Yan the Licentiate Holds Up Two Fingers as He Dies

Yan Jiansheng (Yán Jiānshēng) has land, houses, and something over a hundred thousand taels of silver. He will not buy a catty of pork. When his small son wants meat, he goes to the cooked-food shop and buys four coppers' worth to quiet him. The Jiansheng in his name is not a name at all: it is a student rank that could be bought with money, and buying one was the cheapest way for a rich family with no scholars in it to be treated as gentry.

A household like his has a wife and, if he can afford one, a concubine. Only the wife is the wife. Her word carries, she is mourned properly, and a concubine who has borne the only son in the house still stands a step below her — unless the wife dies and the family agrees to raise the concubine up in her place. Wang shi (Wáng shì) is the wife, and she is ill. Zhao shi (Zhào shì) is the concubine, and the three-year-old boy is hers.

There are also his wife's two brothers, who teach other people's children for a living, speak beautifully about principle, and never leave the house without silver in their sleeves. Everything in the Yan house passes through Yan's hands sooner or later, and he counts it all. What nobody in the room can work out is why, three days from death and unable to say a word, he keeps holding up two fingers.