When the Pen Ran Dry: Old Tales of Pucheng

Writers of strange tales in the Southern Dynasties liked to portray the brush as something divine. Jiang Yan had one too. In the histories, it was a five-colored brush, the subject of legend, and one day Guo Pu asked for it back. Only then did Jiang Yan’s talent fade. This book tells the story of the days before that brush was taken back. At first, things went smoothly for Jiang Yan. His writing reached the capital early, and he served as an official in a prince’s household. He assumed the next step would naturally be a promotion. But he was stubborn: he repeatedly urged his lord not to pursue his “great undertaking,” and when the post of county magistrate fell vacant, he fought to take it on himself. These two things together earned him the displeasure of his superiors, who kicked him down to a small, unsettled county among the mountains between Jian’an and Wuxing, later known as Pucheng. There are two kinds of people who are banished: those who accept their fate, and those who bury their resentment and keep doing their jobs anyway. Jiang Yan was the latter. He refused to let the county’s problems fester under his watch, so he investigated cases, managed affairs, and controlled the waters, taking on every task. It wasn’t some grand ambition. He simply couldn’t swallow his anger, even though he had no choice but to do so. Yet beside a collapsed mountain road, he happened upon a brush that did not belong in this world. The brush let him see what lay beyond the walls, beneath the water’s surface, inside the bark of trees, and in the things people refused to say aloud. It was like a handy tool, and like a friend and mentor who loved to tease him. The more smoothly he used it, the more wary he had to be of the deeper meaning behind its actions.