A weaver of straw sandals

He had found a band of refugees to rely on for the time being and confirmed that he was a transmigrator with a heavenly winning hand. Just one day later, he suffered a trifling setback.

It was nothing much, really. One of his only five important possessions-his straw sandals-had ripped clean apart while he was helping his companions gather river mussels. The tear ran from end to end, leaving them impossible to wear.

For an instant, Liu Cheng panicked a little. Wasn't the journey from Pengcheng to Jiankang the same as going from Xuzhou to Nanjing in later times? That was a good seven or eight hundred li. They had barely set out, and now he had no sandals. How was he supposed to walk?

This could get someone killed!

Of course, his panic lasted only a moment. Soon he realized that on a long trek involving several thousand people, straw sandals were consumables. There had to be a source of replacements.

"Cheng, go find Grandpa Wang." Seeing Liu Cheng approaching from afar with his ruined sandals in hand, the man who had interjected about the White Register two nights earlier offered a helpful reminder. He was carrying a bundle of firewood on his back while feeding his sheep tender grass beside the road. "I just saw him go past. Walk a few dozen paces ahead and call for Grandpa Wang. He weaves fine straw sandals. Half a sheng of millet will buy you a pair."

"Thank you, Brother Qi." Liu Acheng was naturally delighted.

"Don't use millet. Trade these mussels instead." Perhaps it was because the boy kept calling him "Brother," but when Liu Cheng came closer and Brother Qi saw the mussels, he offered another quiet reminder. "It's all the same. Save your millet to keep yourself alive."

Liu Acheng glanced back at the others, who were still gathering mussels. Since his sandals had been ruined while working for everyone, he felt no qualms. He thanked Brother Qi, cradled a dozen or so mussels in some leaves, and went around him to call for the old man up ahead.

Sure enough, at the call for Grandpa Wang, a man with a grizzled beard and plenty of grass scraps in his hair emerged from the procession. Two children followed him out, and all three stopped by the roadside. Then a woman pushing a wheelbarrow pulled out and stopped as well.

Liu Cheng could see a string of straw sandals tied to the wheelbarrow. The old man also had an unfinished pair hanging from a hemp cord around his neck. His hands never stopped-he was weaving as he walked. Impressed, Liu Cheng hurried forward with the mussels and explained what he wanted.

Grandpa Wang frowned at the sight of the mussels and voiced his displeasure at once. "You there, haven't you got a bag of millet at your waist?"

"Are you short of millet, Grandpa? The children are young, and they have all this walking to do. They need some meat, or their feet can easily swell." Liu Cheng hastily put on an apologetic smile. "We just caught these. They won't spoil before you cook them tonight."

"I'm afraid they'll upset their stomachs, and then we'll have to push them along." Grandpa Wang glanced back at the two children, who were peering curiously at the mussels, and shook his head, but eventually nodded. "Does going without meat really make your feet swell? All right, then. Take them over to my daughter-in-law's cart and have her put them in the clay pot. Leave your broken sandals too, and pick yourself a smaller pair. Plenty of people covet big sandals, without realizing that an oversized pair fits badly and wears out faster."

Liu Cheng silently noted that he had learned another word: these straw shoes for outdoor use were called straw sandals. He followed the old man toward the center of the procession and found the wheelbarrow, with seven or eight pairs of sandals on it. First, still holding the mussels, he cupped his hands toward the woman and greeted her as "Sister-in-law." Startled, she hurriedly set down the cart and clasped her hands together, at a loss.

The boy thought nothing of her reaction. In just two days, he had already grown used to it. Plenty of these ordinary people were poor with words.

He set the mussels on the ground himself, then chose a small pair of sandals from the cart. They did not fit when he tried them, so he picked an even smaller pair. Just as he was about to put them on, he saw the woman placing the mussels in an empty clay pot. He put down the sandals first and raised a hand to get her attention. "No hurry, Sister-in-law. I'll get a little water for your pot, so the mussels don't die in the sun."

With that, he took the clay pot barefoot to the river where they had just gathered the mussels and scooped up some water. He returned it to the woman before trying on the sandals. This time they fit perfectly, and delight showed on his face. After setting down the pot, the woman turned and saw him. Though she still said nothing, she pulled something from the cart-he could not tell whether it counted as hemp rope or dried hemp vine-and handed it to him.

The boy bound his feet and sandals securely together beside the road, growing more pleased by the moment. He thanked the woman and the frowning Old Wang several times before turning back to help the others, enduring the prickly itch of his new sandals.

It was a tiny episode, hardly worth mentioning, but Liu Acheng kept it in mind. When they made camp that night, he even resisted the urge to ask Grandpa Liu San more questions and instead sat thinking beside the fire.

The reason was simple. That day, the boy had seen clearly that because Grandpa Wang could weave straw sandals, he lacked no kind of supplies along the road. The cart his daughter-in-law pushed carried not only far more millet than anyone else's, but also cloth, money, vinegar, salt, and even a rusty short knife without a sheath. Presumably, all of it had been traded for sandals. He just did not know whether the wheelbarrow had been acquired the same way.

What was this called?

The scarcity of skilled labor in a vast market.

Straw sandals were hard currency right now, an absolute necessity, and even after they reached the lands south of the Yangtze, they would provide a steady source of income. The Grand Historian had said that those without wealth must labor. True enough, but there were different ways to sell one's labor. Shouldn't a penniless fellow like him, whose body had yet to finish growing, give up the daily toil of gathering firewood and start a business in handicrafts?

Surely "a weaver of sandals and seller of mats" sounded a cut above "woodcutter"?

The only question was whether, on this flight from disaster, he would have the spare time to learn the necessary skills without compromising basic survival. What if it kept him from gathering firewood and mussels along the road, and Grandpa Liu San refused him a second bowl of food that night?

But then he reconsidered. Would reaching the south mean he no longer had to worry about survival? Would he stop wondering where his next meal would come from? If he wanted to learn, the sooner the better. Once he had mastered it, he would no longer have to worry about his next meal!

Having thought it through, he stopped agonizing. Over the next two days, Liu Acheng did not immediately seek out a master. Instead, while gathering firewood, he repeatedly observed the others and looked for a suitable teacher.

Quite a few people in the procession could weave straw sandals. When their sandals broke, many simply found rice straw or something similar and wove or repaired them themselves. There were also several whose craftsmanship, like Grandpa Wang's, was good enough to sell-roughly one for every two or three hundred people. That was probably the result of selection by a buyer's market... In fact, observing the sandal makers brought Liu Cheng an unexpected benefit: he roughly estimated the size of the procession and distinguished its broad composition.

There seemed to be three or four thousand people in all, men and women, old and young. The proportion of able-bodied adults was a little high, but overall it matched the thousand-plus households everyone spoke of.

More specifically, the procession had clearly defined layers. At its core were Liu Zhi, also known as Liu Rengong, and his immediate relatives, slaves, and retainers, including the grain guard led by his eldest son and the escort led by his youngest-roughly four or five hundred people. Next came members of his Liu clan, probably a thousand or so. Last were the attached ranks of people with other surnames, though these were essentially all fellow locals from Pengcheng and Pei Kingdom who had already depended on this family.

Returning to the matter at hand, after observing everyone, Liu Acheng ultimately chose Grandpa Wang. The reasons were simple. First, he did not yet want to leave the group he had grown familiar with—the companions who literally ate around the same fire—and Grandpa Wang's group was close by, no more than one campfire away when they stopped for the night. Second, he had discovered that Grandpa Wang's son had not joined the escort or anything of the sort. His son really was dead. That might give Liu Acheng something to say when asking to learn sandal weaving and perhaps reduce the resistance.

"You there want to learn to weave straw sandals?" Another day later, that evening beside a newly lit fire, Grandpa Wang sat on the ground twisting rice straw and looked the uninvited young visitor up and down.

"Yes, I do." Liu Cheng was thoroughly respectful and did not even sit down. "Just call me Cheng, Grandpa."

"You said every sandal you weave before we settle down in the south will be mine?" Grandpa Wang continued questioning him.

"Of course."

"And you'll help me pound the rice straw?"

"Naturally."

"I won't teach you." Grandpa Wang waved him off.

"Why?" The transmigrator's heart sank, but he kept a smile piled onto his face.

"Why else?" Grandpa Wang pointed at a woman and two children watching a clay pot beside the fire. "Weaving sandals isn't difficult, and plenty of people know how. Back in the village, or once we reach our destination, anyone can learn however they like. It isn't carpentry, where you have to spend years apprenticed to someone. But right now we're traveling and looking after children. Who has the attention to spare for teaching you? Wait until we get there."

That was perfectly reasonable. The old man simply did not want extra branches growing out of the journey. Liu Acheng had nothing to say. He could only thank him again, bow in farewell, and return to his own fire, planning to approach someone else the next day.

Yet at noon the next day, when the procession reached a town, a disturbance broke out and interrupted Liu Acheng's plans again.

It was not a case of local people resisting the refugees. In fact, most of the locals had already left too. Rather, when the officer stationed there issued another round of supplies according to the documents from Pengcheng, the grain given to the procession had become the same sort Liu Acheng had received at the very beginning.

Eight sheng became seven, and the seven were mixed with sand and pebbles. There was not even any talk of deducting the cost of the bag anymore. They simply cut the amount outright.

The people in the procession naturally resented this discrepancy, and Liu Huzi soon brought men on horseback, bows in hand, to raise a clamor outside the military camp.

But it accomplished little. The local officer ignored them entirely, merely shutting the camp gates and watching coldly from behind the palisade. Then Liu Acheng saw Lord Ren for the first time. He looked to be in his fifties or sixties, with grizzled hair and beard. Accompanied by two older sons, he drove his youngest son straight back, then sent his eldest forward to bow and negotiate. Only after repeated pleas did they begin issuing grain again.

To the transmigrator, this was nothing out of the ordinary.

From the soldiers' perspective, they were already more than a hundred li from Pengcheng. Heaven was high, and the grand commander was far away. Could anyone expect every officer and soldier of Great Jin to love the common people like his own children? This was widely acknowledged as one of the darkest periods in Chinese history. Their willingness to give out seven sheng of grain was already a testament to the grand commander's lingering authority and the bearing of an imperial army, wasn't it?

From the refugees' perspective, so many people had abandoned their homes and livelihoods to come this far, even harvesting their crops early. Could they walk back? Or would they dare lead a crowd of women and children against camps and towns when Great Jin's northern expedition troops were everywhere around them? If not, they would just have to swallow it.

So the outcome was inevitable.

What the boy had not expected, however, was how badly this incident would damage the procession's morale. Or rather, what truly surprised Liu Acheng was that although Lord Ren knew to restrain his youngest son and ask for the grain to be issued again, he failed to promptly reassure the thousand-plus households of refugees from the Huai River region who had followed him. He let complaints run rampant through the procession, and all the dragging of feet that day delayed both replenishing their fuel and continuing their journey.

That was not all. Toward evening, just as the cooks finally finished collecting the grain, a light rain began. Out in the wilderness, they could not even have a hot meal, and the situation grew worse.

Many of the older people had noticed the signs in the sky that afternoon and warned that it might rain that night. But amid the chaos, no one took charge. They dragged things out until the rain actually fell before reacting, which only stirred greater alarm and resentment in the procession.

Of course, none of this was the transmigrator's business. A boy who had forcibly wrapped his head in a headcloth to look like an adult was not about to be brought to his knees by a light shower at the end of summer. Nor was it his place, as an outsider, to comment on how this Refugee Commander Liu Rengong was strong on the outside but hollow within. He simply crouched under a tree with his companions, sheltering from the rain and eating outrageously sour wild fruit, grimacing as he listened to their complaints.

And just as Brother Qi mentioned for the third time that his sheep would fall ill from being drenched, Grandpa Wang unexpectedly came looking for him.

"You're willing to teach me now, Grandpa?" Liu Cheng was visibly surprised.

"We've no prospect of supper anyway, and we're sitting idle. While there's still daylight, I might as well teach you. If you're clever, you'll learn it in one evening." Grandpa Wang's tone remained somewhat stiff.

Liu Acheng could more or less guess the reason. Perhaps that day's experience had given the old man a sense of danger and made him want to lower his posture within the procession, especially since his family truly consisted of the old, weak, women, and children. As for the boy, he was only learning to weave sandals, after all. There was little more to say. He readily nodded, told his companions, and followed the old man.

Unlike the "mess" the transmigrator had deliberately chosen, made up mostly of sturdy laborers and bachelors, Grandpa Wang's "mess" clearly leaned more toward women and children. Not only was his daughter-in-law there, holding her two children and staring at the sky with a worried face, but many other women and elderly people were watching the sky too. Even when they complained, however, they did not shout like the able-bodied men nearby. They only muttered quietly.

What struck Liu Acheng as novel was that, for the first time, he heard someone chanting an incantation. The person had broken off a tree branch and was chanting over it, drawing many women to kneel and bow nearby. He could not tell whether it was Buddhist prayer or Daoist recitation.

None of that interfered with learning to weave sandals. It really was quite simple, with only three or four technical points, which he soon understood... How did one pound dry rice straw to soften it? How did one begin by twisting straw into a thick cord to form the "strand"? Then how did one make several thin straw cords for the "warp"? How did one keep feeding more straw into the "strand" to lengthen it, continually interweaving warp and weft into a mesh? How did one find a simple shoe mold and pull, squeeze, and pound the weave into the shape of a sandal?

At most, the final step was to thread in some cattail leaves to serve as something like shoelaces.

And so, before darkness fell, Liu Acheng was holding a straw sandal with a slightly crooked shape and a somewhat loose middle section in its main cord, proclaiming himself proudly promoted to a skilled trade.

Human joys and sorrows were not shared, and people's fates differed utterly... Just when the procession suffered a major setback and everyone was at their most dejected, Liu Acheng successfully changed professions, with financial freedom seemingly just around the corner. Over the next few days, whether by coincidence or not, the situation reversed again.

Several consecutive days of sunshine gradually restored the procession's morale. Better still, the escort sent out to drive away wild beasts discovered a grove of wild persimmons, saving everyone two whole meals! Laughter and cheerful voices filled the air, and everyone seemed to have forgotten what had happened that day. Only Liu Cheng was frustrated because the sandals he wove failed to meet the standard. In Grandpa Wang's words, Cheng had clever hands and a quick mind, learning at a glance, but his thoughts were never on his work when he wove sandals. As a result, they were always rough: either the "strand" came loose in the middle or the "warp" was too dense. If they actually sold them, they would break within two days, and the buyers would come back looking for them.

Once again, the boy had no answer.

In truth, as the procession stabilized over those days, he had relaxed a little himself and become curious about everything. Buddhism and Daoism interested him, as did cattle and horses, wheelbarrows, flute players, and the walled settlements, rivers, woods, and wild beasts they passed along the road.

It was as though only after gaining a skill to rely on did he, a transmigrator, dare to begin actively observing and adapting to this world.

So he could console himself. It was fine. He had mastered the basic skills, after all; all he lacked was practice. Making his fortune weaving sandals was only a matter of time.

Then the procession reached the Huai River.

There was no pontoon bridge across the Huai River, but there were plenty of ferryboats. This time, the negotiations at the crossing produced no strange complications. After seeing the flags issued by the grand commander and checking the documents, the soldiers stationed there agreed almost immediately, promising to distribute grain before letting them through... Even the quality of the grain had returned to what it had been in Pengcheng.

Naturally, the refugees were overjoyed. They first lined up to receive their grain, then followed directions through the military camp to the ferry landing behind it, preparing to board separate boats.

At the landing, the local soldiers seemed quite conscientious too. Saying they were worried about leaving anyone behind, they repeatedly questioned people and checked their details. Only near evening did they lift the barriers and allow boarding, prompting the refugees to surge forward.

Yet whether the transmigrator was being oversuspicious or this body had sharp eyes, he distinctly noticed that every boat, large or small, carried soldiers with swords at their waists in addition to the boatmen. Those soldiers were also watching the refugees boarding their respective vessels. When women and children arrived with trunks and baskets, their faces lit up; when a group of sturdy men appeared, they cursed and grumbled. They also refused to let people carrying farm tools board the small boats. All around, inside and outside the landing, people were grinning and pointing at the refugees.

More than that, the first boats to depart scattered widely both upstream and downstream.

Liu Acheng immediately sensed trouble. But if his suspicion was right, they were already caught in the net, and he was no one with the authority to speak up effectively. Just before boarding, inspiration struck in the urgency of the moment. He poured the half-bag of millet he had left into his newly issued bag, then grabbed several large handfuls of pebbles at the landing and stuffed them into the old one. He bound it tightly with dried hemp vine before calling his companions, mostly sturdy laborers, to follow him to the far edge of the landing. In the end, they boarded a small boat that could hold only a dozen or so people. A boat that size had just one soldier overseeing it.

As expected, the boat veered sharply downstream as soon as it set off. Just after they passed the middle of the river, where they could no longer make out details aboard the other boats, the two boatmen suddenly laid their oars crosswise and let the boat drift downstream.

Then, under the bewildered gazes of almost everyone aboard, the soldier overseeing the boat stood up with his sword in hand and held out his other hand. There was no preamble. He was blunt, even a little impatient:

"Hand over the money! Five hundred coins each!"

----------I am the dividing line of five hundred coins each----------

In his youth, Emperor Taizu was intelligent and discerning, possessed profound insight and far-reaching judgment, acted decisively as circumstances demanded, and did not concern himself with trifles. None of his contemporaries could fathom him.-Old Book of Qi, Basic Annals, Volume One: Emperor Gao, the Great Ancestor, Part One

PS: Thank you all for your enthusiasm. Twenty-two Alliance Leaders on the very first day! And Boss An's Silver Alliance, plus Lord Qianli's double alliance! There are also Waiting for Someone, Second Battalion Commander, Youxiong, Mr Hai, Bachelor A, Yellow-Furred Mouse, Jiang Defu, Bear Roams the World, Not Dazzling, Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbon, Lingshui Little Black, Wang Huohuo, chenky1993, Aunt Chen, James, Qi Pangpang (Qi Fatty?), Thought-Energy Twines Between Fingers, An Qi... Almost all are familiar faces, readers I know very well. Two names looked unfamiliar, but clicking through showed they had also read Shaosong and Chulong.

Among the hundred-plus others who gave tips below, most are longtime readers too.

I bow to you all here in thanks. I am endlessly grateful.

As for Ji Cha and Handsome Dog Frank, I'll just offer a token thank-you. It's paying tax to Qidian anyway.

During the new-book period, I'll work hard to keep updates regular. If a chapter falls short of four thousand characters, I'll do my best to provide another chapter... Once again, wishing everyone great wealth in the new year!