Chapter 1: A Time-Traveler’s Plight
Tianjin Wei, January of the seventh year of the Chongzhen reign. The New Year festivities had just passed, but the cold clung stubbornly to the city. A biting wind howled through the streets, whipping at faces with a stinging chill.
On Hengda Street in the eastern quarter, pedestrians huddled in padded jackets. Most were patched and faded to a grimy black, mirroring the soot-stained buildings that lined the road. The street itself was filthy, littered with muck and horse dung. The gutters on either side were clogged with frozen refuse and sewage, the icy sludge having brought drainage to a standstill. Heaps of garbage and manure piled up in corners and alleyways. The only saving grace was the frigid temperature, which kept the stench at bay. In warmer weather, Li Zhi was certain the odor would have made him retch.
This was the late Ming Dynasty, and Li Zhi was a man out of time.
Six days ago, he had found himself here, a 21st-century industrial designer catapulted into 17th-century Tianjin. While he was growing accustomed to his new identity, accepting the realities of this era was another matter entirely.
Back in his own time, his name was Li Zhi. Here, his consciousness had taken over the body of an 18-year-old youth who, by some strange twist of fate, was also named Li Zhi. He had inherited the boy’s memories along with his form. But the situation he woke up to was far from promising.
Dressed in mourning white, Li Zhi turned into the Jingbianfang neighborhood in the eastern city. Here, the streets were slightly cleaner, the foul piles of waste absent. Clearly, this was a more affluent district where houses had their own privies.
But he had no time to appreciate the relative cleanliness. As soon as he appeared, murmurs sprang up from the shop-fronts lining the street. Houses here doubled as stores, and the women and clerks lounging within watched him, heads bent together in gossip.
"Old Li Cheng’s been dead two years now. The family hasn’t improved a bit. With that simpleton Li Zhi in charge, how will they manage?"
"Hush! I heard Li Cheng’s final illness cost fifty taels. All borrowed from the Xiao family. The two-year term is up in three months. If they can’t repay, the Li family compound will be forfeit."
"Fifty taels? That’s a fortune! And with interest—three percent monthly! Their pepper trade is barely limping along. With that fool at the helm, how will they ever come up with the money? Tsk, tsk. So, that’s it for the Lis? Will they end up on the streets?"
"Let’s not talk about it. After all these years as neighbors, who would have thought the Lis would meet such an end?"
Hearing the whispers, Li Zhi frowned and paused, shooting a glare at the busybodies. But his reputation as the local dullard was well-established. No one paid his displeasure any mind, and the murmuring continued unabated.
Seeing his silent protest was useless, Li Zhi lowered his head and quickened his pace towards home. The Li family compound sat on Hengda Street, its street-facing side a spacious shop front—the family’s pepper store.
Inside, Li Zhi’s younger brother, Li Xing, a handsome but gaunt sixteen-year-old, sat listlessly. Swaddled in a tattered, patched-up padded coat, he was minding two sacks of pepper shipped from the southern seas. The goods were there, but customers were not.
Seeing Li Zhi enter, Li Xing merely glanced his way, offering no greeting. His disdain for his supposedly dim-witted older brother was plain.
Behind the shop was a two-courtyard compound. A black-tiled gate tower and screen wall hinted at a once-prosperous past, as did the carefully laid blue brick paving. Now, however, the place was worn and dilapidated, tiles missing, the former splendor long faded. Dignity was a forgotten luxury; the family had sectioned off a corner of the front courtyard with a bamboo fence to keep chickens.
The inner courtyard housed a well and two small vegetable plots, bare in the winter cold.
In the main hall, a middle-aged woman in mourning clothes bent over a loom. Though only in her early forties, her hair was streaked with gray, her face deeply lined. Yet her hair was neatly combed and tied, and her patched cotton clothes, though worn, were clean.
This was Li Zhi’s mother, Madame Zheng. Weaving was backbreaking work, a full day’s labor from dawn till dusk earning little more than a meager bowl of rice. But with the family’s fortunes fallen, only this relentless toil brought her a shred of peace at night.
Seeing Li Zhi return, she set aside her shuttle and hurried out, her eyes anxious. "Zhi’er, was Second Grandfather willing to help? Did he agree to raise the money for us?" Li Zhi’s errand had been to seek out the clan elder, his father’s uncle, for a loan.
Two years ago, Li Zhi’s father, Li Cheng, had fallen gravely ill, coughing up blood daily. In a panic, the family had consulted a doctor who spoke of "liver-stomach heat accumulation" and "blood stasis." With the pepper business struggling, savings were nonexistent. Desperate to buy medicine, they had turned to the wealthy Xiao family in the neighborhood.
Using their home as collateral, they borrowed first five taels, then ten, then fifteen, until the debt ballooned to fifty taels. The loan was for two years at a crushing three percent monthly interest. With the property as security and the exorbitant rate, the Xiaos had lent willingly. But the silver flowed out, the medicines proved useless, and the illness raged on. In less than two months, Li Zhi’s father was gone.
Now, with only three months left on the loan, the family had no means to repay. They faced the imminent loss of their home. Homelessness loomed for Li Zhi, his mother, and brother. His hope in visiting the clan elder was that he might rally the relatives to pool over eighty taels—enough to settle the debt with the Xiaos. It was a desperate fantasy.
With two sons nearing marriageable age and expenses everywhere, the family’s sole income was the failing pepper shop. The relatives knew all too well that lending money to the Lis was throwing it into the water—it would never come back.
Even before Li Zhi’s arrival from the future, the clan elder had refused several times. The time-traveler Li Zhi knew the likely outcome, but at his mother’s repeated pleading, he had made the trip. The result was as expected.
"Second Grandfather is unwilling to raise money for us," Li Zhi answered flatly.
Madame Zheng’s face fell, her eyes instantly glistening with tears. Leaning against the doorframe, she said despairingly, "In these turbulent times… are we to become beggars on the street?"
Li Zhi continued, "He said he has no money to give. But he would vouch for me and Li Xing to become servants in a wealthy household." A faint, derisive smile touched his lips at the absurdity of the suggestion. Becoming a house servant in this era was the lowest of stations.
A servant’s social standing was beneath contempt; they could be beaten or even killed at their master’s whim with little consequence. The pittance they earned would scarcely cover living costs, let alone afford a wife and family.
Me, a man from the future, Li Zhi thought inwardly, the ghost of a scoff in his mind. I may not have arrived with an army of followers or an aura of destiny, but to be reduced to a servant? Not a chance.
