The twelfth year of Zhengde. Fujian, Yuegang.
The sea that year was especially restless.
The fishermen said the Dragon King was turning over in his sleep. The old men said the celestial signs had changed. Shen Zhou believed none of it. He believed only in wood. Wood did not lie—you shaved along the grain, and it obediently let you shave; you went against it, and it curled up, split, and chipped the edge of your blade.
Shen Zhou built boats.
He was not the sort of master craftsman found in an official shipyard. He was a village craftsman from a fishing village. His shipyard was a flat stretch of rocky beach by the sea, with a shed built over it. The shed was piled with lumber, ropes, tung oil, and a plane that had been used for more than a decade. His father had left him the plane. Its blade had been worn thin from sharpening, but it was still sharp.
His father had built boats too. So had his grandfather. Three generations before them, all the same.
The people of Yuegang said that once a Shen family boat touched the water, it would never capsize.
That was somewhat exaggerated, but it was not entirely untrue. The boats Shen Zhou built really were steady. Not because he used any special kind of wood, and not because he had some secret family formula. It was because he worked slowly.
Other people built a fishing boat in two months. He took four.
“Why are you so slow?” people asked him.
“Slow is what makes it steady,” he said, his plane never stopping. “If the gap between two planks is off by the width of a hair, once the boat’s in the water, that becomes a crack. Water gets into the crack and soaks the wood. The wood rots. Once it rots, it sinks.”
When he said this, he did not look at the person he was speaking to. His eyes stayed fixed on the plank in his hands, as if he were talking to the wood.
Some people in the village believed him. Some did not. Those who believed were willing to wait four months. Those who did not went to find another craftsman. Shen Zhou did not care. He only concerned himself with finishing the boat in his hands.
He was twenty-seven that year. He had not married. It was not that no one had tried to arrange a match for him. He simply felt the time had not come yet. When would it come? He could not say. He only knew he had not yet met the person who would make him feel that it had.
Bai Ping was from the neighboring village.
Her family dealt in fish. They did not catch them; they salted them. Her father had spent his whole life fishing. By her generation, the fishing had been handed down to her brothers, while she was responsible for turning the fish into things that could be stored—salted fish, dried fish, fish sauce, and shrimp paste.
She had learned her craft from her mother. Her mother had learned hers from her own mother. When Bai Ping’s grandmother was young, she had worked as a cook for a wealthy family in Quanzhou City. Later, she married into a fishing village and brought the city’s techniques with her. That was why the fish Bai Ping cured tasted different from everyone else’s—not merely salty, but with an indescribable freshness, as if the taste of the sea wind had been sealed into the flesh.
Before heading out to sea, the fishermen of Yuegang all came to her family to buy dried fish. They carried it aboard, and when they got hungry, they would gnaw off a piece. With fresh water, it could keep them going for several days.
Bai Ping first met Shen Zhou on a rainy day.
That day, she was carrying two baskets of dried fish to Yuegang to sell when heavy rain began halfway there. She ducked into a shed by the road to wait it out, only to discover after entering that it was Shen Zhou’s shipyard.
Shen Zhou was shaving a plank. Rain hammered the roof of the shed, roaring loudly, but he seemed not to hear it. His plane moved forward again and again, and curls of wood peeled from the blade and fell to the ground—thin and curled, like shrimp shells.
Bai Ping set down the baskets by the edge of the shed and wrung the water from the hem of her clothes. She said nothing. She simply stood there watching him shave the wood.
For a long time.
When Shen Zhou finished one side, he turned the plank over and ran his fingers across its surface. His fingers were long, with thick calluses on the pads. He moved slowly over the wood, as if reading something.
“What are you feeling?” Bai Ping could not help asking.
Shen Zhou raised his head. Only then did he notice that there was another person in the shed. He paused, then said, “The grain.”
“What’s there to feel in the grain?”
“Whether the grain runs clean determines whether the plank can be used.” He stood the plank upright and pointed to the lines on it. “Look. There’s a knot here. The wood at the knot is hard, and the wood beside it is soft. The boundary between hard and soft is where it’s most likely to split. If this knot happened to be on the bottom of the boat, uneven pressure in the water would make it break right here.”
Bai Ping leaned closer and took a look. She did not really understand, but she understood one thing: this man took his work seriously. Seriously enough not to overlook even a single knot.
“You work with fish?” Shen Zhou had caught the scent on her. It was not a fishy smell, but something dry, cured by salt and sunlight, with a hint of sea wind.
“Mm. I cure fish.”
“That explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“No wonder you smell like the sea.”
Bai Ping froze for a moment, then laughed. Her laugh was not loud, but it was clear and bright, like raindrops falling on a plank.
The rain stopped. She lifted the baskets of fish and left.
Shen Zhou watched her walk away for a while, then lowered his head and continued shaving the plank.
But his hand stopped for a moment. Only a moment.
After that, Bai Ping often passed by Shen Zhou’s shipyard.
Not deliberately—she went to Yuegang to sell dried fish, and that road was the only way there. But every time she passed, she would glance into the shed. Sometimes Shen Zhou was there, and sometimes he was not. When he was, she would stop and stand outside the shed to watch him work.
She discovered that Shen Zhou built boats much the same way she cured fish.
Both were slow. Both were done one step at a time. Neither could be rushed.
When she cured fish, the salt had to be rubbed on one layer at a time, neither too much nor too little. Too much, and it would be too salty. Too little, and it would spoil. Once the salt had been rubbed in, stones had to be placed on top so the fish could slowly release its water. After the water came out, the fish had to be turned over, another layer of salt rubbed in, and the stones put back. The process had to be repeated several times, and each time required waiting. Waiting for the flesh to become translucent, to become firm, to become tough enough to dry beneath the sun for three days without rotting.
Shen Zhou built boats the same way. Planks had to be shaved again and again, joints tested over and over, tung oil brushed on layer after layer. No step could be skipped. Each step had to wait until the one before it was completely finished.
“You’re just like me,” Bai Ping said to him once. “You’re both slow by nature.”
Shen Zhou thought about it, then said, “It isn’t that we’re slow. We don’t dare be fast. If we rush, something will go wrong.”
“Same with me,” Bai Ping said. “Rush the fish, and they spoil. Rush the boat, and it sinks. Same principle.”
Shen Zhou looked at her and thought this woman had an interesting way of speaking. She was not the sort of person who said pretty things, but every word she said landed exactly where it should, just like the way she cured fish—neither too much nor too little, exactly right.
That was how they slowly became familiar with each other. It was not a dramatic first meeting. It was the kind where they exchanged a few words one day, a few more a few days later, and kept talking until it became a habit.
Shen Zhou was not good with words. He spent more time with wood than with people. His mouth was clumsy. He thought about many things, but what came out was always only a few words.
Bai Ping did not mind. She said, “You don’t have to say that much. I know what you’re thinking just by watching you work.”
The plane in Shen Zhou’s hand stopped for a moment.
Only a moment.