Dedication

As always I am extremely grateful to my wonderful wife, Tracy without whom I would not be the person I am today or the one I'm likely to be tomorrow.  She is the foundation of my world.

Preface

There are probably a myriad of ways that books get born and ink finds its way to paper for the edification and education of enquiring eyes.  This book was spawned at a morning of coffee at a local coffee shop with a former student, colleague, and fast friend.  The friend, herself an insightful and talented historian long interested in Asian matters and Chinese history, mentioned an ancillary penchant for accounts of bandits. 

Throughout my career, I have been delving into Chinese history and have been long interested in the bewildering and murky transitions people had to survive and manage when their whole world commences to collapse and new political paradigms and social synergies begin to emerge to create what will be called modernity by analysts and historians later. 

Satisfying our shared curiosities, I happened upon the skeleton of the real-life notorious Bai Lang, the White Wolf. I decided to put as much flesh on his decomposing carcass as my knowledge, research, and imagination could revivify a soul who struggled with cataclysmic convulsions and find a replacement for the ruptured world of early 20th-century China. 

I hope this satisfies Ginger and everyone who might venture into the trauma of someone who mostly wanted to be good but ended up obliged to outlawry.     

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The eighteen major city districts in Honan China

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Dramatis Personae

Bai Lang, aka Bai Zhiqing, aka the White Wolf, is the major protagonist.  A late Qing dynasty struggling lower gentry member who becomes a formidable bandit after the1911 Revolution

Master Bai, Bai father

Madam Yi, Bai Lang’s mother

Ssu-yin, Bai Lang’s sister

Guan Xin, Bai Lang’s wife

Xiao Peng, chief assistant to the Bai family

Magistrate Wang Zhen, a local powerful leader who has it in for the Bai family

Tangjian

Du Qibin, leader of the bandit band Bai Lang first joins.

Yuan Shikai, former commander of the Beiyang Army and President of the Republic of China after 1912. 

Wu Luzhen, military leader and Republican, follower of Sun Yat-sen.

Sergeant Long, Bai Lan’s former commander, friend and ally.

Peppery-Qin (Peppery Red), Li Hongbin, Song Laonian:  sub-commanders in Bai Lang’s bandit brethren.

Liu Tie, was a Southern revolutionary and follower of Sun Yat-sen.

Fangs of Frustration: The Story of the White Wolf

In 1644, when the Manchu Armies swept into Beijing and rid the city of the rebel usurper to the throne, Li Zichang, the Manchus, calling themselves the Qing, meaning pure in Chinese, proclaimed themselves the inheritors of the Mandate of Heaven and reassured the Chinese people that righteousness had been restored.  They asserted their legitimacy to rule based on strength and virtue proclaiming: 

The empire is not an individual’s property.  Whosoever possesses virtue holds it.  The army and the people are not an individual’s property.  Whosoever possesses virtue commands them.  We now occupy the empire.

1

11 28, 1861  — the Year of the Rooster

There had been a persistent, dull roll of anxiety and fear rippling through many, if not most, of the Confucian officialdom since the death of Emperor Xianfeng and the ascension of five-year-old Tongzhi to the throne.  The vast Chinese empire and the imperial system had woven its way through the various problems and crises attendant to its conquest by Manchu warriors back in 1644 but was now facing its worst cyclone of crises since then.  For several years since the humiliation of the combined Manchu/Chinese banner armies at the hands of British and French forces in two crushing defeats sometimes referred to as the Opium Wars and the rise of the torrential rain of blood of the Taiping Rebellion, which had begun in 1856, increasing numbers of Chinese civil servants and members of the intellectual classes pondered if the Manchus were in the process of losing the Mandate of Heaven.

It had long been a tenant of orthodox Confucian political science that Emperors, the Sons of Heaven, ruled China through a legitimizing license known as the Mandate of Heaven.  Emperors were supposed to be superior moral agents, pleasing Heaven by attending to the needs of the people with good government.  From time to time, if that were not the case and the emperor and his government were corrupt, venal, unjust, and selfishly arrogant, Heaven might send natural disasters and other crises to signal that the Mandate of Heaven might be rescinded and awarded to some other more preferable agent of peace and prosperity.  Over the centuries, there have been three such transitions ushering in new dynasties and leadership teams.  The previous Ming Dynasty lasted for 276 years, and before them, the glorious Tang Dynasty endured for 289 years.  The Manchus had been in power for 217 years now, and many of the scholar/gentry class pondered their time had come.

But there were still superior and fiercely loyal leaders—loyal enough to the Confucian order of things to fight furiously, tooth and nail, to defeat the enemies of the righteous and rightful order of society and governance and restore the imperial throne to its traditional status and glories.  Zhen Guofan, First Class Marquis of Yiyong, was marshaling his reorganized and reinspired armies to surround and eliminate the Taipings still holding out in Nanking, once their capital of the areas they had wrested from Beijing’s control.  Simultaneously, dozens, if not hundreds, of younger and perhaps less hidebound Confucian officials and scholars, were accepting the necessity that significant reforms and changes had to be accepted and adopted to restrengthen the empire and make it more on par with the outside world.   That world could no longer be held at bay and contained by the centuries-old system of international relations that grounded China as the Middle Kingdom—the center of earthly endeavors—and the rest of the earth’s people as tributaries to the singular son of heaven.  Furthermore, there were those more practically inclined Confucian leaders who saw that the material culture of China had to advance into a modern technological age that had, in some ways, left China behind. During the Opium Wars, British and French paddle-wheelers and steamships had run circles around the Chinese navy of junks propelled by wind and sail.  Western artillery had devastated the Chinese smooth-bore cannon batteries in mere minutes during the confrontations with Western forces.  The weaknesses and shortcomings of all sorts of things Chinese, which had not changed much since 1644, had been exposed by a world some two hundred years more modern.

Prince Gong, the younger half-brother of the Xiangfeng emperor, in concert with Cixi, Tongzhi’s biological mother, and the empress dowager Ci’an, Tongzhi’s official mother, orchestrated a coup that displaced the eight regents Tongzhi’s father had appointed to manage affairs for the child in the event of his death.  On November 28, 1861 (an overcast, drizzling day and the day before CiXi’s birthday), at seven o’clock in the morning in the Hall of Supreme Harmony in the Forbidden City, the five-year-old child was crowned. He was given the reign name Tongzhi, which represented the Confucian ideal of what government ought to achieve: order and prosperity.

Resplendently attired in yellow silk brocade robes embroidered with golden dragons amidst colorful clouds, the little boy sat on a golden lacquered throne adorned by nine gilded dragons. Above him, on the ceiling, was a large, coiled dragon with a silver ball suspended between its teeth.  It was believed that the ball would fall on anyone who sat on the throne and did not have the Mandate of Heaven.

On a table before the seated boy was a scroll bearing the imperial proclamation of his enthronement in both Manchu and Chinese.  Beyond that was a 300,000 square foot open courtyard filled with hundreds of officials, all smartly lined up by rank order, standing under brightly colored banners and canopies who fell on their knees in unison to perform kowtows to the new emperor.  The scroll and the officials then proceeded to the Tiananmen Gate—the south gate of the Forbidden City—where the scroll was opened and read out to all the officials gathered outside, first in Manchu and then in Chinese.  It was subsequently transported to the Ministry of Rights and meticulously copied onto special royal paper, and the copies were distributed to all the provinces, where they were read out at assemblies of people at all levels of the government down to hundreds of thousands of villages.

Because she was a woman, CiXi was not allowed to attend the coronation.  The main part of the Forbidden City was off-limits to women.  If she and her sedan chair ever approached within sight of those parts of the palace compound, she was to draw the curtains so as to not be able to even peer out of her palanquin.  Such was the world the five-year-old boy inherited and was responsible for through the inscrutable logic of heaven.

Tongzhi’s father, the Xianfeng Emperor, himself had ascended to the throne as emperor at the age of 19 in 1850.  That was the year that seemingly all hell broke loose in the rebellion against the entire Chinese socio-political and philosophical system launched by the Taipings.

The leader of the Taiping Rebellion, Hong Xiuquan, claiming to be the younger brother of Jesus Christ, believed he was on a divine mission to rid China of heretical Confucianism and the Confucians, in order to convert the people to his syncretic version of Christianity based on his personal visions.  As much out of necessity as anything else, the upper classes of Manchus and Chinese loyally rallied around the throne in hopes of staving off what the Buddhists might have perceived as the Mo Fa, end of times. Hong Xiuquan and his armies carved out an alternative kingdom in central China comprising vast territories and a population of perhaps 20 million subjects.  As if that were bad enough, the Imperial order was simultaneously battered by external forces as Britain and France had launched what was called the Second Opium War against China in 1856 and had punitively occupied Beijing in 1860.  The Xianfeng Emperor fled the city to the Manchu mountain retreat and sanctuary of Jehol, where he died in August 1861, passing the throne to Tongzhi.

As Tongzhi was the first child emperor since Kangxi, in the days, months, and years after Tongzhi’s ascension to the throne, there was the fervent hope and countlessly repeated prayers and ceremonies that he might replicate the career arc of Kangxi, the third Manchu Emperor and the longest living one, reigning from 1661 to 1722.  He became emperor at the young age of seven and has been considered by many to have been one of the greatest Chinese emperors, despite his Manchu ethnicity.  During the first eight years of his reign, the ship of state was guided with the help of the powerful regent Oboi.  But in 1669, Kangxi, at the age of 15, engineered the arrest of Oboi and commenced his personal rule of the empire.  Over the years, he deftly managed to resolve both military and civil challenges to Manchu rule, including an eight-year civil war against Ming loyalists in south-central China and their final stronghold on the island of Taiwan.  The Empire’s borders were extended and stabilized.  Being open-minded and pragmatic, Kangxi oversaw the resolution of border conflicts with an occidental power, Russia,  through the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689.

In 1669, just a year after taking power himself, Kangxi was informed that the calendar for 1670 drawn up by the Chinese Head of Mathematics, Yang Guanxin, was in error.  Resentful of the earlier influence Jesuit mathematicians and astronomers had achieved at the court, Yang had engineered the persecution, torture, and exile to Canton of all but a few of the Jesuits resident in Beijing.  To rectify the faulty calendar and to test the superiority of either Chinese or Western astronomy, Kangxi ordered that a three-pronged test be held between Yang Guanxin and one of the few Jesuits who had been allowed to remain in the capital—Ferdinand Verbiest, known as Nan Huairen by the Chinese.  Announcing that the Heavens would be the judge, the competition was conducted at the Bureau of Astronomy under the watchful eyes of senior officials.  Using both astronomical tables drawn up by Tycho Brahe and telescopes, Verbiest bested Yang on all challenges.  Verbiest was immediately appointed Head of the Mathematical Board and Director of the Observatory.  In the course of time, Verbiest engineered many improvements to the science of astronomy in China, including the introduction of a half dozen Western instruments, including the sextant, to increase the accuracy of astronomical measurements and even navigation.  Kangxi took a liking to Verbiest and accepted his tutoring in geometry, philosophy, and music. 

But that was all two hundred years ago. In the ensuing centuries, relations with Westerners and Western nations had become the bane of China, threatening it with ravenous imperialism and seismic philosophical and social disruptions.  With the supervision of the Empress dowagers CiXi and C’an it was hoped that the three imperial tutors, all senior and accomplished Confucian scholars produced by the incredibly arduous Chinese civil service exam system, could prepare the young Tongzhi to be as diligent and intelligent in performing his duties as Kangxi had been.  Following a rigorous schedule, the boy emperor was lectured on the Confucian classics and the primary duties of the Son of Heaven.  Those included adopting a sincere and genuine concern for the welfare of the people and maintaining impeccable moral standards publicly demonstrated through his proper knowledge and performance of all the traditional rites and ceremonies observed by emperors and the dynastic clan patriarchs.  He was to maintain centuries of traditions and venerate his ancestors.  The best tutors would cite historical events to illustrate situations and problems comparable to contemporary times while satisfying heaven by promoting a proper balance between ethics and the well-being of the empire’s subjects.  Heaven had bestowed upon Tongzhi and the Manchus the Mandate of Heaven and the responsibility to rule.  It was his duty to retain that mandate through virtue and diligence, as had been the case with Kangxi.  But Tongzhi was no Kangxi. He paid little attention to all but one of the prestigious tutors attending to him.  Hence, regardless of how effective the tutors, advisors, and regents might have been, or how serious and hard-working Tongzhi might have been—which he definitely was not—a fundamental flaw in the Chinese imperial system was that it was retrograde and anachronistic based on the precepts, philosophy, and over time, petrified orthodoxy of Confucius over 2,000 years in the making.  By holding on to the Confucian order of things so tightly, the entire Chinese nation seemed to be marching into the future, facing backward.

2

Despite Tongzhi’s inattention to his duties and petulance, the regents and a circle of dedicated scholar-officials launched what became known as the Self-Strengthening Movement and the Tongzhi Restoration.  If the dynasty were to continue, it was imperative that some regimen of reform and modernization simply had to be implemented as quickly as possible.  The first order of business was eliminating the Taiping rebels and their Kingdom of Heaven as well as several smaller rebellious outbreaks gnawing like piranhas at the flesh of the empire.  Senior Statesman Zeng Guofan took the lead in reorganizing the Qing military forces and equipping them with more modern Western weaponry.  Eventually, he and his protegee, Li Hongzhang, were able to restore relative peace within the empire. Together, they advanced the Self-Strengthening Movement by establishing the Jiangnan Arsenal, China’s first modern arsenal, in 1865, which subsequently grew into the largest modern arms manufacturing operation in all of East Asia.  Perhaps one of the more significant bonus effects of the arsenal was that it included a language school for learning Western languages and producing translations of materials deemed useful for strengthening China.  Furthermore, several Western foreign experts were employed to assist and oversee the selective, gradual injection of Western technology, and occasionally Western ideas, into the Chinese body politic.  The antidotes for weakness and instability seemed to take hold initially, and the nation continued down a path of managed change, holding on to the slogan of Zhongxue Weiti, Yangxue Weiyong.[1]

Stubborn and avoiding attending his classical Confucian lessons, Tongzhi grew into a headstrong adolescent, causing many of his officials to lose hope that he might ever blossom into a proper and capable emperor.  Attempting to insulate the system from the growing irresponsibility and even depravity of Tongzhi, the Civil-Service examinations were revived, and mastery of the Confucian classics remained the apparent surest way for ambitious young men to achieve career success and high government office.  So, the best and brightest human resources of the empire continued to invest years in mastering ancient wisdom and avoiding any serious investment in understanding and adopting any of the wisdom and technology that had made the Western nations so prosperous and powerful.  To help restore the lands devastated by the various rebellions and to assuage peasant poverty and discontent, the Self-Strengthening government distributed seeds and tools to the villages. It was hoped that the bucolic bliss of small villages and rural China could be retrieved from the ruins by reactivating centuries of agrarian activities.  

CiXi’s disappointment and resentment at Tongzhi’s insubordination festered for years.  It began to come to a boil in 1872 as the sixteen-year-old emperor approached the age of majority.  The regency was to end in 1873  by prior agreement.  Regents CiXi and Ci’an thought that if Tongzhi got married, that might stabilize him with the ballast of family responsibilities.  But a major disagreement about who the bride and subsequent new Empress would be broke out.  Defying the wishes of CiXi, Tongzhi married a princess she disapproved of, and then, for good measure, he chose two other women as concubines and added two others to his harem not long after that.  CiXi did her level best to separate Tongshi from a wife he seemed genuinely to love and isolate him in the Palace of Heavenly Purity.

But in the early 1870s, Tongzhi achieved the age of majority, and the co-regents Cixi and Ci’an had no choice but to step down and watch as he assumed direct rule.  Though his uncle Prince Gong had managed to stabilize foreign relations with the rest of the world by creating an imperial office responsible for diplomacy, Tongzhi resisted guidance and advice and precipitated a diplomatic crisis with the emerging Asian power—Japan.  Within just a few weeks of becoming Tongzhi commencing his rule, the newly modernized Japanese military forces launched a punitive expedition against Taiwan and occupied it.  Since Taiwan was considered part of the Chinese empire, eventually Tongzhi’s government, still militarily weak, had to pay a substantial ransom to achieve the withdrawal of the Japanese forces and the restoration of Taiwan to Manchu authority.  An inauspicious start to his reign indeed.

Things in the palace and for the empire as a whole went from bad to worse as disputes between Tongzhi, the entrenched civil service, advisors, and the former regents continued to sour and spoil.  For nearly a decade after Tongzhi’s father died, making him the child emperor, heaven’s watchful eye monitored the course of events in the celestial empire.  But Chinese astronomers, indeed astronomers all over the globe, plying their métier, continued to turn their eyes upwards to the heavens.  For the Chinese, such interest was always a combination of spiritual watchfulness,  seeking signs of Heaven’s will, and astronomical science.  The Western world did not harbor any such faith in heaven’s predictive capabilities, but their astronomers were nonetheless interested in figuring out the patterns of the motion of the stars and solving problems like calculating the exact distance of the earth from the sun. 

Of the many astronomical phenomena that regularly occur in the universe, one interesting, often overlooked, and among the rarest of predictable events is the Transit of Venus.  That is when the planet Venus passes between a superior planet and the sun. From the perspective of the Earth, they happen in cyclical patterns every 243 years.  When it happens, a small dark spot passes across the sun, lasting only about four hours in duration and quite easily missed by the casual observer and the naked eye.  Still, both Chinese and Western astronomers predicted that a Transit of Venus would occur sometime in December 1874, and some astronomers began making preparations for it as early as the 1860s, despite all the chaos in China. 

Coincidentally, just as Tongzhi began to go off the rails in 1872, two major Western newspapers went into production in China as furtherance of the Self-Strengthening Movement and the creeping Westernization of the Celestial Empire.  In Shanghai, Shen Bao, written by Chinese reports and published in Chinese for the Chinese reading public, was founded by the Englishman Earnest Major in April 1872.  Just four months later, in August 1872, William Alexander Parsons Martin and Joseph Edkins founded the English language Peking Magazine, a monthly journal.  It was dedicated to international and Western news but incorporated general science, geographical, and astronomical features for the growing audience of Westerners in the Middle Kingdom. 

Those newspapers took up the story of the groundwork of Western astronomers who prepared missions to China to observe the Transit of Venus when it occurred.  The October 1873 issue of the Peking Magazine reported that reputedly, the semi-mythical Emperor Yao, who supposedly reigned from 2356 to 2255 BC, dispatched teams of astronomers through his kingdom to better observe astronomical phenomena.  In like manner, the world was gearing up to observe the Transit of Venus.  The Russians were sending a team northward, and the British observers were going into Southeast Asia.  The article gave further background on the efforts to more precisely calculate the distance between the Earth and the Sun.  By the time of the ascent of the Qing dynasty, Newton estimated this distance to the sun to be something close to 1700 times the Earth’s diameter.  There was no mention in the article of whether  Chinese astronomers came to agree with Western estimates.  But it did report that by 1873, the estimated distance seemed to have grown to between 11,000 and 12,00 times the Earth’s diameter.  The impending Transit in 1874 seemed to offer the world’s astronomers another rather unique opportunity to refine their calculations and estimates using more advanced instruments and photography. 

In April 1874, the Peking magazine again alerted its readers to the preparations being made for Western astronomers and scientists to observe the Transit.  France was sending a team to Asia, and the United States government had committed a sizeable amount of money to send eight teams of professional astronomers and photographers to the East for the event. Five of those would go south of the Equator.  The remaining three would go to Nagasaki, Japan, join the Russians at a site in Northern Korea, and the last planned to watch the phenomenon from Beijing.  Each of those American teams would have one chief investigator assisted by five other people. 

A few months later, in August, the newspaper reported that the University of Michigan Professor of Astronomy, James Craig Watson, would be the leader of the Beijing observation team.  Watson was an arrogant and divisive person back at the University of Michigan who seemed to be as interested in financial gain as astronomy.  He sometimes referred to himself as one of the greatest astronomers America had ever produced and was known to practice his autograph in his notebooks, signing his name James Craig Watson, Astronomer Royal, a title that was usually given to the greatest European astronomers.  Still, he was capable of making accurate predictions about the timing of the Transit and the newspaper reported that Watson predicted that it would occur in the 11th month of the Chinese lunar calendar, on December 9, 1874, and would commence at precisely 9:32, reach its mid-point at 12:01, and conclude at 2:18. Though difficult to see with the naked eye, the paper advised that those who wanted to watch should use some sort of sunglasses or stained glasses to observe. 

Meanwhile, three times the Shanghai Chinese language newspaper, Shen Bao wrote about the preparations for observing the transit and what it was likely to be about while simultaneously advertising the sale of telescopes.  On December 8th, Shen Bao, relying on information published in the American missionary newspaper Wan Guo Gong Bao, predicted times for the event at variance with Watson’s calculations.  Even more confusion about the timing ensued when the Qing dynasty reported in its official astrological almanac, the Qisheng, that the event would happen at night.  Moreover, the Chinese claimed that it would only be visible from the Western Hemisphere and then wondered why so many foreign astronomers were coming to China to witness what they would not be able to see.  One of the readers of the Peking Magazine sent a letter to the editor inquiring about the difference between the Western and the Chinese predictions of the timing of the Transit.  The Peking Magazine responded that it could not just be a coincidence that astronomers from five different nations have taken up observation points in East Asia—three of which were in Beijing. 

Watson’s predictions proved to be highly accurate, which, no doubt, further encouraged his opinion that he was one of the world’s greatest astronomers.  Indeed, in preparing to observe the Transit, while scanning the sky with his telescope, he accidentally discovered a new asteroid.  Since he was in China, he asked Prince Gong if he wanted to name it.  Prince Gong accepted the opportunity and named it Ruihua, meaning lucky China. After the Transit, Watson remained in China for a while, giving at least one lecture in Shanghai and basking in the glory of his besting Chinese astronomers with his greater skill.   Interest in the Transit and the activities of Watson was widespread, even including, as reported by Shen Bao, by the Emperor of Japan.  He applauded the efforts of the Watson team in Beijing, and so that he too could witness the event, a telescope was mounted in the Japanese imperial palace.  One of the American astronomers, dispatched to Japan joined the emperor to watch the whole event and explain it all to the Heavenly Sovereign. 

Despite their growing access to and familiarity with Western astronomical works and data, to traditional Chinese astronomers, the sun represented the emperor.  It was widely believed that if any other celestial body interfered with the sun, that would be an inauspicious portent of Heaven’s displeasure and possibly trigger calamities befalling the Emperor and the Empire.  The Transit had indeed been widely noticed.  One chronicle in Zhejiang Province correctly reported the date and time of the event after the fact, but merely described it as a black spot appearing on the sun. Whether that was a good sign or not was not mentioned.  But within a month of the transit in Beijing, it was reported that, as a result of the event, the emperor had contracted smallpox.  The transit was interpreted as a signal of the illness of both the emperor and the empire. Just a month later, on January 12, 1875, the Celestial Empire world was shocked and plunged into nervous grief when the emperor died.

It was hard to tell how far and wide the Transit might have spread its contagion of ill fortune.  Some 954 miles south of Beijing, in a little village in Henan Province, a mother gave birth to a son, Bai Zhiqingg, on exactly the same day and at the time of the Transit.  His mother and family were totally unaware of the black spot that appeared on the sun for just a couple of hours.  Whether or not that black spot was transmitted to the heart of the baby boy or not would remain to be seen.

3

Having finished a quick bowl of porridge prepared for him by his young cousin, the household servant, Master Bai shuffled towards the door to the exit of the family abode.  She had a restful night? Master Bai shot over his shoulder to his cousin tending the stove.

For the most part, Master, yes, she replied, not bothering to look up at him.  She’s nearly nine months pregnant. It is difficult for her to get comfortable sometimes.

Pausing at the door, Master Bai looked at the Chinese calendar hung just to the right of the portal.  Ah, the ninth day of the rat month, he said, as much to himself as to his cousin.  The new moon comes in four days.  Maybe something will have happened by then.

Ah, his cousin nodded and shot at him and turned to watch him depart. 

Pausing to examine both his Chinese calendar and a calendar from the foreign devils hung next to it, he tried to locate which day it was on the foreign calendar.  Let’s see now, it seems both of these calendars have twelve months, at least this year, Master Bai muttered.  "Every three years, though, we have an extra month, runyue,  or leap month, to balance things out between lunar and solar cycles.  I don’t see anything like this on this foreign calendar."

Reaching out and lifting the foreign calendar closer to him, he proceeded to look at the last month of the year—something labeled December.  Pointing to the word, he said, Rat month, right?

Then, counting from the top left thirteen spaces, he saw what appeared to be a symbol for a new moon.  So, they say there will be a new moon in four days, the thirteenth day. Glancing at the Chinese calendar, he nodded; they seemed to agree.  Today must be the ninth day of the word December then.

Casting his gaze on the little courtyard outside the main branch of the L-shaped compound. It’ll be sunrise in a couple of hours.  I better check on things, this day of, and putting his finger on the word December, whatever they call this month.

Winter is getting colder, he thought, and the year will soon end.  But soon, with heaven’s blessing, I will finally have a son.

Entering the courtyard, Master Bai received the quick differential bow of Xiao Peng, one of his most loyal and dutiful hired hands.  Good morning, Master Bai, Xiao Peng offered.  Any news?

Not yet, Xiao Peng.  Any time now, though, Master Bai offered.  He was in a good mood and a bit more loquacious than usual to the hired help.  Are the rest of the hands up yet? He inquired after the other five hired hands. 

They are still sleeping, Xiao Ping replied.  Today was my day to get up and be ready to serve you first when you came out.

Master Bai just nodded. The six men he retained were all Hui, a downtrodden, discriminated-against Muslim minority population in Henan Province.  Master Bai remembered the bloody massacres and deportation of the Hui in Shaanxi Province to the northwest of Henan during the brutal repression of the Dungan Revolt in the late 1860s.   His hired workers were escapees and refugees from those brutal despoliations.  Master Bai, of necessity, employed and sheltered them, as his thirty acres required extensive work to be as productive as possible.  He did not particularly get along with them, but they symbiotically tolerated each other.  He winced nearly every time he heard them speak to each other in their Hui tongue.  For the most part, though, they could speak Han Chinese with varying degrees of fluency.  Xiao Ping was fairly fluent in Han Chinese, and