The pomegranate tree in the backyard of Wanxiang Tower was dyed amber by the setting sun. The branches were bent with ripe fruit, and the fallen petals covered the ground with scattered crimson petals. Su Jinli pinched a patched coarse cloth apron, her fingertips brushing against the starched, hardened stitching. The stitching was crooked, obviously made by a man. Nianli tugged at the corner of the apron and curled her lips. Her small nose wrinkled like a pomegranate seed under the pearl hairnet. The diamond-encrusted hair ornament gleamed in the twilight. "Mom, this cloth is rougher than the slingshot my grandfather made for me. It pricks my skin and it itches."
"It's more appropriate to wear it a little rough." Su Jinli squatted down to tie an apron for her daughter, deliberately turning the most conspicuous patch to the front. It was a piece of indigo coarse cloth patched with moon-white silk. "We're going to perform in a big opera soon, and ragged clothes will make us look like the actors on the stage." She turned and looked at Si Yan in front of the bronze mirror. The child was scraping the ash from the pottery bowl with a bamboo stick. The ebony abacus jingled at his waist, and every bead was polished to a shine by him.
"Si Yan, be gentle with the scraping. Don't pierce the bottom of the bowl." Jiang Yan passed a well-worn, starched handkerchief. The sleeve of his moon-white robe swept across the purple Duan inkstone on the stone table, where remnants of Su Jinli's daytime poetry writing still clung to it. Si Yan raised his head, his forehead stained with ash from a pot of burning pine branches. In the twilight, he looked like a clown with ink marks on the stage. "Dad, I've calculated it. Pine branch ash is the finest. According to the Qi Min Yao Shu, if you sift it through a sieve three times, it won't choke your throat."
Su Jinli suppressed a smile as she wiped her son's face, her fingertips tracing the cinnabar mole between his eyebrows. She had applied it herself, and now the ash marks made it look even more vibrant red. "That ash is applied so well that it really looks like a little mouse stealing oil." Si Yan, however, carefully adjusted the ash marks in front of the bronze mirror, using his little finger to draw three vertical lines on his cheek. "Mother, I've been eavesdropping outside the window of the Hu family's accounting office for half a day. He stockpiled three thousand yin of salt last year. At eighty wen a dou, he's selling it for three hundred wen now, making a net profit..."
"Alright, alright," Jiang Yan interrupted his son's calculations and unfolded the straw paper Su Jinli had written. The ink characters on the mulberry paper shone golden in the setting sun. "First, pretend to be a beggar, then calculate the Hu family's dirty money. Look at the lyrics your mother wrote—" He cleared his throat and deliberately recited in the tone of a storyteller: "Salt merchant Hu Wanguan, hoarding salt like charcoal, the people eat dust, he makes dirty money..."
"This lyric is easy to remember!" Nian Li clapped her hands and jumped up. The red pompom of the pomegranate brushed across Su Jinli's temples, causing the pearl pendant on her earlobe to sway gently. "This is the tune of the folk song my grandfather taught me in Hangzhou!" She snatched the straw paper, shaking her little head like a rattle, the silver bells in her hair jingling. After a while, she had memorized it by heart, and she even clapped her hands to match the rhythm seriously. Each beat landed precisely on the copper-like pomegranate leaves.
Siyan counted the pages, turning them with his little finger stained with saliva: "Mother wrote five poems, from the price of salt to stockpiling, and the last one is 'Master Censor, please set sail and investigate the Hu family's dirty money.'" He folded the pages into a palm-sized booklet and stuffed it into his patched sleeve pocket. The abacus beads made a tiny sound as they collided in the bag, as if there was a lively cricket in it.
At 11:30 PM, lanterns in the Yangzhou night market lit up one after another. Carp-shaped revolving lanterns spun in the wind, illuminating the bluestone slabs with flickering light. Nianli, holding Siyan's hand, squeezed through the crowd. Her coarse cloth brushed against cinnamon bark from the spice stall, leaving her covered in the spicy aroma and stained with a few strands of glistening sugar. She held a chipped ceramic bowl, a crescent-shaped notch on the rim. She had begged it from a tea stall that day, and the bottom was still stained with stale tea.
"Woo woo..." Nian Li howled twice, then, seeing that passersby were only focused on watching the circus perform fire, she suddenly climbed onto the stone lion at the entrance of the salt warehouse, puffed out her small chest, and burst into song. The night wind blew away her childish voice, like a spring dripping into a boiling pot of oil, instantly exploding into silence:
"The salt merchants are so evil-minded—the people are left to eat dust—"
A dou of salt costs three hundred coins—it can buy three dou of rice—"
Si Yan immediately joined in, tapping the bluestone slab with the bottom of a ceramic bowl to keep time. The abacus on his waist swayed in rhythm with his movements, like a string of wind chimes hanging from his waist:
"The Hu family has stored salt in their warehouses—silver piled up like a mountain—
The adults are hungry—the children are crying for their parents—"
The surrounding clamor suddenly died down. The old man selling sugar paintings forgot to stir his spoon, and the amber syrup solidified into strands in the copper spoon. The dough figurine maker's grip loosened, and his newly formed God of Wealth figurine fell to the ground, chipping a corner. Someone burst out laughing first, and then the laughter surged like a tide, shaking the lanterns. A woman holding a child wiped her tears and tossed a copper coin into a ceramic bowl. The five-cent coin landed on the bottom with a clear sound: "Good child, you sang well! You sang what was in our hearts!"
In the second-floor counting room of the salt warehouse, Hu Wanguan was counting banknotes on a gold-inlaid abacus. Each bead was polished to a perfect roundness, gleaming brilliantly in the candlelight. Hearing the children's rhyme from downstairs, he was so angry that his hand shook and he threw the abacus onto the table. The beads rolled all over the floor, hitting the banknotes with a dull thud, startling the swallows nesting on the beams. "Who's that bastard singing that nonsense?! Check it out!"
The servant scrambled upstairs, his official boots crushing several abacus beads. "Young Master, they're two little beggars! They're dressed in rags, their faces smeared with soot, and the people around them are singing along! That song... that song is specifically criticizing us for hoarding salt!"
Hu Wanguan rushed to the window, lifted a corner of the bamboo curtain, and peered down. Moonlight fell on Nianli, who stood atop a stone lion, her face unevenly smeared with soot. When she sang "Black Heart Money," she stuck out her tongue at the salt warehouse gate. Her pearl hairnet tilted to one side, making her look like a clown on stage. Siyan squatted at her feet, counting copper coins in a ceramic bowl with a clattering sound. The abacus swung rapidly at her waist, each bead catching the lantern light.
"They're rebelling! Get them out!" Hu Wanguan grabbed the blue and white porcelain tea bowl from the table and smashed it against the window. Porcelain shattered in front of the salt warehouse, startling Nian Li so much that she jumped, but she didn't stop singing. The servants rushed out, clubs in hand, but were blocked by a tide of civilians. Their shoulder poles and hoes gleamed coldly under the lanterns.
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