Taoyuan Hotel.
A cluster of young waiters gathered in the lobby, heads tilted back, staring up at the light bulbs overhead.
The lobby was vast, and to ensure sufficient brightness, twenty bulbs had been installed all at once.
"Can this thing really give off light?"
"What does giving off light even mean? What would it look like?"
"Idiot, haven't you ever seen the sun?"
"I wish it would get dark right now."
The peculiar sight of these young waiters drew the occasional guest passing through to stop in their tracks and, out of curiosity, crane their necks upward as well.
What are all these people looking at? What's that round thing? What's so interesting about it?
Can't ask — that would make me look foolish. Better keep watching.
The result was that the crowd grew and grew, everyone staring at the ceiling, none quite sure what they were looking at, but reasoning that since everyone else was looking, they might as well look too.
Though it did make the neck rather sore.
Even Empress Jiang, composed as she was, did not go so far as to stand there gaping — yet she found herself repeatedly glancing upward from the sofa where she sat.
She had never seen electric light either. She wanted to see it too.
Having lived here for some time now, Empress Jiang had come to appreciate, with growing urgency, the importance of money.
Li Xuanji's wages of two yuan a day were simply not enough to cover the expenses of two people — and recently the two of them had moved to a new place besides.
They had taken a proper residential flat, three bedrooms and a sitting room, and the daily rent alone came to one yuan, swallowing half of Old Li's earnings in one go.
As the saying goes, those who give no thought to the future will find trouble close at hand. The household had savings of several tens of thousands, true enough, but one could not simply eat through a mountain of gold without a care.
Watching the wallet grow a little thinner each day had a way of making the heart quietly uneasy.
And so Li Xuanji brought her to Jinyuan, to ask whether suitable work might be found for Empress Jiang.
Empress Jiang was not, by nature, one to ask favors of others — in all her life she never had. At first she went out on her own, walking the streets, looking at the employment notices posted by the government.
Cooks, waitresses, that sort of ordinary work was everywhere, but the wages were generally around one yuan a day, with long hours to match.
For a woman from a common farming family, ten copper coins a day would have been a tremendous windfall, worth fighting for with everything she had.
But for Empress Jiang, it meant hard labor for meager return.
Li Xuanji was no more inclined to ask favors than she was, but for his wife's sake — for the sake of this small household they had only just put back together — he went to Jinyuan all the same.
Jinyuan thought it over and concluded that the wages at the enterprises under Jinxiu's hand were comparatively good, and so she put in a word.
When it was her own sister asking, Jinxiu could hardly arrange anything too shabby, and so she placed Empress Jiang directly as a manager at Taoyuan Hotel.
A public-facing role would not be appropriate, so she was given charge of back-of-house operations — hotel housekeeping and logistics.
Managing a small army of young maids and lads, and the older women who handled the cleaning.
Empress Jiang had run an entire imperial harem without a single thing out of order. This work was, one might say, well within her professional competence.
An ordinary manager's position would have been Grade 3 wages — three yuan a day.
But Jinxiu, noticing that the imperial household seemed a little short of money, assigned her Grade 4 wages instead: a daily salary of 3.8 yuan, second only to the hotel's general manager.
However considerately one might wish to treat her, Grade 5 was out of the question — that would put her on par with the general manager.
If it came to that, Jinxiu would sooner hand her money outright and tell her not to bother working.
Beyond the wages, the hotel paid bonuses as well. Business was brisk, and everyone received a share; for some, the bonus even edged out their base pay.
And so this couple — the husband bringing home two yuan, the wife bringing home eight — was a picture of domestic harmony.
One could only hope they wouldn't come to blows about it in time.
Manager Wu came out of her office and, spotting Empress Jiang, walked over to her. "Manager Jiang, would you go ahead and turn on the lights? That falls under logistics, which means it's your responsibility. From now on, if anything goes wrong, you'll be the one to contact the maintenance staff."
Manager Wu had come up from a common farmwife to the general manager's post she now held, and she had gotten there through hard work, natural ability, and no small measure of social intelligence.
One look told her that this person had been personally assigned by Jinxiu herself, delivered in person by Jinyuan, with whom she appeared to be on rather familiar terms.
That alone was enough to know this was someone of considerable standing — not to be taken lightly simply because she was pleasant and even-tempered. A little deference never hurt anyone.
Empress Jiang shook her head. "General Manager, perhaps you should do the honors. I wouldn't want to steal the moment."
She understood the courtesy being shown her and knew to conduct herself accordingly. After all, she was eating her rice under this woman's roof now.
"Very well then." Manager Wu did not press the matter further. She walked to the front counter and pressed a row of switches all at once.
The lobby, grown dim as the sun sank below the horizon, was flooded in an instant with light — brighter, it seemed, than the brightest day with every door and window thrown open.
"Oh — my eyes—" Many gasped and shut their eyes.
Truly bright it was. The master really was something remarkable, to have actually fitted little suns up on the ceiling like that.
Bright it certainly was — though it cost a pretty penny. With that many bulbs burning, the cost ran to four yuan an hour. Running them through an entire night would wipe out an ordinary person's monthly wages.
Of course, the hotel could hardly keep them burning night after night; and most of the time, not all the bulbs would be switched on at once.
For now, all electricity consumption was sustained by population subsidies, making large-scale expansion impossible.
Jinyi had specifically allocated several generators and placed them in the squares along the busiest streets in the city center.
Great clusters of bulbs were assembled into massive sources of light.
Each night after dark they were switched on, illuminating a wide swath of the surrounding area for half the night at a stretch.
They could be seen from a great distance away, like the brightest stars shining in the night sky.
This was Dragon City's calling card.
Not only did it draw more life and bustle to those several streets after dark — it drew more people to the city as well.
The master had said he hoped Dragon City's population might one day surpass one million.
An inevitably long road ahead, to be sure, but one would do everything in one's power to shorten the journey.
Fellow countrymen, Dragon City has pulled down the sun and hung it in the streets. Don't you want to come and see?
—
Wen Jingran sat in the chair beside the bed, gazing out at the distant glow, and sighed with feeling: "That Master Zhao truly has powers beyond reckoning. To produce something so extraordinary."
"Never mind him. Tell me how things stand in the various regions."
This was a large courtyard in the wealthy villa district — a three-story townhouse with several hundred square meters of grounds, renting for a hundred yuan a day, upwards of three hundred taels of silver a year.
It now served as the nerve center of the imperial court. The permanent residents were Old Wen, Old Lin, and the Crown Prince, Li Chengqian.
Everyone else was staff or attendants.
The Emperor had set his heart on living as an ordinary man and had walked away from an enormous tangle of affairs without a backward glance — but they could not simply let everything drift.
And so the three of them stayed here, keeping a hand on the reins, occasionally forging an imperial edict or two as needed.
After all, since the Emperor no longer wished to be Emperor, surely he would be even less concerned about a small matter like forging edicts in his name?
The court had lost the better part of its territory, and its grip on what remained grew weaker by the day.
Yet a good number of senior officials remained — all three Chief Ministers were still present, and officials of the second and third rank numbered quite a few.
Wen and Lin occupied a rank that was neither particularly high nor particularly low: entitled to a hand in everything, yet holding decisive authority over nothing. In truth, the position was rather awkward.
But the Emperor's current state of mind could not be allowed to become known. If it did, the hearts of men — already scattered — might simply fall apart entirely.
Left with no other choice, the two of them had enlisted the Crown Prince, and together they kept up the pretense that the Emperor was still at the helm, governing the realm from behind the scenes.
To the outside world they said only that the Emperor's position was precarious at present and that his whereabouts could not be disclosed.
Then, every so often, they would issue an edict — to soothe, to reassure, to string everyone along.
Hold the line for now. That was all they could do.