Chapter 379: Sheltering All the Shivering Scholars Under Heaven and Bringing Smiles to Their Faces!

In mid-June of the twenty-seventh year of Qin Shi Huang, on the broad southern bank of the great river, long-wooled Qiang sheep with black-and-white coats were pinned to the ground by sturdy Qiang men. Their four legs were bound tight, and they bleated in terror.

But what greeted this flock was not a sharp bronze knife, but a group of Qiang women with hair loose over their shoulders. In their hands were bone wool-combs; they sheared the long wool about to shed from the Qiang sheep, tuft by tuft, and placed it into leather pouches to be washed at the river in the afternoon…

The Qiang women, ranging in age, went about the work they did twice a year while watching the Qin officials observing them from a distance. Without the slightest reserve they discussed them loudly, breaking now and then into gales of laughter.

"What are they saying?"

Heifu summoned the cavalry commander Qiang Huang, whose ancestors were also Qiang. Although the accent of the Northern Lands Qiang differed from that of the Longxi Qiang, he could generally understand them.

"Does the Right Chief of the Masses truly wish to hear?" Qiang Huang could barely keep a straight face.

"Just say it."

Heifu sat outside his felt tent by the river, drinking fermented mare's milk he had gradually grown accustomed to. Add a little sugar, and it tasted much like sweet milk — no wonder the Yuezhi princes and nobles across the river were so fond of brown sugar.

"Then I'll say it."

Qiang Huang said that the Qiang women were speculating: these black-faced Qin officials had been watching them for two days straight — could it be that one of them had taken a fancy to someone and wanted to sleep with her?

At that point an older Qiang woman said mysteriously that perhaps it wasn't them they were interested in, but the sheep… and then she told a joke about how some Qin soldiers garrisoned at the frontier passes, having no women for years on end, could only make do with the ewes.

"Pfft."

The joke was far too crude; Heifu sprayed a mouthful of mare's milk and choked on it.

Still, those Qiang women weren't exactly wrong — he was indeed interested in their sheep, and their wool…

In fact, he had already seen a similar scene days earlier, when Li Xin and Heifu had led their troops to "Jishi Mountain" upstream from the Fuhan Fortress to perform, on Qin Shi Huang's behalf, the ritual sacrifice at what the Central Plains people believed to be the "river source."

The character "Qiang" means "Western Rong shepherds." The ancient Qiang people were famed throughout the world for sheep-herding. Not only had they domesticated a long-wooled "Qiang sheep" (the Ganjia Tibetan sheep) resembling later generations' wool sheep, they had also developed fairly mature wool-spinning and weaving techniques.

These Qiang sheep, whether black-and-white, pure black, or pure white, grew long wool every autumn and winter, which they shed when the weather gradually warmed in spring and summer.

Taking advantage of this trait, the Qiang women sheared wool twice a year, in spring and summer. Using fine-toothed bamboo combs, they combed the coarse wool that had already shed or was about to shed from the Qiang sheep. After washing it and fluffing it by plucking a bowstring, they could twist it into thick wool yarn for weaving.

When you thought about it, the Central Plains and the south grew kudzu and hemp in abundance, and also had silk for making clothes. The Qiang lands had none of these things. If they didn't want to freeze, they could only turn to animal pelts and fur. And since the local altitude was high and the temperature low, the animals generally wore a thick coat of downy fur. In early times they likely skinned them directly for warmth, and gradually they created the craft of wool weaving: coarser wool was woven into rugs and felt tents, finer wool into clothes to ward off the cold.

This woolen cloth was also a specialty of the Qiang lands, called "woven hide" in the "Tribute of Yu," and was presented as annual tribute to Qin. But the Central Plains was not that cold; nobles and commoners alike were accustomed to wearing kudzu, hemp, silk, and floss, and on the contrary they disdained the Qiang and Rong woolen clothes as rough and carrying a rank mutton stench impossible to remove — just like the smell that forever clung to those wool-shearing Qiang women.

Heifu did not mind it. He traded a piece of brown sugar for several woolen garments, which closely resembled Tibetan robes. After putting one on, he discovered that even the worst sweater of later ages was finer and more comfortable than this.

They were not particularly pleasant to wear, but their ability to ward off the cold was probably reliable. Otherwise, the thousands upon thousands of Qiang would have long since frozen to death in the terrible winters of the Huangzhong region, let alone migrated toward the even vaster Qinghai-Tibet Plateau…

People of the Central Plains always assumed the Rong and Di were resistant to cold, when in truth the main reason was simply that they wore thicker clothing.

Besides sheep's wool, the hair of the yak, called "li cattle," was also used by the Qiang for weaving. They even wove rugs known as "maoji," which were sent as tribute to Xianyang, but these merely hung in the corners of the palace as a novelty, with few people fond of them.

All this only strengthened Heifu's conviction that "a stone from another mountain can polish jade."

Every foot has its strength, every inch its weakness. To say nothing of distant Greece and Rome in the far west, even the Qiang, neighbors right at their doorstep who seemed backward compared to the Central Plains in every way, still possessed many things worth learning from.

Heifu did not know whether the Xiongnu, the Hexi Corridor, or the Western Regions possessed similar techniques, or whether there were other breeds of wool sheep. But what he had seen in Qiang territory alone was enough to support his memorial, "A Proposal to Shear Sheep's Wool for Clothing"!

In his memorial to Qin Shi Huang, he described what he had seen and heard, and proposed that the trading caravans of the Wushi Luo be sent deep into Qiang territory to exchange various salts, sugars, and grains for large numbers of male and female Qiang sheep, to be brought back and raised on the pasturelands of the frontier commanderies.

Then, by means of seizure, enticement, purchase, and other methods, bring some Qiang women skilled in shearing and weaving within the passes to teach wool-spinning and weaving techniques to the border folk, and have the Eastern and Western Weaving Workshops of the Privy Treasury in Xianyang improve upon them to raise efficiency.

Heifu still held the post of "Privy Treasury Deputy," so this proposal was well within his duties, and he wrote it without the slightest hesitation.

"With the skills of the Mohists and the Privy Treasury weaving workshop artisans, replicating this technique, and even refining and expanding upon it, should not be difficult."

The thought that before long he could wear woolen clothes without the rank odor in winter was rather comforting.

Before cotton-spinning technology could be found and popularized, woolen clothes were probably the most suitable winter garments. They were nothing like the so-called "winter clothes" of the Central Plains, which were really just two layers of coarse hemp, nor were they like fur coats that required killing animals to obtain and only wealthy households and nobles could afford. Wool could be continuously regrown — good quality and not expensive.

Once woolen clothes were distributed to the soldiers of the border commanderies, the problem of keeping warm that plagued the garrison troops at Fuhan Fortress could also be smoothly resolved, and it would make the "military farming" strategy even more practical and feasible.

That was why Heifu wrote in his memorial that if it could be extended across the entire north, it would "shelter all the shivering scholars under heaven and bring smiles to their faces!"

While the body would be kept warm, the head must not be forgotten either.

Touching his hair, Heifu had a flash of inspiration and recalled the dog-fur hat brought by his northeastern classmate in the dormitory back at the police academy in his previous life. Unfortunately, the school was in the south, and in three years the guy had only managed to catch one chance to wear it outside when it snowed…

No sooner thought than done. On the paper he carried with him, he swiftly sketched the shape of a dog-fur hat with brush and ink. Things were different now from later ages; in the Central Plains, dog-slaughtering was common, dog meat being as popular as pork, especially in Yan, Zhao, and the Huai-Si-Pei region, so dog pelts were not hard to come by.

He imagined the scene, many years hence, of Qin soldiers in dog-fur hats and woolen greatcoats, crossbows in hand, standing guard on the Great Wall amid swirling snow, even advancing into the even colder old forests of the northeast — the picture was rather stirring…

What Heifu did not realize at that moment was that his casual sketch would have consequences: in later ages, even hats made of brown or yellow dog fur would be called "Black Dog Hats," in honor of their inventor.

After finishing the dog-fur hat sketch and placing the drawing in his traveling pack, Heifu joined the others who had finished striking camp, and went to the great river's bank to rendezvous with Li Xin.

This eastward inspection along the river was Li Xin's proposal. After completing the sacrifice at Jishi Mountain and the river source, he wanted to come downstream, to look at the opposite bank, to see the land where the blade of war would point in the future. Thus, they left five hundred soldiers at Fuhan to build a stockade and open up fields, while the remaining five hundred cavalry rode light and fast.

The southern bank of the great river was Rong and Qiang territory — fragmented and divided, not difficult to subdue. The northern bank was the Hexi Corridor, the land of the Yuezhi, a kingdom stretching nearly a thousand li with a hundred thousand archers.

It was a pity that a long, towering mountain range blocked Li Xin's view, preventing him from seeing the pastures of Hexi and the nomadic camps of the Yuezhi.

Li Xin sat astride his white horse on the riverbank, having the guide and interpreter question the local Qiang people.

"What is this mountain called?"

Li Xin pointed to the high mountain on the northern bank and asked the Qiang herders.

After the Qiang herders spoke at length with gestures, the interpreter gave Li Xin the answer: "He says the herders on the northern bank call it 'Gaolan.'"

Li Xin engraved this name deeply in his memory. Heifu also heard these words and thought to himself: could this be the area of later generations' Lanzhou?

After two days of surveying the terrain, Li Xin believed that this place, bordering the great river, was easy to open up for farming. Next year or the year after, they could send a force to garrison and farm the southern bank, and transfer some migrants from the eastern lands via Guanzhong to establish a walled city, as a base for advancing into Hexi.

Li Xin took off the jade ring at his waist and hurled it far into the river, swearing aloud: "Gaolan, Gaolan… within three years, Xin shall surely cross this river! Surely climb this mountain!"

Heifu stood behind Li Xin, his expression equally solemn, but what he was thinking was: the forerunner of pulled noodles, "soup cakes," had already become all the rage among the eastern migrants south of the Wei River, and baked flatbread was also quite popular. In the future, they would follow the migrants and spread here as well — could this… be the will of Heaven?

This place was the final destination of Heifu and Li Xin's journey. The next day, the two men, along with over a thousand soldiers, began their return to Didao.

Heifu did not know that although he himself was still in Longxi, those three memorials had already been brought back to Xianyang by Qin Shi Huang. Apart from the high-saddle and stirrup, which was a military secret to be promoted covertly and shown to no one, the other two strategies — military farming and woolen clothing — were issued by the Emperor to the hundred officials for debate, and from this there unexpectedly erupted a great debate among the Legalist, Confucian, and Mohist schools…

(End of Chapter)