The third hour of the morning assembly was marked by an act of quiet, domestic discovery.
An old farmer named Uncle Zhao stepped down from the eighth tier of the marble stairs. He was a small, leathery man whose shoulders had been molded by sixty seasons of carrying water buckets with a shoulder-pole. He walked with the slow, deliberate shuffle of a man who measured his life by the length of a furrow, his bare feet cracked at the heels and stained with the indelible yellow hue of deep-river silt. His knees were knotted with salt-rheumatism. But he held his spine straight, bearing his small parcel before his breast with the dignity of an ambassador bearing a royal decree.
In his hands he carried an object wrapped in three layers of greased pig-bladder tied with a strand of dried horsehair.
He stopped two paces from Qiao Ming, his head bowed with country modesty. “Sounder Qiao. Honored Lady Yan. The people have talked about stone, timber, water, and grass. But there is one thing without which none of those can sustain a mortal life.”
With slow, respectful movements, the old farmer untied the horsehair thong. He peeled back the yellow pig-bladder layers, revealing a small, dried bottle-gourd four inches long, its shell darkened to the deep, lustrous hue of old walnut wood by the handling of forty ages. The mouth of the gourd was sealed with a plug of bees-wax. It was stamped with the ancient seal of the Prefect of…
