On the Road to Exile, the Ambulance and I Rush to Each Other

People who transmigrate often know that the more hellish things are from the start, the more uplifting the ending will be.

Gu Mingzhu thought she could follow that pattern too.

After all, as a would-be wilderness medic from 2050, she had barely transmigrated to the Great Yin dynasty before she "won" the premium package of a hellish start: sneaking into someone's bed, having her home confiscated, and being thrown into the imperial prison.

But while everyone else waited to die in prison, she found two "future bosses" there, both covered in wounds.

After struggling to make it out of prison, she clutched her manumission papers and thought she was on her way to a free new life. Then her one and only golden finger started itself up, turned around, and drove off... away... gone...

Gu Mingzhu stood there, watching its tauntingly flashing tail lights, as a question slowly formed in her mind.

Other people's golden fingers are cheats. Is hers a bottomless pit with legs that can run away?

Three thousand li into exile, with floodwaters raging.

Wrapped in a specially made thermal blanket, Gu Mingzhu slipped her cold bare feet into someone's arms and said matter-of-factly, "My feet are cold. Warm them for me."

The person's body stiffened. He wrapped her feet tightly in his warm embrace. "There's not a single part of me that's whole, inside or out. You... would you still save me?"

Gu Mingzhu looked at him sympathetically and thought it over with a serious expression. "My lord, remember to pay the medical fee."

A word of warning: The golden finger runs away (in the early chapters).

My new novel, "Xiao Jiu Niang's Road to Success," is coming in early November.

The ninth daughter of the Shen family was born in Kexi Town, Yongjia County.

The town stretched along the Kexi River, with thirty stone bridges and houses lining the water. The Shen family moved into a little courtyard on the west bank. Their main trade was making Mohele dolls.

They were the little clay figurines every family offered during the Qixi Festival: boys holding lotus leaves, dressed in red vests and green gauze skirts, displayed on the Qiqiao Tower. Women burned incense and bowed before them, praying for sons.

The Shen family had made these Mohele dolls for three generations, offered them for three generations, and sold them for three generations, helping the town's daughters-in-law pray for sons.

Yet in this generation, each of the family's three branches had another three daughters, making nine girls in all.

By birth order, the first branch had the first, third, and fourth daughters; the second branch had the second, fifth, and seventh; and the third branch had the sixth and the last two.

An elder of the clan tapped his teacup and sneered, "The Shen family makes these things to help other people have sons. As for their own family... Nine money-losing girls. They're worth less than the white pig in the pen. At least it can be traded for two shi of coarse rice, and in the twelfth month it can fill two jars with dregs."

The first and second branches of the Shen family could only swallow their anger and say nothing.

Only the third branch's husband and wife dared to stand up and argue with the clan.

The couple could do more than argue. Shen San made Mohele dolls, while his wife, Zhou Qiao, worked as a professional mourner.

Shen San's dolls sold well around Qixi, and Zhou Qiao's mourning jobs came in during the other months. The third branch's stove never went cold all year, and coins kept coming in.

The couple agreed on one thing: if they couldn't pray for a son, they would stop trying. They would save up generous dowries for their three girls, so they wouldn't be any worse off than anyone else's daughters when they married.

The ninth daughter, who had been born into this world, grew up listening to her parents count their coins.

At four, she already knew to squat on the riverside steps in front of her home and swish bundles of bamboo strips in the stream.

The water was cold, the old paste washed away, and in her mind came the skills she had learned in the twenty-first century: the complete set of traditional silk-figurine techniques.

Wire for the frame, cotton for flesh and blood, silk gauze for skin, real silk for hair, embroidered clothes, and twisted silk flowers for hairpins and jewelry.

There was no wire yet, so she found substitutes.

Clay figurines shattered when dropped, so she made ones that wouldn't break.

The clothes painted onto clay dolls couldn't be changed, so she made removable outfits. Sell a doll once, and sell clothes for all four seasons.

Business grew and grew. The old house divided up the work, and everyone pulled together, saving coin by coin.

But no matter how many coins they saved, their trades were still considered lowly occupations in the Great Yin dynasty.

A turning point came when Xiao Jiu Niang was ten.

The Grand Empress Dowager died. A former palace lady-in-waiting, she left a final edict calling for what she had worked toward all her life: women should be allowed to take examinations in the various crafts and workshops. Those who passed would receive official posts, and would not have to remain confined in the palace. They would be appointed to the same official ranks as men!

The young emperor was deeply filial. After three months of struggle with his ministers, the matter was settled. But the ministers had only conceded so much. The crafts examinations would not be held alongside the civil service examinations. They would have their own system, called "Selecting Officials Through the Crafts."

In name, it ranked below the civil service examinations, but its officials held equal rank and wielded no less real power.

Xiao Jiu Niang now had something to hope for and a goal to pursue. Every spring, each county held an "arts examination." There were no restrictions on gender or age. Anyone with a special skill could apply. Those who passed also had to take the "prefectural examination" and the "capital examination," and even demonstrate their skills before the emperor.

The top candidate in the highest grade was called the "Crafts Laureate." They received a plaque inscribed by the emperor himself, and enjoyed a glory no less than that of the civil service examinations' top scholar.

The Shen family had been bound to the artisans' register for three generations. If Xiao Jiu Niang passed, her whole family could leave it.

The day she went to the capital to demonstrate her skill, the Kexi River was swollen.

Her eight older sisters rowed her to school in three black-awning boats. Xiao Jiu Niang sat at the bow and watched the thirty stone bridges pass one by one.

Not a single Shen name was carved among the people who had donated to build the bridges.

She turned to her sisters and said, "One day, our family will donate a bridge of our own!"

The eldest sister laughed. "You're quite the braggart!"

It wasn't bragging.

When women entered the world, they didn't have to be nothing more than dolls on a table, waiting for people to pray to them.

[Reader's Guide]

1. A capable heroine with brilliant skills, who uses her talent and, later on, money to deliver face-slapping to the whole world.

2. Everyone's a villain (crossed out). Everyone's capable.

Theme: A healer's heart, a blade for survival