The Apothecary Diaries - Volume 2 - Chapter 16

Chapter 16: Paper

When Maomao made her first visit in quite some time to the rear palace’s medical office, she found its resident eunuch as mellow as ever.

“Ah, haven’t seen you in a while, young lady,” the quack doctor said, happily pouring tea. “It’s gotten much warmer these days, hasn’t it?” He politely brought her a drink, using a medical treatise in lieu of a tray. Maomao snatched the tea and the treatise both at once, wishing she could give him a piece of her mind for so blatantly abusing such a priceless object.

As ever, the quack was the only one in the office. She couldn’t believe how little work he actually seemed to do in here. He was lucky he still had a job.

“Oh, it’s still plenty chilly,” Maomao said, placing a laundry basket on top of his desk.

Yes, there was still a chill in the air. It was cold enough that the butterbur hesitated to show their faces. Maybe the doctor only felt it had gotten warmer because he was so plump.

Maomao would have to pick plenty of herbs as the new season took hold, but there was something she wanted to do before that happened, and that was what had brought her here today. This wouldn’t normally have been an urgent task, but she was who she was—and the quack was who he was.

“Gracious, young lady, you only just got here. What are you doing?” the doctor asked as Maomao pulled something out of the laundry basket.

“What a question.” From the basket Maomao produced a set of cleaning supplies and as much bamboo charcoal as she had been able to stuff in there. “We’re going to clean. This room.” Her eyes flashed. Apparently two months of Suiren’s discipline had rubbed off on her. With nothing to do in the Jade Pavilion, Maomao had come to the one place where she had almost free rein. She’d always thought the medical office was a bit of a pigsty; now the fire was lit and there was no putting it out.

“How’s that?” the doctor asked, but his sudden frown couldn’t save him.

The quack wasn’t a bad person; indeed, he was quite kindhearted. But that, Maomao knew, was an entirely separate thing from being good at his job.

The next room over from the main office contained cabinets full of medicines. Three walls towered high with drawers, a veritable paradise on Earth for Maomao, but it wasn’t all joy and sunshine. Yes, there might be a great many medicines there, but it was the quack who got to use them. Those he didn’t use regularly would get dusty or might be eaten by bugs. And then there was a dried herb’s greatest enemy: humidity. Let down your guard for a second and the materials would rot. The warmer it got, the more humid it would become. They had to clean things up now, before that happened, or it would be too late.

It wasn’t that Maomao particularly liked cleaning. Neither did she have any special reason to help out here, as all too often when she visited the medical office, it was just to kill time. But still, she felt she must. The sense of duty thrummed in her. (As did the nagging feeling that she’d been thoroughly corrupted by Suiren.)

“You don’t have to do all this, young lady. Surely someone else can take care of the cleaning,” the doctor said, sounding deeply unmotivated. The tone of his voice caused Maomao to involuntarily look at him in a way she normally reserved for Jinshi. Put simply, it was as if she were looking into a puddle full of mosquito larvae.

“Heek!” The doctor quivered right down to his loach mustache. Any gravitas he might have had vanished.

Darn it, stop that, Maomao chided herself. He might be a quack, but he was still her superior. She had to at least act respectful toward him. Otherwise he might not put out rice crackers the next time she showed up. There were too many sweet snacks around the rear palace, not enough salt.

“Yes, we could ask someone else,” Maomao said, “but what if they accidentally switched some medicines around while they were working? What would we do then?”

The doctor was quiet. It wasn’t exactly proper for Maomao to show up at her leisure and decide to clean, but he was quiet about that too. He could hardly chase her out. The doctor who had been close with Suirei had indeed, they’d heard, been punished for the missing thornapple. According to Gaoshun, though, the man was too talented to let go; instead, he merely suffered a reduction in salary.

Maomao started in on the dusty shelves, opening the drawers one by one and running a cloth through them. She threw out anything that had obviously gone bad, and wrote the name of each item on a wooden tag. Whatever medicine remained she put in new paper pouches, then returned them each to their proper places.

Whenever there was something that required particularly strenuous activity, she got the quack to do it. Her leg still wasn’t completely healed. And the doctor was a bit overweight, anyway; the exercise would be good for him.

He certainly uses fine paper here, she observed. Most paper used among the populace was of a low-quality, disposable type. Paper that would last was too expensive for ordinary people. Instead, commoners did most of their writing on wooden strips. There was plenty of firewood floating around, much of it already cut thin enough to start a blaze with. That was what the people used. And when they were done, it doubled as a convenient source of firewood.

The nation had actually exported paper once upon a time, but the former emperor—or rather, his mother, the former empress dowager—had forbidden the felling of the trees used to make the finest paper. The restriction had been eased somewhat since then, but not enough to meet demand. Why had the empress dowager forbidden the trees to be cut down? There had been no one heedless enough of their life to ask at the time, but considering that the harvesting of those trees was still limited, Maomao figured there must be some sort of reason.

The upshot was that these days, with the exception of the very finest stuff, paper was made of other trees, or grasses, or old cloth. Such resources were less readily available than trees and took time to process, making them more expensive—and all the time and trouble caused producers to try to find shortcuts, leading to a low-quality product. Thus paper had acquired a reputation among the populace for being exorbitantly expensive but not actually worthwhile, and had failed to gain traction despite being more convenient than wood.

Maomao exhaled: “Phew...”

“All finished, young lady?” the doctor asked hopefully.

“No, only about half done.”

A disappointed silence followed. Maomao, though, saw that half the work was about as much as she could hope to do in a day considering the sheer scale of the task, and decided to deal with the rest the next day. She left the charcoal sitting in the room to help absorb the humidity. She still didn’t have enough of it, though, and requested the doctor to requisition more.

The doctor massaged his shoulders as he went about fixing a snack. He brought over fruit juice poured from a ceramic bottle. “A sweet treat, that’s the thing when you’re feeling tired,” he said, using a bamboo spoon to scoop mashed chestnut and sweet potato onto some paper. He handed one of the portions to Maomao.

Old guy has rich tastes! Sweet potato was hard to get a hold of at this time of year, making such a snack a particular indulgence; and on top of that, he served it on high-quality paper as if doing so were completely unremarkable.

Maomao cleared the sweet potato in a single bite, then looked at the paper, now stained with round fingerprints. The material had a noticeable sheen.

“This is excellent paper you’re using,” she remarked.

“Oh, you can tell?” It had been an offhand comment, but it seemed to have gotten the doctor’s attention. “My family produces this. We even supply it here to the court. Impressive, no?”

“It is indeed.”

That would explain how he happened to have some lying around. It wasn’t just flattery, either; Maomao could see that this really was material of high quality. Her old man had always picked the best of the worst when choosing from among the selection of disposable paper for his medicine packets. Quality material was desirable to prevent the infiltration of humidity or the spillage of powder, but costs had to be kept down somewhere—and for the sake of the patients, it couldn’t be in the medicines themselves. But savings had to be made, lest supplies consume all of the profit and then some.

Maybe I could get him to sell me some, Maomao mused. You know, at a friendly discount. Ah, the unfair advantage. She sipped her juice as she thought and it coursed, sweet and lukewarm, down her throat. Not for me, she thought, and decided to heat some water for tea. A fire was always kept burning in the medical office, very convenient at times like this.

“The whole village pitches in to make it. There was a time when we actually thought about throwing in the towel, but thankfully, we managed to scrape by somehow.”

Maomao hadn’t asked for the doctor’s life story, but he seemed in a talkative mood today. In the past, making paper had been enough to earn a profit, so his family had concentrated on cutting down the local trees and shaving them as finely as possible to supply product. It was more lucrative to sell abroad than domestically, so their paper became an increasingly important trade good. In his childhood, the village had been so wealthy that the quack doctor could ask for sweets anytime he wanted and eat as many as he liked.

For one reason or another, though—perhaps they simply got too big—the village incurred the wrath of the former empress dowager, who forbade them to cut down the trees they used to make their paper. They were forced to find other materials to produce with, but that inevitably meant a decline in the quality of their product. Now the trading houses were mad at them and had ceased to do business with them.

The village’s salad days were over. The headman—who, in fact, was the quack doctor’s father—was beset by villagers demanding he do something. He saw the writing on the proverbial wall, that they could no longer go on making paper as they had. However, not everyone in the village was able or willing to see this reality, and a great deal of anger focused on the headman and his family.

Maomao listened patiently, pouring boiled water from a teapot into a cup.

“It broke my heart when my older sister came here to the rear palace.”

The village had been established in an ideal place for making paper, but not for much else. They decided to relocate the village, but lacked the resources. Around that time, the rear palace was looking for more palace women, and so the doctor’s older sister answered the call.

“She laughed and said the next time I saw her she would be a mother to the country, but in the end, I never saw her again.”

What exactly to do with themselves remained an issue on the new land. More resources were needed, and now the quack’s younger sister volunteered to follow the older into the rear palace.

“And finally I decided to go. There was really no other choice,” the quack said. As the rear palace expanded, there was inevitably a need for more eunuchs. They were in shorter supply than women, though, and thus commanded a higher price.

He’s had it tougher than I realized, Maomao thought as she drank her tea.

The more one cleaned, the more one saw things that needed cleaning. Maomao successfully finished with the medicine cabinets on the second day, but now the next room over bothered her. The quack did some basic cleaning, it appeared, but he didn’t seem to have an eye for detail. Maomao spent the third day brushing cobwebs off the ceiling and carefully wiping down the walls, and after that she wanted to organize the equipment. The quack had quite a bit of it, she’d discovered, and anything he didn’t much use he stuffed into one of the other rooms.

What a waste, she thought as she surveyed that next room. She’d been given to understand that it wasn’t being used, but for Maomao, it was a treasure trove. She and the quack tackled the scads of medical treatises, Maomao with a glowing smile on her face and the doctor looking rather glum. In this way, over the quack’s pouting, they spent seven full days cleaning. Maomao had also been doing food tasting for Consort Gyokuyou during that time, but nothing out of the ordinary had occurred.

It was around then, as the doctor was grudgingly polishing a mortar and pestle, that another eunuch showed up at the medical office. The quack had received a letter.

“Well, now, what have we here?” the doctor said. He took the letter eagerly, spying a chance to do some slacking off.

“Who’s it from?” Maomao asked. In her mind, she was purely being polite, but the doctor replied, “It’s from my younger sister.” He showed her the letter, which was written on crackly, uneven paper that made Maomao wonder if it was produced from seaweed. It was very much the sort of low-quality product the average person might use.

I thought he said his family made paper, she mused. Maybe the sister figured a botched batch was good enough for writing to a family member.

As he perused the letter, though, the doctor’s face took on a look of shock, his eyes boring into the page. Maomao sidled up beside him, curious what was going on, but at just that moment the quack’s shoulders slumped. He slid weakly into a chair, hung his head, and let the letter drop onto the table. A few words jumped out at Maomao:

“Our Imperial commission may be withdrawn.”

But the doctor had been bragging to Maomao just the other day about how his family supplied the court with paper!

“I wonder what could be the matter,” the doctor said, almost to himself. “And we were just now able to start producing more supply...”

An Imperial commission—or lack thereof—could have major consequences for the family’s income. The hoity-toity types who bought high-quality paper could never resist the idea that they were using the same stuff as the emperor.

“Producing more?” Maomao asked. “They haven’t started cutting corners, have they?” She fingered the rough paper of the letter.

“They would never. They’ve been more excited to work than ever since they got that ox. Nowadays it does all the things we always used to need people to do. Why should that change anything?”

Making paper involved a great deal of physical labor. The work ought to be easier with an ox to do all the heavy lifting.

“And yet if this sample is anything to judge by, I can see why the court wouldn’t be interested.” Maomao picked up the letter and fluttered it at the quack. Low-quality paper would disintegrate if it got the slightest bit wet. Moreover, the uneven surface resulted in hideous written characters.

The doctor was silent, as if in tacit admission that he knew the workmanship was poor. Finally he leaned so far forward his head was on the table. “I just don’t know what’s wrong.”

Maomao, recognizing that now was not the time for cleaning, studied the paper intently. Much of the paper circulating among the commoners was of questionable purity, made of strands of fiber from many different plants. Because the fibers weren’t cut carefully, the glue hardened inconsistently, causing the paper to fall to tatters. Her inspection, though, showed that the fibers of this sample were of uniform size and diligently measured thickness. Yet the surface was uneven, and a gentle tug was enough to tear off a corner of the letter.

Maomao tilted her head in curiosity, reading the letter over once more. It said that the family was still employing the age-old methods of making the paper, and using just the same materials they always had. The younger sister implored her brother to advise them what to do, but sadly, the half-man who was her brother seemed at his wits’ end.

“She mentions a time-tested way of making paper. Exactly what methods do you use?” Maomao finished drying the mortar and pestle and returned them to the shelf. Then she put on a kettle to help them relax.

“The same ones everyone else does,” the quack replied. “The difference is, our family is very particular about how we break down the materials and how we make the glue. I can’t say more than that.”

Not so talkative on this subject, huh? Maomao thought. She pulled a container of tea leaves off the shelf. She was rifling through it, trying to decide which would be good, when some arrowroot practically jumped out at her. She grabbed it and tossed it in a teacup. Then she put the kettle back on the fire to boil.

“Are you also particular about your water?” she asked.

“Mm. We use spring water heated to a very precise temperature to get the glue to set just right. I can’t tell you more, though. That’s a trade secret.”

That was the quack doctor she knew, Maomao thought, as she set down another teacup. She filled it with hot water, then stirred it assiduously with a spoon before it could cool, producing a viscous gruel. Arrowroot tea.

“And the glue, do you boil it with water left over from washing rice?”

“No, we take the trouble to dissolve wheat flour into it, the way you’re supposed to. Otherwise it doesn’t stick well.” The moment he’d spoken, the doctor slapped his hand over his mouth, but it made scant difference to Maomao whether they used rice water or wheat flour or whatever else. She placed the arrowroot tea in front of the doctor.

“In that case, where do you keep the ox?” she said.

“I’m afraid I don’t know that.” He looked at her as if to ask Why arrowroot? but nonetheless started lapping at the hot liquid. It stuck to the teacup, making it tricky to drink. “Young lady, I do believe you’ve mistaken the proportions here. It’s impossible to drink this.”

Maomao passed him a spoon. “My apologies. I’m happy to tell you how to make it drinkable. Want to give it a try?”

“What should I do?”

Maomao placed the spoon briefly in her mouth, then stuck it into the tea and stirred vigorously. Then she did it again, and then again.

“Somewhat uncouth,” the quack remarked with a frown, but he did as she showed him. As he repeatedly put the spoon in his mouth and then stirred, a change began to take place. “It’s getting less starchy,” he observed.

“I should think so.”

“In fact, it’s practically watery now.” The doctor looked quite impressed.

“Arrowroot and glue are rather similar,” Maomao offered.

“I suppose you could say that... I wonder if saliva thins out glue the same way it does arrowroot.”

“Indeed.”

The doctor’s mouth opened. “Indeed what?”

He wasn’t as quick on the uptake as Maomao would have liked. I’m practically rubbing his nose in it, she thought, but she decided to give him one more hint.

“Oxen, I believe, produce a great deal of slobber.”

“Yes, now that you mention it, I suppose that’s true.”

“What if you were to find out where the ox is drinking its water? Just to be sure.”

Maomao, resolved not to say anything further, cleaned up the teacups, and promptly went back to the Jade Pavilion. The quack must have finally caught on, for he dashed off a letter and hurried out of the medical office to send it.

Maomao contemplated what she would do when she was done cleaning.

But it’s when things seem most quiet that disaster often lurks.