WSMTATMC C9

Chapter 9

When Wang Ying returned from the front courtyard, Chen Qingyan was already awake, his expression dark.

“Second Uncle’s family came to borrow money again?”

“Mhm. And you’re still awake this late?”

“I was woken by the noise.”

Seeing that it wasn’t comfortable for him to lie flat, Wang Ying reached over to tuck a bolster under his back.

“Th—thank you.” Their closeness brought a faint heat to Chen Qingyan’s cheeks; fortunately, the candlelight in the room was dim — otherwise, Wang Ying would surely have teased him about it.

“That Second Uncle of yours is really shameless,” Wang Ying said. “He came straight out with a request for five hundred taels of silver. I said a few words, and he started acting like the elder who needed to help your father ‘discipline’ me.”

“Outrageous — he wouldn’t dare!” Chen Qingyan slapped the bed in anger.

“What wouldn’t he dare? He even said that when you die, he’ll sell me to a brothel and make sure I never rise again. If we hadn’t called in the officials, he’d likely have turned the whole household upside down.”

Chen Qingyan’s chest rose and fell sharply with fury. He had always known his Second Uncle was unreliable, but hadn’t imagined it could be this bad. He immediately started to get up to confront him.

Wang Ying promptly pressed him back down. “You can’t even walk — lie back and rest.”

“Cough, cough… Use the wheelchair to push me there… I want to ask him face-to-face — what kind of elder cough, cough… says such things? Simply shameless to the extreme!”

Wang Ying quickly fetched water to help ease his cough.

“He acts so brazen only because he sees you bedridden and without the strength to rely on, with no strong elders in the house.”

“If you really want to look out for your family, focus on getting better. Now that we’ve refused him money, he’s sure to hold a grudge, and may cause trouble later.”

After a long pause, Chen Qingyan nodded slightly. “You’re right. In the past, I thought too narrowly — I kept feeling that once the imperial exam road was cut off, there was no hope, and never considered the family’s situation. Wang Ying… thank you.”

The seriousness of the words made Wang Ying a little embarrassed; he scratched his head. “As long as you can think clearly, that’s good. It’s late — get some rest.”

He himself was thinking about the wheat in the experimental field — it should be ready for harvest today.

During this time, Wang Ying had figured out a pattern: time in the experimental field flowed differently from outside.

He had only noticed recently; the wheat that had needed another month to mature had already entered the ripening phase ahead of schedule.

This delighted him. Did it mean that in the outside world where wheat could be grown twice a year, inside the field it could be grown three or four times — or more?

Or perhaps he could bring vegetable seeds inside and grow them year-round?

After blowing out the candle, Wang Ying lay in bed, preparing to enter the experimental field, when Chen Qingyan’s voice spoke again.

“Do you want to know why I can’t take the imperial exams anymore?”

“If you want to tell me, tell me. If not, it doesn’t matter.” For someone’s personality to change so drastically, it could only be because of something unpleasant. Wang Ying was curious, but not enough to tear open someone’s wounds.

Chen Qingyan was silent for a moment, then sighed lightly. “Sleep.”

The next morning, Wang Ying had barely woken when his mother-in-law summoned him to the front courtyard.

In the main room, Madam Li handed him the household account books from past years.

“Ying’er, can you read them?”

Wang Ying nodded. “I know a few characters — enough to understand them.”

He flipped through them. Until last March, the accounts generally showed a balance each year. But there were no entries past that date — right after Chen Qingyan’s failed exam attempt.

“Why did they stop here?”

Li explained quietly, “At that time, Yan’er was gravely ill, and I had no mind to bother with such things, so I simply stopped recording.”

Chen Qingyun had never learned bookkeeping either, so the mother and daughter had muddled along in managing the household.

Wang Ying set aside the account books and tallied up the household’s current coin. Setting aside the loans to Second Master Chen, they had only six guan¹ left.

“Only this much?”

Li and Qingyun both nodded.

A headache began to throb behind Wang Ying’s eyes.

Qingyun said hesitantly, “There are still plenty of things in the storeroom. If we don’t have enough cash, we can pawn them.”

“Let’s take a look at the storeroom first.” Wang Ying took the keys, leading Madam Li and his second sister-in-law to the Chen family’s storehouse.

The “storeroom” was just an uninhabited side room containing seven or eight large chests.

“These hold bolts of cloth. If we run short on money, we take them to the pawnshop at West Gate,” Qingyun explained — clearly, she had done it more than once.

Counting through them, Wang Ying found six bolts of coarse cloth, thirteen of fine cloth, three of silk, and one of brocade.

From recent inquiries, he knew coarse cloth went for about 300 copper coins per bolt; one bolt, forty chi² (around 100+ meters), could make several sets of clothing.

Fine cloth cost about one tael of silver per bolt. Silk and brocade were far more expensive and hard to come by — even in town, silver alone might not buy them. These bolts must have been old stock kept from wealthier days.

But pawning cloth reduced its value sharply: at best, 200 coins for a coarse bolt, 700 for a fine one — a significant loss.

Other chests held two full porcelain sets: bowls and plates used only for major events, like Chen Qingyan’s recent wedding.

Porcelain was expensive, but in this era it was considered part of the family’s “face” and couldn’t be pawned lightly.

One chest held inkstones, brushes, and ink sticks. Li explained, “These are sent every year by Fourth Uncle, who’s an official away from home. Yan’er and Song’er use them for study — they can’t be touched.”

In this era, stationery was costly — well beyond the reach of most commoners. This box was perhaps the storeroom’s most valuable content.

By the end of the inventory, Wang Ying had a good idea of their assets: about a hundred taels’ worth in fixed property. But he wasn’t ready to touch the storeroom; usable cash was just six guan.

“How many people are in our household?” Wang Ying produced brush and paper for a list.

“Besides Mother and the three of us siblings, there are eight servants.”

Qingyun ticked them off on her fingers: “Chen Bo who serves eldest brother, Tian Mama who serves Mother, Xiaocui in my room, Qiu’an who tends Third Brother, Madam Chen in the kitchen, Brother Liu who does the buying, Old Tian who tends the animals, and Xiaolin at the gate.”

These servants all drew wages — over a guan per month altogether. The largest expense by far was food; even economising, that took five guan a month. Chen Qingyan’s medicine and treatment ran another three guan, not counting social obligations and gifts.

Only after truly grasping the household books did Wang Ying realise they had been living by “robbing Peter to pay Paul.”

Li saw his difficulty. “In a month, the tenant farmers on the manor will pay their rent. The grain can sell for seventy to eighty guan.”

It was mid-June now, past the wheat harvest. Every year, tenants paid rent after harvesting, once they’d handed over taxes to the government; what remained often just covered their own year’s sustenance.

“What crops do we grow on the manor?”

Li blinked. “Oh, millet, wheat, and the like.”

“How much is the annual yield?”

“In the past, these matters were all your father’s concern…”

Wang Ying rubbed his forehead. All right — more ignorance. “I’ll go to the manor tomorrow.”

“I’ll go too!” Qingyun’s eyes lit up.

“Fine — better that we both see it, so no one can fool us.”

Besides confirming the crops, Wang Ying wanted to test-grow seeds brought from the experimental field. If they grew, wheat yields could rise sharply.

In this era, wheat had never undergone artificial breeding. Farmers used the most primitive seed-selection methods — floating in water to discard shrivelled grains — and harvests were pitiful.

Take the original Wang family as an example: they had eight mu³ of “good” fields and six of “lower” fields. “Good” meant flat and fertile enough, yet even then, an acre often yielded only three shi⁴ of grain in a good year.

In a drought or flood, one shi per mu was considered fortunate — crop failure was common.

Lower fields were the upland slopes, unable to hold water, yielding far less and mainly planted in beans for the family’s own use. The Chen manor likely wasn’t much better.

The next morning, Wang Ying put on sturdy dark clothes — easier to work in the fields without ruining them.

Chen Qingyan was up early too. Dressed and in his wheelchair, he had Chen Bo push him to the privy.

When he returned he said, “I hear you’re going to the manor.”

“Mhm. I want to see our fields.”

“Thank you for taking the trouble…”

“It’s no trouble — I just don’t know what the people there are like, or how approachable they’ll be.”

“When I was a child, I went to the estate a few times with Father. The steward was trustworthy enough — his surname is Chen, a very distant cousin. Back during a drought, his family fled here from Li County; Grandfather took them in and put them to work on the manor.”

“These past few years, after Father died, I was busy with the exams and haven’t visited in three or four years. If not for my ill health, I’d go with you today.”

“It’s fine. Qingyun and Tian Mama will come along.”

“Be careful on the road — best to go and come back early.”

“All right. And you, while I’m gone, eat more. Don’t go fainting on me again.”

Chen Qingyan turned away, embarrassed — this man really did know how to hit where it hurt.

notes:

1. Guan (贯) – A currency unit meaning a string of 1,000 copper coins, valued around 1 tael of silver depending on exchange rate.
2. Chi (尺) – A traditional unit of length; in different eras it varied, but here about 0.33 metres (33 cm).
3. Mu (亩) – A traditional unit of land; 1 mu ≈ 0.165 acre or 666.7 m².
4. Shi (石) – A traditional unit of grain measure; historically varied between regions, but roughly equivalent to 100–120 litres of grain in many dynasties.