Undercover - In China - Book 7

Part 58 - Ducks' national anthem

We were looking forward to catching up on our sleep, but Kongming asked if we would take a message down the Long River to Xuande in Xiacou.  When I groaned, he suggested we might get news of Dr Zhang while we were there.

'But how are we going to get there?' Denny asked. 

 'What about Wu Jun?' Licia suggested. 'He brought us here.' 

 At the waterfront, Wu Jun and his crew were finishing off the beer and they were happy to take us to Xiacou. 

 We waved goodbye sadly to Chen Ling. She had decided to stay with Kongming and take care of Grandpa's boat. The weather was bad and getting worse. A steady drizzle of rain made visibility so bad we could barely make out the shoreline. It was a cold, miserable day for boating but at least the murk shielded us from Cho Cho's lookouts. 

 We managed to doze a little, under the folded sail between the legs of the rowers, as we raced down river but we were still tired when we arrived at Xiacou, the bustling river port at the junction of the Han River and the Long River (Yangste). The modern city of Wuhan.

The river bank was crowded with boats of all shapes and sizes. Wu Jun squeezed his boat between two large cargo ships and guided us along the waterfront. We passed farmers, fishermen and traders selling their wares between artisans making or repairing shoes, clothing, tools, cartwheels and boats. The stalls and workshops spilled out of the houses along the narrow streets or from the decks of boats. Soldiers sat on stools drinking beer and playing cards, while noodle makers and cooks prepared meals with every conceivable animal or vegetable. Licia, Miguel and I watched in fascinated revulsion as one cook beheaded, skinned and boiled bullfrogs to order.

Many people lived on boats tied together at the water's edge. Laundry fluttered from lines strung between the boats and small children raced each other along the rough planks that linked the boats to the shore. Wu Jun paid a small toll to an ancient woman, repairing a fishing net, and we took a short cut across a creek using the boats as a floating bridge. Half way across, Miguel lost his balance and staggered into a cage full of ducks. The ducks made an incredible din quacking indignantly at the disturbance and Miguel quacked back at them. Licia laughed. 'You speak duck like a native, Miguel.' 'We were singing the ducks' national anthem,' Miguel told her with a grin.

As we reached the far bank of the creek, a column of smoke rose black against the sky where a gang of tough looking men shovelled charcoal into a brick, blast furnace. Nearby, others pumped steadily on square wooden pistons. Denny pointed out they were heating crucibles (giant pottery urns) packed with a mixture of iron ore, charcoal and crushed limestone. The pumpers forced air into a pile of white-hot charcoal around the pots until the charcoal inside the crucible combined with the oxygen and the iron melted and sank to the bottom of the urns. The limestone absorbed any impurities and floated on the top. On the other side of the blast furnace, molten iron alloy had been run from the urns into moulds, in a bed of sand, to form bars. 

 Nearby, blacksmiths reheated the bars in hearths full of glowing charcoal and hammered them into spear and arrow heads, knives and axes, plough shares and hoe blades.

We found Xuande, Zhang Fei and Lord Guan at the government building. They were delighted to see us and even happier with the news that Kongming still considered himself, 'Safe in the dragon's mouth.' We borrowed some dry clothes and rejoined Xuande and Lord Guan for a meal where they entertained us with the story of their narrow escape from Cho Cho's cavalry.