The Iron Plow Devours the Heavens

The rust-colored wheat in the saline-alkali fields pierced the tax ledgers, while humus washed out of the underground river rotted the official seals. Lu Qingyan and his sister Qinghe led a band of dirt-poor peasants, using toothed harrows to shatter their shackles and melting the iron measuring rods into plows for reclaiming wasteland.

From the curved plow that split the hardened alkaline soil to rust-red awns that pierced the measuring flags; from melting ship anchors into irrigation channels to grinding down sea-ban steles into paving stones, they used wheat ash from the threshing grounds to gum up the tax collectors' abacuses and carved the Book of Farming from snailshells gathered in the underground river. Even the rats' urine in the official granaries became a secret fertilizer. When the roots of the salt-marsh wheat cracked the