3
Rural Hunan, 1849
I lost track of how many shoes I made over that next year; my numbers did not go that high. I did not walk as much as I should have to train my feet and keep making them smaller – my focus was on making shoes. From morning until it was too dark to see, I would embroider the tiny slippers. All through the winter, I sat huddled by the fireplace as close as possible to keep my hands from cramping in the cold so I could keep working.
When spring came back, it was still cold, but the sun was shining more often. As much as possible, I would pull back the tattered window covering so I could work in the sunshine. The colors of the threads were so much more vivid in the natural light. I tried to make each pair different from the last and to use different stitches and patterns. I was trying to train myself to be as good of an embroiderer as possible before going to stay with Lady Tang. I had no idea how much I still had to learn.
It was the first spring in my life that I did not go out into the field to tend to my silkworms, but I had something else to look forward to.
When my birthday arrived, Lady Tang did not send for me. Every day that passed was torture to me. It was over a month later before the sedan chair came back.
I took my few pieces of clothes in a small bag, some of my favorite needles, a brush for my teeth and one for my hair, a set of chopsticks, a teacup, a bowl, and the piece of red thread from my first pair of shoes. Mother, Father, Auntie, and the fortune teller were all there to bid me good-bye.
“Do not disappoint me, Yaqian,” Mother said with the same stern face she always had. “Always do exactly as Lady Tang tells you.”
I nodded and headed out to the sedan chair where one of the men helped me climb up. I opened the curtain and waved to everyone. The man closed the curtain and tied it shut. Then the whole thing rocked and I fell back into the seat as it began to move forward. I yelped in surprise and glee and then laughed at the sensation of being carried. I rocked back and forth in the chair. I sat up and pulled at the curtain to see out, but it was tied so tightly I could barely see the people on the street looking at me as I passed. I could not believe that I was forbidden from getting a better look at the world on my very first trip from home. I yanked on the curtain as hard as I could to try to get it to open, but it would not budge. I took a needle out of my bag and began to rip out the stitching on the ties holding the curtain shut. The thread began to come loose in one long piece. As I ran it through my fingers I realized I that it was the finest piece of silk I had ever seen. It was softer and smoother than any thread I had used before, but was strong enough to hold the heavy window ties shut. I coiled the thread around one of my fingers and placed it into my pocket with the other one.
I finally managed to completely remove one of the ties and the curtain flew open just as we were crossing the Xiangjiang River! The bridge extended over the middle of Orange Island. The trees were bright green and little white flowers were beginning to bloom on them. The island was long and narrow and on either side the river flowed quickly. There were people on the river in small canoes and large steamers. People fishing and catching frogs and crabs were all along the sandy bank.
There were very few other sedan chairs on the road, but there were many people being pulled in rickshaws. I smiled and waved at people as we passed and most just looked back in confusion. Sedan chairs are usually reserved for weddings and the wealthy, and the women inside would never be seen by those outside. What must people have thought seeing this round-faced urchin looking at them from such a beautiful chair?
The main road heading through the city was crowded and noisy. There were so many shops and carts. There were people carrying all manner of birds and fish to market on long polls. A man clapping a piece of wood drew attention to the rat traps he was selling. An elderly couple wailed over the body of their son and begged for donations to bury him. I held my nose as we passed closely to a stall selling stinky tofu.
The sedan chair finally pulled in front of a large moon gate set in a long stone wall. Two men rushed from small guard stands to open the wooden doors. We entered the most beautiful courtyard. The grass and white stone walkways were laid out with precision and the flowers were planted in just the right places. It was clear that an artist had designed this place.
As we approached the main building, I fumbled with the curtain ties to try and make them look closed again. The sedan chair rocked forward unexpectedly as the men set it down. I still had not recovered my balance as the door was opened and I fell out onto the ground! I heard a tittering laughter. I looked up to see Lady Tang and several girls who had come out to greet me. I quickly stood to dust myself off and made a very low bow to try and hide my beet red face. But Lady Tang made no mention of my embarrassment and offered her hand as a greeting.
“Welcome, Yaqian,” she said. “These girls are some of my other apprentices,” she explained, motioning to the girls who each gave a small bow in turn. “They have been here for a few years and will help you get settled. Let me show you to your room.”
The girls were each dressed far more finely than any young girl I had ever seen before. Their clothes were simple silk chaopaos, the high collared Manchu-style gowns that upper-class women wore, but very high quality. Each was a different color, from dark blue to pale red and heavily embroidered. I wore only a white cotton shirt and black cotton trousers. I did wear a pair of embroidered slippers I had finished the day before, but compared to the shoes they wore, I was beginning to doubt my talent. They also each had their hair properly done and delicately adorned while mine was simply tied back with a piece of fabric. I guessed the girls were about twelve to fourteen years old.
I followed closely behind Lady Tang as we walked through the building. “This is the main house,” she said. “This is where the living and dining areas are and a few areas for small gatherings and places to read and study. The dining room is to the west and your rooms are too the east.”
My family home had been quite small, a single open room with a small loft for storage and where I would sleep when the weather was mild. Lady Tang’s home, no – estate would be a better word, was sprawling, with dozens of buildings and courtyards connected by walkways and all surrounded by a tall wall. My feet began to ache at the mere thought of having to walk so far to get from my room to the dining and work areas every day. But Lady Tang and the girls all had bound feet, so I knew I would have to get used to it. I also noticed that they had a more elegant swaying gait than I did. I sort of hobbled in an attempt to put as little weight on each step as possible. I bit my lower lip to keep from crying out as I followed behind them and did my best to mimic their movements and keep up.
We walked down a long path and finally Lady Tang stopped. “This is your room,” she said. I opened the door and was shocked at what I saw. There were four beds, one in each corner of the room. Each had silk blankets and embroidered pillows. Next to each bed was a small desk with embroidery tools, a candle, and a washbasin. There was a small chest at the foot of each bed. The room had a large latticed window facing the east that let in the morning sunlight. There was a stove in the middle of the room for warmth and boiling water. The room was beautiful, clean, and bright.
“You can enter the room, Yaqian,” piped up one of the girls. “You won’t get it dirty.” All the girls giggled. Lady Tang simply held up one of her hands to quiet the girls and I took a step into the room.
“One of these beds is mine?” I finally asked.
“This one over here,” one of the girls said pointing to a bed in the southwest. Even with my little knowledge, I knew that this was the least auspicious spot. But being the newest person, I didn’t mind. I walked over to the bed and ran my fingers along the cover. A bed of my own. In my old home I slept on a bamboo palate on the landing or on the floor by the fireplace when it was very cold.
“This is my bed,” the girl said sitting on the bed in the northeast. “And those beds belong to Xiaxia and Mingzhu. But they are in the studio right now.”
I nodded. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Su Wensong,” she said with her head held high.
I smiled. I didn’t have many friends back home. My female cousins were older than I was and my male cousins were spoiled and unpleasant. There were some local girls I liked to swim and play with, but I had not seen them since my feet were bound. It was exciting to be surrounded by so many young girls. I couldn’t figure out if Wensong and the other girls liked me or not, but they seemed pleasant enough.
“Come, girls,” Lady Tang said. “Time for lunch.”
I left my small bag of meager possessions on my new bed and followed Lady Tang and the girls as they swayed to the dining hall. As excited as I was to be in this new place, all I wanted to do was sit down to rest my feet.
In the dining room were two long tables where five girls were already seated. Everyone was smiling and chatting happily. All the girls looked so lovely and proper. Each wore a brightly colored silk chaopao, some nicer than others, and all had their hair done up. A few girls had some nice jewelry pieces and some even wore paint on their lips and cheeks. Two kitchen maids came out and began to serve rice and soup to each girl. I looked down and realized I was dressed like a kitchen maid. My face got red-hot again. I was so out of place. I didn’t really belong here with these nice girls. How did I get to be here?
Lady Tang directed me to sit next to her. The kitchen maids then began bringing out bowls of hot dishes. There were whole chickens cut up, bowls of potatoes, eggplant with green beans, tofu, dumplings, and egg and tomato soup. I had never seen so much food served for one meal. And it was all so good. I could have sat there and eaten all day. I tried to eat slowly, as if this meal was nothing special to me, but after a few minutes, I eagerly wolfed it down. I never realized just how hungry I was until I finally had enough food to eat.
After lunch was rest time, something else I was not familiar with. Many of the girls would return to their rooms to nap during this time, but some would visit with each other, read books, or continue working on their embroidery. With a heavy stomach and achy feet, I slowly returned to my room climbed into my own bed for the first time. The room was warm from the sunshine and the stove and Yi, Mingzhu, and Xiaxia were already in their beds, so I quickly fell asleep.
An hour or so later, everyone instinctively seemed to know it was time to get up and get back to work. I, however, continued to sleep soundly. It had been a long time since I had felt so warm and comfortable. I awoke sometime later to an empty room except for Lady Tang standing over me, frowning at me for the first time. I scrambled out of bed, bowed, and apologized profusely.
“Afternoon session begins promptly at the hour of the goat!” she declared. I wasn’t sure what to say. I had no idea how to know what time it was if I was sleeping, but I kept my head low and only repeated my apologies and promised it wouldn’t happen again.
Lady Tang left the room and I followed her. We went out the back of the house.
“I heard that you tended you father’s silkworms back home,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” I replied. “Until my feet were bound, I tended them every day.”
“Good,” she said. “Before you can properly embroider, you must get to know your tools. You must learn everything there is to know about silk. You must be able to determine where it comes from, its quality, and how it is made. You already know about growing silkworms and collecting the cocoons, but do you know what happens next? How we extract the silk from the cocoons?”
I shook my head no.
She nodded. “Then that is where we will start.”
Behind the main compound were many small, ramshackle buildings. We entered one and there were many young women dressed in coarse cotton clothes sorting through thousands of cocoons on tables with raised edges. They would empty a large sack of cocoons onto a table, move the good cocoons into a basket on their right and put the bad cocoons in a basket on their left. Lady Tang picked up a good cocoon and a bad cocoon at random from the baskets and handed them to me.
“What do you see?” she asked.
I turned them over in my hands, feeling the little caterpillar roll about inside, and tried to figure out which one was defective. I finally noticed that one had a slight yellow tinge to it. But if I had not been looking for such a slight impurity, I would never have noticed it. I took a few more bad cocoons out of a basket and looked them over. Some had dark spots, some had tears, some I simply could not see what was wrong with them. I was amazed at how quickly the women were able to sort the cocoons. It would have taken me much longer to examine each one.
“It takes practice and a keen eye to do what these women do,” Lady Tang explained. “They have trained their eyes to know what to look for and their hands have learned to follow suit. You will soon learn the same thing, but in a different capacity. Your eye will learn what it takes to make a fine piece of embroidery and your hands will learn to bring them to life.
“A piece of embroidery is not just putting needle to cloth and making an image appear. Every part of the process is an art in and of itself.”
As she spoke, I didn’t realize that I had stopped breathing. Lady Tang’s voice had a way of making the world slow down because you didn’t want to miss a word. Even the women working within earshot of us noticeably slowed and quieted as they listed to her. Once she stopped, they picked up speed again.
“What happens to the bad cocoons?” I asked.
“I sell them to another silk house that has much lower standards than I do,” she said. Her swan-like neck seemed to stretch a little longer when she said that. She then motioned for me to follow her to the next building.
When we entered, my eyes widened in horror. “What are they doing to the caterpillars?” I shrieked. I felt sick to my stomach as a basket of good cocoons was dumped into a vat of boiling water.
“We have to boil the cocoons to loosen and extract the silk,” Lady Tang said calmly as she nudged me deeper into the room of slaughter.
“But…the caterpillars! They are still alive inside!” I yelled.
“Yaqian, calm yourself,” Lady Tang said. “If we waited until the moth chewed its way out of the cocoon, the silk would be ruined. Besides, so many silk moths would be far more than necessary. And boiled silkworms are very delicious. These marvelous creatures serve many purposes.”
I put my hand to my mouth; I could almost feel my face turn green. “You…you eat silkworms?” I finally managed to choke out.
“Oh, yes,” she replied. “We have so many we serve them nearly every night. I am surprised your family didn’t eat them. Many poor people supplement their food supplies with them.”
I felt weak. I bent over and put my hands on my knees. My poor little silkworms! I had no idea that by gathering the cocoons and giving them to my father every day I was sending them to their deaths. And my embroidery! Every thread of silk I used to make my beautiful shoes cause the deaths of countless silkworms. I had spent so many years with my silkworms as treasured friends. I tenderly cared for and reared each one, imagining that each one lived a beautiful life that led to beautiful embroidery work. To think they all ended up boiled, their safe, silken homes ripped from them, and they ended up in someone’s dinner bowl was more horrible than I could bear.
I was suddenly so angry. I couldn’t believe how heartless and cruel Lady Tang was. Why had no one ever told me this? I reached down, took off my embroidered slippers, and chucked them at Lady Tang. She easily batted them away, but her eyes and mouth were agape with surprise.
“You’re a monster!” I yelled. I ran out of the boiling house as fast as my little broken feet could carry me. I ran through some of the other outbuildings, a dying house, a weaving house, trying to find my way back to the main house so I could leave. When I finally found it, I marched straight from the back of the house to the front and headed for the moon gate. It was locked.
“Let me out!” I demanded of the guards.
“We only open the gates on the order of Lady Tang,” one of them said.
“I am not a prisoner,” I said. “Let me out so I can go home right now.” I did my best to stomp my foot in emphasis, but ended up wincing from the pain. The guards laughed at me.
“Yaqian,” I heard Lady Tang call from behind me. I looked and saw her standing on the porch. I also saw the faces of the other embroidery girls peeking out the windows and doors at me. “Come back inside so we can finish your orientation.”
I was surprised that Lady Tang was not seething in anger at me. She was just as calm as ever. I felt guilty for my outburst after the kindness she had extended to me, but I had already made a fool of myself. The only thing worse would be backing down and going back inside. I had to stand firm. I had said I wanted to go home so that is where I was determined to go. I turned my back on Lady Tang and the school and stared at the gate. They had to open it eventually.
The few hours I stood there in the sun felt like forever. The gate did not open and my feet and legs ached. The sun eventually went down, and it got chilly. I shivered as the guards were brought warm bowls of food. My stomach growled.
I finally sighed, dropped my head, and slunk back into the house. Candles and oil lamps were burning. Some girls were in the front room playing Go. Others were reading or working on their calligraphy. Some were playing music. They all immediately went silent as I entered. I tried to ignore their stares as I walked past them toward Lady Tang’s rooms, but I could feel their eyes on me.
I knocked on her door so softly that I was shocked when she said, “Come in.” I opened the door and stepped inside, keeping my head down.
Lady Tang was sitting at a desk, writing something with a horsehair brush. She did not acknowledge me, so I just stood there, saying nothing. She finally finished whatever she was writing, hung the brush on a small rack, and turned to me.
“One day, Yaqian,” she began, “you will die.”
I looked up at her sharply, wondering why she would speak to me of such evil.
“You will die and be buried under a mound of dirt. In that dirt, will live worms that will eat your decaying body. The rain will come. The ground will become so saturated that the worms will not be able to breathe underground. They will dig out for the chance to find the sun. But they will not find the sun. The birds will be waiting for them. The worms that ate your body will be eaten by the birds. But you know what will happen then? Up, up, up, the birds will spread their wings and fly to the heavens with you in their gullet. You, Yaqian, long after you are dead will soar through the sky like a bird.”
She stood and walked over to me. She reached out and handed me the shoes I had thrown at her. “We are all connected, Yaqian. Your worms will live on in the beautiful works of art you make with their silk. They will fly like birds, swim like fish, and become beautiful women. Show them honor in death by becoming the best embroidery girl Hunan has ever known.”
My chest swelled with emotion, as did my eyes. I was so embarrassed by my outburst and so thankful for Lady Tang’s kind lesson. I took my shoes from her and kowtowed at her feet.
“I beg your forgiveness, Lady Tang,” I said, doing my best not to cry. I was failing.
“Go to your room and rest,” Lady Tang said, returning to her desk. “We will start fresh tomorrow.”
“Yes, Lady Tang!” I said as I stood but stayed bent at the waist and backed out of her room. When I shut the door and turned around, all the other embroidery girls were there waiting for me. I wiped the tears from my cheeks, stood up straight, and cleared my throat.
“Excuse me,” was all I said as I passed through the crowd and headed to my room.
I changed into a set of silk sleeping clothes that had been laid out on my bed for me. Sleeping clothes! I had never had separate clothes just for sleeping in my life. Lady Tang must have known that I would return and had them prepared for me in spite of the horrible way I had acted. I crawled into bed even though I was thirsty and starving. I did not deserve anything to eat or drink. I would sleep and start anew tomorrow.
The next morning, Lady Tang and I started again. We never spoke about my first-day tantrum again and none of the other girls brought it up either. It felt strange living in a place where my past mistakes were not constantly held against me. It felt safe.
After a warm breakfast of hot corn juice and congee, of which I ate three bowls, we returned to the boiling room. Lady Tang showed me how the cocoons were boiled and stirred with a large wooden spoon to loosen the silk fibers. The silk was then slowly pulled in long strands from the water into a spinning wheel that spun the strands into thread. The threads were then taken to the dying room. The women who worked in that room looked barely human. Their skin and clothes were many different, unnatural colors from working so closely with the dye. Some of the women were blue from head to foot. Some of the women had green arms or purple hair. Some of them looked quite humorous, but the tired, worn looks on their faces told me it probably wasn’t a particularly easy or enjoyable job.
I learned that in Xiang embroidery, embroidery from Hunan, silk threads of over 100 different colors are used! I couldn’t even name that many colors. Indeed, many of the colors were extremely similar, only varying slightly in hue. Lady Tang was right; I would have to develop a keen eye for color to know when to use which threads. Not all of the colors were made in Lady Tang’s workshop. She specialized in a few deep, rich – expensive – colors. Other colored threads she bought from other workshops.
After that was the weaving room, where the rolls of silk thread were fed into huge looms and woven into long bolts of silk cloth to be used for clothes, bedding, burial shrouds, banners, and many other things. The women moved so quickly, tossing the shuttle back and forth, whole sheets of cloth appeared in a matter of moments. The monotony was mind numbing, though. Left hand, close the loom, right hand, close the loom, repeating for hours on end. I felt drowsy after watching them for only a few minutes. I looked forward to working on my embroidery, when every day I would make a unique and beautiful piece of art.
After lunch and rest time, I finally got to go with the other embroidery girls to their workroom in the main house. Each girl had her own workstation with a small table where she kept piles of silk threads, needles of various sizes, small wooden frames, and drawings or paintings of flowers or animals she wanted to recreate in embroidery. Some of the girls had paints and paintbrushes so they could paint an image on the fabric before going over the image with thread.
Unlike the other rooms in the house that had small, latticed windows with wooden shutters that would shut out the cold and the light, the windows in the embroidery studio were very large, almost floor to ceiling, and glass-paned. For delicate embroidery work, the girls needed as much natural light as possible, but they also needed to keep their hands warm. Cold fingers cramp and shake, making it impossible to work. A large stove gave off plenty of warmth while the glass kept the heat in and let in the sunlight. The windows could also be opened in the summer to let the cool breezes through. Winters were especially nice for the embroidery girls, though, since there were so few hours of daylight. Some days, Lady Tang would dismiss the girls as early as the hour of the rooster, so they had the whole evening to read, play games, paint, or work on their music. Some of the girls would just get plenty of sleep since in the summer they might have to work ten-hour days. But my first day in the embroidery studio was a bright spring day, and I was eager to get started.
Lady Tang took me to an empty table in the back of the room and motioned for me to sit. She pulled a chair next to mine and handed me a bundle of ugly green thread, a small round frame with a thin piece of silk already in it, and a red pincushion with a few needles in it.
“We will start simply,” she said. “Can you make a leaf for me? I want to observe your style.”
I took a deep breath. I was a little apprehensive. I wanted to impress Lady Tang, but leaves were easy so I didn’t need to be nervous. I had made many leaves before, and flowers, and even peacock feathers! I was sure I could impress her with a simple leaf. I picked a needle from the pincushion and reached for the thread.
“No,” Lady Tang said.
I froze. What had I done wrong? Had I already messed up so badly? I looked at the needle in my hand. It looked fine to me – sharp on one end and an eye in the other. But I put it back in the cushion and reached for another one. I then reached for the thread again.
“No,” she said again.
This time, I felt my face blush hotly. She did not sound angry or exasperated with me. Her “no” was calm and even, but I still felt myself growing nervous.
“I do not know what I am doing wrong, ma’am,” I finally said.
Lady Tang took all of the needles out of the cushion and laid them in my hand. “Look closely. Each one is a little different. Some are longer, some are shorter, some are fatter, some are thinner. You have to learn which tool is best for each job, even if that job is as simple as embroidering a leaf.” She handed me a longer, fatter needle.
I sat up straight, took a deep breath and reached for the thread again. I paused, waiting for the “no,” but it didn’t come. I started to use my fingernails to separate the thread into thinner strands.
“To make a leaf, you must start with the stem, which is very thick and dark. You can make fewer passes if your thread is thicker,” she explained. “As the leaf fans out, you will want thinner strands.”
By this point, my hands were shaking. “I thought you were only going to observe,” I mumbled.
Lady Tang laughed. “I can observe and teach at the same time,” she said. “Do not be so sensitive and take criticism so personally. If I did not think you had potential, you wouldn’t be here. But you still have a very long way to go. Many of the things you taught yourself are wrong and you will have to unlearn them.”
I had never even used a frame before, or such high-quality silk threads. I had only ever embroidered cheap shoes and even the silk threads my father had bought me felt coarse in comparison. My creations were nothing compared to the beautiful flowers of Lady Tang’s flowing robe, undoubtedly embroidered by herself. I had no idea what I was doing.
I do not know how long I sat there ruminating, but Lady Tang never rushed me. I finally came out of my daze and looked at her.
“Whenever you are ready,” she said.
“As long as you show me,” I replied. “From the beginning.”
Lady Tang nodded and showed me how to sit up straight so I wouldn’t strain my shoulders and neck. She showed me how to hold the frame so my arm would not tire too quickly. She showed me the different needles and what each one was used for. She let me slide the thread through my fingers so I could feel how smooth and fine it was. I do not think I ever got around to making a leaf that day, but when her lesson was over, I took one of those ugly green threads and put it into my pocket alongside the red thread from my first pair of shoes and the thread I stole from the sedan chair. That evening, I tied them together in a bow and put them in the chest at the foot of my bed. I finally had a safe place of my own to store my memories.