Raise a cup with you, my friend, and set your heart at ease — human affections turn and shift like restless, rolling waves. Old friends who once vowed loyalty now reach for hidden blades; while those newly risen to power laugh and toast, brushing dust from caps of office. — Wang Wei, “Raising a Cup with Pei Di”
Chapter 34: New Year Trifles
The crackle of firecrackers sends off the old year; ever the fresh peachwood charms replace the old.
The atmosphere was lively, and the bustling New Year period, stretching all the way through the Lantern Festival, brought with it all manner of obligations. Even as a live-in son-in-law, Ning Yi couldn’t avoid these entirely — the various visits Su Tan’er had asked him to accompany her on before the New Year had all been in preparation for this stretch of the calendar. Between the main and second branches, relatives by blood and by marriage, and business partners the family worked with, visits back and forth between households were simply unavoidable. When visiting family relations, Su Tan’er and Ning Yi went together; but when it came to visits outside the household, they mostly followed along with Su Boyong — after all, Su Tan’er had not yet formally taken over the main branch, so before the New Year the visits were mostly about discussing business, while the more symbolic, presence-establishing visits after the New Year still needed to be led by Su Boyong.
Before the New Year, Prefect Song Mao, having made his rounds of visits, departed from Jiangning. And thanks to a few kind words from Song Mao, Ning Yi’s standing within the Su household rose somewhat further. Among the servants, there had of course never been any real case of servants overstepping their bounds with him, but few had bothered much with him before; the rest had simply remained indifferent. Now, a good number of servants had grown noticeably warmer toward him — though this mattered little one way or another to Ning Yi himself.
As for the family members, the various young masters — third, fourth, fifth, sixth — now clearly regarded Ning Yi with even less favor than before. Previously they had simply treated him with cold indifference; now they found themselves having to be more wary of him. Of course, there was little they could actually do, since the old Patriarch had clearly come to hold Ning Yi in higher regard. After the examination at the library, Ning Yi’s standing had risen considerably, and the Su family all understood the old Patriarch’s long-held wish — that the Su family might eventually produce a few genuine scholars, shedding at least some of its identity as mere merchants.
However wealthy a merchant might be, once trouble struck, he had no way to protect himself, left entirely at the mercy of officials who could crush him on a whim. A scholar was different — with an official title, however modest his circumstances, he would always have some means of speaking up for himself. The Wu Dynasty, despite its name suggesting a military foundation — and indeed it had been founded on military strength — had, after several major upheavals in its early years, learned its lesson and turned instead to governance through scholar-officials. Now, much as Ning Yi already knew from his understanding of the Song Dynasty, the era treated scholar-officials with great generosity, valuing civil learning far above military accomplishment.
Since Ning Yi had given the old Patriarch this glimmer of hope, he was naturally held in higher regard as a result. Particularly during the New Year greetings, the old Patriarch’s conversations with Ning Yi ran noticeably longer than with anyone else, something everyone present took note of. Mostly the old man simply wanted to chat with Ning Yi about matters of study and schooling, and Ning Yi would casually share a few thoughts on teaching through engagement and enjoyment. The old Patriarch didn’t really understand such ideas — he found it far easier to accept notions like “a rod produces a filial son” or “a strict teacher produces an outstanding student” — but one advantage of having spent so long as head of the household was that he never presumed to lecture a genuine specialist on his own subject. He simply listened contentedly and, at the end, would only say, “If any of them misbehave, feel free to discipline them however you see fit.”
And then he would add, with a sigh, “Old Zi’an certainly has a fine grandson.” This referred, of course, to Ning Yi’s grandfather.
The old Patriarch remained in good health these days, his spirit still sharp. Though he no longer kept especially tight discipline over his grandchildren and granddaughters, appearing kindly, at ease, and content to let things flow naturally, his grip on the household itself remained anything but loose. No one within the current Su family dared provoke his displeasure on a matter like this. After this New Year’s Day conversation, the cold looks and idle gossip directed at Ning Yi certainly hadn’t stopped — if anything, they’d increased — but the desire to actually move against him, to cause trouble for Su Tan’er, or to undermine the old Patriarch’s wishes, had grown vanishingly rare.
Still, though the school was currently on holiday, whenever Ning Yi happened to run into Su Chonghua, he could sense a certain wariness in the man’s eyes, which he found rather amusing.
These were merely small shifts he noticed here and there, and honestly, whether such changes occurred or not made little difference to Ning Yi either way — people of shallow standing could hardly stir up any great trouble; those capable of nothing more than dirty looks, no matter how hard they schemed, would likely only earn a few more dirty looks in return. During the day he mostly went here and there on various errands, and occasionally, at the homes of merchants who did business with the Su family, those who had heard something of Ning Yi’s reputation would call over their own children who were studying to “get to know” him a little — a friendly gesture, though of course these children had generally only read a handful of poems and essays, and the exchanges amounted to little more than light banter.
Ever since that “Prelude to Water Melody” had spread around during the Mid-Autumn Festival, Ning Yi had largely faded from Jiangning’s mainstream gossip circles. The poem was still sung daily, but discussion of the man himself had mostly lost its momentum. If pressed, people would simply note that this fellow, twenty years old this year, a live-in son-in-law at the Su household, taught at the unremarkable Yushan Academy, was said to have devised some strange sort of blackboard, and rarely mixed with the city’s literary circles — an odd, hermit-like existence, but at most it earned him a reputation as simply an eccentric character.
Smooth-talking, socially adept scholars might rise to fame more quickly, but there were plenty of reclusive, homebody-type scholars too — cases like his, where a single verse had struck people so forcefully, were simply rare.
Since that conversation on the balcony that night, his relationship with Su Tan’er had grown noticeably closer. Previously, Su Tan’er had treated Ning Yi the way one might treat a bookish simpleton, always trying to control the situation between them. Having now come to “understand” him, at least to some degree, she had relaxed considerably. Both of them being, in their own ways, “strange people” — this shared understanding satisfied her greatly, largely because Ning Yi never seemed to mind her taking such a public, active role in business affairs. When discussing certain merchants with him, she grew noticeably more at ease, occasionally mentioning some difficult problem, explaining how she’d resolved it, then asking, “What does my husband think?” Of course, more than anything, this simply satisfied her own need to talk things through, to express herself. There were, after all, precious few people capable of understanding and accepting her the way she needed — even when she occasionally spoke with Xiao Chan and the others, it amounted to little more than talking to herself. Being able to discuss business matters with someone like Ning Yi, who had no stake in the business itself, was naturally a welcome kind of relief for her.
Ning Yi, for his part, naturally played along, offering the occasional teasing remark or an expression of admiration, and Su Tan’er would come away feeling thoroughly satisfied. This need to express oneself had little to do with actual capability — even the most capable people sometimes felt stifled and simply wanted someone, anyone, to know what was on their mind, ideally someone entirely unconnected to the matter itself. It was much the same principle as digging a hole out in the wilderness, whispering one’s secrets into it, then burying it again as a way to relieve pressure.
Of course, most of their conversation still consisted of entirely unrelated small talk — returning home in the evening, eating dinner, telling stories, playing gomoku. Su Tan’er, who had once found Ning Yi’s stories rather frivolous, now listened to them purely for relaxation, occasionally asking him to continue a bit longer, or triumphantly gloating over a game of gomoku. In truth, of the group, Xiao Chan actually had the most natural talent for the game and won the most often. Ning Yi was by far the most difficult opponent — when he actually applied himself, he never rushed to win outright; instead, the moment his opponent placed two stones together, he would immediately move to block, blocking and blocking endlessly, until his opponent felt thoroughly stifled, the board filling up with scattered stones, at which point he would suddenly launch a counterattack the instant his opponent’s guard dropped.
This style of play was utterly maddening to the three young girls, and on quiet, warm evenings, one could often hear Chan’er, or Juan’er, or Xing’er protesting: “Young Master is being such a cheat!” Su Tan’er, who learned the fastest and possessed no shortage of patience herself, would press her lips together and grind out this same tedious blocking match against Ning Yi, each trying to outlast the other. Once, the two of them filled the entire board and ended in a draw, while the three girls whispered among themselves that the young master and mistress must both be monsters in disguise. A couple of days later, Ning Yi finally laughed helplessly. “Why must we keep destroying each other like this…” Su Tan’er, who had been blocking his stones with grim determination, finally couldn’t help but press her lips together and burst out laughing too, before immediately going right back to blocking his stones with the same look of delight on her face.
After that, the two of them gradually developed a bit more mutual understanding, and stopped playing games that were purely tests of patience against one another.
Su Tan’er occasionally asked Ning Yi about the things he was working on, and he would often gesture things out for her: “Right, so here you’d need a cylindrical tube made of sheet iron, standing upright… and over here you could pour water in to cool it down… but it needs to withstand strong acid, so I’d have to increase the concentration of sulfuric acid — well, what people here call corrosive water — except without a container that can resist strong acid, it’s hard to raise the concentration in the first place, and without raising the concentration, it’s hard to make a container that can withstand strong acid either, so it turns into this chicken-and-egg problem… and making glass isn’t easy either, for that matter… um, are you following any of this?”
Since she was the one asking, Ning Yi didn’t mind explaining, speaking freely. Su Tan’er, who had only been asking out of idle curiosity, found herself thoroughly bewildered. “Um… husband… what exactly are you actually trying to make?”
“Oh, something to eat. If you want a concrete comparison… it’s roughly similar to salt, I suppose. You know kelp soup, how good it tastes? If you boil a hundred pounds of kelp down into broth, filter it, and dry out the liquid, you end up with a very small amount of something similar to salt — not especially pure, but it makes food taste really good when added to dishes… yeah, that’s basically it.”
“Um… kelp soup… using the essence of a hundred pounds of kelp for cooking… how many dishes could that even make?”
“Probably enough for one bowl of food.” Ning Yi blinked. “Which is exactly the problem — it’s far too wasteful this way. I want to find another method to produce it instead.”
“…Oh.” Su Tan’er nodded, resting her cheek on one hand, looking rather pained — not quite a headache, more like a toothache. If you could somehow produce something equivalent to the essence of a hundred pounds of kelp through some other method, that certainly sounded impressive enough, but… kelp soup wasn’t really all that delicious to begin with, was it?
“My husband really is a strange man…” In the end, she settled on simply stating her honest impression.
What Ning Yi was actually trying to make was monosodium glutamate — MSG.
He had some background in this area from before, and at the very least understood the modern industrial process for producing it, though honestly, that knowledge was essentially useless here. Acid-resistant containers, fermentation enzymes, strain cultivation, crystallization, refrigeration, precise temperature control — all things that were simple enough a thousand years later, but here in the Wu Dynasty amounted to nothing short of a fantasy. And the trouble was, aside from knowing the most modern production process, all he really knew about MSG’s history was that it had originally been extracted from kelp broth — the entire span between those two points, including the earliest, simplest industrial methods, remained a complete blank to him. If he wanted to produce sodium glutamate step by step from scratch, he would essentially need to kickstart half an industrial revolution first.
Of course, sitting back and doing nothing wasn’t his style. MSG was something he intended to try producing no matter what. Over the past few months he had already sketched out a basic process outline, mulling over alternative approaches whenever he had idle time. Before the New Year he had already been wandering through Jiangning’s various markets, gauging how developed this world’s technology actually was, and had even tracked down a copy of the Dream Pool Essays to study.
In any case, just as he had told Su Tan’er, this really was just something to tinker with in his spare time — he didn’t expect any real results within the next few years, and certainly had no intention of assembling a whole team to force some particular outcome. Whatever byproducts might emerge along the way could carry significance large or small; for now, simply laying the groundwork was enough. Beyond matters like this, there simply weren’t many other genuinely interesting goals to pursue in this era.
That said, there was one other thing he found even more interesting than MSG.
Learning martial arts.
On the night of the Lantern Festival, going out with Su Tan’er and the others, he encountered for the first time a truly legendary master of the martial arts. Not quite as extraordinary as in the movies and television dramas, perhaps, but genuinely, remarkably impressive all the same…