Chapter 47: Along the River During the Qingming Festival

The sky was growing dark.

Pedestrians hurried past the harbor, vendors were packing up their carts, and in the distance, households were closing their doors and windows.

Several women stood in the street, calling out their children's names to come home.

Soldiers patrolled the streets beating gongs, telling passersby not to linger.

The sight of this everyday street life amused Lin Qian greatly.

Zheng Zhilong reminded him, "Brother Lin, curfew time is almost upon us. We should find a place to stay soon."

Lin Qian snapped back to attention and said, "You know Guangzhou well—lead the way and find us somewhere decent."

"Right away." Zheng Zhilong acknowledged.

Zheng Zhilong, with Lin Qian's cloth satchel slung over his shoulder, led the two of them weaving through the alleys, and within moments they arrived at a bustling street.

They settled on an inn called "Pine Wind Lodge."

Lin Qian asked the innkeeper for three superior rooms and also ordered hot bathwater and food and wine to be sent up.

The innkeeper, beaming from ear to ear, personally escorted the three of them upstairs.

Lin Qian entered his room and found it exceptionally tidy, with furnishings and decor that were quite refined.

Before long, a waiter brought up the food and wine. After eating and drinking his fill, Lin Qian had it cleared away, and then servants brought in a wooden tub and hot water, along with two young women to attend his bath.

In his previous life, Lin Qian had been accustomed to having women accompany him while bathing, so he acted naturally now.

Though these two young women were in the prime of their youth, their looks were middling at best, and Lin Qian had no designs on them.

After bathing, Lin Qian felt as if he had shed two catties of weight—this was the first time he had been this clean since arriving in the Great Ming.

He lay down and fell fast asleep on the bed.

In the six months since his transmigration, this was the most comfortable sleep Lin Qian had ever had.

The next day, dawn light was just beginning to break.

Lin Qian rose and went downstairs, finding Zheng Zhilong and Bailangzai waiting for him in the inn's main hall.

The three of them went to have breakfast first.

Guangzhou did not yet have a morning tea culture at this time, but as the birthplace of Cantonese cuisine, its breakfast offerings were already quite abundant.

Lin Qian chose a restaurant on the second floor and picked a seat by the window.

He ate his breakfast while gazing out at the scenery.

In his eyes, the city of Guangzhou was like a living scroll of Along the River During the Qingming Festival—everything he saw was fresh and novel.

He imagined that Western missionaries arriving in Guangzhou for the first time must have felt the same way; no wonder all sorts of travelogues were always full of praise for Chinese cities.

After introducing Guangzhou for quite a while, Zheng Zhilong could not help but ask, "Brother Lin, what are we doing today?"

"We'll take a stroll around the city first today," Lin Qian said.

The meeting with the councilman was set for the tenth day of the seventh month. They had arrived four days early, and as luck would have it, the Tanka boats had not yet returned—so they could first seek out the physician and take in Guangzhou's local customs at the same time.

"Great, I know plenty of good spots," Zheng Zhilong said excitedly.

After breakfast, the three of them wandered about the city.

Though it looked like idle wandering, Lin Qian was not without purpose—he made a focused study of Guangzhou's city gate defenses, the various waterways both large and small, and the patrol patterns of the soldiers.

Then he toured the major shops, not to buy anything, but only to observe the state of handicraft industry and technology.

Afterward, he visited the markets, acquainting himself thoroughly with grain prices, vegetable prices, and meat prices.

Lin Qian was not usually a man of many words.

But today he was especially fond of chatting with all sorts of people—from servants and waiters to vegetable farmers and butchers, and then to brokers and shopkeepers—anyone he could strike up a conversation with, he would exchange a few words.

At first he still needed Zheng Zhilong to translate the Cantonese for him, but within half a day, Lin Qian could already understand several everyday phrases.

This made Zheng Zhilong's jaw drop—after all, when he had first learned Cantonese, it had taken him over a month just to understand what people were saying.

In his previous life, Lin Qian had been a merchant who dealt with people constantly, and he knew well the principle of speaking to each person in their own language. Within a few sentences, he could make people let down their guard and talk freely.

In just one morning, he had learned the gist of everything he wanted to know.

For lunch, Lin Qian again chose a lavish restaurant—having come all the way to Guangzhou, he had no intention of shortchanging his stomach.

He had to make up for the half-month of deficits from eating the "sailor's three-piece set."

While eating, Lin Qian mulled over the information he had gathered that morning.

Combined with his knowledge from his previous life, he had already formed a rough judgment of the Great Ming's current economic problems.

The Great Ming was currently trapped in a strange cycle of import-driven inflation in the south and contraction-driven deflation in the north.

In Jiangnan, due to the influx of massive amounts of Spanish silver, productivity could not keep pace in the short term, causing silver inflation. The wealthy participated in overseas trade, earning silver at a speed comparable to printing money outright, and through lavish consumption, they plundered the wealth of the poor.

The Great Ming as a whole lacked sufficient silver, and because the roads were difficult to travel, transport was poor, and powerful households resisted taxes, the further north one went, the more scarce silver became—resulting in silver contraction.

Officials and powerful households in the northwest, taking advantage of the Single Whip law, tightened the money supply at harvest time to make silver appreciate rapidly; after the harvest, they loosened the money supply, causing silver to depreciate violently.

When the common folk had grain, grain was cheap; when they had silver, silver was cheap—they could only be ruthlessly squeezed dry by the landlord masters.

The common people truly exemplified the saying, "Suffering in prosperity, suffering in ruin."

Lin Qian, having been steeped in the ways of commerce for so long and possessing some knowledge of economics, discovered in just one morning countless methods by which officials and gentry sucked the marrow from the bones of the people.

After lunch, the three of them went downstairs and had not walked far before they spotted a medical clinic.

The clinic's plaque read "Green Plum Workshop."

Lin Qian suddenly recalled that the wound-healing medicine he had bought from the flower boat bore a plum blossom mark—he suspected it was produced by this very clinic.

In places like flower boats, cosmetics and powders might not be the finest, but wound-healing medicine was always top-grade.

As it happened, the ship was short a physician, so Lin Qian walked in to take a look.

The moment he reached the doorway, he could smell an extremely heavy aroma of Chinese medicine.

Upon entering, he was greeted by a row of massive medicine cabinets. Beside the counter there was no physician or attendant—only a girl of thirteen or fourteen minding the shop.

Having walked all morning without seeing a single woman, Lin Qian was somewhat curious now. He cupped his hands in greeting and asked, "Young miss, where are the adults of your household?"

The girl looked up at that, her black-and-white eyes taking in the three of them, then she said with a smile: "Our physician is in the back courtyard seeing patients right now. The three of you might as well wait a moment."

The girl's voice was crisp and clear, and she spoke in the official tongue. She showed no fear at all before strangers, which rather won one over.

The three of them, Lin Qian included, found a place to sit as instructed.

The girl nimbly poured tea for the three of them.

Though all she brewed was some cheap tea-dust, given the shabby furnishings of the clinic—so strapped for money they couldn't even afford an assistant and had to have a young girl mind the shop—this tea was already a thoughtful gesture.

The girl sat back down behind the counter, and Zheng Zhilong lowered his voice: "Brother Lin, if you're looking for a physician, I know a few good ones. This clinic has hardly any patients—business is dismal—so the medical skill here is probably mediocre."

The moment he finished speaking, as if to prove his point, a miserable scream came from the back courtyard.

Then a man's stern voice followed: "Bear with it!"

"It hurts! Have mercy, Doctor!"

"With this ailment of yours, it won't heal without pain—the pus must be completely drained. What about that wooden stick I gave you? Bite down on it and it won't hurt."

After that came the man's muffled screams of agony, clearly biting down on the wooden stick with all his might, unable to make a sound.

Zheng Zhilong's face went pale as he and Bailangzai exchanged glances.

Yahei

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