many bureaus—though he did not know his name. He reacted by sighing inwardly at the man’s plight. To be the head of a Bureau in one of the Six Boards meant that he had passed the Imperial Civil Service Examination, yet here he was, so poor he had to beg a bowl of gruel in a charity tent. It was the height of absurdity. From decades of experience in official yamens, Zhao Jia was well acquainted with the means by which various officials fattened their purses and the vagaries of promotion. This fellow, who was crouching in the snow by the side of the road eating a bowl of charity gruel, was either hopelessly incompetent or a man of rare virtue.
After Zhao and his apprentice received their gruel, they too crouched by the side of the road, and as Zhao ate, his eyes remained on the man who had caught his attention. He was grasping his delicate ceramic bowl tightly in both hands, obviously for the warmth it afforded. The beggars and city poor all around raised a din as they slurped their gruel. He alone ate without making a sound, and when he was finished, he covered his bowl and his face with one of his wide sleeves. Zhao could not say for certain why he did that, but it was worth a guess. And he was right. When the man lowered his sleeve, Zhao could see that the little bowl had been licked clean. The man stood up, put the bowl back inside his robe, and headed southeast at a quick pace.
So Zhao Jia and his apprentice followed the man; that is to say, they too set out for the Board of Punishments. The man took long strides, his head tilting forward at each step, like a galloping horse, and Zhao and his apprentice had to trot just to keep up. Later, when he thought back to the occasion, he could not say what had motivated him to follow the man, who, as it turned out, slipped and fell as he was turning into a narrow lane near a hot-pot restaurant; his arms and legs were splayed on the ground, and his blue bundle went flying. Zhao’s initial reaction had been to rush over and help him up, but thoughts of the trouble that might cause held him back; so he stopped and watched to see what would happen. The man was having a hard time getting up, and once he was on his feet, he managed only a few steps before falling again, and this time Zhao could see that he was rather badly hurt. So, handing his bowl to his apprentice, he rushed over and helped the man, whose face was beaded with sweat, to his feet.
“Are you hurt, sir?” Zhao asked.
Without replying, the man took a few steps, supporting himself with his hand on Zhao Jia’s shoulder, his face twisted in pain.
“It looks to me, sir, that you are badly hurt.”
“Who are you?” the man asked with obvious suspicion.
“I work in the Board of Punishments, sir.”
“The Board of Punishments?” the man said. “If that’s true, how come I don’t know you?”
“You don’t know me, sir, but I know who you are,” Zhao said. “Tell me what you would like me to do.”
The man took a few more tentative steps, but his body gave out and he plopped down on the snowy ground. “My legs won’t carry me,” he said. “Find some transportation to take me home.”
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2
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Zhao Jia flagged down a donkey-drawn coal cart and accompanied the injured official to a broken-down little temple outside Xizhi Gate, where a tall, lanky young man was practicing kungfu in the yard. Despite the cold, he was wearing only a thin singlet; his pale face was beaded with sweat. As soon as Zhao Jia helped the official into the yard, the young man ran up. “Father,” he shouted, and burst into tears. Icy winds whistled through the flimsy paper covering the windows in the unheated temple, where cracks in the walls were stuffed with cotton wadding. A woman sitting on the chilled kang was shivering as she spooled thread. She looked like an old granny, with a sickly pallor and gray hair. Zhao Jia and the young man helped the official over to the kang, where, after a respectful bow, he turned to leave.
“My name is Liu Guangdi,” the man said. “I passed the Imperial Examination in 1883, the twenty-second year of the Guangxu reign, and have been the