Though Old Qin was mild and easygoing in his everyday dealings, when it came down to it, he was a man built for great undertakings, and men of that sort needed to have a certain largeness of spirit about them. He wasn’t without feeling — he wasn’t the type to believe that friends were as close as one’s own limbs while a wife was no more than a change of clothes — but when it came to his attitude toward women, the old man still carried the common view of men of this era. He wasn’t so shallow as to think women had no temper of their own, but honestly speaking, a mere two women was hardly something worth expending much effort over.
He’d never much approved of this particular trait in Ning Yi. In the end, though, he simply filed it away as one more of the odd quirks that made up the young man’s character.
For this private dinner, he had, on one hand, had Yun Niang invite Yun Zhu’s side without telling Ning Yi, and on the other hand invited Ning Yi without telling Yun Zhu. His pretext for the invitation was solid enough — that day at the Zhu Ji shop, Ning Yi had saved his life, and Yun Zhu and Jin’er had also played their part, so drawing them closer together made sense. In truth, though, he was using the occasion to conveniently throw the two sides together.
The instant Yun Zhu saw Ning Yi she understood at once — the man she liked was about to be put on the spot — and she smiled, a little playfully, though after that she never let anything unusual show on her face again, keeping her expression light and composed, unwilling to trouble anyone. Old Qin only smiled about it once, at the very start, and made no further attempts to interfere after that.
The banquet that followed was divided between men and women. By all accounts, Yuan Jin’er chatted animatedly with Su Tan’er about business matters — she wanted to become a formidable businesswoman herself, and so had no qualms about seeking advice from a genuine one. Tan’er asked her about the details of running her shop and, true to form, actually gave her some useful pointers; the two got along famously.
On Ning Yi’s side of the table, Qin Shaoqian talked for a while about matters in the army camp, then brought up the flower-viewing excursion planned for two days later. When he mentioned Li Shishi and the Fan Tower, he burst out laughing. “I know the Fan Tower well! And that Li Shishi — I’ve met her too. We should all go see her together when the time comes.”
Qin Shaohe looked puzzled. “You’ve been to the Fan Tower plenty of times, sure, but Li Shishi’s only come onto the scene in the last few years. How would you know her?”
“Ha, the year before last I went to Bianjing and looked up a bunch of old friends to get together. They told me this Shishi girl was the most famous one around, so we went to the Fan Tower. Before I’d even laid eyes on her, though, I saw that fake son of Gao Qiu’s throwing his weight around, trying to put his hands on a woman selling melons. I — ahem — I mean, I can’t stand that sort of thing, so I got into it with him right there on the spot. Later on we ended up brawling in the Fan Tower. If it hadn’t been for that dog of his — some fellow called Lu Qian who’s not bad with his fists — I’d have landed a couple of punches on him myself.”
At the table just then were the three men of the Qin family besides Ning Yi and Xu Xiaohu at his side. Hearing his younger son bring up something like this, Qin Siyuan set down his chopsticks and handed his bowl to a servant to refill with rice, frowning. “Reckless.”
But there wasn’t much real reproach in his tone. At this time Gao Qiu already held the post of Grand Commandant in the Eastern Capital, but he had climbed there through flattery of his superiors, and though he was said to be quite skilled at manipulating power, he wasn’t well regarded among the higher officials, civil or military. Though Qin Siyuan had called it reckless, he clearly didn’t think much of Gao Qiu either.
Qin Shaoqian, understanding his father’s temperament well enough, spread his hands. “What’s reckless about it? Was I supposed to just stand there and watch? Back in Bianjing we used to get into it with those bullying thugs and gangsters all the time — see an injustice, step in. Father, you haven’t been to Bianjing in a long while, you don’t know how badly some of these young lords of privilege have fouled things up over there. Just a few months after I left last time, I heard that Young Master Gao got some instructor surnamed Lin in the Imperial Guard framed for a crime. Later—”
He paused. “Heh. Later this Instructor Lin’s wife died in Young Master Gao’s chambers. Instructor Lin was exiled, and last year I heard he’d rebelled — gone off to join Liangshan. Damn it… ask around on the streets of Bianjing and eight out of ten people will know exactly what happened. Pity we hadn’t heard much of his worse deeds back then, or even with Lu Qian and Uncle Geng holding me back, I’d have drawn my blade and cut him down.”
Qin Siyuan looked up at him. “Was Xidao there too?” Geng Xidao — that was Geng Nanzhong.
Qin Shaoqian nodded. “Mm. Uncle Geng asked me to send you his regards, Father. He was the one who came out to smooth things over, so we had to give him face. The Fan Tower’s Madam Li brought that Shishi girl out too, to help calm things down. Afterward we all sat down together in a side hall — us on one side, that Gao fellow’s crowd on the other, with that Shishi girl playing and singing in between. Tch, not the least bit interesting. We broke up without much good feeling all around.”
Having finished, he shrugged and buried his heavily bearded face in his bowl to shovel down rice. The others at the table laughed. Qin Siyuan nodded. “Xidao really does have a knack for playing peacemaker.”
The talk turned to this and that after that, and it was only when the subject of Xu Xiaohu came up that the others learned this young man was in fact a genuine martial arts master, trained in a real, superior school of internal boxing. Qin Shaoqian, by contrast, had no such background — most of his fighting experience came down to raw nerve. Qin Siyuan laughingly recalled how Ning Yi had once longed to learn martial arts himself, and naturally Ning Yi couldn’t help but offer Xu Xiaohu some words to the effect of “I’ve long admired you — they call me the Bloody-Handed Butcher” and so on.
According to Qin Shaoqian, Xu Xiaohu’s fighting style was fierce and direct, his specialties being a boxing form called Bazi Fist and White Ape Through-the-Arm technique, though in character he was quite simple and honest, even a touch bashful. Ning Yi, having trained for so long himself, had plenty of questions about martial arts, and once he asked, Xu Xiaohu answered everything he knew without holding back. In the end, though, what he said largely matched what Lu Hongti had told him before — that martial arts, in the end, came down to actually fighting. Practicing forms too much, without reaching the point where the body moved before the intention even fully formed, wasn’t of much use. In other words, what mattered most was building it into pure reflex.
By the time the meal was finished, both hosts and guests could be said to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves.
A day later, the day of the flower-viewing excursion arrived. This fell two days before Qingming, in what was known in ancient times as the Cold Food Festival, established to commemorate Jie Zitui of the Spring and Autumn period. Before the Three Kingdoms era, people would refrain from lighting fires for a full month around the Cold Food Festival, eating only cold food. Later, because that month-long stretch often proved too much for the elderly and infirm to endure, Emperor Wu of Wei — Cao Cao — abolished the custom of eating cold food. Later still, the tradition of visiting graves and strolling outdoors during the Cold Food Festival shifted by two days, merging with Qingming.
The weather that day was fine. A mist rose in the early morning but had cleared by sunrise. In front of the small tower by the banks of the Qinhuai River, Yun Zhu and Jin’er had dressed themselves as men, each holding a folding fan and waving it idly as they made ready to head out.
The spring wind was already warm, and clouds stretched across the sky like white dragons in flight. Along the banks of the Qinhuai, the willow branches hung a lush green — it was exactly the right season for an outing. Jiangning’s residents were well-off, and this sort of activity was more common here than in poorer places. These days, the roads leading out to the countryside often showed families in twos and threes, dressed neatly and cleanly, setting out cheerfully together, children tottering along hand in hand with the adults, faces bright with delight.
Today there seemed to be even more people out than usual. On the Qinhuai River, one or two painted pleasure boats could occasionally be seen making their way out of the city. Along the roads, amid the drifting willow catkins, there seemed to be an unusual number of young scholars heading toward the city gates. Today’s flower-viewing gathering, hosted by Chen Luoyuan, was to take place near White Egret Isle just outside Jiangning.
Yun Zhu hadn’t been out on an excursion like this in years. In her earlier years she’d had the chance only while at Jinfeng Tower, and even then, going out had never been for her own sake. In the first couple of years after buying back her freedom, she’d savored the feeling of it, yet had rarely gone out at all — almost as though she’d reverted to that timid young lady from an official’s household who feared strangers. Later, when she began selling preserved eggs, going out was strictly a matter of necessity for business. Left to her own preferences, she still felt more at ease staying home; at heart she remained a traditional, conservative sort. As a woman going out to enjoy herself like this, she always felt she ought to be accompanied by family — as a child, that meant her parents, and from then on, presumably, her husband. So when Ning Yi asked her to come along, she was delighted, yet couldn’t help feeling a little nervous as she dressed herself as a man.
“I’m a bit nervous,” she said, smoothing the hem of her robe as she walked, turning her head toward Jin’er.
Jin’er, fanning herself with her folding fan as she walked, shrugged at this. “Nothing to be nervous about. Here, Sister Yun Zhu, take my arm.”
Yun Zhu smiled. “I’m playing the young master too, same as you, right now. What’s there to take?”
The two of them had arranged to meet Ning Yi near White Egret Isle. Chatting and laughing along the way, they reached the city gate, hired a carriage, and set off toward Stone City.
For Ning Yi, today’s outing was treated more or less like going to a concert — he was in no hurry about it. Before leaving the city he first stopped by Yushan Academy to set some assignments, and by the time he arrived at the meeting spot, the riverbank near White Egret Isle already had a good many people out enjoying the day.
The White Egret Isle of this era wasn’t in the same location as the White Egret Isle Park of later Nanjing. This White Egret Isle was the original site referenced in Li Bai’s line about three mountains half-hidden beyond the blue sky, with the two branches of the river splitting around White Egret Isle — a sandbar in the Yangtze just outside Stone City that divided the river in two. Reeds grew thick across the isle, drawing frequent flocks of white egrets, which was how it got its name. Later, as silt built up along the Yangtze, the isle gradually joined with the southern bank, and in time it vanished altogether.
The scenery around White Egret Isle at this time was quite fine, but an outing wasn’t meant for trysting, so there was no need to venture into the reed beds on the isle itself — people generally strolled along the hills and waterside on either bank. Spring outings of this sort came in many varieties: a family of three flying kites in the wilds counted as one; a larger group wandering about aimlessly counted too. The more formal version usually took the shape of a literary gathering, where a group of young scholars, having received invitations from some renowned literary elder or high official who’d passed the imperial exams, would assemble in the hills while the great figures set a topic, and the young scholars would try to make a name for themselves through their writing — this too could be called a spring outing. The historically famous gathering of Wang Xizhi, Xie An, and others was of this sort — they called it the Lustration Festival, but lumping it together under the broader category of spring outings caused no real harm.
This particular gathering wasn’t quite so formal, but it was still made up mostly of literary men, with a fair number of merchants and officials thrown in as well, though these too were naturally all well versed in letters. The organizer, the eminent scholar Chen Luoyuan, had his own garden estate nearby, and the gathering was naturally set there, so as to keep out the many casual onlookers who might otherwise show up. Truth be told, though, plenty of uninvited scholars had already gathered in the area, hoping to see whether they could talk their way in — or, for the more ambitious among them, planning to organize an even bigger literary gathering of their own, one that would put Chen Luoyuan’s and Li Shishi’s gathering to shame.
And so, by the time Ning Yi arrived, the riverside was crowded with all sorts of idle onlookers, and a number of painted pleasure boats had moored nearby as well — presumably carrying women who had also been invited. Ning Yi’s arrangement with Yun Zhu and Jin’er had been vague, and it took him a while to find them; the two of them, dressed as young men, had gone to considerable trouble with their disguises, and Ning Yi didn’t spot them right away. In fact, he’d been drawn off by a confrontation happening nearby — several people standing beneath a tree, the atmosphere clearly tense. On one side were Yun Zhu and Jin’er; on the other, three scholars and a woman who looked to be a courtesan escort. Among them Ning Yi recognized one face — the talented scholar Liu Qingdi, who had once admired Jin’er greatly and used to fly into a rage whenever he saw her getting close to Ning Yi.
At the moment, though, Liu Qingdi wore a rather haughty expression, while Jin’er looked distinctly displeased. It seemed Liu Qingdi, realizing he had no chance of winning the girl over, had already started acting resentful, deciding not to give this “fickle” woman a decent look — hence the argument breaking out between the two sides.
Tsk. Chasing a girl and ending up like this — that was just embarrassing. Even Jin’er’s attempts to court Yun Zhu were more graceful than this…
Ning Yi sighed inwardly and was just about to head over when, from behind, a hand reached out and grabbed his shoulder. “Brother Ning! You’re here too?”
The voice carried a note of genuine delight.
Ning Yi turned to look, and sure enough recognized the face — the one who’d been standing beside that Miss Wang the day they’d met her, her companion. What was his name again?
Ning Yi thought about it.
Yu Hezhong.