Trouble

Lujiang Village was called Lujiang Village because, two li west of the village, there was a small river called the Lujiang River.

When Chen Yan first heard that a river barely ten feet wide was called the "Lujiang River," disbelief was written all over his face.

When he was seven, Chen Yan asked his father in this life, Chen Dasheng, why such a small river could be called a "jiang." Chen Dasheng answered:

"What's wrong with that?"

The honest man sat at the table, slurping thin rice porridge from a chipped wooden bowl. He reached out with his chopsticks for some dressed wild greens, confusion flickering in his eyes at his second son's question.

Chen Yan decided he might as well not have asked.

Later, in the winter when Chen Yan was nine, he traveled to Xingyuan City with Chen Dasheng and Chen Dong for the first time. There, an old man told him why the Lujiang River bore that name.

Over two hundred years ago, the Lujiang River had been dozens of zhang wide.

It had become what it was now because Emperor Yanwu, King of the Great Yan Dynasty, had undertaken a vast canal project over two hundred years earlier. He had diverted the Yanjing River, the largest river in his realm, so that it ran from north to south.

After that, the Lujiang River, a tributary of the lower Yanjing River, had lost much of its flow and dwindled to its present size.

The villagers of Lujiang Village had filled in its abandoned riverbed and turned it into farmland.

Chen Yan entered Lujiang Village and headed home.

At this hour, most of the villagers were busy in the fields. Those still in the village were mostly the elderly, women too frail for farmwork, and children.

"Grandpa Lin!"