In the twenty-third year of the Yuan era, Chang’an was touched by the gentle warmth of late spring. Morning mist had left the flagstones of the medicine shops in West Market gleaming. The curtain at the door of Shen’s Pharmacy on the corner had been lifted early, and sixteen-year-old Shen Qingwu carried a bamboo basket as she slipped quietly into the medicinal garden in the rear courtyard. Today she wore a moon-white cotton skirt and blouse. The hem was damp in one corner from the previous night’s dew, but her concentration was undisturbed.
The garden was small but meticulously maintained. Motherwort, mint, and other common herbs grew in the eastern corner, while rarer angelica root and astragalus were cultivated in the west. Each plant had a small wooden marker bearing its medicinal properties and harvesting season in neat regular script. This was Shen Qingwu’s little world, which she had tended every day since she was seven, and where her journey into medicine had begun.
“Qingwu, sort the motherwort and clean it well today. We’ll deliver it to the Imperial Medical Bureau this afternoon,” her father, Shen Zhongwen, called from the shop’s front room. Shen Zhongwen was a senior physician at the Imperial Medical Bureau. Though he held an important post, he remained humble as a doctor. Every day, besides working at the bureau, he saw patients at the pharmacy, and he often entrusted his daughter with handling the bureau’s medicinal supply requests. It was both a way to train her and a sign of his trust.
