Being young is great; you can take a beating.
Stepping out of the Sihai Restaurant, Zhao An raised his arms and rubbed his legs. They ached, certainly, but fortunately those fellows knew the rules and hadn't aimed for his face. Otherwise, how could he show up before his uncle with a bruised and battered mug?
It had been a close one, though. The meat he had finally managed to get into his belly had almost been beaten right back out of him. If that had happened, this beating would have been for nothing.
He looked up at the sky, estimating it to be around six or seven in the evening by his past life's standards. Figuring his uncle, who worked as a runner at the yamen, should be off duty by now, he asked for directions and headed straight toward Zuowei Street.
Along the way, he had to ask several more people before he finally found Zuowei Street, the place his late father had mentioned in his memories where his uncle lived. However, when he asked about the specific lane where his uncle's home was located—Luosi Jiding Alley—not a single person knew which lane it actually was.
Seeing the sky growing darker by the minute, just as he was starting to worry, a passing old man pointed out the location of the alley for Zhao An. It turned out to be just a few hundred meters away from where he was standing.
Only, as the old man walked away, he gave Zhao An a meaningful look and shook his head, saying, "People don't come looking for others in broad daylight, so why come at night? During normal days, hardly anyone dares to go down that alley. It's dreadfully eerie."
What was that supposed to mean?Zhao An was completely bewildered, but he soon understood why the old man had said that, for Luosiji Ding Alley was the kind of place that sent a chill down anyone’s spine.
Staring into the alley from the entrance, it was not only pitch black, but it also emanated an eerie, sinister aura, as if the path led straight to hell. Heaven only knew how his cousin’s family could live in such a place.
On second thought, he told himself not to be a coward; if there really were ghosts, how could his cousin’s family live there? What was Yangzhou City, after all? Every inch of land was worth its weight in gold. Even in this haunted alley, there were likely many people who couldn't afford to live.
He proceeded to grope his way into the alley, but the further he walked, the more his heart pounded. He felt as though countless people were staring at him from the shadows, yet he could not see a single one of them. It was truly hair-raising, but he had no choice but to steel himself and continue forward.
Not until he reached the depths of the alley did he spot a sliver of lamplight, faintly illuminating four or five households. Upon reaching the first one, Zhao An hurriedly stepped forward to knock on the door.
"Who are you? Who are you looking for?"
The person who opened the door was an old woman over fifty, staring at the stranger, Zhao An, with a look of confusion.
Zhao An hurried to ask, "Excuse me, is this the home of Wang Defa?"The old woman nodded. "It is my home."
Hearing that he had found the right place, Zhao An said joyfully, "Then you must be my aunt?"
"Aunt" was the term used in the Huaiyang region for a cousin-by-marriage on the father's side, while "Uncle" was used for a cousin-by-marriage.
"Who are you?"
The old woman scrutinized Zhao An, who was standing at the door claiming kinship, truly unable to recall which relative's child this might be.
Zhao An quickly identified himself. "Aunt, I am Zhao An, the son of Zhao Darong."
"Zhao Darong?"
The old woman was stunned for a moment, then, suddenly recalling something, she said uncertainly, "From the Zhao family in Xinghua?"
"Yes, that’s right!"
Seeing that the old woman knew of the Xinghua Zhao family, Zhao An breathed a sigh of relief. He glanced into the courtyard and asked tentatively, "Is my uncle at home?"
"Yes, he is. He just got back from the Tax Bureau."
Since the guest was a relative on her husband's side and had traveled a long distance, the old woman could hardly turn him away. She stepped aside to let Zhao An into the courtyard, and as she closed the gate, she called toward the house, "Husband, someone from the Xinghua Zhao family is here."
"The Xinghua Zhao family?"
Wang Defa, who was just preparing to change his clothes and wash up, was stunned when he heard his wife’s call. He quickly dressed and pushed the door open. "Who from the Zhao family has come?"
"Uncle, it is your nephew, Zhao An, here to visit you!" Zhao An stepped forward to introduce himself.
"You are Darong’s son?"
Looking at Zhao An, whose appearance closely resembled his cousin when he was a young man, Wang Defa—who had not seen relatives from Xinghua in over thirty years—felt a surge of excitement. Upon learning that his cousin Darong had passed away several years ago, he couldn't help but feel a pang of sadness.
He collected himself and pulled Zhao An into the house, casually telling his wife, Madam Ma, to prepare a couple of dishes for their nephew so the two of them could share a drink and have a good chat.
"Uncle, I’m not hungry. Please don't trouble Aunt."
Zhao An wasn't just being polite; he truly wasn't hungry. He felt a warmth in his heart because he had been worried that his uncle might look down on a poor relative from the countryside. He hadn't expected his uncle to be so hospitable.
It seemed he had been reading too much cynical advice and had started viewing his own relatives with suspicion.One might ask, how many relatives in this world truly turn their backs on one another?
Wang Defa was a clerk at the Tax Bureau in Ganquan County, which fell under the jurisdiction of Yangzhou Prefecture. His primary duty was copying official documents. Beyond the clerks, the Tax Bureau also employed accountants. These "clerical and accounting" positions were equivalent to the office managers in other government bureaus, holding a status higher than the "patrolmen" who collected merchant taxes. To put it bluntly, those patrolmen were merely temp workers who ran errands; today you might have the job, but tomorrow, who knows?
The chief of the Tax Bureau held the title of Commissioner. Their rank was quite low—typically Grade 9 for a prefecture-level bureau and unranked for a county-level one—but they were still registered personnel under the Ministry of Personnel. If one performed well, after nine years of periodic evaluations, they might even transition from a mere functionary to an actual official.
Zhao An didn't know much about the ins and outs of the Qing Dynasty government. He only knew what his late father had said: his cousin once removed worked at a tax collection office in Yangzhou. In Zhao An’s mind, that office was naturally the Tax Bureau. To be able to work at the Tax Bureau—even if not as an official or a formal clerk—meant earning dozens of taels of silver a year was no problem. In the parlance of later generations, Wang Defa could be considered a "somebody." And regardless of whether this "somebody" was big or small, he was certainly someone of consequence within his own little sphere.
Having come all the way from Xinghua, Zhao An wasn't looking for great riches or high status, nor was he dreaming of a miraculous promotion. He simply wanted his cousin, Wang Defa, to give him a hand and use his connections to "recruit" his nephew into the Tax Bureau, securing a stable iron rice bowl to get by. As for working, he might not know much else, but surely he could handle collecting money?
Naturally, Zhao An couldn't bring this up the moment he arrived. Instead, he accompanied Wang Defa for a few drinks. Over the meal, they chatted about old times back in Xinghua, which stirred up quite a bit of emotion in Wang Defa, who hadn't been back to his hometown in over thirty years.
Seeing that the atmosphere was right, Zhao An finally brought up his request.
"As the saying goes, blood is thicker than water among kin. Besides, your grandmother was my own aunt. Since you’ve come all this way to ask me, your cousin, for help, what kind of person would I be if I didn't reach out?"
Wang Defa was indeed a man who valued family ties. Setting aside his late cousin, for the sake of his late aunt alone, he had to help his nephew. He set down his wine cup and said to Zhao An:
"You’ve come at just the right time. Just the other day, I heard Commissioner Ding muttering that the office is short-handed and needs to bring in some new people. Tell you what, I’ll speak to Commissioner Ding about it tomorrow. By the way, do you have your credentials?"
"Credentials?"
Zhao An, who had been secretly rejoicing, was stunned by the term. Did the concept of business licenses even exist in this era?
Only after Wang Defa explained did he realize that "credentials" didn't mean a business license, but an academic diploma—specifically, a "Licentiate Certificate."
His cousin Wang Defa was a kind man, thinking that if he was going to help, he should do it properly. Getting his nephew a job as a patrolman would be easy, but that was an unstable, errand-running life with inconsistent pay. He had hoped to secure a steady position for his nephew in the office as a clerk or accountant; after all, he himself was getting on in years, and if he trained the boy well for a few years, perhaps he could even take over his job one day.
That way, he would have done right by his late aunt and his late cousin.
However, the clerical and accounting positions at the Tax Bureau required academic certification—at the very least, one had to be a Licentiate. Otherwise, how could someone who couldn't read a single word do the job?
In Zhao An’s previous life, this condition would have been impossibly loose, equivalent to letting a primary school student into the workforce. The problem was that his predecessor had only attended two years of private school before dropping out—he didn't even have a certificate of attendance, let alone a primary school diploma. Where was he supposed to get one?
One shouldn't underestimate the Licentiate certificate; it was the most fundamental stepping stone of the imperial examination system. Only with this credential could one continue their studies and become an official or a clerk. Without it, even running errands as a patrolman would be a struggle.
"Uh..."
Zhao An was in a bind. At twenty years old, was he supposed to go back to school with the children to earn a diploma? He could try to fake it, but by the time he finished, the opportunity would long since have passed him by.
How could a living person be stifled by such a thing? His first thought was to find a seller of forged documents.
*The term "Luosi Jiding" (Leishi Jiding) is a local dialect referring to a place where the piles of corpses reached the rooftops. This alley was the site of the greatest number of killings during the Ten Days of Yangzhou, where bodies were stacked up to the eaves.*