Old Bian's Staples

The old street of Qingshui Town ran alongside a slow river. In the years before the concrete bridge across the river was finished, the townsfolk lived at an easy pace and still had use for all manner of old trades. Chief among those who were both respected and feared was Old Bian, the tinker who pushed his cart from lane to lane mending cracked porcelain.

Old Bian's given name was Bian Fugui. The townsfolk found the characters for "wealth and honor" too vulgar, and noticing the old scar that ran sideways across his left cheek, as if someone had struck him flat, they took to calling him Old Bian, Flat Bian. He did not mind. "Flat is flat," he said. "A flat stone still bears polishing."

His cart had once been a medicine cabinet. Its top shelves held rows of copper and iron staples, fine as hairs, thick as chopstick ends; beneath were his drill, his small hammer, his anvil, and a little bellows that puffed with a ready whoosh. From the cart handle hung a copper bell that rang wherever he went, ding-ling, ding-ling, mending basins, mending bowls, mending great vats.

No one in town failed to admire Old Bian's skill. Once, Granny Liu at the lane's end, who kept the grocery, dropped her dowry blue-and-white bowl; it shattered into seven or eight pieces and she came weeping. Old Bian did not hurry. He fitted the shards together, drilled fine holes along the crack, set in the copper staples, and smoothed on his putty. At the last he touched a small crabapple blossom into the bowl's heart, the staples laid out like the veins of petals. Granny Liu carried it home, turning it this way and that, and declared the bowl prettier than new. From then on, whoever broke a cherished piece of porcelain thought of him first.

Yet Old Bian kept three kinds of work he would not take. He would not mend what was broken in anger, a bowl smashed when a couple fell to quarreling; the seam, he said, was sewn through with that anger, and mended it would still leak, leaking the peace of a household. He would not mend fake antiques; when a dealer brought him a piece, he would tap it three times and, hearing it was fresh from a new kiln, would leave his cart and walk away without a word. And he would not mend what no one meant to keep; if the owner said, "Fix it and I'll shove it to the back of the cupboard, out of sight, out of mind," he would wave a hand: "If you won't keep it, why should I?" These three refusals cost him plenty of goodwill, but Old Bian never wavered.

The first to run against his temper was Qian Mazi, a dealer in antiques from west of the river. The man brought a blue-and-white jar with a cracked neck and insisted Old Bian run a hidden line of copper staples so the mend would be seamless and invisible, to fool some unknowing buyer. Qian Mazi pressed a red envelope on him; Old Bian would not take it. He pressed the jar to his ear and tapped it three times, heard it was a Republican-era imitation from a new kiln, and pushed it back at once. "This jar," he said, "was worth thirty cents new, and thirty cents broken. If you want me to help you cheat a man, you have come to the wrong cart." Qian Mazi's face burned red; he lugged the jar off. After that, no dealer dared bring him rubbish.

That autumn, Hei San, the butcher at the east end of town, came to his cart. Hei San was a hard man whom everyone gave a wide berth; if you owed him for meat he would flip your stall. In his mother's lifetime he had, drunk, smashed a little bowl she treasured. She had said nothing then, but took sick afterward and never spoke of the bowl again. After she died, Hei San was suddenly sorry. He set the half-bowl, all that remained, upon the altar in his front hall, and went looking for someone to mend it, to show a late-born filial heart.

He brought the half-bowl to Old Bian and slapped a thick wad of notes onto the cart board. "Mend it," he said. "Make it look as if it never broke."

Old Bian did not look at the money. He took the half-bowl first. On its base was a mark, a small seal reading "Bian." His fingers traced the rim twice, and then he raised his eyes. "This bowl," he said, "was mended by my master, years ago."

Hei San blinked. "Your master?"

"My master's surname was Bian; we share the clan. This seal at the base, there is no mistaking it." Old Bian turned the bowl over and pointed to the tiny hidden mark. "Your mother brought it to be mended once, with a fine crack, and my master closed it. Now you have broken it again, and come to mend it once more. While your mother lived, you broke it. Now she is gone, you enshrine it. Tell me, half-bowl, who is it you mean to show?"

Hei San's face swelled to the color of a pig's liver. The money still lay on the cart, but his mouth opened and closed and not one hard word came out.

Old Bian set the half-bowl back into his hands. "I won't take your money. If you truly miss your mother, wipe this half-bowl clean and keep it on the altar. That is worth more than any mend. Mend it, and it looks as if nothing happened, and then your mother's love of it was for nothing."

Hei San stood a long while. At last he gathered the money, took up the half-bowl, and went. Later, people saw that on his altar, beside the half-bowl, there now sat a small dish of osmanthus candy his mother had loved in life. No one ever saw him ask anyone to mend a bowl again.

Old Bian kept to his lanes. But as the years went on, fewer came to him. Plastic basins are sturdy, stainless pots do not break, and young people think a mended bowl shabby and simply throw it away. Once a young junk collector teased him: "Uncle Bian, your trade is about to be intangible cultural heritage." Old Bian gave him a look. "Heritage or no heritage, there will always be cracks, and someone to make them. So long as there are cracks, there is Old Bian."

As he spoke he took up his water flask from the cart, a coarse porcelain flask with a chipped mouth, and on its base his own "Bian" seal. He used it every day; the stapled place shone with a bright copper, like an old scar smoothed warm by handling.

One day after the early winter set in, Old Bian did not set up his cart. Some said they saw him push his empty cart toward the old kiln grounds across the river, gone to look for good copper. Others said he had gone to tend his master's grave. No one could say for certain.

And from that time on, the old street of Qingshui Town no longer heard that cry of ding-ling, mending basins, mending bowls. Now and then a piece of porcelain hits the ground and shatters; the townsfolk sigh, sweep it up, and throw it into the rubbish cart, for there are, after all, cracks that someone would rather not keep.