When the Swallows Return: A Strategy for the Realm

The blizzards sweeping Bianjing broke the pride of upright scholars. Shen Tingfang, a judicial official at the Dali Temple, submitted a final memorial and secured the exile of his whole family to Chuzhou in Jiangnan. Five-year-old Shen Mingwei followed her gravely ill father onto the thousand-mile journey through the raging waters of the Grand Canal. Their place of exile, Shanyang County, stood at a perilous junction where the Huai River met the canal. Floods struck often, and salt smugglers and river bandits had sunk deep roots. Faced with nothing but a worthless stretch of mudflat, Shen Mingwei completely concealed the sharpness she’d once shown in the capital. She knew that sharp words and clever arguments wouldn’t save lives. Only by taking root in the land and securing grain and iron could she build a backbone for the Great Song. From then on, she rolled up her thin sleeves and gradually set about creating a grand blueprint for infrastructure in the Jiangnan waterways. She studied agricultural texts, turning saline wasteland into fertile rice paddies and mulberry-dyke fishponds. She improved water-powered machinery, harnessing the mighty force of the Grand Canal to drive the stone mills in her papermaking workshop. She dredged waterways and made use of the convenience of boats to build a vast commercial network along the canal, linking north and south. Ten years of patient planning passed. Time moved on. The daughter of a disgraced minister, once at the mercy of others, transformed a dilapidated river station into the realm’s granary, connecting the economic lifelines of the Great Song’s north and south. All the salt, rice, firewood, and cooking oil of Jiangnan, along with its paper money and silk, came under the sway of her abacus. When Xie Guzhou, the imperial inspector, once a bloodthirsty wolf in the shadowed alleys of Bianjing, returned to Chuzhou with killing intent in his eyes and a promise made ten years ago… Shen Mingwei stood atop the towering flood embankment along the Grand Canal. Behind her stretched ten thousand acres of bountiful fields, and on the canal, countless sails raced forward beneath the stirring song of a prosperous age.