After the Jinliang left, Li Ming sat alone in the teahouse, studying the calling card. A wave of unease washed over him—had he been too direct with the "rotten house" comment? In this delicate time, such frankness could be dangerous.
He approached the shopkeeper to settle his bill. "Thank you for the introduction," he said, placing coins on the counter. "Master Tatara seems... knowledgeable."
The shopkeeper's eyes gleamed with the satisfaction of a successful matchmaker. "Ah, young master has good judgment. Master Tatara is quality people—Manchu nobility, Plain White Banner, though times have been hard since his father's death five years ago."
"His father?"
"Tatara Deshun, rest his soul. Served in the Beijing garrison. He tried to rebuild the family connections through the Beiyang system after his own father died in the foreign wars of 1860." The shopkeeper leaned closer conspiratorially. "The young master inherited three properties and has been working to restore his family's standing ever since. Very determined, that one."
Li Ming felt relief flood through him. A pragmatic bannerman seeking connections, not a traditionalist spy. "He seems... adaptable."
"Indeed. He holds salons for educated young men—Chinese and Manchu both. Discusses Western ideas, military reform, that sort of thing. Quite enlightened for nobility, if you ask me." The shopkeeper lowered his voice further. "He's been networking with foreign traders, learning their business methods. Some of the old-style Manchus disapprove, but the young master says adaptation is survival."
"And his connections?"
"Lost most of his Beiyang contacts in the recent war—dead or transferred to distant posts. That's why he's been cultivating new relationships, especially with those who understand foreign ways." The shopkeeper straightened up. "You seem like his type of contact, young master. Educated, forward-thinking."
Li Ming thanked the shopkeeper and left, his mind less troubled about Jinliang but increasingly distracted by larger questions. He wandered through the twisting alleys without conscious direction, his feet carrying him toward the sound of ships' horns and the cry of gulls.
He found himself at the waterfront, where the reality of China's position struck him like a physical blow.
Foreign vessels dominated the harbor—British steamships with their proud Union Jacks, German merchant vessels flying the black, white, and red tricolor, and a few American clippers riding high in the water. Chinese junks and sampans scuttled between them like mice among elephants. British customs officers in crisp uniforms directed the flow of goods with casual authority, their voices carrying the assumption of command that came with victory.
Chinese porters bent under impossible loads—bales of cotton, crates of machinery, sacks of grain. Their backs curved in submission that spoke of generations of defeat. They moved with the mechanical precision of broken men, faces blank with the exhaustion of the perpetually conquered.
In the distance, the gray bulk of Royal Navy gunboats patrolled the river mouth, their cannons raised like proud peacocks displaying their plumage. HMS Centurion sat at anchor, its crew lounging on deck with the casual confidence of men who knew their guns commanded respect. The message was unmistakable: this was no longer truly Chinese water.
Li Ming watched a customs inspection unfold—a British officer rifling through a Chinese merchant's papers while the man stood with downcast eyes, answering questions with the servile politeness of the defeated. The officer's tone was not cruel, merely indifferent, as if the Chinese man were part of the dock machinery.
A familiar ache settled in Li Ming's chest. Four years at the National Defense University, five years as an active officer—he understood military hierarchy, logistics, the meaning of displayed power. What he saw here was occupation dressed as commerce, humiliation wrapped in the language of international law.
On National Day 1998, he had stood with his grandfather watching the parade on television—gleaming tanks, precise formations, fighter jets screaming overhead in perfect unison. His grandfather had wept with pride, his weathered hands trembling as he pointed at the screen. "Look, Ming'er," the old man had whispered. "Look how strong we've become. Your father's sacrifice wasn't for nothing."
The same blood that had flowed in his grandfather's veins flowed in his. The same patriotic fire that had driven his grandfather to join the Red Army, that had motivated his father to study Soviet heavy industry, that had pushed Li Ming himself into uniform despite his doubts about the Party. Three generations of men who had worn their country's uniform with pride, who had believed in sacrifice for the greater good.
Born in 1962, he had been only ten when his father disappeared into That decade of chaos in 1972—too young to understand, but old enough to remember the tears, the whispered conversations, the way adults looked at him with pity. At eighteen, he had entered the National Defense Academy, driven by a mixture of patriotism and defiance—he would serve the country that had destroyed his father, prove the family's loyalty through his own blood if necessary.
The academy had sharpened his mind, taught him strategy, tactics, the science of warfare. But it was the 1984 deployment to Laoshan that had forged his character. Fresh from graduation at twenty-two, he had been selected for special operations behind Vietnamese lines—missions that didn't officially exist, conducted by soldiers whose names would never appear in any honor roll. The jungle had been a green hell of constant danger, where one mistake meant death and hesitation meant failure.
He had killed his first man there—a Vietnamese sentry, knife sliding between ribs while the man's eyes widened in surprise and terror. The academy had prepared him for the mechanics of death but not its weight, the way it settled on a man's shoulders and never fully lifted. Four more deaths had followed during that deployment, each one necessary, each one adding to the burden he carried.
The memory still burned. In one of the missions his unit had been ordered to take a hill held by Vietnamese regulars. The attack plan was suicide—frontal assault against prepared positions, no artillery support, inadequate intelligence. Li Ming had argued for a flanking movement, only to be overruled by political officers who cared more about revolutionary fervor than tactical sense. When he modified the attack to save his men's lives, twelve good soldiers had died anyway. His "insubordination" had marked him as politically unreliable.
His stubborn refusal to let go of his father's case, even after official "rehabilitation," had been the final straw. The Party wanted pragmatic officers, not men haunted by generational trauma.
By 1989, after five years of active service, he had earned promotion to major and the position of deputy regiment commander, along with a reputation for tactical brilliance. But when his father was posthumously "rehabilitated" and the family name cleared, Li Ming had found himself at a crossroads. He could continue climbing the military hierarchy, accept the Party's belated acknowledgment of his father's innocence, and play the role of the loyal officer. Or he could walk away from the institution that had shaped him, seek a different kind of life.
The choice had been easier than expected. The PTSD since Laoshan had haunted him, made him yearn for a life where decisions didn't end in death. He had resigned his commission and drifted south to Guangdong, where the Reform and Opening created opportunities for men with organizational skills and flexible morals.
But what good? What sacrifice? His father had died in a prison for the crime of learning too much from foreigners. His grandfather's revolutionary ideals had devoured their own children. Yet Li Ming had also heard the other stories—the ones his grandfather told late at night, when the old man's defenses were down and memory overcame ideology.
Stories of landlords who bled peasants dry, of corrupt officials who sold grain while villages starved, of foreign missionaries who bought converts with silver and rice. His grandfather had fought not just for abstract ideology but against concrete oppression—the same oppression Li Ming now saw replicated in Tianjin's bent-backed dock workers and servile merchants.
The academy had taught him to think strategically, to analyze systems of power with cold objectivity. From that analytical perspective, he understood what his grandfather had understood: China's problems were structural, not superficial. The landlord-gentry class, the comprador merchants, the corrupt officials—they were like cancer cells in the national body, requiring surgical removal rather than palliative treatment.
But analysis was different from action. Li Ming had killed in Vietnam's jungles when national duty demanded it, lost his comrades in war due to his wrong decisions—but the thought of the systematic violence that revolution required made his stomach clench. Risking the lives of people he might come to know on this journey troubled him. Was he ready to put the lives of close comrades at risk again? The peaceful years since his military service had softened him, made him cherish the quiet life where his decisions affected ledgers rather than lives.
He stared at the foreign ships and felt the weight of impossible choices pressing down on him. What could he do as Li Ming, the time traveler? He knew the history, could navigate the complexities, understood the forces that would reshape China over the next century. But knowledge was not power. At best, he might become a warlord based on his experience in military and his knowledge of modern warfare —and then what? Fight against the tide of history itself?
Yet what alternative existed? Constitutional monarchy? The Qing were finished, their legitimacy bled out in a dozen defeats. The Empress Dowager Cixi was intelligent but old, trapped by conservative court factions and foreign pressure. Even successful reform would leave the same landlords and gentry exploiting the same peasants under a different flag, as had happened in every dynasty for thousands of years. The Japanese model required a cultural unity China lacked.
Republican government? He had seen what happened when too many cooks spoiled the broth—the warlord period, fragmentation, foreign intervention. Sun Yat-sen's revolutionary ideas were noble but impractical for China's vast, diverse population. A sinking ship needed a captain, not a committee of arguing passengers. Without a unified party structure and revolutionary discipline, republicanism would fragment into competing factions.
In his heart, Li Ming knew the answer. China needed what his grandfather's generation had eventually provided—a revolutionary party with iron discipline, strategic vision, and the will to use whatever force was necessary to break the old system completely. The landlords and compradors would never voluntarily surrender their privileges; they would cling to any new government like parasites until it, too, became corrupt and ineffective.
But admitting this truth meant accepting its implications. Revolution meant blood—not just the enemy's blood, but the blood of innocents caught in the crossfire. It meant becoming the kind of man who could order executions, who could sacrifice thousands for the salvation of millions. Li Ming had been that kind of man in Vietnam's jungles, but that had been war against external enemies. Revolution meant turning that same ruthless calculus against his own people.
The peaceful years had made him soft. Part of him yearned to find some gentler path, some way to reform China without becoming a butcher. But the academy had taught him to think systemically, and systems that were corrupt required surgical removal of the cancer, not gentle medicine.
A British officer strode past, his leather boots clicking on the stone wharf. Chinese workers stepped aside automatically, eyes downcast, bodies bent in unconscious submission. The officer didn't even see them—they were part of the landscape, like the stones or the water.
Li Ming's hands clenched into fists. This was what defeat looked like. This was the price of the "rotten house" he had spoken of so glibly to Jinliang. But was communist revolution the only answer? Or was he trapped by his own historical knowledge, unable to see alternatives because he knew what had already happened?
Perhaps that conversation with Jinliang had taught him something valuable. A Manchu bannerman, whose people had ruled China for centuries, was now learning English and courting foreign traders. Not from cowardice or corruption, but from a pragmatic understanding that the world had changed. If Jinliang could adapt without abandoning his essential dignity, what did that say about Li Ming's own assumptions?
He had spent half a day judging this era through the lens of history books written by the victors—books that portrayed the late Qing reformers as failures, the revolutionaries as tragic heroes, the whole period as an inevitable catastrophe leading to communist salvation. But he had not yet met the actual people who lived through these times. Jinliang was the first, and the man had surprised him with his intelligence and adaptability.
Perhaps the error lay not in the people of this era, but in his own preconceptions. The historical figures he had studied—Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao, Sun Yat-sen, even the Empress Dowager—had all been swimming against powerful currents. History remembered them as winners or losers, but they had been men and women making choices with incomplete information, facing impossible odds.
What if the communist path wasn't inevitable? What if other alternatives existed that history had forgotten because they weren't tried, or failed for reasons that could be avoided? Li Ming tried to convince himself of this idea, though it seemed impossible.
Li Ming possessed something no historical actor had ever had—perfect knowledge of what lay ahead. Perhaps that knowledge could be used not to repeat history, but to write it differently.
The sun was beginning to set, painting the harbor in shades of gold and red. The foreign ships looked less threatening in the warm light, more like vessels carrying trade than instruments of domination. Chinese sampans moved between them with growing confidence as the working day ended, their owners calling out in dialects that had been spoken on these waters for thousands of years.
Li Ming took a deep breath of the salt air, tasting coal smoke and foreign tobacco, but also the eternal scents of the river and sea. Tomorrow he would visit Jinliang's property, and then seek work with the China Merchants Steam Navigation Company. Small steps, careful moves.
He would be curious rather than judgmental. He would listen more than he spoke. He would learn about this era not from books but from the people who were living it. And perhaps, somewhere in that process, he would find a path forward that honored both the lessons of history and the possibilities of the present.
The river carried its burden of ships toward the sea, indifferent to the hopes and fears of the men who sailed upon it. Li Ming turned away from the water and began the walk back to his lodgings, where Meiling would be packing their few possessions for tomorrow's move.
In his pocket, Jinliang's calling card felt like a key to doors not yet opened, paths not yet chosen. The future remained unwritten, despite everything Li Ming thought he knew about it.