The Craft of a Reclusive Family

It was afternoon when Su Jin arrived in Shenzhen.

Tencent's headquarters stood in Nanshan, two tall buildings joined together. Their glass curtain walls gleamed blue in the afternoon sun, like two trees that had grown out of the ground and would never shed their leaves.

Zhao Mingyuan was waiting downstairs for her, wearing a dark gray Brioni suit and a navy tie knotted in a Windsor.

When he saw her get out of the car, he went to meet her. "Ms. Su, Mr. Ma is waiting for you upstairs."

Su Jin nodded.

The elevator doors opened.

The corridor was quiet. Its dark gray carpet was thick, and footsteps made no sound on it.

At the end of the corridor was a door. It stood open, revealing a vast office with floor-to-ceiling windows facing Shenzhen Bay. A few boats sat far out on the water, tiny as grains of rice scattered carelessly across blue velvet.

Ma Huateng stood by the window in a dark blue polo shirt, its collar open and its sleeves rolled up to his forearms.

He heard the footsteps, turned, and came over with his hand extended. "Ms. Su, I've heard so much about you."

Su Jin gently took his hand.

"You're too kind. I never imagined I'd get to come into your office."

He sat down on the sofa and gestured to the seat opposite. Su Jin sat down. Two cups of tea stood on the coffee table, one Longjing and one pu'er.

Ma Huateng leaned back on the sofa.

"Now that you're a Tencent shareholder, we'll naturally be working closely together. I've reviewed the proposal for Tencent Video's cooperation with your company.

"Three projects: a movie, a series, and a variety show.

"The movie is Mending Heaven, the Disney project. Tencent Video wants exclusive rights in China. The series is She Comes from the East, your suspense drama. Tencent Video wants to participate in producing it. As for the variety show, we're planning to create a multinational talent show. Tencent Video wants exclusive broadcast rights, and we'll need your resources to support it. Of course, your share of the profits will be substantial."

Su Jin set down her teacup. "The terms?"

Ma Huateng took a document from beneath the coffee table and opened it. "For the movie, a package price of eighty million for the rights, plus five percent of the box office. For the series, we put up forty percent of the production costs and take thirty percent of the rights. For the variety show, we buy the exclusive broadcast rights outright at sixty million a season, for three seasons."

Su Jin didn't look at the document. Instead, she looked him straight in the eye.

"One hundred million for the movie rights, with the box office share unchanged. For the series, you put up fifty percent and take twenty-five. For the variety show, eighty million a season, for three seasons."

Ma Huateng looked at her in silence for a few seconds. "Ms. Su, you have a very unusual way of negotiating."

Su Jin shook her head. "I don't negotiate. I name my price, and you decide whether to take it."

Ma Huateng leaned back on the sofa and tapped his fingers twice on his knee. "All right. We'll do it your way."

He held out his hand, and Su Jin shook it.

"Here's to a successful partnership."

By the time she left Tencent, it was already dark.

Hong Kong lay across Shenzhen Bay, its lights stretching together like a shattered golden river.

Su Jin sat in the car when her phone vibrated. It was a message from Su Heng.

"Grandpa got in touch with them for you. The Cheng Family in Jingdezhen. They make porcelain. They've been doing it for six hundred years. They fired porcelain for the imperial kilns during the Ming dynasty and tea bowls for the emperor during the Qing. The line was broken during the Republic. No, it wasn't broken. They went into hiding. Hid in the mountains.

"Grandpa looked for them for a long time, but they never came out. This time, when they heard you wanted to fire peachbloom glaze again, they said they wanted to meet you."

Su Jin looked at those words, her eyes growing a little sore. Was this what it felt like to have someone behind her?

She typed a few words: "Send me the address."

Su Heng sent her a location pin immediately: a village she had never heard of in Fuliang County, Jingdezhen, Jiangxi.

There was another line beneath it: "Grandpa says the old master of the Cheng Family is ninety-one, two years younger than your grandpa. He doesn't come down the mountain or meet strangers. But he wants to see you. He said, 'After waiting all these years, I've finally found a young person who wants to fire peachbloom glaze.'"

Su Jin put her phone away and leaned back in her seat, looking out at Shenzhen Bay. The lights were still shining, the boats were still moving, and the sea was still black.

She said, "Change the itinerary. We're going to Jingdezhen."

Zhao Mingyuan glanced at her in the rearview mirror. Without asking why, he said, "All right."

It was afternoon when Su Jin arrived in Jingdezhen. The rain still hadn't stopped. The mountain road from the airport to Fuliang County had taken two hours. Outside the window, the mountains faded layer by layer into the distance, until the farthest layer could no longer be distinguished from the clouds.

She changed clothes.

She put on a qipao, dark green, not the bright kind, but the "crab-shell green" of a porcelain glaze. Its green was deep and muted, like water in a deep pool, dark on the surface but with light beneath.

The fabric was plain silk gauze, impossibly thin and light, clinging to her like a water-soaked cicada's wing that would not tear.

The collar was a traditional yuanbao collar, standing neither too high nor too low, just brushing her jaw. An extremely fine line of dark blue piping edged it, hand-stitched so closely that the stitches were almost invisible unless one looked carefully.

The sleeves were narrow and three-quarter length, exposing part of her forearms and an emerald jade bangle on her wrist. It was an imperial green so rich it was almost black. Su Heng had given it to her, saying their mother had left it behind. This was the first time she had worn it.

The qipao's hem reached the middle of her calves, with a slit at the side, neither too high nor too low. As she walked, it revealed a small stretch of skin above her knee. Her skin was white, the qipao green. Where white and green met, they looked like a spring sprout that had just pushed through its shell, revealing the flesh inside.

On her feet were dark green satin Roger Vivier heels, each with a small silver square buckle on the upper, almost invisible unless one looked closely.

Her hair was arranged in a low bun, secured with a silver hairpin. Its head was shaped like a ruyi and carved with exceedingly fine cloud patterns.

A pair of jade studs hung from her earlobes, matching the bangle. Their imperial green was so rich it would not dissolve. In the gray-white daylight filtering through the car window, they did not glitter. They were only dark, only deep, only green.

She wore no makeup, but between the gray-green qipao and the rich green jade, her face was as white as a freshly fired, unglazed porcelain body.

The car stopped below a flight of stone steps.

The steps were narrow, wide enough for only one person. Bamboo groves stood on either side, the stalks tall and dense, their dark green leaves gleaming after being washed by the rain. The green stalks crowded together one by one, like a group of people standing close without speaking.

There was no moss on the steps. After years of being trodden, their surfaces were smooth. Rainwater streamed down them like a thin layer of tears that would never stop.

A member of the Cheng Family was waiting for her above, an old man in his nineties wearing a dark blue cotton robe. He stood at the very top of the steps beneath a black umbrella, large enough to cover him entirely.

Behind him was a wooden door, so old that its paint had peeled away, exposing the dark brown grain beneath, each line like a dried-up riverbed.

A plaque hung over the doorway, black with two gold characters: "Cheng Kiln."

Su Jin got out of the car. Fang Ying offered to hold an umbrella for her, but she declined.

She simply stood in the rain, looking up at the plaque. Water ran down her forehead, along the bridge of her nose, past the corners of her mouth and down her jaw, dripping onto the collar of her qipao. A small dark patch spread through the deep green silk gauze, like a drop of ink dissolving and dispersing over a porcelain glaze before settling there.

She stepped onto the first stone step. It was slippery, and her heel wobbled slightly when it came down. She steadied herself without taking hold of the railing.

She walked slowly, planting each step firmly, as though confirming that this path was real, that this door was real, that the person who had waited for her so long was real.

The old man stood at the doorway looking down at her. He did not come down to meet her.

He watched her climb, step by step, watched her come up to him, watched her come to a stop.

The old man merely nodded, turned around, and pushed open the door.

It opened without a sound.

Behind it was a large courtyard paved with gray bricks. Moss grew in the gaps, deep green and plumped up by the rain, glistening like rows of green silkworms that did not move.

An osmanthus tree stood in the center of the courtyard. It was very old, its trunk so thick that it would take two people to encircle it with their arms. Its gray-brown bark had split into patches like crocodile skin.

Its leaves were still green, thick and glossy. Raindrops fell from their tips, one drop, then another, then another, striking the moss below without a sound.

Directly across the courtyard stood a row of single-story rooms with gray brick walls and black tiled roofs. The tiles were old: some were broken, some cracked, and some had sprouted low green clusters of roof succulents, as though someone had planted them there on purpose.

A bamboo curtain hung at the entrance to the rooms. It was lowered, hiding the interior. Only voices could be heard within, too low to make out the words, like water flowing, wind blowing, a kiln fire burning.

The old man led her across the courtyard, past the osmanthus tree, over the blue-gray brick paving, past those black roof tiles that were broken, cracked, and sprouting succulents.

He stopped in front of the bamboo curtain without lifting it.

"Go in."

Su Jin stood before the curtain. It was woven tightly from bamboo strips, and warm yellow light shone through the gaps, like a kiln fire, like candlelight, like someone who had waited for you for a long time, keeping the lamp burning, never letting it go out.

She lifted the curtain and went in.

Inside was a very large room with no partitions. She could see all the way from one end to the other.

The gray brick floor had been worn flat by centuries of footsteps. Its surface was smooth, like jade, like porcelain, like stone washed by water for a long time.

At one end of the room stood a long, wide walnut table covered with dark blue velvet. Several pieces of porcelain rested on the velvet: a peachbloom-glazed brush washer, a sky-blue-glazed water pot, and a sacrificial-blue-glazed incense burner.

The brush washer was small, only as wide as an adult's palm. Its glaze was red in varying shades, purplish in some places, pink showing through the red in others. In one place was a small patch of extremely pale green, as though the copper had failed to oxidize completely during firing, leaving behind a small mark belonging to chance.

Su Jin stood before the table, looking at the brush washer.

It was identical to the brush washer in the set of peachbloom-glazed scholar's utensils she had bought at auction in Paris.

She couldn't help laughing.

"Who fired this? You must introduce me."

The old man stood behind her and said quietly, "My grandfather's grandfather fired it.

"During the Ming dynasty, he fired a kiln of peachbloom pieces for the imperial kilns. He fired thirty-six pieces, chose the best one to send to the palace, and smashed the other thirty-five.

"This one wasn't smashed. It was hidden away, hidden for many years and passed down through many generations until it came to me."

Su Jin looked at the brush washer, at that small patch of extremely pale green on its glaze, at the hair-fine crack along the edge of the green, like a blood vessel.

"I want to fire it again."

Without a word, the old man walked to the other end of the room and pushed open a small door.

Behind it was a small kiln room. The kiln was old, a brick-built mantou kiln with an arched opening. A thick layer of black soot coated its walls, glossy as colored glass melted by heat.

Several stacks of saggars were piled in front of the kiln. They were gray and rough, their edges chipped, exposing the clay beneath, white enough to gleam.

The old man stood before the kiln, one hand resting on its opening, his fingers brushing over the black, glossy soot.

"This kiln fired for six hundred years. Through the Ming, the Qing, and the Republic. It kept firing until 1937, then stopped. Not because we didn't want to fire it, but because we couldn't afford to.

"Firewood was expensive, glaze was expensive, labor was expensive. One firing took a month, dozens of loads of firewood, dozens of people, and hundreds of jin of glaze. And even then, it might not succeed.

"If it succeeded, the pieces might not sell. If they sold, they might not cover the costs."

He paused.

"It's been idle for nearly ninety years. For ninety years, no one has touched it."

Su Jin stood before the kiln and reached out without thinking, her fingers touching the bricks around its opening.

The bricks were cool, but warmth seeped out through the joints. It was heat from underground, from a floor that had been baked through by fire over hundreds of years. Its surface had cooled, but it was still warm underneath.

She turned and looked firmly at the lost light in the old man's eyes.

"I'll fire it."

The old man raised his head and looked at her for a long time.

"Do you know how long it takes to fire a kiln of peachbloom pieces?" Su Jin said, "A month."

"Do you know how much firewood it takes to fire a kiln of peachbloom pieces?" Su Jin said, "Dozens of loads."

"Do you know how many people it takes to fire a kiln of peachbloom pieces?" Su Jin said, "Dozens."

At that, his gaze changed. He stared into the girl's determined eyes, and there was a light in his own, not lamplight reflected in tears, but a light shining from within, like a kiln fire, like candlelight, like someone who had waited a long time, keeping the lamp burning, never letting it go out.

"Then it seems you've prepared everything."

The old man turned and took a saggar from a wooden rack beside the kiln. Inside the saggar was a lump of clay.

The clay was gray and damp, wrapped in oilpaper that had yellowed and grown brittle at the edges, crumbling at a touch.

He peeled back the oilpaper, revealing the clay. It was still damp, still soft. When he pressed a finger into it, the impression remained without springing back.

"This clay has been kneaded for hundreds of years. From the Ming dynasty to the present, every generation has kneaded it, kneading it until it softened, until it matured, until it was like human skin, with warmth, breath, and memory.

"It has waited for many years, waiting for someone to come and shape it into a brush washer, dry it, trim the body, glaze it, put it in the kiln, and fire it.

"Fire it for thirty-six shichen, and let it turn peachbloom red in the fire on its own. Whether it succeeds is up to the clay itself."

Su Jin carefully accepted the lump of clay.

The clay was cool and damp against her palm, like a piece of ice that had soaked in water for a long time and would not melt.

Her fingers closed around it, and the gray, soft clay squeezed through them, like a bundle of thread that had been kneaded for a long time and would not break.

The old man watched how tenderly she held it, and the corners of his mouth curved slightly.

"The kiln fire has been out for many years. It's been waiting for you to light it."