“Ei,” said Bai.
“Ei,” answered Yu without looking up.
“These smoke-dried fish are beneath notice,” Bai said, and deposited a package on the bench behind the worktable.
“They’re appreciated,” Yu answered without ever breaking the rhythm of the delicate little tooth scraping in the clay. Bai saw that he was using a stencil. Of course, most people did these days, when putting in a precise background pattern, scrolling or curling leaves, for example. But Yu’s studio was known for its rare freehand work. Maybe the old man was just taking a break. Bai watched him work.
He was relaxed, the rhythm of his hands companionable with the passage of time. “How have you been?” he asked Bai.
“Well. And well traveled. You?”
“Well enough. How about business?”
“I stand a moment in fortune’s favor. That’s one bit of a beautiful cup.” He nodded at the piece under Yu’s hand.
“After the Ming prototype,” Yu said. “There’s a reason why the sweet-white ware from the Yongle reign remains all but unsurpassable. It’s not easy to reproduce! Truly. Everything depends on the materials used.”
“It is inappropriate for me to even say, for I’m a rank beginner,” Bai said, “but is it not so that in the body of the sweet-white, the level of alumina should be high?” He glanced at Yu to see if he was right.
The older man dipped his metal point into a saucer of water, swirled it. He patted it dry on a towel and looked up expectantly at Bai. “And?” he said.
Bai sang inside, for that meant he was right. “Yongle pots had higher kaolin content. They needed higher firing temperatures. So the body was stronger and could be as thin as eggshells, thin as a spectrum of light.”
“And are you on equally intimate terms with the sweet-white glaze?”
“I am a poor student,” Bai said gleefully, blessing all the nights he’d spent, elbows on the table, forehead in his hands, bent over the books in his room. “In the glaze there was less lime and more potash. This means there was more feldspar, and that change, combined with the lowered lime levels, evaporated away the blue tint of a lime-ash glaze. And that is what made the sweet-white color.”
“Good!” Potter Yu laughed. “How did you know?”
“That one! I admit, Old Ma over at the Ming excavations told me.”
“Ah! Is it so? Old Ma!” Yu knew the man very well. Old Ma had been minding the kiln site for more than fifty years. Over the yawning hole in the ground he’d built a little brick structure, with wire-mesh windows high up in its walls. Old Ma himself had dug the great pit a spoonful at a time, had exposed the centuries-old stones of the firing chambers, the work area, the all-important shard pile. Here, in the northeast corner of the excavation, he had unearthed thousands of pounds of broken china.
And these pieces were the true prizes. They were some of the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of pots smashed because they were not perfect.
Through shards, every compositional detail of the best imperial porcelains could be dissected. If a man knew exactly how kaolin and petuntse were combined in a given reign, what minerals, what levels, that man, if otherwise an artist, could make a pot that had the ineffably correct look.
Yes, Old Ma was the place to learn, Yu thought. And if this ah chan was smart enough to listen to the old man, he might succeed. His tortoise-frame glasses slipped a little as he moved to his feet, untied his blue apron, and laid it over the chair. “Come inside, Bai. I have something to show you.”
Bai followed him down the long aisle-on one side, finished works of majestic scale: garden stools, great oversize standing urns, enormous goldfish pots, all painted in a riot of styles from Ming to new China kitsch. On the left, the horizontal racks of narrow rough-hewn boards held marching lines of unfired pots: bowls, cups, plates, ewers, vases, jars. Dozens of each type.
Yu pushed back a swinging door and they were in the room where he kept his finished wares. There were two facing couches and a commodious, low felt-lined table for looking at pots and drinking tea, but otherwise the room was all shelves. Shelves of porcelain were interrupted only by a few crank windows in their metal frames, kept more or less permanently open to the sultry hillside air. The room was well lit with thoughtfully placed spots. Yu knew what his wares were worth.
Bai circled appreciatively, drinking in Xuande bowls and Yongle stem cups and Chenghua wine cups and Yuan platters and Hongwu vases. Yu had chosen to work in fang gu, the reproduction of past masterpieces. All the best potters made fang gu, but for some it was an occasional thing. There were only a few like Yu, who placed it above all other pursuits.
Bai admired an ingot-shaped covered box of the late Ming, the Longqing reign-blue and white with swimming dragons, it was scoop-waisted, like a dumbbell, and its upper half was a fitted lid. The Longqing emperor had reigned from 1567-1572; a short reign, but one that had left its own stamp on porcelain’s evolution, with covered boxes, wine pots with overhead handles, and other objects of art intended to suggest use. Not that these pieces were actually used. The whiff of use, the patina, was enough. They were far too perfect to use. Their utilitarian aspect was purely metaphorical.
“Beautiful,” Bai said. It was so pitiable about Hu and Sun, he thought suddenly, so terrible. To have been caught. For lightning to have struck.
But he was still here. The bolt wouldn’t strike again, not so soon. He would make it through and he would be rich and everybody would call him Emperor. He needed something magical, some symbol of power, some connection to the gods to carry with him. “Potter Yu,” he said. “I’d like you to make me a chicken cup. If you can get it right, make it truly fine, I’ll pay double. Really! This is a thing I want for myself. I want a cup that is exactly like the ones made for the Chenghua emperor right over there-” Bai cocked his glance north in the direction of the Ming kiln, with its pit of shards. “I will rely on you. Truly. I want a piece that from every angle, on every facet, is as fine as the cup of the Chenghua emperor himself.”
“No, not Nanchang. I want to fly straight to Jingdezhen. What do you mean?” Lia pressed the phone to her ear, crossed out what she had written and started again. “One flight a week? Are you serious?”
She listened. “And when’s the next flight there? And when returning?” She closed her eyes. She would have to leave the following evening, right after work. She could finish the rough inventory by then. When she returned, she and Phillip could go over it.
Unfortunately she’d have to fly to Nanchang, and from there take a four-hour train to Jingdezhen. Then a day in Jingdezhen could follow, and she could catch the weekly flight from Jingdezhen to Beijing. It made her tired just to think about it. “Book it,” she told the phone agent.
It was worth it. The history of pots was impressed into the very texture of Jingdezhen, like ingrained kiln dust. The town was the art, and the art, the town. She knew a few people there. Through one she would meet another; it always happened that way. She might even find the Master of the Ruffled Feather.
She stepped out into the night air. It was fresh, cooler, with a half-moon rising over the roofs. Standing in her court she could feel a pull, a well of life, from his court on the other side. It’s amazing, she thought, the observational side of herself off to the side, marveling; as if feeling can actually change physical laws. Specify the bend of light. Make me want to go to him, right now, and tell him I’m leaving Beijing.
But she saw through the gates his courtyard was dark. She couldn’t tell him. He was out somewhere. Of course, she thought, why shouldn’t he be? It was strange, the way she felt. Nothing had been said and yet here she was wanting to go and tell him she was leaving town. She had the uncomfortable sense that her feelings had gone out of line with the situation. Abruptly, she turned around and walked out and away down the lane.