TRCT_23

Chapter 23: Painted Embroidery — The Assistant's First Day at Work

Waking up in the morning, outside the window the light rain was still falling in a steady drizzle, but by the time Ji Qingzhou finished bathing, finished breakfast, and went out the door, the clouds had cleared and the rain had stopped.

The hangover delayed things after all. Usually he could arrive at the shop around nine o'clock, but today, despite hurrying as fast as he could, he was still nearly forty minutes late.

Of all days, he had just hired a new employee yesterday, and had arranged for the person to come to work at nine.

Leaping down from the tram, Ji Qingzhou looked up toward the shop door, and sure enough saw a young person crouching on the wooden threshold of his shop door.

Head lowered, hair half covering the face, looking as dejected as a puppy abandoned by its owner.

"Ah, I'm really sorry, I drank too much at a friend's banquet yesterday and woke up late, you must have been waiting a long time..." Ji Qingzhou stepped over the wet gravel path and ran over in big strides.

The moment Zhu Renqing heard his voice, his head snapped up at once.

Seeing Ji Qingzhou running over with a smile on his face to open the door, he immediately shed his dejected expression, stood up and brushed the dust off his backside, and stood to one side somewhat stiffly, saying: "I haven't waited long."

Ji Qingzhou took out his key and unlocked the door, and after pushing it open and going inside, just as he was about to take the shop banner pole to hang the flag-curtain outside, Zhu Renqing quite naturally took the pole from him and said: "Sir, let me do it."

"Alright, go ahead."

After Zhu Renqing finished hanging the banner and came back inside, Ji Qingzhou asked: "Have you eaten breakfast?"

"I've eaten," Zhu Renqing answered with seeming composure, though his eyes did not dare meet Ji Qingzhou's directly.

"Then eat a bit more," Ji Qingzhou saw at a glance that he was lying, but he didn't expose it, and directly handed him the two large meat buns he'd packed and brought from the Jie family.

"A young fellow like you, surely you can fit in two buns?"

Zhu Renqing looked up and met his clear, luminous eyes, hesitated for two seconds, then reached out and took the paper bag, saying gratefully: "Thank you, sir."

In fact Zhu Renqing had eaten breakfast, though it had been quite meager, just rice water made by adding a bit of water to the leftover pot used for boiling his mother's porridge and reheating it, really not much different from drinking hot water to stave off hunger.

He had gotten up early, and after arriving at the shop had waited nearly an hour, his stomach already growling with hunger. Now holding the warm, soft white flour bun, even though he wanted to appear as restrained as possible in front of his new employer, he still couldn't help taking a big bite.

The buns made by the Jie family's cook had thin, soft skin and a fine, generous meat filling. With one bite, the rich aroma of scallions burst out, his mouth filling with the savory taste of meat juices.

Zhu Renqing ate it so eagerly that tears nearly welled up in his eyes.

Two palm-sized meat buns, and he finished them completely clean in less than three minutes.

With his stomach about sixty percent full, Zhu Renqing was visibly more energized than before. After tossing the paper bag into the trash bin at the mouth of the alley, he hurried back and asked: "Sir, what work should I do?"

Ji Qingzhou was flipping through this week's work schedule, and upon hearing this asked: "Can you operate a sewing machine?"

Zhu Renqing glanced at the completely unfamiliar machine in the center of the room, and rubbed the back of his neck somewhat awkwardly: "I can't."

"It's fine, you'll learn gradually."

Ji Qingzhou closed the schedule, walked to the table, spread out a piece of plain weave cotton fabric that the shop already had, took out the qipao paper pattern he had drawn the day before, unfolded it, and laid it on the fabric according to the grain direction of the material.

After arranging the pattern pieces and placing weights on them, he beckoned to Zhu Renqing with his hand and said:

"Come here, you know how to use scissors, right? Your next task is to cut out the corresponding fabric pieces according to these pattern pieces I've arranged.

"Pay attention to cut precisely along the edges of the paper pattern, don't let it shift and don't cut through it. The lines, especially the curved ones, should be cut as smoothly as possible.

"Also, wherever there are notches marked on the paper pattern, the same notches need to be cut into the fabric pieces too, that is, these small notches. They're used later during sewing to align positions correctly. Understood?"

This work was indeed quite simple and easy to understand, but halfway through listening, Zhu Renqing found himself staring blankly at the two scratch marks and bruises on the wrist beneath his rolled-up cuff, momentarily lost in thought.

"What are you zoning out for?" Ji Qingzhou, getting no response, patted his arm.

"Sorry," Zhu Renqing snapped back to himself and quickly apologized, but still couldn't help asking: "What happened to your hand?"

Because he had experience dealing with similar wounds himself, he felt that the symmetrical marks on Ji Qingzhou's wrists looked very much like marks left from being bound.

"Oh, this. I bumped it on the table while moving something heavy."

Ji Qingzhou unconsciously looked away and answered lightly, though in his mind he recalled the matter of getting drunk and harassing Jie Yu'an, the tips of his ears reddening slightly.

Hearing this, Zhu Renqing felt ashamed for having thought too much, and didn't dare ask further.

He listened carefully once more as Ji Qingzhou explained the work tasks, then picked up the scissors, made a few practice motions, and single-mindedly began cutting the fabric.

Ji Qingzhou watched beside him for a while, and seeing that although he cut slowly, his handling was fairly careful, he relaxed and let him cut at his own pace.

After all, it was just the muslin for making a sample, so even if it really got cut wrong, the loss wouldn't be much. As his assistant, these tasks would have to be picked up gradually anyway.

While Zhu Renqing was busy, Ji Qingzhou began making the pattern for that qipao for Shi Xuanman on the mannequin.

Since Luo Mingxuan had already made the bold promise that the fabric he needed would be dyed within three days, this order would most likely not be cancelled, so he could start working on it now.

Although for these three qipao orders currently on hand, Ji Qingzhou had conservatively quoted a one-month timeframe when reporting the schedule, this was partly because he hadn't really made qipao by hand much in the past, and his experience wasn't as extensive as with other types of fashion garments.

Secondly, the custom-tailoring process for a well-fitted and comfortable qipao was actually just as complex as that for a Western suit, especially the shaping and easing of the front and back panels through stretching and shrinking techniques. The slightest mistake there would significantly compromise the garment's fit and aesthetic appeal.

Add to that the fusing of interfacing, dart pressing, applying stay tape, and the starching, folding, and pressing of the bias binding fabric, and so on. Every step required his own hands, and demanded a great deal of patience, which meant the timeline was actually extremely tight.

Time flew by in the midst of busy work. After settling lunch with a bowl of noodles each, Ji Qingzhou temporarily set aside his work and, as originally planned, went to visit his newly hired employee's home.

Although his gut told him that Zhu Renqing wasn't fabricating a story to win his sympathy, just in case, he still felt it would put his mind more at ease to visit the new employee's home.

According to what Zhu Renqing himself had said, his home was in Zhabei, roughly in a small lane between Chang'an Road and North Suzhou Road.

Because it was located in the Chinese-administered district, the tram could only take him as far as the intersection of Maigen Road and Suzhou Road. After getting off, he still had to cross a bridge and walk about a kilometer to reach it.

Hearing this, Ji Qingzhou asked him how he had gotten to work that morning.

Sure enough, the answer was that he had walked the two kilometers over.

Of course, for a young man in the prime of his youth, a journey of several dozen minutes like this didn't really seem like much.

Since he knew in advance that there was a sick mother at home, Ji Qingzhou, passing by a fruit and vegetable shop along the way, spent five jiao to buy a few bananas and a small basket of loquats.

To save time, he took the tram with Zhu Renqing, and after getting off, headed straight for Zhabei.

Separated by the Suzhou Creek, the Chinese-administered district and the foreign concession were simply two different worlds.

Zhu Renqing had said his home was in a lane neighborhood, and at the time Ji Qingzhou had assumed it would be the kind of shikumen-style building. It was only once they got near the area that he realized he had been far too optimistic. It was more like a run-down shantytown area near a factory dock, divided up for workers to live in.

These low, squat shacks had stood for who knew how many years, their walls covered in cracks, moss growing in the corners, and even the roof tiles looked like they were about to collapse.

Once you turned into one of the side lanes off the main street, looking out, it was all this kind of filthy, dilapidated little houses, packed tightly together like fish scales on the black mud ground, the rows seeming almost endless.

From Ji Qingzhou's perspective as someone from a later era, life within the concession, even though it could be considered backward to him, was a kind of backwardness he could imagine and accept.

But it was only now, entering the Chinese-administered district, that he so directly and deeply realized this was the true living environment of most ordinary people in the Republic of China over a hundred years ago.

Breathing in the air thick with the smell of sewage ditches, watching the occasional resident passing by in worn-out cotton-padded jackets, for a moment the feelings in his heart were difficult to put into words.

After the rain, the narrow lane was full of standing water and mud. Zhu Renqing tried his best to pick out the raised, dry sections of the path to walk on, but because the path was truly narrow and cramped, and sometimes there was foul-smelling garbage and excrement along the sides, he couldn't avoid stepping into the muddy water at times.

"Sir," Zhu Renqing stopped in his tracks, looked at a stretch of mud up ahead that seemed impossible to cross no matter what, then turned back to look at Ji Qingzhou's clean, neat Western trousers and leather shoes, and said with shame:

"I'm really sorry, why don't you step on my feet to get across, or if you don't mind, I'll carry you across on my back. I'm wearing straw sandals anyway, I can just wash them afterward."

"How could you even think of something like that, stepping on your feet to cross. Let's just walk like this, no need to feel sorry, this was my own lack of consideration to begin with..." not choosing a day other than this rainy one to come.

Ji Qingzhou sighed softly, lifted his chin slightly, and said: "Let's go, let's not waste time."

Seeing his insistence, Zhu Renqing had no choice but to respond: "Then please be careful."

After winding through several more turns, the two finally arrived at their destination.

Zhu Renqing's home was a shack similar to the others around it. Moving aside the wooden plank that served as a door, the interior was laid bare at a glance.

In the dimly lit room, the only decent furniture was a table, a stool, a cabinet, and a wooden plank bed. Clothes were piled in the corner of the bed, and the old newspapers pasted on the walls were covered in water stains left by leaks.

On the right side against the wall was a narrow ladder made of a few wooden crossbars joined together, its upper end connecting to a roughly two-foot square hole in the ceiling, forming the stairway up to the second floor.

Seeing that there was only one bed downstairs, Ji Qingzhou guessed that Zhu Renqing must normally sleep on the second floor.

However, judging by the height of the building, the space on the second floor must be extremely cramped, and with Zhu Renqing's height, he probably couldn't even straighten his back if he crawled in there.

At most one could lay out bedding on the floor and crawl in to sleep at night. Moving around inside would be very difficult.

"Mom, I've brought sir to see you."

Zhu Renqing scraped the mud off the bottom of his shoes on the stone by the threshold, then walked into the house.

Seeing this, Ji Qingzhou followed suit, scraping the mud and water off his shoes on that same stone.

After entering, he placed the fruit on the table, turned to look at the gaunt woman on the bed, and nodded in greeting: "Hello, I'm Zhu Renqing's current employer. He told me you're ill, so I came by to see how you're doing."

"A' Qing told me about you," The woman had been lying on her side, her whole body buried under the quilt, her sallow face full of the weariness of illness, her age impossible to guess.

With Zhu Renqing's help, she struggled to sit up, leaned against the pillow, and gazed at Ji Qingzhou with a smile, saying in a gentle voice: "You've even brought all this fruit, there's no need to be so polite. You're willing to let A' Qing work at your shop, paying him wages and providing lunch too. I really must thank you properly."

"Not at all, he's young and strong, and willing to work hard. He'll be a great help to me."

The woman shook her head, her expression still earnest, repeating words of thanks again and again.

Being looked at with such sincere eyes, Ji Qingzhou felt somewhat ashamed, after all he had come with the intention of checking things out.

After nodding along for a while, he changed the subject and asked: "Have you had lunch yet?"

"I've eaten. Whenever A' Qing goes out to work, he asks the young girl next door to bring me some food at noon. I've already eaten."

"Good that you've eaten. Then have some fruit," Ji Qingzhou handed the basket of loquats to Zhu Renqing, telling him to go wash them, then broke off a banana, peeled it, and handed it to the woman.

The woman seemed a bit embarrassed, shook her head and said: "You should eat it yourself."

"I just ate. This was bought for you."

The woman hesitated for a moment, then reluctantly took the banana from his hand and began eating it in small bites.

Ji Qingzhou glanced at her sallow-colored fingers and asked: "What illness do you have?"

"I'm not quite sure. At first they said it was some kind of abdominal mass with bloating, then later they said it was jaundice, and after that..." The woman shook her head.

"Actually, I know my own body well enough. It's most likely incurable, taking medicine is just dragging things out. But A' Qing is still young, his father died long ago, and he had an older brother too, who also died when he was six or seven. I'm the only birth mother he has left in this world. I can't bear to see him sad, so he works himself to the bone earning money for my treatment and medicine, and no matter how bitter it tastes, I take it every day..."

Ji Qingzhou felt somewhat inclined to urge her to go see a doctor at a hospital, since even with his shallow medical knowledge, he knew that jaundice, if treated promptly, wouldn't lead to death.

But then he thought again, this was the Republic era, medical technology wasn't very advanced yet, seeing a Western doctor cost a great deal, and ordinary people had quite a lot of misunderstandings about Western medicine. If he raised this suggestion, it would probably only add to the burden on this mother and son.

Moreover, judging from what she described, it seemed like more than just simple jaundice. If traditional Chinese medicine could let her go on living in a hazy, muddled way, that wasn't necessarily a bad option either.

Ji Qingzhou hesitated for a moment, then thought it over and decided it would be better to mention it to Zhu Renqing afterward. As for how to choose, that would be up to them.

Not knowing what was on his mind, the woman ate her banana and asked: "Seeing you dressed so lightly, summer must be coming soon outside?"

Ji Qingzhou shook his head slightly, the corners of his mouth lifting as he answered: "Still over a month to go before the summer solstice."

"Then the plum rain season must be coming soon," She sighed to herself: "Time really flies. After I fell ill at the start of the year, I haven't been able to get out of bed. Every time A' Qing comes home he tells me the grass by the roadside has turned green, and the locust flowers have bloomed too. I know he's just hoping I'll get better, so I can go out and see the spring outside..."

Before she finished speaking, the woman looked up toward the doorway.

Ji Qingzhou turned around, just in time to see Zhu Renqing walking into the house carrying the basket of washed loquats.

He stood up and made way for him, letting Zhu Renqing sit down to peel loquats for his mother.

The small golden loquats had clearly been freshly picked not long ago. As soon as the skin was peeled, they released their distinctive sweet and sour fragrance.

And amid the spreading fruit fragrance, Ji Qingzhou faintly caught the scent of a delicate flower aroma as well.

He glanced around the room and finally found the source of that floral fragrance.

On the wall facing away from the lane, there was a small window, and on its narrow sill sat a chipped bowl filled with clear water, with two pure white gardenia blossoms floating in it.

.

After sitting in the small house for half an hour, chatting for a while to keep Zhu Renqing's mother company, the two of them got up to head back to Love Lane.

On the way back, Ji Qingzhou passed by a shikumen-style building and saw a few women sitting by the roadside near the entrance, chatting idly while doing embroidery with hand hoops.

"What are they doing?" Encountering something in his familiar field, Ji Qingzhou couldn't help stopping in his tracks, turning his head to ask Zhu Renqing.

Zhu Renqing took just one glance and answered: "That should be work assigned by the Gu embroidery workshop nearby, embroidering children's shoes, sleeve edges, and the like. My mother used to do this kind of work often too."

So it was Gu embroidery...

Ji Qingzhou nodded, suddenly lost in thought.

Indeed, Gu embroidery had originated and spread in the Shanghai area, its technique characterized by being 'as fine as hair, with needles like brushes, and colors like a painting,' which was why it was praised as 'painted embroidery'.

If he remembered correctly, Gu embroidery had once declined in the late Qing dynasty, nearly lost entirely.

So with hardly any hesitation, upon hearing it was Gu embroidery, Ji Qingzhou stepped over toward them.

These women seemed to know Zhu Renqing, and seeing an unfamiliar face approach, they didn't shy away or avoid him, openly letting him look.

Ji Qingzhou leaned in for a closer look, and was instantly struck by the lively, vivid flower-and-bird patterns on the base fabric, asking: "How much can you earn embroidering a piece like this?"

"Can't earn much at all, embroidering a pair of sleeves only gets you three to five jiao," One of the slightly older women among them said with a sigh, her needle moving deftly all the while.

Only three jiao to five jiao? A pair of sleeves like this would take at least three days to embroider, the cost of bottom-tier labor was terrifyingly cheap!

Ji Qingzhou felt both astonished and stirred with feeling.

He recalled the lettering he had embroidered onto He Lu's suit, which had taken him twenty minutes and could only be described as neat and legible, with no aesthetic quality to speak of at all. Compared to the exquisite embroidery work in front of him now, it was like heaven and earth.

Thinking that his own shop was gradually getting on track, and that it would be ideal to have a batch of main labels custom made, Ji Qingzhou couldn't help feeling tempted, and asked: "Do you take on piecework?"

"We do, if the price is right we'll take it."

It was still that same woman speaking, apparently taking him for some kind of shop owner upon hearing his question, and she replied amiably: "Whatever work you have, you can give it directly to us. As long as you provide the materials, we can do it all."

"Good, then I'll come find you when I have work," Ji Qingzhou readily agreed.

He stood there a while longer admiring their extremely refined skill, secretly feeling stirred with excitement.

Excellent, with craftsmanship this exquisite and delicate, then surely it wouldn't be a problem for him to design his trademark with more complexity?

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