Xin the Ninth's Bamboo Knife

At the foot of the wall at the end of Blue Stone Lane, an old man often sat cross-legged, a worn bamboo-splitting knife laid across his lap and a drift of snow-white shavings at his feet.

The old man's surname was Xin, the ninth in his family, and the lane called him Xin the Ninth, or simply Old Bamboo. For forty years he had woven things from bamboo — baskets and sieves, mats and trays, the dowry cases for weddings and the banner frames for funerals. With his rough hands he could split a single stalk along its grain into twenty-four gossamer strands, thin enough to let the light through, yet they would bend and never break.

Xin had forged the knife himself, and on its spine he had cut a single character: bone. "Bamboo has bone," he liked to say. "Split it along the bone and it will not crack. A man has bone too; weave him along his bone and he will not come apart."

When a child was born in the lane, he wove a bamboo cradle and sent it over, free of charge. The cradle, he said, was the first thing to receive a life into a home, and it should be made of seasoned bamboo that could outlast the years. He wove dowry cases for weddings and banner frames for the dead. In forty years, half the bamboo ware in Blue Stone Lane had passed through his knife.

But Xin kept three things he would never weave.

First, he would not weave a cage for a living thing. Bird cage or rabbit cage, anything that let a creature in and would not let it out, he would not make it. Once a child in the lane brought two copper coins to order a fine cage for a grasshopper. Xin felt the child's hand and said, "The grasshopper sings loud now; cage it a night and it will sing no more. Go, spend the coins on candy." And he gave the money back.

Second, he would not weave a basket to hide stolen goods. Anything meant to cover a lie or mask a theft, he refused.

Third, he would not weave an instrument of coercion. Anything used to dun a debt, to break a life, or to bend a man's neck, he turned away without a word.

The first two rules the neighbors honored. The third would later bring him real trouble.

At the east end of town lived Zhao Maochun — nicknamed King Yama for the usury he ran. He kept a band of thugs, and if you owed him, he could devise a hundred ways to make you pay. In Blue Stone Lane, the tofu seller Gen had borrowed three silver dollars when his fields flooded, and the interest had swelled the debt to nine. He simply could not pay.

One day Zhao himself strolled into the lane, two men behind him carrying a thick bamboo stalk. He stopped before Xin's spot, smiling without warmth. "Old Bamboo, do me a favor and weave a cage — stout enough to hold a man. Gen owes me, and I mean to invite him in for a couple of days, to teach his family a lesson."

Xin did not look up; his fingers still walked the strands. "Boss Zhao, my knife splits bamboo only. It does not split men."

"Three became nine, black on white. Will you weave it? Refuse, and you can forget the bamboo trade in this lane — I'll have the raw hand at the west end do it."

Xin drove his knife into the pile of bamboo, the character bone facing up. "Break my hands and there are still three hundred pairs in this lane that know my work. This cage, I will not weave."

Zhao's face went dark. He did hire the half-trained hand from the west end. The man worked fast and used green bamboo cut fresh from the riverbank; he wove a square cage taller than a man, which looked tidy enough. Gen was indeed shut inside and tied up at the lane's mouth as a spectacle.

That night it rained. The green bamboo swelled with the water and its joints loosened; the cage quietly came apart. In the dark Gen worked his ropes free and climbed the wall and ran. At dawn Zhao came to collect his prisoner and found only a litter of scattered poles. The onlookers roared: "King Yama's cage could not hold a tofu seller!"

Zhao turned crimson with shame and never again threw his weight around in Blue Stone Lane.

After it was over, Xin went on sitting cross-legged at the wall, splitting bamboo. Someone fretted for him: you have crossed King Yama, surely there will be a reckoning. He gathered the fresh strands and said quietly, "Green bamboo cannot bear a load — nor can a certain kind of man. He cages his, I weave mine."

And still, when anyone in Blue Stone Lane needed bamboo ware, they came to sit before Xin's spot. The things he wove, set out under the sun, cast shadows that seemed to breathe a clean, clear air.