Thinking of suitable gifts to bestow upon Pei Shaohuai was indeed no easy matter.
The officials below discussed it in hushed voices and went around in circles without arriving at anything sensible. If it were a robe, the Emperor had already bestowed a Qilin robe upon Pei Shaohuai at the time of his wedding. If it were a promotion, Pei Shaohuai was already about to be assigned as a fifth-rank Prefect in an outside post — already promoted two ranks — and imperial favor ought not to be shown too extravagantly. If it were a grant of noble title or peerage, the matter of opening the seas had not yet succeeded, and elevating him from Earl to Marquis was too soon.
As for granting manor lands and estates, gold and silk, or a banquet hosted by the Emperor — these were not in keeping with the Emperor’s character.
Moreover, the Emperor had the will to bestow a reward and could do so however he pleased — there was no reason to have the officials huddle below and deliberate in circles. With the Emperor’s little bit of “mischief,” the tension that had hung over the hall during the debate was now eased.
Pei Shaohuai stepped forward on his own initiative and said: “The ruler’s wisdom shines above; the subject’s loyalty holds firm below. A subject’s ambitions are born of a ruler’s sagacity — this official dares not claim credit, and dares even less to seek reward.”
“Come now — since We have already opened Our mouth, how could We possibly take it back?” the Emperor said with a cheerful smile, as though he had already made up his mind. He continued: “We shall bestow upon you the Imperial Sword. Beloved Subject Pei shall carry the sword south, to open the seas on behalf of Our Da Qing.” He also ordered the Ministry of War to begin forging the Imperial Sword without delay.
When a military official achieves great merit, he is bestowed a fine horse and precious sword; when a civil official is entrusted with an important mission, he is bestowed the Imperial Sword.
Pei Shaohuai carrying the Imperial Sword as he traveled south meant that an official posted outside the capital could act with discretionary authority — the significance was profound.
The assembled officials all declared in unison: “Your Majesty is wise.” No one objected.
Pei Shaohuai, momentarily stunned, came back to his senses and accepted the honor: “This official humbly receives Your Majesty’s great grace, and shall not disgrace the mission.”
The court session concluded. The Emperor kept the Cabinet ministers behind to deliberate on important matters, while the others departed in turn.
……
Minister Chen of the Ministry of War waited outside the Qianqing Palace, standing there until Zhang Lingyi emerged from the Imperial Study. The two walked together side by side. They had both come from the Ministry of War, and having known each other for many years, their relationship was quite good.
“Old Chen, I’m not saying this without reason, but you really should rein in that hot temper of yours and do some honest reflection,” Zhang Lingyi said. “I told you long ago — this minor advisory official is different from other young men. His knowledge is broad and deep, and he is well-versed in military strategy. He is not one to act rashly.”
To his surprise, Minister Chen shot straight back: “Should it not be Senior Academician Zhang himself who reflects?”
“What do I have to reflect on?”
Minister Chen stopped walking. His tone was blunt as he asked Zhang Lingyi: “You are his seat teacher, and you share a considerable history with him. Knowing full well what a fine prospect he is, you still did not keep him in the Ministry of War… Is that alone not enough for Senior Academician Zhang to reflect on?”
Now it was Zhang Lingyi’s turn to be embarrassed, and he could only murmur in response: “I wanted to let him temper himself first — there will be more opportunities down the road… more opportunities.” Yet even as he spoke the words, he did not believe them himself.
Minister Chen let out a long sigh of regret: “The older one is a lost cause — no use hoping for him anymore.” With that note of lament, he added: “Fortunately, the younger one can still be worked out.”
Through today’s court debate, Minister Chen had taken a liking to Pei Shaojin, and wanted to bring Pei Shaojin to the Ministry of War.
This was precisely why he had waited outside the hall, keeping watch for Zhang Lingyi to come out.
But then he saw Zhang Lingyi’s embarrassed expression grow even more pronounced, with some hemming and hawing — and Minister Chen immediately sensed that things did not bode well. He tilted his head, his face cold, and asked: “The younger one is also a lost cause? Who moved so fast?”
“Ah—” Minister Chen stamped his foot in frustration, demanding: “Why did you not hold things back?”
“His Majesty was the one who ‘moved fast’ — how was I to hold anything back?” Zhang Lingyi said. If blame were to be laid, it could only be laid on the two brothers for being too dazzling to go unnoticed.
He told Chen Gongda that just before he himself had come out of the Imperial Study, His Majesty had just made up his mind and was preparing to bestow upon Pei Shaojin the post of Advisory Official for Military Affairs.
“Settle your temper — after all, the Ministry of War and the Bureau of Military Affairs only differ by one character.”
Minister Chen: “…” He was even more furious now.
……
After the session concluded, the two brothers rode home together in the same carriage.
“How does Younger Brother Jin feel today?” Pei Shaohuai asked.
“Clear-headed and thoroughly satisfied.” Pei Shaojin smiled and replied, “Everything I have seen, learned, and written up to now has at last ceased to be mere words on paper — it can be transformed into a real force of action. So this is what it feels like to put things into practice.”
In a single court session, he had made the leap from “writing essays” to “doing things” — something many newly appointed officials failed to achieve even after years in service.
Pei Shaojin continued: “Younger Brother has also learned much from Elder Brother. I now understand that words come easily from the mouth, yet to actually bring them to fruition is fraught with difficulties at every turn — every step requires careful calculation.”
Just then the carriage began to climb a slope, its pace slowing considerably. Pei Shaohuai took the opportunity to respond: “If one is willing to sink into mediocrity, naturally no one will stand in the way — the east wind and flowing water will carry you wherever you please. But if one has aspirations, and desires to see them realized, then it is like climbing steps one by one, rowing against the current, rising against the wind — it will never come easily.”
“Elder Brother is absolutely right,” Pei Shaojin said. “I have come to understand what I want to accomplish in the court.”
“What is that?”
“To secure Da Qing’s four frontiers, and to aid Elder Brother in opening the seas.”
Elder Brother had already set his sights on the vast oceans; he would set his on the stability of the land frontiers. When the seas were opened as a source of abundance, it would also be the time for the land borders to expand — the two endeavors complementary to one another.
……
……
In the depths of midwinter, snow and ice blanketed the world.
Younger Sister Zhu’s cotton weaving mill had begun to show its first real results. The cotton bolls harvested this year were several times greater in number than the year before. Weaving mills in various locations had been busy from early autumn straight through to the twelfth lunar month without pause, and many farmwives had taken up the work as their livelihood.
Over at the Jingchuan Earl’s household, Elder Sister Ying’s medical hall, “An Qing Tang,” had been open for several months and had already gained a modest reputation within the capital.
An Qing Tang specialized in treating women’s ailments. Aside from Elder Sister Ying herself, there were also two senior palace matrons who had retired from the imperial court, and a middle-aged woman from a family with generations of medical expertise — all of them practicing female physicians at the medical hall. In addition, several female apprentices had been taken on to study medicine and pharmacology, and in their daily duties they assisted the physicians with consultations, dispensing and preparing medicines, and caring for patients.
An Qing Tang was spacious and bright, with a full range of medicinal ingredients, not at all inferior to the other great medical halls in the capital.
However, that “reputation” was a double-edged one — praised by the women who sought treatment there, it was also met with no small amount of criticism. Elder Sister Ying had anticipated this long ago, and let it go in one ear and out the other. The criticism and suspicion, no matter how many times it came around, amounted to the same few complaints: “Even if she has some knowledge of medicine, how can a woman show her face in public and engage in such a lowly profession?” — “I would sooner treat ten men than one woman; women are inherently deficient in vital energy and impure in constitution — how could these half-baked practitioners possibly treat them?” — “Medicine is orthodox practice; shamanism is heresy — who knows whether what they use is medicine or witchcraft?” …
Those who criticized An Qing Tang were not the common people, but rather attacks from some fellow practitioners, and the whispered judgments of ladies from prominent households.
With the Jingchuan Earl’s household and the Jingying Marquis household standing behind Elder Sister Ying, these idle words did not dare to go too far.
And so the medical hall continued to operate.
In this world, men stayed within and women stayed within their own bounds; the strict propriety between men and women meant that a woman seeking medical care faced innumerable taboos — not only was the pulse taken through a curtain, but there were ailments she could not even speak of. Under such circumstances, it was only natural that no small number of women came to An Qing Tang seeking treatment.
Elder Sister Ying had a rule: when going out to treat patients at wealthy households, the consultation fee was not to be too low — for if there were no livelihood in studying medicine, what woman would be willing to study it in the future?
A physician’s heart is one of benevolence; when treating commoners, one could not turn a profit, but neither could one refuse payment altogether — a measure of grain fosters gratitude, but a full load breeds resentment. The medical hall, too, must have its rules.
That day, an unusually large number of women had come to An Qing Tang for consultations. By the time the last of them had been seen, night had already fallen. The Jingchuan Earl’s carriage was already waiting outside the hall, and Elder Sister Ying, having washed her hands, was preparing to head home.
At that moment, she saw an elderly woman peering left and right as she emerged from the alleyway across the street, her face half-hidden beneath a bamboo umbrella. She walked quickly into the medical hall. She was dressed in fine silk — clearly a woman of comfortable means.
The moment she entered, she burst into tears, begging Elder Sister Ying to save her daughter, saying: “Not a single medical hall in all of the capital is willing to treat her, and her husband’s family has given up on her.”
That not one medical hall in all of the capital was willing to take her in — this was something unusual. Elder Sister Ying asked: “What is your daughter’s condition, and why is there no physician willing to accept her?”
The elderly woman was evasive, her gaze shifting about.
“If you will not speak plainly, please leave.”
Only then did the elderly woman recount the situation from beginning to end: “My daughter is a bit fond of amusements, and her husband indulges her. They had been married for less than three months when, on the seventh day of this month, she went out… she went up into the hills, and then took shelter from the rain in a deity’s temple.” The old woman turned her face away and said: “A few days after she returned, her abdomen began to swell.”
Even when speaking of something that had happened to her own daughter, shame was still evident in her words.
Only then did Elder Sister Ying understand why no one would accept the patient, and why the elderly woman had come seeking a “physician” — what she sought was not medicine, but shamanism.
The two senior palace matrons shook their heads at Elder Sister Ying, urging her not to get entangled in this matter.
In medical texts, it was commonly written that women were of a yin constitution and susceptible to the invasion of malevolent spirits; if one were not careful and dreamed of illicit union with a spirit or communed with a ghost, she might conceive what was called a “ghost fetus.” For instance, the “Annotated Edition of Fu Qingzhu’s Gynecology” wrote: “Entering a deity’s temple and harboring licentious thoughts amid clouds and rain, or wandering in forests and hills while giving rise to lascivious imaginings — either of these can summon a malevolent spirit and cause such a fetal condition.” Similarly, the “Collected Works of Chen Que” cautioned newlywed young wives to never enter temples or roam the hills, and to avoid attending street fairs and gatherings, lest they contract malevolent energy.
This was especially true outside of the first and fifteenth days of the lunar month.
From the elderly woman’s account, her daughter’s various symptoms were all consistent with what was described as “summoning a spirit and conceiving a ghost fetus.” Naturally, none of the major medical halls wished to become involved in such a matter.
One of the senior palace matrons, seeing that Elder Sister Ying had not yet spoken to refuse the case, quickly stepped forward and lowered her voice to advise her: “If even other medical halls dare not accept this patient, how much less should we at An Qing Tang — if you go, I fear the outside rumors that An Qing Tang uses shamanism to treat patients will only grow louder…”
After all, what else but shamanism could cure a “ghost fetus”?
Elder Sister Ying was weighing it carefully in her mind. What she was weighing was not merely one patient, nor merely one case — it was the way medical texts had written about women, the prejudice against women patients that permeated those texts.
After a long moment, she asked the other three female physicians: “Each of you is both a woman and a physician. In so many medical texts, women are described as inclined toward obstinacy, jealousy, and anger; their monthly courses as unclean; and now, as susceptible to ghostly possession. Do you accept these groundless and unreasonable descriptions? A swollen abdomen — it may simply be that she caught a chill in the rain, causing heat and stagnation within the body — a condition a single prescription of medicine might save. Are we to stand by and watch her die untreated?”
She further asked: “If no one stands up to refute this, then in all the years ahead, whenever a woman falls ill, those who come after will continue to attribute the cause to the woman herself, will continue to say that women’s ailments are difficult to treat — ten times harder than treating men.”
Elder Sister Ying had once become captivated by the principles of medicine and pharmacology because bitter medicine reliably heals, and treatments passed down through generations of accumulated wisdom were worthy of her devotion.
Not some prejudice, baseless speculation, or disparagement of women.
Elder Sister Ying picked up her medicine case and said: “If even someone of my standing still fears that the world will not tolerate this — if I remain hesitant and unable to take a step forward with a physician’s heart — then who else would dare to make this move?”
These were the words the Jingchuan Earl had once spoken to her, and the hope that the Earl’s wife had placed in her.