THE LUNEFABLE REVIEW
As a father, I just want to quietly watch you live a long life
What a Woodcarver Can Buy His Daughter
A porter wants a door he can lock and neighbors who will answer a cry. His route to both runs through a competitive woodcarving examination.
THE SHORT TAKE
The workshop gives cultivation a wonderfully specific purpose. The danger to a newborn lends urgency to an absorbing account of what skilled labor is worth.
A father with both hands full
Li Che is still holding a frozen carp when his uncle tells him to calm down. He has walked home through the snow carrying dinner for a woman in labor. He stops pacing on command, hears his daughter cry, goes inside, thanks the midwife and only then remembers to put the fish down. Li Hongtian leaves that awkward object in his hand for exactly long enough. Before we know what a Dao Fruit can do, we know what this father does when he has a job to finish and something far more important happens.
The soup eventually gets made. The vision that accompanies the birth can wait while Li Che shows his wife their daughter, and it can be interrupted again when the pot on the stove begins to boil. That order of attention earns much of the affection carried by the title. It also sets quite a high standard for the later scenes in which the narrator repeatedly explains how much Li Che loves his family. A cold fish and a boiling pot have already made a more persuasive case.
The value of a pair of hands
At Xu's workshop a porter earns a single copper coin for moving timber and five for carrying a finished carving. A scratch can cost him his pay. That distinction changes the way one reads Li Che wrapping a statue before tying it with rope. The habits that make him good at the least prestigious job in the building put him in daily contact with expensive, finished work. When his new gift allows him to feel the sequence of cuts that made a six-eyed Bodhisattva, his old job has already supplied the most precious thing a beginner needs. He has access to a master's example.
Chapter three gives this fantasy about skill a particularly satisfying small test. Li Che feels that the piece of willow he has chosen is wrong for another commission. He replaces it. The master who receives the second piece realizes that its shape will spare him time laying out the figures. Neither man needs to say anything about levels for us to understand how much that judgment is worth. A reader curious about artisanship gets a better demonstration here than in the tables of progress that follow.
Read chapter 3 · Choosing the second piece of willow ↗Who gets to call a place safe
The midwife initially refuses a poor family's money and offers sensible advice about the cold, the streets and the local worshippers of a child god. Later, troubling news about children she delivered sends Li Che to the government noticeboard. Seeing him check a family report for himself gives the danger weight. So does his refusal to bet his daughter's life on an apparent pattern in the children's ages. The reports concern children approaching their first birthday. The father still has to decide who will watch the house tomorrow morning.
The answer offered by Chen Dabao is chillingly practical. An ordinary porter can ask the veteran for advice. A recognized carver can move his family onto the premises and count on armed neighbors. The same man is capable of kindness in either conversation, yet the father's standing determines quite how useful that kindness can be. A better job suddenly means having people obliged to open their doors when your child cries. That is an unusually good reason to care about a fictional trade qualification.
An examination you can actually watch
The assignment in chapter seven is a four-armed Bodhisattva holding a child. Each extra arm introduces another chance to get the balance wrong. Earlier commissions have taught Li Che something about carving a face and something about carving children. The reader can see which parts of the task fit his experience and where he must improvise. His gift makes the pace of his learning extremely generous. It still leaves him a real artistic problem when he faces a block of dried wood and a clock.
Watch the judges watching the piece. They recognize another carver's handling in Li Che's work and can spot the lines that lack a veteran's finish. What arrests them is a quality of expression visible before polishing. For a few pages we occupy three useful positions at once. The judges think they have discovered a natural talent, the reader knows where some of the gestures came from, and the father is trying to calculate how much skill he can safely show. The apprentices who have paid and trained for years see the outcome from a fourth, less comfortable angle.
Read chapter 7 · The four-hour carving trial ↗The question after the gong
There are stretches of instruction here. The rank divisions, percentages and grades of physical training arrive in enough detail to satisfy a reader who enjoys anticipating upgrades. The last stretch of the examination also repeats variations on the spectators' amazement. Someone coming primarily for the family story may wish Zhang Ya had as much room to speak about her circumstances as the men have to discuss the quality of a cut. One of her sharpest observations is the small joke about all the hobbies her husband has taken up and quietly set aside.
Chapter eight offers a fair stopping point for deciding whether to continue. Li Che has listened to a long explanation of martial training, with its further costs and opportunities. When the lesson ends, he goes looking for the man who can explain how to move house. If that errand feels like the reward you were waiting for, you have found the kind of progression these opening chapters do especially well.
Based on chapters 1–8 of the English edition. The first eight catalogue entries each contain one complete story chapter. This is an opening impression, not a full-series verdict. No later plot developments are discussed.
MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND
The first chapter is waiting.
Read freely, or keep this story on your shelf for later.
Your shelf is saved in this browser. No account needed.