In the second year of the Jingde era, snow bit at the chilblains on the back of Chen Jiu's hand in Bianjing. He rubbed the broken piece of a printing block his father had left behind. The edges of the character in “The spring breeze knows not the Yumen Pass” looked like a scar that would never heal.
Chen Xiaoya brought over a roasted sweet potato. “Your writing is worth more than candy figurines, big brother.” But Su Xiaoyan suddenly grabbed his wrist, trembling as she jabbed a fingertip at the character. “It's ‘cross,’ not ‘know’! My father refused to change that character, and he died unjustly in the snow at his place of exile.”
Chen Jiu remembered the rhythm of his father tapping the edge of the bed. It had been the strokes of the character for “cross.” By the charcoal fire in a ruined temple, he carved it into mulberry wood. A splinter pierced his palm, and blood dripped into the final stroke, like a piece of red-hot iron.
Shopkeeper Zhao called him “a wild dog gnawing on words,” and the constables kicked over his type tray. But the calluses of Skinny Monkey, the old scholar's chipped tea bowl and inkstone, and Chun Ya's handwritten copy all cried out for the character's innocence.
The little girl strung wood shavings together to make “word bones.” Su Xiaoyan scraped ink residue from an inkstone to piece together “Wild Goose Return Inn.” Beneath the ink blots in Shopkeeper Wang's ledger lay the old trace of the character for “cross.” They had to carve a hundred true characters before the autumn examinations. Blood, tears, and crooked strokes seeped into the wood, carving back the edges that power had ground smooth.
The snow melted, then fell again, and the carved strokes grew bright from being touched. It was only an apprentice teaching characters to find their way, and a younger sister protecting a piece of wood. Together, they wanted the “spring breeze” to remember: it should “cross” the Yumen Pass, not pretend to “know” the road that had been changed. The sounds of blades, laughter, and tears within the characters became the grain of living type: nothing fancy, but warm enough to hold close.
