Servants (2)

Gao Qing handed over a list of equipment in the house. Xiao Zishan didn’t take a look at it and instead just shoved it into his sleeve. Instead, the three gathered around a table and started sketching out a layout plan of the building. Wang Luobin had studied drafting, so even though they only had a notebook and some ballpoint pens, they could still produce a rough sketch.

“Xiao Zishan, you’re such a stingy person.” Wang Luobin commented while drawing. “Why do you care so much about this little bit of meat and rice? It’s not easy for them to support their family, and it’s not like we need it.”

Xiao Zishan smiled. “Wang Luobin, there is more than 40 shi^[1] of rice on this list. This is about 40 taels of silver, according to the price of rice at the end of Tianqi.”

“So what, you want to sell this rice?”

“40 taels of silver would be equal to four years of wages for Gao Qing and his wife. If we give away 40 taels now, how much should we give in the future?”

“Do you mean that their expectations would be raised too high?” Wen Desi said.

“That’s right.” Xiao Zishan nodded. “Gao’s family is indeed in a tough spot, but they’re still getting by for now. Furthermore, we still can’t be sure of Gao Qing’s background and his relationship with Master Gao. There’s no need to make ourselves out to be such benevolent people.”

Xiao Zishan lowered his voice and whispered to the other two. “I’m sure that Master Gao has definitely left instructions behind for Gao Qing, especially to pay close attention to our movements.”

“Hmm, that’s indeed very likely.”

“So we shouldn’t try to win him over yet. Gao Qing doesn’t know us well, and might even be very suspicious that we’re up to no good in Guangzhou. Besides all that, we just met today, and he hasn’t even done anything of great merit for us yet. What would he think if he’s suddenly given such a heavy gift? He would definitely report this to Master Gao immediately. That would completely negate the benefit of our gift, and would actually only bring more trouble upon us.”

“True. But still, in the longer term, it would still be best if we could get Gao Qing onto our side.”

“Rewards must be given, but they must be small. Over time, he will come to appreciate us, and naturally side with us. Besides, he isn’t a close confidant of Master Gao, and it would definitely be possible to win him over.”

“Not a confidant? This residence is an emergency hideout of Master Gao, how would the people watching over it not be close with him?”

“Didn’t you hear what Gao Qing said? He was transferred here less than half a month ago. There would also be no way Master Gao would let us get close to any of his close circle.”

“Maybe what Gao Qing said was all fabricated?”

“That’s possible, but probably unlikely. Just look at him, with his dull expression and distracted face. He doesn’t seem like such a capable and conniving person.” Xiao Zishan glazed out into the courtyard, where Gao Qing was working. “Put it this way, all Master Gao wants to do is keep us around and squeeze profit from us. As long as we keep the money flowing it’s unlikely that he will spend so much effort trying to monitor us.”

“Then what do you plan on doing?”

“We should still give some small gifts to Gao Qing. How about this…”

---

While the three were discussing, Gao Qing’s wife entered the study and asked about dinner. Xiao Zishan checked his watch^[2] and found that it was already 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

“No need to prepare dinner for us. Call your family here. We want to see them.”

“Actually, I want to have a taste of the food in Great Ming.” Wang Luobin said. “It’s said that they used a lot of spices…”

The four servants had soon gathered. Gao Qing’s wife looked pretty, but she was thin and dark. She didn’t appear to be good at talking, and only lowered her head in silence. The pair of children stood out. The boy had an average appearance, but his eyes were bright and playful. Although he pretended to be serious on the outside, he snuck frequent glances at what the three were doing. The girl on the other hand was very different from the other family members. Her skin was much whiter than everyone else’s, her eyes big, nose small, and she was even taller than the boy. Xiao Zishan estimated that she was more than 1.6 metres tall. A faint suspicion formed in his heart.

“What’s your name?” Xiao Zishan asked the girl.

The girl was taken aback, surprised that the first question was for her. She stammered something under her breath.

“The master is asking you a question!” Gao Qing suddenly shouted at the girl. He bowed to the three and apologised, “Please excuse her, the girl has never seen the world, and…”

“Let her speak. You are her father, you can speak for her now, but you cannot speak for her forever”

“My name, ummm, call me Gao Dajie…”^[3]

Xiao Zishan almost spat some tea out, and Luobin and Desi also looked like they couldn’t hold back their laughter either. Gao Dajie, this name was really quite something. Speaking of which, looking a bit closer, this girl looked quite similar to Michelle Yeoh with a thin body and long legs.^[4]

The Gao family all looked at their new masters speechlessly. None of them could think of anything funny with the name.

Gao Qing apologised: “I’m sorry to let the Masters hear such an embarrassing name…servant girl has never been properly named…”

“It’s nothing,” Xiao Zishan laughed, “Since she doesn’t have a proper name, we can just give her one.”

But, Zishan’s terrible sense of humour flared instead. “Let’s call her Colgate.” [TN: Gao Lujie]^[5]

Wen Desi: “Our goal?”

Wang Luobin: “No cavities!”

The three, disregarding their image, roared with laughter.^[6]

Gao Qing and his family, seeing the three masters laughing uncontrollably since they had heard Gao Dajie’s name, couldn’t help but get slightly scared. They could only smile slightly.

Wen Desi thought that this young lady was a real beauty by modern standards, but of course this was not so in the view of the Ming. Unfortunately, she was still quite skinny, and lacked capital in certain areas.

“How old is she?”

“Four…fourteen” Gao Qing couldn’t speak clearly, thinking that it wasn’t looking good for his daughter.

Fourteen? She was still young then. Unfortunately, the three had way too much other stuff on their plate, and would have no time to raise her.^[7]

Xiao Zishan had practised calligraphy for a few days back when he was a child, and still remembered how to write traditional Chinese. He found some rough scratch paper on the wide and wrote three large characters, “Gao Lujie”, on it^[8]. This was the new name for the girl.

“Thank you for the name, masters.” Gao Qing and his daughter kowtowed.

“Please rise, we are master and servant, we are a family. No need to be so polite.” Xiao Zishan said. “You and your wife’s monthly salary will follow the old rules.”

“Thank you sir!” Gao Qing finally let down the worry in his heart. He had been concerned that their new masters might cut their salaries.

“Your family has been quite burdened, and faced much hardship. So, we will give you half a shi of rice every month^[9] to save some of your expenses.”

“Master! Thank you for your kindness!” Gao Qing was so grateful he almost knelt down. Half a stone of rice was enough to feed his whole family for a month. This was equivalent to increasing his monthly salary by five entire qians of silver.

“This here is twenty taels of silver. We will often be away on travels, and it is difficult for us to return here. So, part of this is an advance of one year’s salary.^[10] The rest is to be used in the maintenance of this residence. As for the monthly rice allowance, you can go and get it yourself.” Xiao Zishan paused.

“Can you read?”

Gao Qing smiled awkwardly, but his son suddenly spoke up. “I can!”

“Oh really?”

Gao Qing cut his son off and glared at him. “Ever since he was small he liked to hang out outside the accounts office. He knows but a few words.” He growled at his son, “what are you showing off for!”

After asking some more questions, it became clear that the boy didn’t know many words, and could only be called semi-literate. However, because he learned from the accountant, he knew how to keep accounts and use an abacus. For people in ancient times this would have been quite rare.

When they asked about his name, it turned out that he was simply called Gao Di.^[11] Xiao Zishan thought that the way working class people named their children was really quite simple.

“Seeing that you can read and also keep accounts, from now on you will be responsible for accounting for us in the future. You must keep track of all transactions clearly, understand? I will also give you one qian every month.”

”Thank you masters!” Gao Qing was overjoyed, and made his son kowtow again and again.

The reason why they asked the boy to do the accounts for them was not really that they couldn’t, but to remind the family that every blade of grass and every leaf on the trees belonged to them. This would dissuade them from trying to take over the residence after a long absence. Although these ordinary people seemed honest, they had all met too many people who would drastically change in the face of tempting greed.

After scouting out the residence and the surroundings, the travellers decided to use the study room in the first courtyard as their entry and exit point. They instructed Gao Qing to sweep the first courtyard once every three days, and to never enter it otherwise.

Although Gao Qing didn’t understand why the masters had such an instruction, he knew better than to ask about their affairs. The only thing he found strange was that Master Wen even had to clearly specify which date he should start cleaning on.

After darkness had completely set, the travellers finally opened up a wormhole in the new location. Fortunately, the portal on the other side hadn’t moved too far, and was still within the underground garage. They pulled over the hydraulic trolley and several loaded pallets were brought across.

The next day, when Gao Qing got up, he found that the first courtyard was already empty. He hesitated for a moment, as if torn by what he should do. He steeled his heart, and walked towards the back entrance of Master Gao’s residence.

---

1. 1 shi = 10 dou. One dou ~ 10 liters. So, 1 shi = 100 L, and 40 shi = 4,000 L of grain. Which is a lot! ↩︎

2. Damn, why aren’t these guys selling wristwatches? ↩︎

3. The name of the girl is literally, “Gao Big Sister”, which is hilariously weird for a name to a modern audience. Because it sounds very arrogant and bossy. If there’s another layer to the joke I’m missing please let me know. ↩︎

4. You can find a picture if you’re not Michelle Yeoh and don’t know what she looks like. Also, if you are Michelle Yeoh, I’m sure that the author meant this comparison in a good-natured manner. Please don’t sue me. ↩︎

5. I’m not kidding, this is the raw. It works because Colgate is spelt ‘Gao Lujie’, with the same ‘Gao’ as Gao Qing and the entire family. Doesn’t work in English though. ↩︎

6. Is this a punchline from a Chinese Colgate ad? In the future I might try to localise this joke, if my single brain cell with a sense of humour ever comes up with something. ↩︎

7. Grooming alert ↩︎

8. Colgate consists of 3 characters in chinese: Gao Lu Jie. ↩︎

9. 50 L of rice, which actually sounds like a lot? ↩︎

10. Remember that 1 tael = 10 qian. ↩︎

11. Lit. “Gao Little Brother”. Go figure ↩︎