Chapter 372: Chicken Rib

"Your subject believes we should not rush to break with the Kingdom of Shu."

The Pinglin General Cen Peng had stationed his troops at Lantian and was training newly recruited militia from the Guanzhong region. Summoned, he immediately traveled to Shanglin County south of Chang'an to pay his respects to the King of Wei. When Diwu Lun asked him about Feng Yan's proposal to dispatch troops to seize Hanzhong, Cen Peng firmly opposed it.

"At present, Your Majesty has already sent the General of Chariots and Cavalry Geng Bozhao with ten thousand troops to strike Beidi, and the Front General Jing Sunqing with twenty thousand troops, together with over ten thousand Hedong soldiers, to attack Shangdang. We are fighting two campaigns simultaneously, both long-distance expeditions."

"The troops still in Guanzhong are either garrisoned with the Guard General Wan Junyou in Youfufeng to guard against a Wei clan counterattack, or stationed with me at Yao Pass to watch the Greenwood forces' movements. There are also scattered soldiers and stragglers under orders to suppress bandits. The new recruits are not yet trained. Our military strength simply cannot sustain a third campaign!"

Cen Peng continued, "Even if, as Minister of Foreign Affairs Feng Yan proposes, we dispatch three thousand troops and send a bold general south via the Tangluo Road, there is indeed Yan Cen, a Greenwood chieftain in Hanzhong willing to pledge allegiance to Your Majesty. But Wei can go there, and so can Shu. Moreover, the Shu army has already occupied Wudu and is now attacking Yangping Pass. Once that pass is breached, the thousand li of Hanzhong will lie open and unobstructed."

"Even if our surprise force immediately heads south, it may well encounter the Shu army at Nanzheng. They will be many, we will be few. At that point, do we fight, or do we not?"

Once Wei and Shu went to war, it would no longer be a matter that three or five thousand men could resolve. It would inevitably drag on, with both sides having to cross mountains and ridges just to send troops into Hanzhong. Given the region's destitution, it could not bear the burden of feeding a large army, and provisions would again have to be hauled from afar.

Even if one expended enormous effort to drive the Shu army back, a large garrison would then be required to hold Hanzhong, yet the local manpower and resources would be barely better than nothing…

Diwu Lun picked up the rib bone of the whole chicken he and Cen Peng had just finished eating and said with a smile, "So this Hanzhong is just like a chicken rib — a pity to discard, yet nothing to be gained by eating it."

Cen Peng laughed. "Your Majesty's metaphor is brilliant. Allow your subject to offer a few cruder comparisons."

"Compared to Hanzhong, Shangdang is the chicken wing, and Taiyuan is the drumstick — they will let Your Majesty eat his fill of meat."

In that case, would Hebei be the chicken breast? Diwu Lun smiled and said, "General, your words have merit. In the past, Sima Cuo and Zhang Yi debated before King Huiwen of Qin. Zhang Yi argued that they should first attack Han, but Sima Cuo forcefully rejected Zhang Yi's proposal, contending that attacking Shu would yield its manpower and resources to strengthen their military readiness. King Huiwen of Qin adopted Sima Cuo's advice."

"Today we likewise face two paths — eastward advance or southward advance — but the circumstances are entirely the reverse."

Where to commit limited troops, which territory to contest — there was no need to even think about it. Attacking Hanzhong now was destined to be a losing venture. Seizing the moment of Northern Han's internal chaos to capture Shanxi in one stroke and bite off the rich lands of Jizhou — that would be the great profit.

"Yet some worry that if Gongsun Shu takes Hanzhong, he will emulate Emperor Gaozu of Han and march north."

That "someone" was naturally Feng Yan, but Cen Peng thought otherwise. "Your subject has heard that since the Han dynasty, the old roads have fallen into disuse!"

Cen Peng knew this common knowledge well. "After the Shu army takes Hanzhong, it will need time to consolidate and recover. Even if, a year or half a year later, they send troops north along the Baoxie, Tangluo, or Ziwu roads, all are perilous defiles without water routes. Soldiers carrying dry rations would need to march half a month just to emerge from the valleys, by which time they would be utterly exhausted."

"Our army need only wait at ease for the weary foe — a thousand men could hold off ten thousand."

Diwu Lun had personally traversed the Ziwu and other valley roads, and it was indeed so. Defense was far easier than offense. Diwu Lun nodded. "Good. Maintaining relations with the King of Shu for now is to our advantage. The Baoxie Road will be entrusted to Youfufeng's Wan Xiu to watch over. I will also dispatch troops to guard the Tangluo Road."

"As for the defense of the Ziwu Road, Junran, you may take that on as well." Diwu Lun was simply afraid Cen Peng might have too much idle time.

The intelligence Feng Yan had risked life and limb to send back, the "brilliant stratagem" for seizing Hanzhong with ease, was thus rejected by Diwu Lun — without Feng Yan even getting a chance to debate Cen Peng.

He was now only qualified to deal with minor schemes and had no part at all in overall strategy. Unknowingly, he had been pushed to the periphery of the inner circle, occupying roughly the same niche as the Chamberlain for Law Enforcement Peng Chong, who was kept around solely to take the blame — in other words, a chicken rib.

And Diwu Lun's present return to Shanglin County was also for another matter.

……

After Diwu Lun moved the capital back to Chang'an, many people north of the Wei River also relocated south of it. Because Yin Lihua was an exceptionally skilled embroiderer, she was assigned to the "Cocoon Observatory," where weaving women were concentrated, and appointed as a female official.

The Cocoon Observatory, as its name implied, was so called for its abundance of mulberry and silkworms. This place had been the center of palace sericulture since Han times. Situated near Kunming Pool, it had channels connecting directly to the Wei River and Chang'an, making transport very convenient.

The third month was precisely the month for raising silkworms, hence called the "silkworm month." The pure white silkworms grew rapidly, feeding day and night without pause. The mulberry-picking women were likewise quite busy. Mulberry leaves from ten thousand mu of groves were plucked and spread upon rattan trays. Spring woods, warm rain, the mulberry leaves lush and green.

Yin Lihua watched them rest upon the green mulberry leaves, their deft, fine teeth moving soundlessly, gnawing open a hole, then widening it, like ripples spreading across a lake's surface. Throughout the Cocoon Palace, the sound of delicate chewing rustled and whispered, like the murmuring flow of a mountain spring or stream.

The silkworms slept and woke, woke and slept. With each dormancy they shed a layer of skin and donned new garments, growing ever whiter and plumper. By next month they would spin their cocoons.

"If only one could be like a silkworm, free of all worries, just eating and eating all day long — how fine would that be?"

The thought flickered past and was immediately rejected. "No. If that were so, then when the cocoon is spun and one is dropped into boiling water to be scalded to death for the silk, all the while utterly unaware — would that not be tragic?"

Yin Lihua was rather sharp-witted. Perhaps because of the King of Wei's subtle, intangible regard, after becoming a weaving woman, Yin Lihua had risen quite quickly and was already a minor overseer.

She had also arranged for her younger brother Yin Xing to sit the civil service examination. He passed into the second rank and entered the palace as an attendant, frequently able to see the King of Wei.

In their spare moments amid the bustle, the weaving women of the former Han palace would also discuss this King who, with thunderous measures, had restored peace to Guanzhong.

"This King of Wei is strange. He doesn't order court garments made, but instead has us produce clothing for the soldiers. I hear the Queen in Jianzhang Palace is also working a spinning wheel."

"The same goes for the brocades produced at the Cocoon Observatory — military banners are made first, and only then supplied for palace use."

The weaving women were fairly content with their present lot. The King of Wei had vigorously promoted agriculture and sericulture, and apart from private individual women spinning and weaving, the weaving women formerly attached to the palace had also been mobilized. Officials came to tell them that although the King of Wei had lifted their personal restrictions, the world outside was still very chaotic. They would do better to stay for now — they would receive protection and could exchange their labor for food. Each month they were also issued some cloth as compensation, which could count toward a dowry. They were even permitted to live in the palace gardens once reserved for the Emperor's consorts.

Spinning frames had nearly all been concentrated at the Cocoon Observatory. Besides the mulberry groves nearby, there were also over ten thousand mu of hemp fields, both jute and white hemp. So apart from spinning silk, they also had to weave hemp and kudzu cloth.

Yet recently they had a source of discontent. Starting from the second month, officials from the Privy Treasury had scoured every weaving workshop at the Shanglin Cocoon Observatory, searching for leftover scraps of silk and hemp. In the past, these scraps usually belonged to the weaving women themselves — for stitching insoles, making a small undergarment or drawers, that sort of thing…

But now all scraps were to be handed over. Many weaving women could only wash their old undergarments again and again, while wondering what the Privy Treasury was doing collecting so many hemp cloth scraps.

When the weaving women curiously asked the female official Yin Lihua, who was said to "have connections," she merely smiled.

"I hear they're being used to make heti."

……

"It used to be called heti. From now on, according to the King of Wei, it is to be called 'paper.'"

"Why is the King of Wei, like Wang Mang, so fond of randomly renaming things? Wouldn't it be better to leave them unchanged?"

"Shh, keep your voice down — do you want to get us killed?"

Making heti was an old craft of the Privy Treasury. The official weaving rooms produced large quantities of loose threads and cloth scraps every day. To avoid waste, as early as the early Han, craftsmen had been chopping, steaming, and pounding them to produce a thin material resembling cloth…

Because its texture was coarse, it was not very suitable for writing and was mostly used to wrap small items. However, since the late Han, the craft had grown increasingly refined, and writing directly on it was no longer out of the question. Many people had already replaced silk with this cheap material for copying texts.

In the second month, after the King of Wei entered Chang'an, he issued an order to the Privy Treasury and the Chief Commandant of Waters and Parks, even writing out some process steps, instructing the craftsmen to create "paper" on the basis of heti.

The craft itself posed no great difficulty — a slight improvement following the King of Wei's suggestions sufficed. There was no shortage of hands either. But one thing nearly stumped the craftsmen to death: the raw materials.

Craftsmen liked to speak blunt truths, and they grumbled quietly again: "The King of Wei has the nerve to test others on 'common knowledge' — he himself has none!"

"He wants us to make paper from hemp, but this is the wrong season! Hemp is only harvested after autumn. It's just turned spring, the hemp hasn't even sprouted yet — make what the hell!"

But when the leadership merely moves their lips, those below run their legs off. What could the Privy Treasury officials and craftsmen do? They could only gather up the scraps from every weaving room.

Fortunately, among the materials the King of Wei proposed, besides hemp, there were also mulberry bark and vine.

But it was the peak silkworm-raising season — who would dare lay a hand on the mulberry trees? So the craftsmen turned their eyes to the old, gnarled vines in Shanglin, gathering quite a lot. They peeled them and soaked them in the ponds used for retting hemp, where they steeped for the better part of a month.

As for the King of Wei's verbal instruction that they try chopping wood to make paper — that was a joke. For wood to soften to the same degree as vine, it would have to soak for a year or half a year at least. Fine, toss it into Kunming Pool to soak. When the King of Wei has unified all under Heaven, we can look back and see if it's softened yet.

The papermaking process need not be belabored here. In any case, "The King of Wei has no common sense" had already become the shared conviction of the Privy Treasury craftsmen.

But after busying themselves for a month or so, when the third month drew to a close and the thing was actually produced, the craftsmen felt the yellow surface of the paper and clicked their tongues in wonder. It was indeed somewhat different from heti.

These hemp papers and vine papers, made according to Diwu Lun's requirements with different raw materials and ratios, were stacked together and delivered to the Kunming Palace, where the royal presence had graciously arrived.

The hemp papers included white hemp and yellow hemp. The latter was coarser, and on its reverse side, the unpounded yellow hemp fibers, grass traces, and cloth threads were clearly discernible.

Rattan paper was softer and looser in texture, and its color leaned whiter.

These were only "samples" — whether to produce them in bulk still awaited the King of Wei's decision.

"Jiya, Bowen, you two go try writing on it."

Diwu Lun's own calligraphy was merely average, so he had only the Palace Gentlemen with good handwriting take up the brush to test it — he generally brought only the top ten Palace Gentlemen with him when going out.

After Du Du and Fu Long, ranked first and second among the Palace Gentlemen, had tried it with the brush as ordered, Diwu Lun asked them how it felt.

Du Du's answer carried a note of ingratiation. Although inwardly he felt it was "not as good to write on as silk," this was, after all, something the King of Wei had ordered made, so he merely said: "The brush glides light and smooth — truly an exquisite thing for writing."

Fu Long, however, spoke the honest truth: "This material soaks up ink too readily. Your servant is still accustomed to using bamboo slips and wooden tablets. If one makes a mistake, one can scrape and correct it with a knife. But with this, once the brush touches and the ink sinks in, the ink stains seep through to the other side, and it can no longer be altered."

The other Palace Gentlemen felt much the same. Diwu Lun smiled and said nothing. Having grown used to one writing medium, to switch abruptly to another — it would be strange if anyone could adapt instantly.

It was Cheng Gong's reaction that Diwu Lun found rather interesting. After testing it, he reported back: "Great King, though this material is not as pleasant to write on as silk, it is certainly cheaper than silk; and though it is not as convenient for corrections as bamboo slips, it is incomparably light."

Exactly — possessing the lightness of silk yet cheaper than bamboo slips: that was the reason paper was destined to supplant the two earlier mediums.

That said, Diwu Lun's urgent order to the Privy Treasurer to manufacture paper was not meant to replace bamboo slips and wooden tablets overnight. This was an event momentous enough to be recorded in the annals of civilization. Historically, that process took five hundred years; even now, it could not be accomplished without fifty years of gradual, imperceptible change.

In Diwu Lun's plan, in the short term, paper was not for ordinary people to waste on writing — it was to be deployed as a weapon!

A weapon of propaganda!

Paper alone was not enough; it had to be paired with another major project he had ordered the Privy Treasurer to develop: woodblock printing.

Because the King of Wei esteemed simplicity and disliked ornamentation, the wood-carving artisans in the Privy Treasurer had nearly lost their livelihoods, but recently they had found a use for their skills again. Even so, it took over a month of trial and error before they discovered that blocks of pear wood and jujube wood best suited the King of Wei's requirements. And the ink needed also took a full half-year of formulation before it yielded results.

Policy essays were neatly copied onto paper and pasted onto planed-smooth, thick wooden blocks. The thin, nearly transparent manuscript paper was affixed face-down against the block, turning the characters into reverse images, their strokes clear and distinct.

The carver used a graver to cut away the unmarked portions of the block's surface, carving with meticulous care. As the graver traced its path bit by bit, the characters emerged as raised relief — positive text.

When printing, the raised characters were inked with a specially prepared ink, then paper was laid over them. A tool was used to gently brush the back of the paper, and the writing was left upon the sheet.

When the fresh sheet was carefully lifted away, dried, and presented before the King of Wei, it was clear that the sturdier rattan paper was, compared to hemp paper, far better suited for printing.

After Diwu Lun examined it, he found it far too crude and was only barely satisfied. The craft would still need slow exploration and improvement. But as a propaganda weapon, once mass-printed and disseminated throughout the city, to every commandery, and even across newly occupied lands, it was entirely sufficient.

He then had it passed around among the Palace Gentlemen. Du Du, Fu Long, and the others, seeing their own essays appear on it without needing to be copied out, were all rather surprised — but not utterly astonished. The principle was, after all, much the same as a seal.

Some even complained that during the printing process, blank areas had picked up stray ink stains, distorting and blurring the characters, which felt off-putting.

Only Cheng Gong, holding this wondrous printed product, suddenly grew agitated and bowed twice to Diwu Lun.

"Cheng Shaozi, why are you bowing?" Diwu Lun asked.

Cheng Gong, holding the paper in both hands, said: "Your servant suddenly recalled how, in the past, when I taught disciples in the villages of Right Fufeng, I constantly suffered from a lack of books to read. Dozens of people would share a single tablet, or else listen to my oral recitation — it was terribly inconvenient."

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"But now, with these two things, if the learning of the sages can be printed onto paper, countless copies can be produced in a single day. Then, given time, every disciple will have books to read!"

Even having risen in the world, he had not forgotten the hardships of his former disciples. Diwu Lun was very pleased. He had promoted Cheng Gong from the forties into the top ten — he had not misjudged the man. He then turned his gaze to the others: "Anyone else?"

Du Du, thinking of the Greater and Lesser Du legal commentaries passed down in his family, responded: "If the Great King's edicts, decrees, and legal ordinances could be printed upon it, then the errors of petty clerks copying by hand, which ruin great affairs, could be avoided."

Those who could rank at the top were no fools. Fu Long, having inherited his father the elder Fu Zhan's political sensitivity, immediately drew further inferences.

Good heavens — from the examinations to this very day, the King of Wei had truly linked one ring to the next. Brilliant, absolutely brilliant!

He then said: "If the policy essays can be printed upon it, transmitted to Chang'an, and spread throughout the realm, so that people read and recite them, then no one will fail to know that Heaven's Mandate rests with Wei, and that the fortune of the Han house has utterly run its course!"