1636: The China Venture

by Eric Flint

  Aleni’s head was throbbing, and the immediate reason was that he had learned that unlike the Dutch, these emissaries from the USE spoke Chinese. The problem was that in 1623, he had published the Chih-fang wai chi, a world geography in Chinese. And in that book, he had said that in Europe, everyone from kings to commoners worshiped according to the orthodox religion, that is, the Catholic Church. It would therefore be rather embarrassing if Aleni’s literati readers were to hear of the Protestant Reformation. And considering that Gustav Adolf was the chief defender of the Protestants, it seemed likely that they would hear about it in the very near future.

  Nor was that the only problem. The same treatise had also proclaimed that under the benign rule of Catholic kings, governing a people guided by Christian morality, Europe had been at peace for sixteen centuries. Yes, he had admitted, the Europeans had armies and navies, but that was for defense against the Turks. The revelation of the wars that had ravaged Europe for the past fifteen years, not to mention all the conflicts that had preceded it, was therefore going to create difficulties.

  For some of his colleagues, a further problem was that the books of Grantville taught that Galileo, Copernicus and Kepler were right, and Ptolemy (and more importantly, the Church) was wrong: The Earth went around the Sun.

  His eyes strayed to the mechanical clock in the vestry. The clock was of course of western manufacture; the Chinese used water and sand clocks. At least nowadays, they did. A literatus had told Aleni that centuries ago they had had their own mechanical clocks, but the secrets of their manufacture had been lost.

  The clock told him that it was time to enter the confessional booth. Hopefully, some of his parishioners would in fact come by to make confession. His male parishioners, that is; in view of Chinese sensibilities, he heard confession from males and females on different days of the week.

  * * *

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.”

  Father Giulio Aleni was shocked. Not by the words themselves—they were a customary beginning to the sacrament of penitence—but by the language that they were uttered in: Latin.

  Here in Fuzhou, he was, as far as he knew, the only resident European. There were, in fact, only twenty-one European Jesuits in all of China. The Portuguese merchants of Macao were not normally permitted to travel to Fuzhou, although of course they might come on the sly if they bribed the right officials. And as for the agents of Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden and the USE, they surely would come into his church only to deface and despoil it.

  The penitent continued, “It has been nine months since my last confession.”

  From that, Aleni deduced that the visitor had most likely last confessed in Europe. And was reasonably devout, as the fourth Lateran Council only required confession at least once a year and many parishioners didn’t come even that frequently.

  “I accuse myself of the following sins.”

  As was often the case, the sinner merely named each sin and the number of times it had been committed, without discussing the circumstance. The sins in question were merely venial.

  “For these and all the sins of my past life, I ask pardon of God, penance, and absolution from you, Father.”

  Father Aleni set the penance, and asked the sinner to say the Act of Contrition. That accomplished, he intoned, “I absolve you from your sins in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.”

  After a moment, Father Aleni added, “You are of course under no obligation to do so, but I hope that after confession you will come to the front door so we may converse freely, rather than under the seal of the confessional. I would like to know who you are, and what brings you to China.”

  “I’ll do that, Father. But my wife would like to confess, too. Is that possible? We don’t expect to be in Fuzhou long.”

  “Your wife?” Aleni was shocked. Aleni had come to Macao in 1610, and entered China three years later. Over the past score of years, he could not think of one instance in which a Macanese merchant had been permitted to bring his wife to nearby Guangzhou. For a couple to come to Fuzhou was truly extraordinary.

  “In deference to Chinese custom, we have men and women come to confess on different days. It would be better if she could come on one of the days of the week appointed for confession by women,” said Aleni. “They are posted outside the booth. Is that possible?”

  “We’ll make it work,” said the penitent. “How much longer are you on confession duty today?”

  “Another hour,” said Aleni.

  “We’ll come chat with you then.” And the stranger left.

  Aleni puzzled over his surprise visitor’s Latin accent. Not Portuguese or Spanish, surely. Perhaps Italian? Aleni himself was from Brescia, in the Republic of Venice. The accent wasn’t Venetian, but Italy’s language was as disunited as its polity.

  A moment later, he heard the door of the confessional booth open, and he had to give his attention to a new penitent. The puzzle, he told himself, would be resolved quickly enough once he met the couple openly.

  When Aleni finally emerged from the confessional booth, the mystery couple was sitting in one of the pews. “So you’re the famous Giulio Aleni, the Confucius of the West!” said the male visitor. Like Aleni himself, he was dressed as a Chinese scholar, which bespoke a certain familiarity with China. His wife wore a white chang’ao, a formal robe, and her long blue-gray skirt peeked out underneath and hid her feet.

  “Where have you heard that term?” asked Aleni. “And who are you?”

  “It was in one of Father Mazzare’s books. And my name is Jim Saluzzo. My wife Martina and I”—he gestured at the woman beside him—“are among his parishioners at St. Mary Magdalene’s. Were his parishioners, I should say, as Father Kircher took his place.”

  Of course, only one of these names was familiar to Aleni. “Kircher? Athanasius Kircher? I have corresponded with him on scientific matters,” said Aleni. “But I thought he was teaching at the Collegio Romano.”

  “He was. He came to town sometime in 1633, I believe. He started out doing research at the library and then was recruited to teach at the high school. And then he was asked, or maybe ordered, to take over Father Mazzare’s parochial duties so Mazzare could go to Venice.

  “And of course once the Pope appointed Father Mazzare as Cardinal-Protector of the United States of Europe, he had to find a permanent replacement and move to the capital, Magdeburg,” Martina added.

  “Cardinal-Protector…” repeated Aleni dumbly.

  “Hearing of his presence in Venice,” Martina continued, “the Pope asked Father, excuse me, Cardinal Mazzare to come to Rome to serve as Galileo’s advocate. Mazzare had previously sent copies and extracts of up-time books on theology to the Pope, at Cardinal Barberini’s request, so the Pope was certainly aware that in the old time line, the Church took Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus and Galileo’s Dialogue off the Index Librorum Prohibitorum in 1835. And that in 1992, Pope John Paul the Second spoke of the ‘error’ of the theologians of Galileo’s time in thinking that scripture required that the Earth be at the center of the solar system.”

  Aleni blinked but didn’t comment.

  “He must have been favorably impressed,” Jim said, “because he made the appointment to the cardinalate after hearing Mazzare’s defense. Galileo is now safely home in Florence.”

  “Well.… I see that our isolation has denied us much news of interest,” said Aleni slowly. “When did all this happen?”

  “In June 1634.”

  “Well, hopefully a report from Rome will arrive within the next few months, to verify what you have told me.”

  “Actually, the mission bears letters that we can show you. One from Father-General Vitelleschi, attesting to the appointment of Lawrence Mazzare of Grantville as Cardinal-Protector of the USE. And another from Mazzare, to the Vice-Provincial, requesting cooperation from the Jesuit missions to China.”

  Father Aleni sighed. “You are certainly making life interesting for me. Are you famili
ar with the Chinese proverb, ‘Better to live as a dog in an era of order than as a man in a time of chaos’?”

  * * *

  Zheng Zhilong had fed the members of the USE mission well in Anhai, but when they visited the governor of Fujian in Fuzhou as part of Zheng Zhilong’s entourage, they found that Governor Xiong Wencan was an even more lavish entertainer.

  Of course, the up-timers were basking, to some degree, in the reflected glory of Zheng Zhilong. Having just defeated the infamous pirate Liu Xiang, he was the man of the hour. Moreover, it was Xiong Wencan who had persuaded Zheng Zilong to surrender to the Ming in 1627, and thus claimed credit for the ex-pirate’s maritime victories. So honoring Zheng Zhilong reminded his guests that those victories were made possible by Xiong Wencan’s diplomatic skills.

  Many of the local gentry were present. Those were the families who had produced at least one individual over the past few generations who had passed the national examinations and become an official.

  Father Aleni was not.

  Xiong Wencan stood and made a speech praising Zheng Zhilong. Zheng Zhilong stood and returned the favor.

  Zhilong reminded the guests that the chili and the sweet potato had come to China from overseas. The sweet potato had, in fact, saved Fujian from famine in 1594, earning the then-governor the sobriquet “Golden Potato,” and leading to the composition of He Qiaoyuan’s somewhat less-than-immortal poem, the Ode to the Sweet Potato. He then introduced Mike Song as a distant kinsman whose forebears had left China rather than submit to Kublai Khan, the founder of the Yuan Dynasty. This was, of course, complete nonsense, as in fact Mike’s grandparents and parents had left China in the 1940s to escape the Red Army. But correcting him would have done more harm than good.

  The banquet began at noon. A total of eight courses were served. Eight, of course, was a lucky number, because the word for the number sounded like the word for wealth. Each course consisted of numerous dishes; often there was a large serving dish surrounded by many smaller ones, a style of presentation that the Chinese called “moon and stars.”

  Each guest was given chopsticks and a spoon, but no knives; all the solid food was cut up small enough to be picked up with chopsticks. No one could eat until the host, Xiong Wencan, had picked up his own chopsticks.

  Between the courses, there were performances: music, dancing, and poetry recitals. The musical instruments included lutes, zithers, flutes, and drums. The music had an alien, discordant sound to the western ear and the poetry was incomprehensible to all of the westerners save Mike Song and Eric Garlow, but the dancing proved an interesting spectacle for all.

  For one of the courses, two soup bowls, one red and the other green, were brought to each table, but the guests were cautioned by the servers not to partake of any until after the governor invited them to proceed. Once the soups were on every one of the tables, Mike Song stood.

  “So, we have a special culinary treat for you,” said Mike. “We call it, the ‘Father of Flavor.’ It is a seasoning that is found in very small quantities in certain seaweeds, and, while it does not have a pleasant taste in pure form, it enhances the taste of other foods.

  “With the cooperation of our host, we are conducting an experiment. We had the governor’s cook prepare a fish soup, and divide the soup in half. To one half, he added this powder in the quantity we prescribed. And to the other, he added nothing. The cook marked the containers so as to know which is which, but we and you will taste them ‘blind.’ And after we have given our opinion of the tastes, the cook will reveal which was which.”

  Before the banquet had started, the up-timers had demonstrated to Wencan that the powder was safe by having some of the soup themselves. It wasn’t that Wencan had any reason to think that they would want to poison him or his guests, but it would have been foolish not to take precautions against treachery. Zheng Zhilong, of course, had already experienced the “treat” before, at his own palace.

  Now, in front of his guests, Wencan dipped his spoon into the first soup and took a sip. He took a drink of water to cleanse his palette, then tried the next soup.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Well, that is a surprise. From seaweed, you say. What kind of seaweed?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Mike, “since that’s not how we obtain it ourselves. We make it by alchemical means that are not available to you. But if we know you want it, we can supply it in a few years in whatever quantities you might wish.”

  Wencan now invited the guests to try the two soups. There was general agreement that one was much tastier than the other. It was quietly made known that Huang Menglong, Zhilong’s maternal uncle, had the exclusive distribution rights for the “Father of Flavor” in Fujian.

  The powder, of course, was that staple of modern Chinese cooking, monosodium glutamate, and it was found in kombu, a Japanese seaweed, in levels of a couple of parts per hundred. The up-timers made it by reacting wheat gluten with hydrochloric acid and then adding caustic soda.

  * * *

  Judith Leyster unlocked one of her work chests. She shared a cabin with Eva Huber, the only other unmarried woman on the Rode Draak.

  She took out the clothing that formed the top layer of the contents, exposing the precious artifacts below. These included two cameras and ready-to-use dry photographic plates.

  Thanks to the art teacher at the high school, Judith had been able to take the photography course at Brennerei und Chemiefabrik Schwarza’s school in Grantville without having to pay the fee in advance. One of the high school art teachers, Elaine O’Meara, had spoken to Celeste Frost on her behalf: “Celeste, if people see beautiful photographs taken with your cameras and plates, then they’ll imagine that they can do the same. So we have here in Grantville a woman, Judith Leyster, who is already accepted as a master painter by the artist’s guild in Haarlem and in the old time line became famous enough to have paintings hanging in the Louvre, the National Gallery of Art in DC, and the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. But she’s broke and can’t afford to take your course. Can you do something?” Well, Celeste got Judith in, and gave her a camera to boot, in return for a five-year appointment as Judith’s European agent for sale of photographic prints, at a ten percent commission.

  Unfortunately, between learning photography and studying Chinese, Judith hadn’t had much time for creating art. So she was still broke. But once Celeste heard that Judith was going to China, she loaned Judith a twin lens stereo camera, too. The two lenses were spaced horizontally at the same distance as the pupils of the human eye and you could photograph simultaneously through both lenses, each creating an image on half of the photographic plate. The two images together formed the stereo pair.

  Before Jim and Martina had gone to see Father Aleni, they had explained their religious obligation of confession to a Chinese official, so as to obtain a license for the journey. The license had been issued only after Zheng Zhilong had spoken up for them, and they had been escorted by one of the official’s runners, who had waited patiently for them outside the church. So Judith had feared that she might not be allowed off the ship to photograph the vistas of Fuzhou.

  But after the banquet, the official mood had improved. The governor had given permission for all of the members of the USE mission—albeit not the ship’s crew—to move freely through Fuzhou.

  Officialdom was not the only possible obstacle to photography, for this was the rainy season in the province of Fujian. The weather during their stay in Anhai had been so foul that Judith had limited her photography to Zheng Zhilong’s family compound. But so far, at least, today was dry.

  She was planning to take landscape shots and for that she preferred the single-lens camera. The lens was slow, by up-time standards, which meant that exposures had to be long. That in turn meant that the camera had to be mounted on a tripod, and back in Grantville Judith had quickly learned Tripod Rule Number One: Use the heaviest tripod your partner can lug around for you.

  But alas, Judith was single. Fortunately, in China the cost o
f labor was very low. A word to Yan the Swallow, Zheng Zhilong’s brother, and a Chinese lad was assigned to her. His name was Zhang Wei, which was more or less the equivalent of “John Smith” in English. He seemed too young to Judith to be of much help, but he loaded up her equipment on his pull cart with no delay, and off they went into town. Yan had given her some suggestions as to what to photograph. She just hoped that the day would remain sunny.

  Not much later, she set up her camera for the first time on Chinese soil. She stood at one end of the long reflecting pool in front of Xichan Temple, which dated back to the Tang Dynasty. The lychee trees lining the pool were relative newcomers, having been planted in the Song Dynasty, half a millennium ago.

  “Wei, please set the tripod right here.”

  She positioned the camera over the tripod head and fastened it down. She frowned. “Help me shift it a few inches to the left.”

  She opened the shutter of the lens; the light entered and fell upon the ground glass on the rear plate of the camera. She threw a black cloth over her head and the camera so she could see the image. She tilted and shifted the front and back standards until she liked the composition, and focused the lens until the image on the ground glass was as sharp as she could make it.

  A tall, gray, multistory pagoda on the left was balanced by a shorter red-roofed temple and an arched bridge on the right, the three structures forming a triangle whose three lines were neither vertical nor horizontal. The edges of the pool led the eye to these structures. Yes, for the first photograph of China, this would do nicely. She reminded herself that the captured image would be monochrome, but she would remember the colors, and could hand-color in some of the prints.

  She swapped in the glass plate carrier in place of the ground glass and pulled out the cover that protected the emulsion from the light. She counted out the exposure. “One Gustavus, two Gustavus…” Back in class, she had memorized a table that related the exposure to season, time of day, and cloud cover. Jim Saluzzo had told her how to modify the table for the latitude of China. She made notes about the shooting conditions; if this plate was ill-exposed, it would help her correct the problem the next time around.