The Southern Bumpkins' Tour of Laling (3)
As dawn broke, the Laling administrator’s office lay wrapped in heavy silence. The nomadic driver of the post carriage had not brought the horses down that day, forcing them to walk for the better part of an hour to reach it. A “no visitors” plaque hung on the main gate, and the commander seated on a white horse was calmly turning away outsiders who had come seeking mediation for some brawl.
In one hand he held a bamboo slip—the sort he rarely bothered with anymore—while the other gripped the horse’s reins. He carried no weapon, yet the soldiers standing behind him gripped long poles stripped of their spearheads and guarded the mansion entrance with formidable discipline.
“Excuse me, but is it impossible to meet the administrator today?”
“Who are you?”
“Ah, I am Zhou Gongjin. I carry a personal letter from His Excellency Yuan Gonglu, Governor of Jing Province. We sent word yesterday and were promised an audience this morning…”
“A personal letter from the governor… mm… Ah, here it is. Please come this way.”
The commander ran his eyes over the bamboo slip until he found the names of Sun Ce’s party, then signaled his soldiers. The gate opened, and a steward was informed of the guests’ arrival.
“Ah, so it’s the gentlemen from yesterday. This way, please.”
The office gate that had been closed to them the day before now swung wide, revealing a young woman whose most striking feature was the impressive set of dark circles beneath her eyes.
“A pleasure to meet you. I am Liu Ziahui, Administrator of Laling.”
“Administrator? I thought you were the magistrate?”
“Laling is a full commandery now, so of course it has an administrator. A year ago the place had lost so many young people that it was downgraded to a mere county… but when tax revenue is high enough, changing an administrative name is simple enough.”
Sun Ce and Zhou Yu had both been born in 175. At this moment in 191 they were only fifteen or sixteen, yet their appearances already shone. Zhou Yu, praised in the romances as the peerless Gongjin, and Sun Ce—whose historical counterpart had grown so furious over a mere scratch on his face that he died of sheer pride—already possessed the kind of looks that could stop conversation.
Liu Ziahui’s eyes trembled for a brief moment. When she spoke again her voice had softened considerably.
“Changing a name is simple, you say… what exactly do you mean?”
“The man who changes weights and measures on a whim is none other than our own Duke of Yan… er, His Grace. Altering a local place name would be child’s play to him.”
“…?!”
“Why the surprise? The very system of weights and measures we use today was first created by an ancestor of His Grace. If a forefather establishes the foundation and his descendant refines it, that seems perfectly reasonable, does it not?”
The original creator of the chi-guan system had been Shang Yang of Qin, a man of the Gongsun clan. While not a direct ancestor, he could reasonably be counted as a distant forebear of Gongsun Zan. Of course the blood tie was extremely remote, but in an era when even the distant scions of Prince Jing of Zhongshan were accepted as imperial kin, no one quibbled over such trivial details. Thanks to the general acceptance that anyone claiming descent from the Yellow Emperor’s line must be legitimate, the common reaction was simply, “As expected of His Grace the Duke—he truly is extraordinary.”
To establish new standards, Gongsun Zan had employed a method similar to that used four hundred years earlier by the Greek philosopher Eratosthenes. He calculated the circumference of the earth, then took one one-hundred-millionth of that length—roughly forty modern centimeters—and declared it one chi. Remarkably, this matched the length of the two existing chi standards (around forty-six centimeters), allowing ordinary people to accept the new measurement with little resistance. The coincidence arose from the margin of error between the institute’s measurement of the earth and its true circumference, but to people of this era it seemed like the wisdom of the ancients made manifest. The populace adopted the new system without hardship, and everyone was happy.
Next, he defined one liang—roughly sixty-four modern grams—as the weight of water filling a cube whose sides were one-tenth of the new chi. This too fell close to the existing two-liang standard of about seventy grams, so the people adapted to the new weight without difficulty. In practical terms, the common folk simply felt the old units had doubled, but the new interconnected system of length, volume, and weight greatly stimulated scholarly curiosity. Tax collectors and officials discovered that a single iron rod calibrated to one Gongsun chi could measure nearly everything they needed, making the old grain-based system seem crude by comparison.
Naturally, some officials and merchants still tried to tamper with the standards, but the nomads’ eyes were everywhere across the Central Plains. They faithfully reported every “disrespectful underling’s” crooked schemes to the great man they called the incarnation of Tengri who commands fire. Besides, few lunatics in this world were brave enough to openly cheat a man who possessed a body that could not be achieved without modern pharmaceuticals, who had carved through a million-strong army to take Zhang Jue’s head, who could turn stones into blazing infernos, who flew through the sky, who had conquered Ji Province in a single night, and who had spirited the emperor out of Luoyang alone.
The real problem was volume. The old hu measured roughly 180 milliliters, while the new hu was based on the amount of water that filled the vessel used for one Gongsun jin—approximately 400 milliliters. Because the old volumetric units did not convert cleanly, confusion arose. Still, this was a problem that time would solve naturally. With only the weight standard one could still measure volume, so the convenience for merchants and officials was incomparable. The institute’s researchers had calculated that people naturally gravitate toward the easier standard, and therefore simply left the matter alone.
Finally, Gongsun Zan divided the scale between the freezing and boiling points of water into zero and one hundred, creating the concept of temperature. Of course the notions of hot and cold had always existed, but compared to Newton’s temperature scale which would not appear until 1701, this was roughly fifteen hundred years ahead of its time. The difficulty lay in manufacturing the thermometer itself. Although glass technology had existed since the Spring and Autumn period, the delicate capillary tubes required for a modern-style thermometer could not yet be produced. Blacksmiths, recalling the thermal expansion coefficients of metals they had learned through experience, managed to create a primitive bimetallic thermometer—essentially a dial-type gauge similar to an old oven thermometer.
The instruments of this era were not particularly accurate, but temperature was a concept only blacksmiths truly needed to worry about. Even they treated the devices merely as teaching tools to help apprentices master the notoriously difficult art of fire control. Thus the margin of error was not considered a serious issue.
Once the new weights and measures were established, the quality of iron ingots produced by the ironworks could be standardized across the entire State of Yan. Standardized ingots made it far easier to produce wrought iron and steel suited to specific purposes. First-grade steel ingots went to the Yan army, second-grade to the civilian market, adding a valuable new commodity to the existing trade networks. The combination of standardized steel and primitive bimetallic thermometers allowed any blacksmith who had shed his apprentice status to produce tools of consistent quality. The institute’s massive blast furnaces and converters, along with the waterwheels installed along the great river, gathered the small forges that once dotted every village into a single site. With so many blacksmiths working together, the complex gradually took on the form of a primitive manufactory.
As the smiths gathered, natural rivalry arose. Each man’s hard-earned know-how was shared, and new inventions born from the scholars’ intellectual curiosity began to appear one after another. So many intellectuals were drawn to the institute that administrative vacancies could not be filled, yet the researchers simply shrugged and said, “But we came up with some kickass inventions, didn’t we? Drinks on me,” and paid the shortage little mind. It was for exactly these reasons that Liu Ziahui—who had once been nothing more than an aide under the Governor of Ji—had rocketed past magistrate all the way to administrator in record time.
Of course the terrifying human meat-grinder known as the State of Yan was not a cash-strapped nation like Joseon, so official salaries were quite generous. But what good was a high salary when there was no time to spend it? The few administrators who had married could at least endure each day by looking at their families’ smiles, but unfortunately Liu Ziahui remained single. Her own relatives were scattered across Yan, each holding their own post, so she rarely saw their faces. The trade port she had created in a burst of developmental zeal had become her own shackles; even her resignation letters were rejected. At some point the figure of Gongsun Zan had fallen in her mind from the exalted Duke of Yan all the way down to “that damn boss.”
Administrators who, unlike her, simply maintained the status quo without throwing themselves into development enjoyed perfectly reasonable work-life balance. Her tragedy was largely self-inflicted… yet sadly few people were willing to acknowledge that fact.
“In any case… I understand you carry a personal letter for His Grace the Duke. May I ask its precise contents?”
“Yes. The eldest legitimate son of Governor Yuan Gonglu, Yuan Yao, has reached the age of marriage this year. We have come to propose a familial alliance with His Highness the Prince of Bohai, who has not yet taken a betrothed.”
“Mm… well, that is a matter for Elder Liu Baian to decide, so permission should be simple enough… however, the traitor Dong Zhongying recently sent troops to Pingyuan, leaving the people of Yan rather unsettled. His Grace the Duke of Yan is currently in Pingyuan himself, making it difficult to arrange an audience with His Highness the Prince… mm… if you wait a few days the situation should be resolved. We can offer you the inner residence, so please consider it a chance to recover from your journey and rest comfortably.”
“We travel with a large retinue and would not wish to impose. We gratefully decline.”
“Ugh… ah… yes. Then… do as you please.”
She was twenty-five years old. Number of men she had met privately: zero. She possessed no ability to refuse a handsome man’s words. When the bold suggestion she had mustered the courage to offer was politely declined, she sank like a stone. It was said that the court sessions held that day were unusually strict.
Wildflowers were beginning to bloom across Laling’s fields, yet her own spring had still not arrived.