From the Start, I Defend the Yangtze to the Death, Keeping Yang Jian Awake at Night

On the first night after he woke, they pulled him out of the river. No one could explain why he had fallen in, and he had no answer himself.

His duties during flood season should have been watching the river, counting boats, and reporting water levels. But he didn’t just count the boats. He recorded their draft, the color of their sails, and how many weaves down their ropes were soaked. Alongside the official flood register, he kept a separate sheet: what he saw went in the main column; what he couldn’t verify got two words: “unconfirmed.”

That night in the reed inlet, he led six veterans into the reeds and captured smugglers, seizing eleven wooden chests with iron-bound corners. That was how military supplies were transported, not ordinary cargo.

The report that came back contained just one sentence: “Five smugglers captured.” The military command’s reply was just eight characters: “The matter is settled. Do not submit further reports.”

But there had been six men crouching among the reeds. The one who changed the number was somewhere above this flood patrol.

From that day on, he had to keep track of three things at once: which storehouse received the eleven chests from the north bank; when the man at the hidden landing, who had changed his name three times, would surface; and the fact that the other bank was gathering boats while all they had on this side was a flood register.

He was only a garrison soldier. But the military manual recognized no rank, only real accomplishments: lying in ambush among the reeds, reciting military regulations before a crowd, taking a blade at the mouth of an alley. Each time he earned merit, a new section opened: vetting, organizing the ranks, discipline, noncommissioned officers.

He turned ten men into a flood patrol and hung an open ledger, one anyone could write in, on the garrison fort’s gate.

Seven years. Seven years later, Jiankang would fall, and Yang Jian’s army would cross this river. The people standing on the river then should not still be a pair of eyes that could only watch.