1636: The China Venture

by Eric Flint

  “And rest assured that we are not going to neglect the medical needs of the mission. If we can’t find an up-timer with suitable skills who’s willing to go, we will certainly be able to provide a suitable down-timer. Not Balthazar Abrabanel, but one of similar experience.”

  Don Francisco stood, and offered his hand; Jim took it automatically. “It has been a pleasure to meet you, Jim. You are everything we had hoped for; please give our proposal your careful consideration and let us know if there is anything we can do to, what’s that American term? Clinch the deal.”

  Martina’s Home

  Martina still lived with her mother, Mary, but of course Jim was over frequently. Once Jim Saluzzo and Martina were married, either Jim would move in with her, or Martina would move in with the Saluzzos. Right now, Jim and his sister Vicki were still living with their parents—real estate was extremely expensive in post-RoF Grantville.

  Jim, Martina and Eric were in Martina’s kitchen, rinsing dishes. Jim and Martina had invited Eric over for dinner. Eric’s wife Heather had also been invited, but Eric came alone, saying that Heather had been “indisposed.” The Goss’ boarders had, as a courtesy, gone out for the evening, and Mary was visiting with her husband Arlen at the assisted living center, so it was just the three young people.

  “If Jim goes, I’ll go,” said Martina Goss. “In fact, I want to have a job on the mission. Surely, you’ll need someone to manage the correspondence? I’m in the consular office right now, so I should be considered qualified. And before it leaves, I can help with the research.”

  “I’ll speak with Nasi and Piazza,” Eric Garlow promised. “You had to know about the mission anyway, given Jim’s significance, so I can argue that including you would reduce how many people need to be told what’s going on.”

  Martina put the last dish in the drying rack and hung up her apron. “Actually, I have a particular interest in China. Let me show you why.” He followed her into the living room, Jim a few steps behind.

  Martina took out of a drawer a book and a figurine. The main text of the book was in Chinese, but it had many color photographs, and captions in English, French and German.

  “Ah,” said Eric. “The figurine represents a general in the terra-cotta army of Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of China. You were in Xi’an?” The terra-cotta army had been buried in the third century BCE and discovered in 1974, east of Xi’an, near the tomb mound at Mount Li. Its secret had endured for over two millennia.

  “Oh, no, I have never been to China. In fact, before the Ring, I had never been out of the States. But while I was at WVU—you know I had to drop out when my father was disabled, don’t you?—I was a volunteer ‘Conversation Partner’ in the Intensive English Program. I would meet for an hour or two each week to give the foreign student I was working with, Liu Feng-jiao, a chance to practice English. Usually in the coffeehouse. Remember Perks? At the corner of Chestnut and Reid?”

  “Sorry, I don’t,” said Eric. “Remember, I was at Pitt, not WVU. I did come to Morgantown for some games, but if I didn’t take the first bus home, I’d probably have gone to a bar with Tom and Rita.”

  Jim smiled at Martina. “Well, I remember Perks. I met Martina there, sometimes.”

  “Anyway, when we first met,” Martina continued, “and at the end of each semester, Feng-jiao would give me a present, like this one. I suppose that she must have packed several sets of Chinese souvenirs to take to America.”

  “Were there a lot of Chinese students at WVU?” asked Eric. “I know they didn’t have a major in Chinese, that’s why I went to Pitt.”

  “The IEP representative told us that they were the second-largest contingent of international students at the school, after the Indians. But more of the Indians spoke English already.”

  Eric paged through the book, returning at last to the handwritten inscription on the title page: For Martina, may she one day see my beautiful country, as I have seen hers. Feng-jiao.

  “So, do you speak any Chinese?”

  “Not beyond the ‘hello’ and ‘how are you, fine, thanks’ stage. After all, the whole point was for Feng-jiao to learn English, not for me to learn Chinese. Still, after hearing Feng-jiao talk about China, I’d like to see it before I die. And this mission is a chance to go there at someone else’s expense. And perhaps making enough money to help out my folks, too.”

  Eric stroked his chin. “Given your background, you are qualified to serve as the ambassador’s correspondence secretary and administrative assistant.”

  “Not to sound crass, but what are the financial arrangements for the up-time representatives? Jim has been a little vague about it.”

  “Probably because the details aren’t completely firm, but you’ll be paid a salary which, if you’re already employed, is fifty percent more than you’re making now, plus you’ll be allotted a certain amount of cargo space for private trading.”

  “How much space is that?”

  “That’s the detail that still being firmed up. But I think that at least for up-timers, it will be more than the norm for passengers and crew on VOC ships to the Indies.”

  Eric offered the book back to Martina. She put it back in the drawer, and said, “That sounds promising, but Jim and I will have to see the contract. And perhaps we should have a lawyer look it over, too.”

  Cheng home

  Grantville

  Jason Cheng was gratified to see how many would-be students of Chinese had come to his home. There were young and old, men and women. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “It is an honor and a privilege to teach you the beautiful language of my homeland. I ask that you be diligent in your studies.”

  He took a sip of water. “I know you are here because you are being sent to China. What you will be learning to speak is what Americans call Mandarin. The Chinese name is ‘Guanhua’ and it means, the ‘language of officials.’ It was needed because there are hundreds of different forms of Chinese, and they aren’t all mutually intelligible.

  “The original Mandarin was based on the language spoken in Nanjing, which was the first capital of Ming China. Nanjing Mandarin is what would be used in China right now. Unfortunately, by the time I went to school, what was taught was Beijing Mandarin. But my father spoke Nanjing Mandarin. When I can, I will give you the Nanjing version, but you will no doubt have to make some adjustments when you are in China.

  “Our first goal will be for you to learn what you might call ‘survival’ spoken Chinese: ‘hello,’ ‘goodbye,’ ‘please,’ ‘thank you,’ ‘you’re welcome,’ numbers, asking and understanding directions, money, weights and measures, the names of the goods you’re most likely to need to buy, and so forth.

  “My father used to say, ‘The only things you need to be able to say in a foreign language are ‘how much’ and ‘too much’!”

  There was a polite titter.

  “Of course, you’ll need to learn how to correctly pronounce all those words. In the phrase book that I prepared—a copy has been printed for each of you, and please don’t lose it!—I have written down the Mandarin pronunciations of Chinese words in the Latin alphabet using a system known as Pinyin with tone marks. I must warn you, Pinyin is not yet used in China, so this is just for your own studies. However, I will let you use the Pinyin–English dictionary that Eric Garlow will be bringing along with him.

  “As we work through the phrase book, I’ll be writing the Chinese characters on the black board, and you will copy them into your book.”

  Martina raised her hand. “Why do we need to write down the characters if we’re just learning spoken Chinese?”

  “Good question,” said Jason Cheng. “Now, while I hope that you all master Chinese pronunciation, I have to admit that it’s not easy for a foreigner to learn. For example, vowels have tones—high and steady, rising, falling then rising, falling, and ‘neutral.’ The sound ‘ma’ can mean mother, hemp, horse, scold or a question mark, depending on which of the five tones it bears. There are tricky consonant
s, too. But if you have the character written down, well, at worst you show it to the person you’re trying to communicate with.”

  Having covered the blackboard with characters, Jason stopped. “Anyway, that gives you a taste for what written Chinese is like. But for the rest of today’s class, we’re going to work on pronunciation. And we’ll start with the sounds in nĭ hăo, which means ‘hello.’”

  * * *

  After the class, Martina said to Mike Song, “It isn’t fair. I have all this studying to do, and you already know Chinese.”

  “Don’t complain to me,” said Mike. “After all, I had to learn English in school. And now my uncle says that since I already know Chinese, I have to study Portuguese and Dutch instead.”

  “Ouch. Have you spoken to Ashley about her stuff?”

  “Yes, she will loan the class all of the ‘learning Chinese’ materials she has acquired since she started going out with Danny. Textbooks, phrase books, dictionaries, flash cards, audio tapes, and so forth. But they can’t leave Grantville.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Chapter 8

  December 1633

  Grantville

  “So what will it be today?” asked Cora. Eric Garlow and Mike Song had met Mike’s sister-in-law Ashley and Mike’s brother Danny for lunch at Cora’s Cafe.

  Eric looked at his companions.

  “Coffee. Black.”

  “Me, too.”

  “Me, three.”

  “I’ll make it unanimous,” said Eric.

  Cora put her pad away. “Four black coffees, coming up.” She then moved on to the next table.

  Ashley coughed. “I think you’re going about the China venture the wrong way.”

  “What do you mean?” asked Eric.

  “You’re looking for things to buy cheap here and sell dear in China.”

  “What’s wrong with that? It’s certainly better than the reverse.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t be buying stuff at all. You should be taking stuff on consignment, like we used to do at Tack Boutique. If it doesn’t sell, you return it to the supplier and it’s up to them to make the best of it. And if it does sell, then you take a cut—twenty percent, maybe—and the supplier gets the rest.”

  “What happens if the goods are lost, or stolen, or deteriorate en route?” asked Martina.

  “They belong to the supplier, the consignor, until they’re actually sold, so those are the consignor’s risks, not yours. Once you make the sale, though, if that money is stolen, it’s your risk. And if you want to be able to borrow that money to buy Chinese goods, you better make sure that the consignment contract permits you to do that.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Hey,” said Danny, “there are lots of start-ups here in Grantville, and for that matter, in Jena and Magdeburg. We could point out to them that China’s a huge market, and that they should pay us for the privilege of carrying samples of their widgets and making a sales pitch to the Chinese for them.”

  Eric, by now, had whipped out his little notebook and was jotting down ideas. “I’ll talk to the money people.”

  “I wish I could see China,” said Danny wistfully. “The mainland, that is. In school, they made it clear, our country was China, we were only in Taiwan as a matter of expediency. But going there from Taiwan was banned altogether up until 1987, and by the time I was old enough to go on my own, I was living in North Carolina.”

  “Well, I’d rather be here in Grantville,” said Ashley. “Or at least in Europe. And it’s not like there’s much demand for a computer scientist in seventeenth-century China.”

  “That’s true,” Danny admitted. “But Eric, I’m surprised you’re not keeping the China venture a secret anymore.”

  “Well,” said Eric. “It all comes down to money. The USE wants to send a mission to China, but it doesn’t want to pay for one. It wants to piggyback it on a commercial venture. And the big-time financiers, people like Louis de Geer, they’re interested enough in China to put some money in, but let’s face it: with all the commercial ideas spewing out of Grantville, there are plenty of other places to put their money. So we found we needed to offer shares to the general public. Which meant that we needed to tell them enough so they’d invest, right?

  “But we aren’t saying everything. We aren’t mentioning to the general public everything we’re looking for, exactly what we’re taking, when we’re leaving, or which port in China we’re sailing for. And we aren’t talking about exactly who’s going, or the diplomatic mission. I’m the only up-timer that’s been mentioned publicly as part of the venture, and that just because having an up-timer involved is good for raising money.”

  “What about Heather?” asked Martina. “Isn’t she going?” Heather Cargill was Eric’s wife; they had gotten married in the summer.

  “No. In fact, we’ve separated, and I doubt we’re going to stay married. You know that we aren’t from Grantville. We were both guests at Tom and Rita’s wedding, and after the Ring of Fire, we were both refugees. Orphans. Heather was one of the few people I knew, especially after Tom and Rita went off to London. So naturally, we hung out together when we could, and one thing led to another. But we honestly don’t have much in common.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Mike. “I had assumed that Heather would be coming along to impress the Chinese, especially the ladies, with how cultured we were.” Heather had been about to graduate WVU with a degree in visual arts when the Ring of Fire happened. “Now it’ll be up to Martina, I guess.”

  “Heaven help us,” said Martina. She took another sip of her coffee. “There are down-time artists in town, looking for work, now that Amsterdam’s under siege and all. I could ask the art teacher at Jim’s school whether she can recommend anyone.”

  December 1633

  Cheng home

  Jason Cheng looked over the class filling his living room. He was pleased to see that most of those who had started studying Chinese a month earlier were still coming. Of course, he knew that they weren’t like college students taking a language course to meet a distribution requirement; most if not all of them were going to China as part of the USE mission he had been briefed on, and their ability to do their job might depend on how much Chinese they learned.

  He cleared his throat. “Several of you have badgered me to teach written Chinese, and since you now have studied Chinese pronunciation, I have decided to try giving a second class. Actually, my wife and daughter are going to teach it, while I continue with spoken ‘survival’ Chinese. So am going to sit down now, and let Jennie Lee and our daughter Diane do the rest of the talking.”

  “I didn’t think Jason should have all the fun,” Jennie Lee told the students. “There are something like forty thousand Chinese characters, but you need perhaps two thousand to be functionally literate. Up until the early twentieth century, Chinese children learned the language by memorizing the characters in the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and the Thousand Character Classic. Despite their titles, that came to a total of about two thousand characters.

  “It took about two years for children to learn those characters and of course they were spending a large part of every day doing so, and they saw the characters wherever they went. Even if you study Chinese from now until when the mission leaves, and continue your studies on shipboard with my nephew Michael, you still won’t have the same number of study hours.

  “So we’re going to take a different approach, one that was used in Diane’s ‘Chinese school’ in North Carolina. We’ll teach you a group of radicals first, and then characters built from those radicals. There are two hundred and fourteen radicals in use in Chinese. Radicals can indicate what the character means or how it is pronounced. If you know the radicals and not the character, you at least have a chance of guessing the meaning of the character. Let me show you what I mean.…”

  On the blackboard, she drew a long vertical line, then, to its left, an “L” with a short vertical and a long horizontal
that touched the bottom of the first stroke, and then another short vertical on the right that grazed the end of the horizontal and extended a little below it.

  “This is shan; it means a mountain or a hill, or anything that resembles a mountain.” She made some more chalk marks. “This is kuang, and by itself it means an ore. Combine the two, as kuangshan, we have ‘ore-mountain,’ that is, a mine. I think you are interested in those, yes?

  “And kuang is composed of two radicals, shi which means a stone, rock or mineral, and guang which means widespread, but is used to indicate the sound.” She wrote the shi and guang radicals alongside the kuang character.

  “The word shi itself is found in baoshi, gem. The word bao means treasure or precious.…”

  * * *

  Walking home afterward, Martina said to Jim, “What do you think?”

  “I think this will be the hardest class I’ve ever taken. Give me tensor calculus and quantum mechanics any day. I am tempted to drop it and just let Mike and Eric translate anything that’s in writing for me.”

  “I understand. I am lucky that I can study Chinese whenever I am not busy at the store. And that I don’t have to also study astronomy at the same time, as you do,” Martina added. “So…are you going to drop it?”

  “No, just complain a lot. I’ve never dropped a class in my life, and I am not going to start now.”

  Part Two

  1634

  For the temple-bells are callin’,

  an’ it’s there that I would be—

  By the old Moulmein Pagoda,

  looking lazy at the sea…

  —Rudyard Kipling, Mandalay

  Chapter 9

  Year of the Dog, Second Month (February 28–March 28, 1634)

  Tongcheng

  The Fang family servants and tenants were lined up, waiting for orders, implements of destruction in hand. Fang Yizhi clapped his hands, bringing them all to attention. “The time we knew would come has at last arrived. It is necessary that we defend our lands against invaders. My father has appointed me to lead you. Each of you has his appointed task. Yong!”