Jinghe Year Sixteen, the fifteenth day of the first month, the Capital.
On the evening of the Lantern Festival, the lanterns burned as they always had.
Along both banks of the Qinhuai, painted pleasure boats crowded together like woven threads, their lanterns like stars, casting half the river in red.
Sadly, this year's lanterns seemed three shades dimmer than last year's.
White mourning cloth still hung at Court for Fang Qi, Minister of Works.
After the snow, the cold pierced flesh and bone.
The Dongjing Menghua Lu recorded that lanterns were lit for the Lantern Festival from the fourteenth through the eighteenth, the imperial guards lifted the curfew, and people of every surname roamed freely to admire them. It was called the height of splendor.
But that splendor lay not in the lanterns alone, but in the peace and happiness of people's hearts.
Now Fang Qi had just died, Shen Duan lay ill, Wei Nisheng oversaw official appointments, and Xie Lin was still on the road.
Not a single day at Court passed in peace, yet singing and music still rang without pause along the Qinhuai, and the lantern boats sailed as before...
This was not peace, but peace's shadow.
The lanterns were three shades dimmer through no fault of their own. People's hearts had darkened first.
At the court assembly on the fifteenth day of the first month, nothing else arose. The officials were silent; only Fang Qi's posthumous title was discussed.
The Ministry of Rites submitted its memorial, stating that Fang Qi had been upright and circumspect throughout his life, had served in successive offices without fault, and had led the Ministry of Works for eight years, repairing rivers and canals, maintaining the Palace City, and reducing needless expenditure. It requested the title "Cultured and Solemn."
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