In the mid-19th century, during the dying light of the Qing Dynasty's Tongzhi era, the humid air of Zhejiang province hung heavy over the town of Cangqian. It was a place where the mist from the waterways clung to the eaves of grey-tiled roofs, and fortune was a commodity measured not in gold, but in copper coins and the salt of one's sweat. In this labyrinth of narrow alleys and stone bridges, the Ge family ground out their existence, quite literally.
They were tofu makers, a trade that demanded a punishing devotion. The profession required them to rise while the stars were still bright and the moon hung low, firing the stoves and working the heavy stone mills to transform hard soybeans into fluid, nourishing milk. The patriarch, Ge the Eldest, was a man shaped by the millstone—enduring, repetitive, and eroding slowly under the friction of his life. His shoulders were permanently stooped, his hands calloused and white from the constant immersion in bean brine. His wife, Madam Yu, provided the steel in the family's spine. She was a matron with a sharp tongue, a calculator for a heart, and eyes that missed nothing—a woman who could spot a counterfeit coin or a lazy motion from fifty paces.
Fate, it seemed, had spent all its malice on the Ge bloodline, saving none of its benevolence for their offspring. They had a son, Pinlian—known to the neighborhood as "Little Ge." He was a stunted, hollow-chested boy of fourteen, with a weak chin and a constitution that seemed perpetually on the verge of collapse. He was a shadow of a man, barely strong enough to turn the heavy grindstone.
But Pinlian was a prize compared to his sister, Third Girl. To speak plainly, the girl was a walking nightmare, a cruel jest of nature. The gods had sketched her in charcoal and forgotten to smooth the lines: her skin was as dark as charcoal and rough as old bark; her eyebrows resembled coarse brooms bristling with anger; and her eyes bulged like copper bells, rolling in her head without focus. With a collapsed nose, a cavernous mouth filled with charred, chaotic teeth, and a voice that sounded like a cracked gong, she was a terrifying sight. Worse still, her mind was as tangled as her features; the locals called her the "Ugly Fool," for she could not distinguish barley from wheat, often sitting by the shop door, clapping her hands at invisible flies while drool slicked her chin.
The Ge family lived on the razor's edge of penury. Every drop of soy milk was counted; every copper coin was pinched until it screamed. They could afford no help, no laborers to ease the burden. And so, Pinlian worked the mill alongside his parents, his youth grinding away with the beans, a dull existence of steam, sweat, and sour smells.
One humid afternoon, the rhythmic thrum-thrum-thrum of the millstone—the heartbeat of the house—was broken by a voice from the street.
"Brother-in-law! Are you hidden away in there like a tortoise?"
Ge wiped the soy-froth from his hands onto his apron. He knew the voice immediately; it possessed a slippery, oily quality that set his teeth on edge. It was Yu Jingtian, his wife's younger brother, a small-time merchant with shifting eyes and a manner that suggested he was always looking for the nearest exit.
"Is that you, Jingtian?" Ge called out, feigning a welcome he did not feel. "Come in, come in. The shop is open."
Yu Jingtian entered, fanning himself with a worn paper fan. He glanced around the damp, dark interior of the tofu shop with a mixture of pity and calculation. Madam Yu emerged from the back room, wiping her hands on a rag. Her eyes narrowed as she assessed her brother; she knew him too well to expect a social call. He only appeared when he wanted money, or when he had a scheme.
She poured him a bowl of coarse tea, the steam rising between them. "Brother," she said, her voice dry, "you didn't walk all this way to watch us grind beans. What is the matter?"
Yu Jingtian took a sip, grimacing slightly at the bitterness of the tea, before leaning in. He dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, the kind used by men in teahouses discussing rebellion or contraband.
"The floods in Nanjing," Yu began, his eyes widening theatrically. "They've washed the world away. The Yangtze has swallowed whole villages. Refugees are spilling out of the city like water from a broken jar, clogging the roads to Hangzhou. Yesterday, a distant relative of my wife's arrived at my door—a widow of the Bi clan and her young daughter. They lost everything. The house collapsed into the mud, the furniture floated away. They have no hope, and nowhere else to turn."
He paused, sighing with the weight of a burden he had no intention of carrying. "Sister, brother-in-law, you know my situation. Business is lean. The rice jar is not bottomless. I cannot cast them out—I am not a monster—but I cannot feed two extra mouths just to sit and eat idle rice. I was despairing, truly. But then... I looked at the girl."
The merchant in him took over now. The theatrical sadness vanished, replaced by the sharp glint of a appraisal. "Her name is Xiugu. She is only seven years old, but she is clever. She is healthy. And she has skin like white jade, untouched by the sun. I looked at her, and I thought of you."
Ge and his wife went still. The rhythmic sloshing of the water vat seemed to stop. They knew where this road led.
"Pinlian is fourteen," Yu pressed, gesturing toward the stunted boy who was hauling a bucket of water in the corner. "He is of age, but look at him. And look at your coin purse. Who will you find for him? A cripple? A widow?" He leaned closer. "Why not take Xiugu as a tongyangxi—a child bride? You raise her here. She eats your rice, yes, but girls eat like birds. In exchange, she works. She fetches water, she scrubs the floors, she washes the greens. She becomes a daughter to you. And when she bleeds, and Pinlian is ready? You marry them."
Yu spread his hands wide. "Think of it. No matchmaker's fees. No expensive dowry to bankrupt you. You secure a wife for your son and a servant for your house in one stroke. It is the perfect solution."
The brilliance of the tongyangxi system was its cruelty and its economy: a girl raised to be a wife, molded by her mother-in-law, purchased for the price of her survival. It was a practice born of desperation, common among the poor, but rarely did an opportunity like this fall into one's lap so easily.
Ge the Eldest hesitated, his brow furrowed. "It sounds... convenient," he admitted slowly. "But we are poor, brother. We work from darkness to darkness. If she is soft, she won't last a winter here. And the mother? I don't want a weeping widow on my doorstep in a month, demanding her child back because the work is too hard. That would bring trouble I cannot afford."
"The mother is desperate," Yu said, waving a hand dismissively to cut off the objection. "I spoke to her plainly. She knows she cannot feed the child. She wants the girl to live. That is enough. And as for cost... there is none. No silver. No gifts. Just the exchange of the Eight Characters to seal the fate. A little wine later for the wedding, perhaps, but for now? Free."
The word hung in the humid, bean-scented air of the shop. Free.
Madam Yu's eyes lit up with a predatory gleam. A servant who would become a daughter-in-law, costing nothing but a bowl of watery porridge? It was a bargain made in heaven. She looked at her husband and gave a sharp nod.
"We agree," she said. "Bring her tomorrow."
The next morning, the dingy tofu shop was scrubbed as clean as it would ever be. The scent of sour beans was temporarily masked by the aroma of roasting meat. Madam Yu, in a rare display of extravagance, had splurged on pork and fish. She set up a small altar in the main room, placing the "He-He Er Xian"—the Twin Immortals of Harmony and Union—in the center, flanked by red candles that guttered in the draft. This was a transaction, yes, involving human lives, but it required the stamp of the divine to be binding.
When Yu Jingtian arrived, the morning sun was just cutting through the mist. He trailed a weary woman in faded blue cotton and a small child.
The mother, Mrs. Bi, was a picture of defeated gentility, her shoulders slumped under the weight of tragedy. But the girl...
When Bi Xiugu stepped over the threshold, the air seemed to leave the room. She was seven years old, but she stood out against the gray, grime-streaked backdrop of the Ge household like a white lotus blooming in a mud pit. She was startlingly beautiful. Her brows were delicate strokes of ink, curved like distant spring mountains. Her eyes were clear pools of autumn water, intelligent and observant. Her skin possessed a luminosity that the Ge family, with their sun-baked, brine-soaked hides, had never seen.
Ge the Eldest and his wife exchanged a look of greedy, unbelieving delight. They had expected a sturdy peasant girl, a workhorse to be beaten into shape. Instead, they had been gifted a thoroughbred.
"The papers," Madam Yu demanded gently, though her eyes were fixed hungrily on the girl.
The red slips of paper containing the "Eight Characters"—the precise astrological timestamps of birth year, month, day, and hour—were exchanged between the adults. It was a bureaucratic act of spiritual binding. The stars had been aligned, the fates locked together. The girl's life was no longer her own.
"Kowtow to your parents," Yu Jingtian commanded, his voice booming in the small space.
The girl knelt on the cold stone floor next to the stunted, open-mouthed Pinlian. They bowed to the ancestors, then to the beaming Ge and Madam Yu. It was a grotesque tableau: the beautiful, delicate child tethered to the dullard son, presided over by the ugly daughter, Third Girl, who sat in the corner laughing and clapping her hands, understanding nothing but the excitement of the noise.
After the formal bows, Mrs. Bi pulled her daughter into a shadowed corner of the room. Her composure cracked, just a fracture in the porcelain mask of maternal strength. She smoothed the girl's hair, her hands trembling.
"Xiugu," she whispered, her voice thick with unshed tears. "You belong to them now. You must forget your old life. Obey them in all things. Work hard. Do not be lazy. Do not give them cause to strike you." She paused, choking back a sob. "I will visit when the waters recede... one day. When I have a roof over my head again."
Xiugu looked up at her mother. She did not wail. She did not cling to her mother's leg as other children might. She simply nodded, letting the tears slide down her face in silence, displaying a maturity far beyond her seven years. She understood, with the terrifying clarity of the poor, that this was necessary for survival.
"Come, come! No tears on a joyous day!" Ge the Eldest cried out, pouring warm yellow wine into chipped ceramic cups. He felt a twinge of pity, or perhaps just the expansive magnanimity of a man who has won a great prize for nothing. "Let her eat! A full belly for luck!"
They sat to feast. The hierarchy of the table was strict and telling. Mrs. Bi sat in the seat of honor, though she could barely swallow a grain of rice. Yu Jingtian ate with the gusto of a man who has successfully offloaded a burden, picking at the choice pieces of fish. Madam Yu busied herself piling meat onto the bowl of the cackling Third Girl, trying to keep the creature quiet so as not to scare off the guests.
And there sat Pinlian, staring at his new bride with a slack-jawed confusion, while Xiugu ate with lowered eyes, her movements precise and graceful, shrinking into herself as if trying to disappear.
When the meal ended, the finality of the arrangement set in like a frost. Mrs. Bi stood up, smoothing her faded dress. She looked at her daughter one last time, her eyes memorizing the curve of the cheek, the line of the jaw. She opened her mouth to speak, but closed it again. There were no words that could bridge this separation. She turned and walked out into the street without looking back. To look back would be to collapse, and she had no luxury for collapse.
Bi Xiugu stood in the doorway, watching her mother's figure disappear into the dusty bustle of Cangqian. She wore a simple green tunic over a white apron—a splash of verdant color against the drab wood of the shop. It was this image, the fresh green and the stark white, vivid and clean, that would sear itself into the memories of the neighbors. It would earn her the nickname whispered through the teahouses and markets of the province, a name that implied something fresh, desirable, and easily consumed: "Little Cabbage."
From that hour, she was theirs. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and turned to the washing basin. She rolled up her sleeves, exposing thin, pale arms, and plunged her hands into the cold water. She was docile, she was diligent, and she was terrified.
The Ge family believed their fortunes had finally turned. They had secured a free servant and a beautiful future bride for their unmarriageable son. They saw only the economic victory, the domestic convenience. But fortune is a fickle spirit, often hiding a dagger behind a smile.
Just as they began to enjoy their luck, enjoying the envy of their neighbors and the bustle of their shop, Ge the Eldest fell gravely ill. A darkness was gathering over the tofu shop, a sequence of events that would spiral out of the damp alleyways of Cangqian.
They did not know it yet, but the arrival of the beautiful Little Cabbage was not a blessing. It was the first act of a tragedy that would shake the Qing empire to its rotting foundations.