Chapter 220: Orioles and Swallows

Outside the west gate of Jiangling, there was a large expanse of public farmland belonging to the government offices, tilled by convict laborers. What they grew was not grain, but ramie and what the Hemp Affairs clerk called "great hemp."

"The Left Military Clerk has come at an awkward time. Both ramie and great hemp are sown with the rains in late second month or early third month, and they have only just sprouted. It will still be several months until they mature — at least mid-summer, the fifth month, before the first harvest can be gathered..."

The Hemp Affairs clerk offered apologies with his lips, but inwardly he found the Left Military Clerk's behavior utterly baffling. He needed hemp cloth, yet he even had to come inspect the hemp fields and hemp plants themselves. Did he have to go peer at a hen in the chicken coop to see if she was pretty before he ate an egg?

"What an odd fellow."

Heifu, unaware of the clerk's thoughts, earnestly asked about everything concerning great hemp. It turned out great hemp could be harvested three times a year: in late summer, at the Start of Autumn, and before the onset of winter. After harvest, the leaves were stripped away, and only the stalks were retted in pools. Once the fibers softened, they were pulled out, dried in the sun, and carefully separated — then they could be used to sew cloth.

"Rich fields yield fifty or even a hundred shi per mu; poor fields still yield thirty. Compared to obtaining silk from silkworms, growing hemp is far easier."

And so the hemp field before them held little more than sprouts just poking out tender leaves; nothing remarkable could be seen.

There was an exception, however. After circling halfway around this hemp field, which spanned a full thousand mu, on a small adjoining hill they at last discovered some hemp plants that had grown there from spilled seeds.

But looking at these plants, which stood as tall as nine chi and towered over him, Heifu's expression turned doubtful. "This is the great hemp you spoke of?"

"This is indeed great hemp."

Not only did the Hemp Affairs clerk nod, but Chen Wujiu at his side also gave an affirmative answer. Although this type of hemp was not as widely planted in the south as ramie, in the north it was the primary source of hemp cloth — something even a five-year-old child would recognize. Chen Wujiu was a physician who dealt with plants constantly; how could he possibly not know it?

Heifu was somewhat disappointed, because this did not seem to be the "great hemp" he had imagined.

In his previous life, during an internship, Heifu had accompanied a narcotics squad to arrest a household that secretly grew great hemp at home. The kind of great hemp that could be smoked, though very similar in form to the hemp before him, grew low and squat, not even half a person's height, and its leaves seemed larger and rounder. By contrast, the hemp before him had tall, slender stalks and much narrower leaves.

Heifu could not help recalling that in his previous life, a teacher had once explained to the class that although all were called great hemp, there were different subspecies. The northern Chinese great hemp widely used in ancient times for weaving cloth was a fiber type, with extremely low narcotic content. But the great hemp that grew in India and Yunnan had a higher narcotic content; once its flowers and leaves were dried, they could be used as a drug to be smoked. And the locals there chewed hemp seeds as a snack, as casually as the people of the Central Plains chewed melon seeds...

"What a pity..."

Heifu was slightly disappointed — not because he wanted to "take a puff" for the novelty, but because if he could find great hemp containing narcotic substances, it might provide an anesthetic for treating the wounded when dressing their injuries.

He had once asked Chen Wujiu: aside from wine, did physicians these days have any stupefying substance to ease a man's pain after an injury?

Chen Wujiu thought for a moment, then told Heifu that it was said that when Bian Que treated patients, he had once used a kind of "poisoned wine" that made a man fall into a deathlike stupor for three days. Then he would cut open the patient's chest, probe the heart, deal with the diseased site, and finally administer a divine remedy so that the patient awoke as if from a dream, restored to his original state...

This account astounded Heifu. So surgical operations existed that early? Bian Que was truly formidable.

But when he asked Chen Wujiu whether he could make that kind of "poisoned wine" that could knock a man out for three days, Chen Wujiu said helplessly that ever since the physicians' school had scattered and Bian Que had vanished, that secret formula had been lost.

Lost? Are you kidding me?

Heifu was greatly disappointed. Still, ancient techniques did often suffer breaks in transmission; it was all the fault of physicians, restricted by faction and lineage, each treasuring their own meager knowledge like a broom of gold.

But today, upon hearing the name "great hemp," a different thought stirred in Heifu's mind.

"It's said that the divine physician Hua Tuo of the Eastern Han once created Mafei Powder. Since the name contains the word 'ma' — hemp — it probably has some connection to hemp. Perhaps it was a narcotic substance extracted from the flowers and leaves of great hemp?"

Although the hemp before him seemed different from the great hemp of later ages, Heifu was still unwilling to give up. Over two thousand years, perhaps the flowers and leaves of the hemp of this era had a higher narcotic content than in later times? Besides, this was a warm climatic period; the climate and vegetation around the Cloud Dream Marsh were similar to Yunnan in later ages. Perhaps some wild great hemp could be found? Maybe, not yet altered by human domestication, it could yield a decent narcotic substance.

So Heifu asked Chen Wujiu, "Physician Chen, I wonder — aside from weaving cloth, has this hemp ever been used in medicine?"

"It has."

Chen Wujiu answered without hesitation, "The seeds of this hemp, fried in oil, are called hemp kernel. They primarily treat dry, bound stools and can be used to moisten the intestines and promote bowel movements!"

He lowered his voice. "What, does the Left Military Clerk need to use it?"

You're the one who's constipated!

Heifu was speechless. He could only put on a mysterious air as he recounted a tale, claiming that when he was a child, out of mischief, he had seen a wild great hemp plant in the mountains. In his childish ignorance, he had plucked its flowers and leaves and chewed them, and then had fallen into a sleep from which he did not wake...

"Physician Chen, imagine this: an officer is wounded on the battlefield, pain gnawing at his heart. If at that moment there were something like Bian Que's poisoned wine to stupefy him into unconsciousness, and while he was insensible his severed limb or wound could be swiftly treated, sparing all officers and soldiers from suffering — would that not be wonderful?"

Chen Wujiu was a clever man and caught on at once. "The Left Military Clerk means that I should try to see whether the flowers and leaves of great hemp can also be used as medicine?"

"Exactly. If you could produce something akin to Bian Que's poisoned wine, Physician Chen, your merit before all physicians under heaven would be that of reviving a lost art! I imagine the Grand Physician would once again regard Physician Chen with special favor."

Spurred on by Heifu, Chen Wujiu's interest was piqued. He agreed that while Heifu trained the medical corps, he too would experiment with the flowers and leaves of great hemp to see if they could be made into medicine, and would take men to search for wild great hemp.

"If it can be produced, the credit for this matter will belong entirely to Physician Chen. It will have nothing to do with me."

Heifu washed his hands of the matter in advance, resolving to let Chen Wujiu puzzle it out on his own. He would inquire no further. Whether it succeeded or failed, it would have nothing to do with him.

"It's all Ye Teng's fault. Now I truly do good deeds without leaving my name." Heifu did not know whether to laugh or cry.

After that, Heifu discussed with the Hemp Affairs clerk: within this month, the Military Office needed one hundred bolts of ramie cloth, and he requested the Weaving Workshop to help make each bolt into twenty rolls of bandages. And over the half year that followed, the Weaving Workshop would also need to weave 1,500 bolts of ramie cloth and produce 30,000 rolls of bandages!

"Is such a large quantity needed?" Chen Wujiu was somewhat surprised. At the market price of three hundred cash per bolt of ramie cloth, that meant an outlay of four hundred fifty thousand cash — no small sum.

"Be prepared for any eventuality."

So said Heifu. He knew that Nan Commandery would conscript at least thirty thousand soldiers this year. Though not every man would be wounded, they had to guarantee at least one roll of bandages per person, did they not? And if that was still not enough, the Weaving Workshop in the rear would need to keep producing and supplying the front lines.

Moreover, if he remembered correctly, although this war would ultimately end with the destruction of Chu, the process would be very long. Every standoff and tug-of-war would cause considerable casualties. That would be the time for the medical corps to show their worth. Apart from boosting morale so the soldiers had no rear worries, if they could save as many men as possible, that too would be a good deed.

As for the expense? If he remembered correctly, after breaking out of Tongyang and returning to Qin, the King of Qin's reward to Heifu and the nearly one thousand men with him had amounted to as much as two or three million cash! Heifu alone had received seventy thousand. If spending just a few hundred thousand cash could boost the morale of tens of thousands of soldiers and save hundreds or thousands of lives, it was absolutely worth it! He trusted that the King of Qin and the Commandery Governor and Commandery Commandant could do that arithmetic.

These matters were beyond the Hemp Affairs clerk's authority to decide, so Heifu and Chen Wujiu returned to the Weaving Workshop west of Jiangling city, intending to discuss everything properly with the Weaving Workshop Master Artisan. But just as they reached the entrance, they discovered that, at some unknown time, a large crowd of women had gathered here...

The crowd of women, a scene of orioles and swallows, all held bamboo trays filled with fresh mulberry leaves, and were walking with small steps toward the silkworm house.

Heifu certainly did not mistake them for mulberry-picking girls, for judging by their attire alone, these women clearly came from wealthy and noble households. They were led by several middle-aged matrons dressed with proper dignity and decorum; the rest ranged from their early teens to their twenties or thirties, all clad in brocade and silk garments — either wide-sleeved deep robes or two-toned ruqun skirts. They had also dusted on fragrant powder and carried scent sachets, filling the entire Weaving Workshop with the fragrance of thoroughwort...

"What are all these wives and daughters of Jiangling nobles doing here?" Heifu found it odd.

"I beg the Left Military Clerk not to take offense."

Seeing that Heifu and the others had returned, the Weaving Workshop Master Artisan hurried over to apologize. "On the first day of the last month of spring, by custom, from the queen and consorts above down to the wives and daughters of commandery and county governors and magistrates below, all must go to the local Weaving Workshop and silkworm house to personally pick mulberry leaves, rear silkworms, and reel silk. This is the rite of encouraging sericulture. Today, led by the Commandery Governor's wife and daughter, the wives and daughters of all the officials great and small in the city have come. I was just now busy preparing for this and have been remiss..."

Heifu suddenly understood. So that was why the Weaving Workshop Master Artisan had hurried off earlier — it was for this!

He knew that during the spring plowing in the first and second months, the King, the Commandery Governors, and the County Magistrates, to show their regard for agriculture, all had to personally go into the fields and touch the plow handle; this was called "encouraging agriculture." Their womenfolk could not be idle either. At the critical silkworm-rearing moment in the third month, they too had to come out and personally perform these "women's works," to show an attitude of encouraging mulberry and silkworm.

This was not mere formalism either, for even within their own homes, these women, free from worry about food and clothing, were encouraged to learn to weave cloth and sew garments. These were all part of "women's works," and the clothes and silks they wove would even be sent to the local chief official's wife to compare skill.

Having run into this by chance, Heifu and Chen Wujiu ought to withdraw. But Heifu thought to himself, "That being the case, the Commandery Governor's wife and daughter are among them?"

His eyes swept across the flowerbed of orioles and swallows, toward the very front row by the silkworm house, where a young girl stood beside a middle-aged noblewoman.

The young girl was far away. She wore a cyan deep robe in the color prescribed by ritual for the third month's palette. Her pale neck was long and graceful, and since she had not yet undergone her coming-of-age ceremony, her glossy black hair hung down over her shoulders. At that moment, she was struggling to hold a bamboo tray full of mulberry leaves, following her mother into the silkworm house, and soon vanished from sight...

Heifu saw only a figure from behind. It would not be until the Double Third Festival two days later that he would have a chance to glimpse her features...

(End of chapter)