The Record of Seal Imprints

With an old pocket watch resting in his palm, he can tell from its weight that the movement is a replacement. When he picks up a scale, even the slightest tilt of its counterweight makes the scales in his mind ring. He can smell a batch of medicinal herbs and tell how long they were stir-fried and how much was adulterated. Nothing gets past his nose. Pei Wujiu is a secondhand-goods broker in Nameless Alley, Yunzhou. He is twenty-three, speaks little, has a frighteningly good memory, and cannot abide the word “shoddy.” One late-autumn day, a dying old man asked him to authenticate a watch. It was a fake. The old man refused to believe him. So Pei spent three days rebuilding the watch until it truly worked. He lost all his savings and was driven out of the market. Back home, he dug out an old wooden box left by his ancestors. The first line appeared in the ledger inside The Register of Trades. The conscience of each of the three hundred and sixty trades was recorded within. From one watch to an entire street, from one city to all three hundred and sixty trades, including the jobs nobody wants to do and nobody notices. He had no money or power, and the seal in his hand held no legal standing. There was only one thing he could do: set the oldest rules before the most modern people and let everyone see for themselves. “This isn’t work. It’s cutting corners.”