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There was no response as we followed Wang Gan inside; the feeding troughs were still there, so too were holes in the walls created by the animals’ hooves, and dried cattle and horse dung. The oven where feed had been cooked and a kang just big enough for the six sons in the Fang family was there as well. I’d slept on it many winter nights when water froze before it hit the ground. Old Fang was too poor to own bedding for his children, so he stuffed dry grass into the opening beneath the kang to keep a fire burning; the bed got hot enough to fry an egg. His children slept like babies since they were used to the brick bed, but I tossed and turned all night long. Now a pair of quilts covered the kang, while the walls were pasted with New Year’s posters of unicorns delivering babies and strolling ancient scholars. A thick wooden plank laid across two feeding troughs was a bench on which mounds of clay and clay-working tools sat; our old acquaintance Qin He sat on a bench behind the plank. He was wearing a blue smock whose sleeves and front were daubed with many colours. His white hair was parted in the middle, as before; his face was drawn like a horse, with a pair of large, deep melancholy eyes. When we approached him, he looked up and his lips moved, apparently a mumbled greeting. He then went back to studying the wall, his chin resting on his hands, as if deep in thought.

We held our breath, not daring to speak loudly and walking on tiptoes to keep the noise down so as not to interrupt the master’s train of thought.

Wang Gan gave us a show of the master’s handiwork. Unfinished dolls were drying in the cattle troughs. Dried dolls waiting to be painted were laid out on long boards against the northern wall. The children, in all their varieties, were waving to us from the cattle troughs, already lifelike, even before colours were added.

Under his breath Wang Gan said that the master sat trancelike like that every day, and sometimes didn’t climb onto the kang to sleep at night. Yet, like a machine, he kneaded the clay at regular intervals, making sure it never stopped being soft and well formed. Sometimes he’d sit all day long without making a single child; but when he began, he worked remarkably fast. I sell the master’s products and am responsible for his day-to-day living, Wang Gan said. At last I’ve found my calling, just as he’s found his.

The master’s needs are minimal. He eats what I place in front of him. Of course, I make sure it’s the most nutritious food I can provide. He’s the pride of the whole county, not just Northeast Gaomi Township.