the whole process begins today.”

Pei Shaohuai was pleased and curious in equal measure.

A wooden ship could travel the open sea — and for all that the right materials and fine craftsmanship were part of the answer, there surely had to be some ingenuity behind it. This critical stage, he thought, might offer a glimpse into what that was.

“Young Graduate Pei, please follow me.” Wang Jiangtou led the way.

The two of them came up to the high platform alongside the dry dock, from where they could see clearly into the empty hull below. Inside, dozens of men were working together.

Along the central keel, they were raising a solid vertical bulkhead that divided the interior into left and right halves; then they continued fitting a series of transverse bulkheads, partitioning the lower hold of the vessel into individual cells — each sealed, with no passage between them.

Pei Shaohuai counted: eighteen cells in all.

“This is the third stage — the installation of the watertight compartments,” Wang Jiangtou said. He paused, withholding the rest, and then asked: “Young Graduate Pei, you might like to venture a guess — what purpose does this serve? Why is it called the most critical stage of all?”

Pei Shaohuai had lived many experiences in his previous life, but he had never made a careful study of ancient shipbuilding methods. Hearing of watertight compartments for the first time, he did not immediately know their purpose. But his mind quickly turned to bamboo rafts floating on water — the sections of a bamboo pole, one node after another, drifting on the surface; even if one bamboo section were broken through, the bamboo would not sink.

Because the nodal septa divide the bamboo into many separate chambers.

One wall breached, but the whole remains unbroken.

The watertight compartments worked on precisely this principle. Eighteen cells, none connected to the others — so that if the ship were to strike a reef at sea, or be struck by enemy cannon fire, and the hull were damaged, only a single compartment would take on water. At that point, one would quickly redistribute the cargo to balance the vessel, and there would still be time to turn back toward shore for repairs — greatly improving the safety of the crew.

Once he had reasoned this through, the pleasure showed openly on Pei Shaohuai’s face, along with a deep respect.

He said: “The compartments are like the nodes of a bamboo — each sealed from the others — so that if the hull is breached in navigation, there is still a chance to recover.”

Wang Jiangtou heard this and went very still, hardly believing what he had heard, astonishment plain across his face. “Young Graduate Pei truly has great gift — he saw it and worked it out at once, without any need for this old man to say more.”

Pei Shaohuai shook his head. “The forefather who first thought to use this method — now there is true gift.”

He stood on the shoulders of those who had gone before and could survey the full picture from above; guessing at the purpose of the watertight compartments was not so remarkable. Shaojin and Yan Cheng, had they been here, would likely have worked it out as well. But the person who had first seen a bamboo stem and then conceived of recreating the “bamboo sections” within a ship — fashioning compartments by that inspiration — that was true genius.

Perhaps it was not one person at all, but the work of one generation after another.

And then, quite suddenly, something became clearer than it had ever been in Pei Shaohuai’s mind: what he needed to do was to build upon the wisdom of those who had come before and improve upon it steadily — not to try, on the strength of his memories from a later life, to overturn everything around him.

One step at a time — and the future held every promise. But to think oneself clever and tear things down would be to render oneself worthless.

After more than two months, the vessel was nearly complete. A ship of three hundred liao — dozens of meters in length, standing roughly as tall as two stories, with room for fifty or sixty people.

The hull was still in bare timber. The craftsmen were finishing the final stages.

The caulking workers kneaded coconut fiber or hemp into a paste with powdered clamshell and tung oil, then worked it with a small awl into every seam and joint along the hull, filling every small hole and hairline crack. They went over the entire surface, above and below, not daring to miss a single spot.

To protect against wood-boring insects in the water: the craftsmen ground oyster-shell lime to powder and mixed it with rice paste into a thick slurry, and painted it evenly over the entire hull, top to bottom.

To protect the underwater hull planking against the corrosive effect of seawater: lime water was applied to the bottom boards.

When Pei Shaohuai came again on this particular day, he found more than a dozen old craftsmen standing on the high platform, painting patterns onto the outside of the hull. The designs were ancient and intricate. He said admiringly: “The old masters are not only fine woodworkers — they are accomplished painters as well.”

Wang Jiangtou replied: “These patterns are not merely there to look pleasing — there is great significance to them.”

On the bow, a mirror motif was painted — the “mountain-opening mirror,” meant to warn against hidden rocks beneath the surface ahead.

On the two sides of the bow, dragon eyes were carved. On fishing boats, the dragon eyes looked downward to search for schools of fish; on merchant vessels and official ships, the dragon eyes looked forward to seek out the sailing route ahead.

On the stern, the tail of a loach fish was painted. Legend had it that the dragon’s tail and the loach’s tail were one and the same — on the sea, the dragon was sovereign, and all fish and shrimp obeyed the dragon’s command. With the dragon’s tail to guard the stern, the voyage would be smooth and free from mishap.

Through those long months — from the bare keel, with nothing upon it, to a ship slowly built up into a vessel that could sail the rivers, the seas, and all the waters between — Pei Shaohuai came to believe that this shipyard, still a little worn and weathered at the edges, would one day be of great consequence.

Returning home, Pei Shaohuai sat with his father to talk. He asked: “Now that the shipyard has produced its first vessel, Father — should the Taicang Shipyard be placed under the Board of War, or under the Board of Works? Have you decided?”

The Taicang Shipyard had been established by the prefectural administration, which made it an official government shipyard — not a private one.

“The matter of the Zhenhai Guard involves complexities that run deep. The Taicang prefectural administration will inevitably need to rely on the Board of War’s support before there can be any thorough resolution. My own inclination is toward filing the shipyard with the Board of War and having them report to the court — with the shipyard’s main purpose being to build patrol vessels, and to build warships once we have the capacity. What does Shaohuai think?”

“Your son’s thoughts align with yours, Father.” Pei Shaohuai believed that by securing the Taicang Shipyard, his father had added another card to his hand. When Minister Zhang of the Board of War petitioned for commendation on his behalf, this would stand as concrete and tangible achievement.

Pei Bingyuan said: “I will submit the memorial to the court on an appropriate day.”

In the early days of the fifth month, Pei Bingyuan received an imperial edict from the court, appointing Yan Chengzhao as the General of Maritime Patrol with command over four guard naval forces, to suppress pirates along the southeastern coast of Da Qing.

Word came from ahead that in less than a month, Yan Chengzhao would be arriving in the vicinity of Taicang Prefecture. Pei Bingyuan, as the administrator of Taicang Prefecture, would naturally need to engage with him.

Given the longstanding enmity between the Earl’s household and the Anyuan Prince’s household, and given that Yan Chengzhao — as the Prince’s second son by a concubine — had also inserted himself into the matter of Pei Ruozhu, his position made him someone the Pei family felt no goodwill toward.

This was an exceptional opportunity to bring order to the Zhenhai Guard, and yet it was Yan Chengzhao who had been appointed as Commander. Pei Bingyuan did not know what Yan Chengzhao’s attitude would be, nor how he himself ought to approach the encounter with Yan Chengzhao — and so his expression was grave, and his mind could reach no clear decision.

At the evening meal, it was clear enough that his mood had no appetite for food.

When Lin Shi and Pei Shaohuai learned of the matter, they too fell into quiet thought.

Pei Shaohuai said: “Since we are all family, Father should first consider Third Elder Sister’s feelings. If this matter were to create a rift between them, it would be difficult to mend later… Perhaps we should send word by fast horse and ask Third Elder Sister’s thoughts.”

He continued: “First — none of us truly know what kind of person Yan Chengzhao is. Only Shaojin and Third Elder Sister have had any real contact with him, and know something of his character. Whether he can be trusted, and how we might work together — we should hear their opinions on that. Second — Third Elder Sister’s mind is perceptive and her heart is as broad as any man’s. Father need only share the situation here in brief, and she will understand the circumstances of Taicang Prefecture and the difficulty of Father’s position — I believe she will see reason.”