The Year of Rice and Salt

'Nowhere is it a good thing to be a woman,' Kang replied irritably. 'But concubines are not wives, they don't have the same family rights.'

'So things are only better in China if you are married.'

'This is true everywhere. But not to be able to read, even the daughters of the rich and educated men! To be cut off from literature, to be unable to write letters to your birth family…'

This was something Kang never did, but Ibrahim did not mention that. He only shook his head.

'It was far worse for women before Mohammed brought Islam to the world.'

'That says very little. How bad it must have been before, and that was over a thousand years ago, correct? What barbarians they must have been. By then Chinese women had enjoyed two thousand years of secure privileges.'

Ibrahim was frowning at this, looking down. He did not reply.

All over Lanzhou they saw signs of change. The iron mines of Xinjiang fuelled the foundries being built upstream and down from the town, and the new influx of potential foundry workers made possible many more expansions, in ironworks and construction more generally. One of the main products of these foundries was cannon, and so the town garrison was beefed up, the Green Standard Chinese guards supplemented by Manchu horsemen. The foundries were under permanent order to sell all their guns to the Qianlong, so that the weaponry flowed only east towards the interior. As most of the workers were Muslim – and dirty work it was – quite a few guns made their way west in defiance of the imperial edict. This caused more military surveillance, larger garrisons of Chinese, more Manchu banners, and increased friction between local workers and the Qing garrison. It was not a situation that could last.

The longer term residents could only watch things degenerate. There was nothing any one individual could do. Ibrahim continued to work for a good relationship between the hui and the Emperor, but this made him enemies among the new arrivals, intent on revival and jihad.

In the midst of all this trouble, Kang told Pao one day that she found herself to be pregnant. Pao was shocked, and Kang herself appeared to be stunned.

'An abortion might be arranged,' Pao whispered, looking the other way.

Kang politely declined. 'I will have to be an old mother. You must help me.'

'Oh we will, I will.'

Ibrahim too was surprised by the news, but he adjusted quickly. 'It will be good to see a child come of our union. Like our books, but alive.'

'It might be a daughter.'

'If Allah wills it, who am I to object?'

Kang studied his face closely, then nodded and went away.

Now she seldom went out into the streets, and then only by day, and in a chair. After dark it would be too dangerous in any case. No respectable people remained out after dark now, only gangs of young men, often drunk, jahriya or Khafiya or neither, though usually it was the jahriyas spoiling for a fight. The babblers versus the deafmutes, as Kang said contemptuously.

Indeed, it was intra Muslim battling that caused the first great disaster of the troubles, or so Ibrahim judged. Hearing of the fighting between jahriya and Khafiya, a banner arrived with a high Qing official,

A banner: a horse detachment of up to a thousand men.

Xirizhu, who joined Yang Shiji, the town's prefect. Ibrahim came back from a meeting with these men deeply troubled.

'They, don't understand,' he said. 'They talk about insurrection, but no one out here is thinking of the great enterprise, how could they be?

We are so far from the interior that people out here barely know what China is. It is only local quarrelling, but they come out here thinking they are bound for real war.'

The great enterprise: dynastic replacement.

Despite Ibrahim's reassurances, the new officials had Ma Mingxin arrested. Ibrahim shook his head gloomily. Then the new banners marched out into the countryside to the west. They met with the Salar jahriya chief, Su Forty three, at Baizhuangzi. The Salars had concealed their weapons, and they claimed to be adherents of the Old Teaching. Hearing this, Xinzhu announced to them he intended to eliminate the New Teaching, and Su's men promptly attacked the company and stabbed both Xinzhu and Yang Shiji to death.

When the news of this violence got back to Lanzhou with the Manchu horsemen who had managed to escape the assault, Ibrahim groaned with frustration and anger. 'Now it really is insurrection,' he said. 'Under Qing law, it will go very bad for all concerned. How could they be so stupid?'

A large force arrived soon thereafter, and was attacked by Su Forty three's band; and after that, more imperial troops arrived. In response Su Forty three and an army of two thousand men attacked Hezhou, then crossed the river on pifaci and camped right outside Lanzhou itself. All of a sudden they were indeed in a war.

Pilaci: hide rafts that for centuries had allowed people to cross the Yellow, Wei and Tao Rivers.