Qian Jiaoniang was led into the study next door, where several pairs of couplets were hanging haphazardly. Ah Da was blowing gently on one. Two were in running script, one in regular script—and now that Qian Jiaoniang knew a little, she could tell the calligraphy was impressive.
“Which one’s better?” Xing Muzheng suddenly asked.
Qian Jiaoniang blinked and looked at him blankly. “Huh?”
He looked at her seriously. “Which one would look best on the front door?”
She turned her head, looking left, then right, and finally at the one in regular script, reading slowly: “From the four seas and five lakes, spring colors everywhere; across all the mountains and rivers, brilliance shines… all things renewed… This one’s good.”
“You can read every character now—not bad,” Xing Muzheng said with a smile, praising her. “Why this one?”
She shrugged innocently. “It’s the only one I understand.”
Xing Muzheng was stunned for a second, then burst into hearty laughter.
Though meant in jest, Qian Jiaoniang hadn’t expected him to laugh so loudly. For some reason, her face grew warm. She shot him a glare.
Xing Muzheng waved a big hand. “Fair enough! Ah Da, put this one up!”
Ah Da, who rarely saw the master laugh so freely, grinned as well. “Yes, sir!” He carefully took the regular-script couplet, then remembered something. “Master, you haven’t written the fu character yet. Why not write it now so I can hang them all together?”
Xing Muzheng nodded, then turned to Qian Jiaoniang. “How about you write this ‘fortune’ character?”
Qian Jiaoniang’s smile was neither quite a smile nor not one. Inwardly she thought, Is he making fun of me? “I dare to write it—would the Marquis dare to put it up?”
“If you write it, what wouldn’t I dare to put up?”
Qian Jiaoniang arched her brow, said no more, and went straight to the writing desk. She pulled out a square sheet of bright red paper, took up the brush Xing Muzheng had left beside the inkstone, and with a broad stroke began writing on the paper. But when a beginner writes large characters, there’s only one possible outcome—ghastly. The only decent part was perhaps that it was upright. The horizontal strokes weren’t straight, the verticals weren’t straight, all crooked and wobbly—so bad even Qian Jiaoniang herself couldn’t bear to look. Xing Muzheng came up to look and actually praised it.
“Not bad,” he said, and then added, “No missing strokes or dots.”
Qian Jiaoniang’s face darkened. So his ‘not bad’ just means it still resembles a character?
Fanning it with his hand, Xing Muzheng passed it to Ah Da. “Go on, paste these on the main gate.”
Ah Da was loyal to both Xing Muzheng and Qian Jiaoniang, but he really couldn’t bring himself to paste this “fortune” character on the main gate. If the Marquis wanted to please the Madam, putting it on the inner room door would be enough. But this kind of calligraphy right in the center of the front gate—the dignity of Dingxi Marquis’s household would… Has the Marquis been completely bewitched by Madam? And to make it worse, there was still no hot water ready!
“Marquis, you really want it on the main gate?”
“Would I be joking?”
“Aren’t you afraid people will laugh?”
“What’s there to laugh about? You’ve only just started practicing calligraphy—writing like this is already very good.” Xing Muzheng sounded genuinely sincere. He tilted his head slightly. “If you’re afraid outsiders won’t understand, just say Little Chou’er wrote it.”
…And what crime had Chou’er committed, to have to take the blame? Was he really his biological son? Qian Jiaoniang rushed to snatch the “fortune” from Ah Da’s hands and crumpled it into a ball.
“If Chou’er wrote something like this and we put it out, wouldn’t Mr. Cao be so angry he’d pack his bags tomorrow? Marquis, you’d better write it yourself—don’t let us mother and son lose face.”
With that, Qian Jiaoniang took the paper ball and turned to leave. Xing Muzheng, for some reason, lowered his head and started smiling again.
Ah Da laughed. “Master’s in a good mood today.”
The smile still on his lips, Xing Muzheng looked up. “It’s New Year’s—aren’t you happy?” He walked back to the desk to keep writing. Thinking of Qian Jiaoniang’s expression just now, the smile lingered stubbornly at the corners of his mouth. At that moment Ding Zhang came to ask where the New Year’s Eve feast should be set, but we’ll leave that aside for now.
Qian Jiaoniang strode back to the side chamber, destroying the character completely along the way. When she returned, Granny Zhou and Zhou Cuilian had already arrived. Zhou Cuilian was sitting where she had been before, having just cut out a string of paper window flowers—lifelike and exquisitely done. Everyone praised them, but Zhou Cuilian herself only pressed her lips into a faint smile and said nothing. She had been gloomy these past days—either hiding in the carriage or in her room, refusing to see anyone. Granny Zhou was anxious and had dragged her out by force. The window flowers too were at her insistence—once a woman is cast aside, she is worth nothing; it was rare enough that Jiaoniang was willing to take them in, so she had to show some usefulness, to avoid being looked down on.
Before long, Suier and Shanzha arrived with everything for making dumplings—dough, and seven or eight kinds of fillings already minced. Xing Pingchun, who had never seen so many varieties, was wide-eyed with wonder and grinning from ear to ear, asking Qian Jiaoniang to make one of this filling, then one of that filling. She took a large bowl and mixed whatever he said he wanted to eat. Hongjuan was already kneading dough on the side. Granny Zhou remarked that while Cuilian was only average at making dumplings, she was very skilled at making buns and steamed bread, always able to shape them into many designs. Suier suggested, “The kitchen also has some leavened dough ready; why don’t I go fetch some?”
Jiaoniang agreed, and Suier went off with a young maid. When the fillings were ready, everyone gathered around the table to start making dumplings. Yanluo didn’t know how, but she was willing to learn from Jiaoniang. With deft hands, Jiaoniang quickly made a plump ingot-shaped dumpling, irresistibly cute.
