1636: The China Venture

by Eric Flint

  Zheng Zhilong, whose agents had quietly purchased much of the American ginseng while it was still at a discount, then resold it at a great profit.

  He told his younger brother Yan the Swallow, “Never underestimate the value of a well-timed rumor.”

  Chapter 34

  Wei, riding the driver’s seat in front of Jim and Martina, eased off the pedals of the cycle rickshaw, and asked for directions. They were on the Great Street of Hangzhou—“Great Street” being the Chinese analog to the American notion of a town’s “Main Street”—and there were no lack of people to talk to. The problem was finding someone willing to stop and answer a question. But the novelty of the cycle rickshaw probably helped.

  After a quick exchange, too fast for Jim and Martina to follow, Wei pointed forward and to the right. “As I thought, sir. That’s Guan Bridge, across the canal that runs parallel with the Great Street.” He then pointed left. “And that’s Guan Alley, where this church is supposed to be. The fellow I spoke to said that we can’t miss it.”

  “The words most dreaded by travelers, in any locale and age,” Martina grumbled.

  “Well, let’s proceed,” said Jim.

  Wei nodded and renewed his pedaling, turning the cycle rickshaw down the alley. It wasn’t very long.

  “Are we sure that it’s on Guan Alley?” asked Martina. “I certainly don’t see a church.”

  “Wait here,” said Jim, “and I’ll walk around.”

  He got up and walked up and down the street several times, finally stopping and beckoning to Wei to bring the rickshaw around. Wei did so, and then ran over to open the passenger door for Martina, waving Jim off. “This is my job,” he said politely.

  “Here, Madam Saluzzo, allow me,” Wei said, helping her down. “Is the baby kicking, ma’am?”

  “I would say that he or she has already scored a field goal,” said Martina. “Jim, where’s the church?”

  “Through this gate and into this courtyard,” he said. “Don’t know whether I’d have found it if the gate hadn’t been open.”

  “I don’t—oh.” The two-story building in front of them, on the other side of the courtyard, was typical Chinese architecture, with circular windows and flying eaves. However, two red crosses were mounted on the front wall, one on each side of the double doors.

  Jim and Martina passed through the doors. At first, all they could make out were a few candles, but gradually their eyes adjusted to the relatively dark interior.

  A young Chinese boy was sweeping the floor at the front of the nave, singing a song to himself, and didn’t notice them at first.

  Then Jim whispered to Martina, “Not quite like home, eh?” The pews were of a red wood, and would not have looked out of place at St. Mary’s back in Grantville, but the interior walls and ceiling were painted in shiny blues and golds. Hanging at the rear of the sanctuary, there was a painting of the Virgin Mary, but with attendants of Chinese appearance.

  The boy looked up, and screamed. “Demons!” He raced to a side door, flung it open and yelled, “Father, help! There are western demons in the church!” He then ran out of sight.

  “Well, that’s one way for us to attract the attention of the local priest,” said Jim.

  In due course, the priest emerged, holding a cross. He peered at them, and slowly lowered the artifact.

  “Well, you don’t look like demons,” he said in Latin. “At least, any more than the average western barbarian. Are you from Macao? Are the Chinese finally allowing western merchants to trade here openly?”

  “My name is James Saluzzo.”

  “Your surname sounds Italian.…”

  “My great-grandparents were from the old country—Sicily, Calabria and so on—but I am third generation West Virginian.”

  “I’m fourth generation,” said Martina.

  The priest stared at her. “You are the first Christian woman I have seen in China, outside Macao. And even there, they aren’t common.”

  “This is my wife, Martina,” said Jim. “My family has been Catholic since forever, but her father converted when he married her mother.”

  “My mother’s Irish,” explained Martina. “A Scanlon. May I ask your name, Father?”

  “I am Pietro Canevari of the Society of Jesus. But here I am known as Nie Shizong.”

  “Ah, you too are Italian!”

  “I am Genoese,” Canevari acknowledged.

  “And you are in charge of this church?”

  “For the moment. But Joao Froes, the rector of the seminary, is senior to me. And, so, too, is Lazzaro Cattaneo, but he is elsewhere in the province, right now. I have heard of Virginia; it is an English colony in the New World. Are you from its western district? Have they started allowing Catholics to settle there?”

  “In our time, they had. We are from West Virginia, but more particularly from the town of Grantville. Have you heard of it?”

  Canevari’s eyes widened, and his expression was wild. For a moment, it seemed as though Canevari was rethinking his dismissal of the “western demons” accusation. Then he smiled. “Catholics are welcome in this church, from wherever or whenever they come.”

  He glanced at Martina’s belly; her clothes didn’t hide the baby bulge. “Does your visit have something to do with your wife’s pregnancy?”

  “It does,” said Martina. “We want to make sure that the baby is baptized as soon as possible after birth. Our doctor expects the birth to be in December.”

  “Since you are both Catholics, I see no difficulty,” said Canevari. “Provided you give birth here in Hangzhou, or another city with a church.”

  “Why isn’t there a cross at the top of the roof? Our St. Mary’s church back home has one, and so does every Catholic church I’ve ever seen, in this time or my own.”

  “We had it there at first, but we had to take it down as a concession to local superstition,” the priest explained. “The geomancers proclaimed that it was a ‘poison arrow.’ Mind you, they couldn’t agree whether it was an obstacle blocking the flow of chi, or a generator of killing energy. Bah!”

  “What about the crosses flanking the doors?”

  “They are accepted, albeit grudgingly. Thanks to the outer wall of the courtyard, there is no direct line of sight between the crosses and the entrance of any other residence.”

  Canevari paused. “May I ask when you last took confession?”

  “A few months ago, with Father Aleni, in Fuzhou.”

  Canevari raised his eyebrows. “And how is Father Aleni? I have not seen him for a long time. We are spread thinly in this heathen empire.”

  “He seemed to be in good health,” said Jim.

  “Well then,” said Canevari. “I expect to see you at mass each Sunday.”

  Tethered balloon field

  The USE mission had continued to stage weekly balloon exhibitions, attracting ever larger crowds. Food and other vendors had set up stalls nearby.

  Doctor Tan Zhu of Wuxi and his daughter Hengqi watched with amazement as the balloon made its ascent into the sky above Hangzhou.

  “To think that I expressed skepticism about the attainments of these sages from, what did they call it—”

  “The Uttermost West,” said Hengqi.

  “Thank you. Now, I must wonder, if they are able to fly into the sky, what secrets of medicine might they know?”

  Hengqi shrugged. “Only one way to find out, I suppose. Let’s talk to them.”

  The Tan family had been associated with medicine for several centuries. One of Hengqi’s forebears was the famous Tan Yunxian, the author of Sayings of a Female Doctor, who lived from 1461 to 1554. Nor were Hengqi and Yunxian the only Tan women who had exhibited a vocation for the healing arts: The same was true of Yunxian’s grandmother. For that matter, Hengqi’s aunt Jifen was a Dame of Medicine in the Imperial Lodge of Ritual and Ceremony in Beijing. As such, she was on call if any of the women or children of the Forbidden City required medical attention.

  Their homeland, Wuxi, lay o
n the north shore of Lake Taihu, whereas Suzhou was to the east. Hangzhou was about ninety miles away from Wuxi, south of the lake, but it was a trip that Zhu and Hengqi made fairly frequently, because Hangzhou had many bookstores. Doctor Tan was working on a great compendium of medicine and was always looking for esoteric manuscripts of the past. Occasionally, he would travel further afield, to Beijing, Nanjing, Luoyang, Kaifeng, or even Xi’an. All had been capitals of Chinese dynasties in the past, sometimes more than once.

  Zhu had passed the provincial examination many years ago, but had become disenchanted with the civil service system and decided to devote his intellect to medicine. In recent years, as a result of failing eyesight, he had retired from active practice. But since his daughter Hengqi was his only child, she had studied medicine since childhood. Already, she had a reputation back home as a practitioner of fuke, that is, female medicine.

  They asked Jim Saluzzo, who was supervising the ground crew, about the medical wisdom of the visitors. He shook his head. “I’m sorry, you need to talk to Doctor Carvalhal. And I think he’s already headed back to the exhibition hall. He doesn’t linger once he sees that we’ve landed safely.”

  The exhibition hall

  “And have you brought books of medicine with you?” Zhu asked. He and his daughter had told Doctor Carvalhal about themselves.

  “Father,” said Hengqi, rolling her eyes.

  “I have,” said Doctor Carvalhal, “but they aren’t in Chinese.”

  Zhu’s eyebrows reached toward Heaven. “Not in Chinese?” It was plain that he had difficulty with the notion that there could be books that were not in Chinese. Medical books, at least.

  “Sorry, they are almost all in Latin. But frankly, I keep those more for sentimental reasons than anything else; they were my school textbooks. I now know, thanks to my studies in Grantville, that they are filled with misinformation.”

  “Grantville? That’s one of your great cities?”

  Doctor Carvalhal laughed. “It’s not great in terms of size; I don’t think more than ten thousand people live there right now. But it’s great in knowledge. In fact—” He lowered his voice. “Can you keep a secret?”

  Zhu drew himself up. “My daughter and I are physicians. We are accustomed to respecting patient confidences.”

  “Well then,” said Doctor Carvalhal. “I am not sure I am allowed to talk about it, but Grantville is a town from the future.”

  “From the future? How can that possibly be?”

  “It was clearly the handiwork of Heaven,” said Carvalhal. “But I think that the divine purpose is that we learn from them. From their history books, we learned what fate held in store for us. And with that warning, and with the aid of their science, we have been able to change our future.”

  “But how do you know that they are really from the future?” demanded Hengqi.

  Carvalhal’s expression became distant. “I have been there, and spoken with people who live in nearby Rudolstadt. The people of that town say that there was a giant flash of light, and the town of Grantville appeared out of nowhere. I have seen with my own eyes its strange buildings, constructed of an unnatural stone they call concrete and with giant windows of clear glass. I have seen their metal vehicles, which move without being drawn by man or animal over strange black roads. And I have seen what wonders of medicine they can perform.”

  “Well…I wish I could meet one of these people from the future,” said Zhu.

  Doctor Carvalhal laughed again. “You already have; one of them was up in the balloon, and another was supervising the ground crew. I am the physician on the staff of the embassy from the United States of Europe, the political entity that includes Grantville. And that embassy is led by four of those people from the future; we call them ‘up-timers.’ Three men, and one woman; the woman is pregnant.”

  “Pregnant? May I speak to her?” asked Hengqi.

  “Given that you are a doctor who cares for women, I am sure she’ll want to speak to you. And perhaps you have a midwife you can recommend?”

  * * *

  Carvalhal owned one up-time medical book, a copy of Grey’s Anatomy. While Zhu and Hengqi couldn’t read the English, the illustrations spoke for themselves.

  The Jewish doctor had shown Grey’s to the Tans with some trepidation, since it was obvious that the anatomical information in the book could only have been gleaned by dissecting human bodies. Back in Europe, dissection was prohibited in some countries and severely restricted elsewhere.

  Tan Zhu’s reaction was not as severe as Carvalhal had feared. “In the third year of the Tianfeng era of the Xin dynasty, the rebel lieutenant Wangsun Qing was captured and executed. The palace physician publicly dissected Wangsun and measured his organs. There are also many anatomical measurements in the Inner Canon of the Yellow Lord. I must suppose that they were obtained by dissection, no doubt of criminals.”

  Year of the Pig, Seventh Month (August 13–September 10, 1635)

  Zhejiang Province

  Hangzhou

  It had not been a good day for Colonel von Siegroth. He had spent several days in a row talking to various flunkies at the headquarters of the Zhejiang Province Regional Military Commission. Even when he managed to obtain an audience with an official, he was unable to find anyone who was willing to watch a demonstration of his weapons in action, let alone place an order. Demonstrating telephones and flying balloons were all well and good, but they had yet to generate any sales. The Chinese had bought cannon from the Portuguese off and on for decades, so he didn’t understand why he was having problems.

  Zheng Zhilong had warned von Siegroth that this might happen. “This is not Beijing. The military commissioners in Zhejiang are not risk-takers, and buying western arms is a risk.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Have you heard of Sun Yuanhua? No? He was a Christian convert who was appointed assistant surveillance commissioner of Shandong five years ago. Later, he was also named grand coordinator of Denglai.” Denglai encompassed the ports of Dengzhou and Laizhou on the northern coast of Shandong Peninsula. “He was a strong advocate of buying western artillery and even employing Portuguese soldiers to serve them and teach the Chinese how to cast cannon. They were with him in Dengzhou in 1632 when Kong Youde and his troops mutinied. The mutineers spared him to carry their demands to Beijing, and he could not commit suicide because he was a Christian. The emperor blamed Sun Yuanhua for the mutiny and he was executed a few months later. Moreover, his patron, Minister of War Xiong Mingyu, was dismissed from office. And another patron, Zhou Yanru, was forced to resign the following year.”

  “Tragic,” said von Siegroth, “but what does this have to do with my guns?”

  “Sun Yuanhua was a Christian and he was executed for treason. Xiong Mingyu and Zhou Yanru were disgraced. All favored buying western cannon, so buying western cannon is now politically questionable.”

  “This is what the Americans call ‘guilt by association,’” complained von Siegroth.

  “So sorry. You must find someone who has both a high position and is not afraid to advocate a politically unpopular course of action if he thinks it is in the best interest of the Middle Kingdom. I will think about who might satisfy those criteria. And how to approach them. Be patient; it may take a while.”

  Von Siegroth had to admit that his patience was fraying. So far, his principal customer had been Admiral Zheng. When the Rode Draak visited Batavia, he had offered carronades to the Dutch, but they declined—their view was that the VOC would certainly test the new artillery and if they were effective, the Dutch would make them themselves at less cost. At least they were willing to buy some of the conventional three-, six- and twelve-pounders that had been part of the former armament of the Rode Draak and the Groen Feniks, and relegated to cargo when the ships were rearmed.

  The admiral had bought several carronades, but save for the single “memento” purchase of the thirty-two-pounder used against Liu Xiang, he had mainly acquired twelve- and eighteen-
pounders. The eighteen-pound carronade weighed a mere thousand pounds, and the twelve-pounder about two-thirds of that. Moreover, he had them mounted on wheeled carriages, not slide mounts, so they were really gunnades, not carronades.

  Surprisingly, the admiral had bought several mortars. These had been intended for sale to the Dutch, but they had declined those too, stating that they had all they needed. Colonel von Siegroth had tried to explain that they were intended for siege warfare, not naval combat, but the admiral hadn’t been dissuaded.

  The colonel hoped that there had been no misunderstanding; he wanted the admiral to be a repeat customer. But he did have to show a profit for this voyage and so, of course, he sold the mortars and matching shells.

  Still, he needed more customers.…

  “I don’t suppose, Admiral, that you might know of some more suitable military men,” said the colonel. “There would, I am sure, be recompense for your time if your inquiries bore fruit.”

  Zheng Zhilong held up his hand. “I will be in touch. You may need to travel on short notice, however.”

  Colonel von Siegroth had to be content with that vague promise.

  Chapter 35

  Home rented by USE mission

  Hangzhou

  Fang Yizhi frowned. “So you’re saying that, even though you’re from the future, you don’t know for sure what will happen in the future.”

  “That’s right,” said Jim. “The very arrival of Grantville in 1631 Germany changed the future in several ways. The most obvious effects are those attributable to the spread of our ideas and gadgets, and the actions of our armed forces. For example, King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden did not die leading a cavalry charge at the Battle of Lützen in November 1632, and instead was crowned Emperor of the United States of Europe, which didn’t exist at all in the old time line.”