Synopsis
The Yellow River has flooded for a century. The dead are not the people, but the truth.
Chen Yanzhi, a minor clerk in the Ministry of Works, is sent to Tongwaxia. On his first day in office, he finds two carved words on his predecessor's desk: "Straw."
His predecessor "slipped" and drowned three months ago.
Chen digs down along the embankment. Two feet beneath the earth, there is no lime and no sticky rice paste, only rotting straw. The embankment is repaired year after year, and stuffed with straw year after year. When the floods come, it collapses at once. Seven villages on the north bank were flooded three years ago.
This is no natural disaster.
Five li upstream, the local gentryman Zhou Heting has privately built a weir, forcing the Yellow River to change course and sending floods crashing into Sanli Bay year after year. Ten li downstream, the imperial kiln works are blocking the sediment for profit. The powerful are waiting for flood season to breach the banks, so they can sell the silt for silver.
One embankment links an entire chain of interests, from local gentry to Grand Secretaries, from the provinces to the Imperial Household Department. Everyone is carving out their share from the Yellow River, and with every breach, the people pay with their lives.
Chen Yanzhi carves the truth into three stone tablets and sets them up at the ferry crossing, the marketplace, and the city gate. The people gather around. The powerful come to smash them. An imperial commissioner arrives with "kind intentions": "If you investigate to the end, you'll reach the Empress's younger brother, three Grand Secretaries, and the Imperial Household Department that's building gardens for the Emperor. This case cannot be pursued."
He refuses to compromise. He burns the evidence, but only the copies. The originals are divided into three parts: one is left with a censor, one with the people, and the last is built into the wall of the River God Shrine.
The River God says nothing, but there are words inside the wall.
Twenty years later, someone will tear that wall down.
This is a story about one man taking on an entire machine. No golden finger, no happy ending. Only a man-eating Yellow River and someone who refuses to stay silent.
Come on…