先说，日食人一升岁衣人一缣

Twenty-fourth of March, eight in the evening. On the table, draft nine. The first eight are in the bin.

Draft one ran two and a half pages, and I stopped halfway through reading it back because there is not a single number in it. Store appropriately. Distribute promptly. Mind the temperature. Which is the same substance as the two lines in last year's twelve-page handbook. Draft two added the numbers and ran to four pages, too long. Draft three cut it to one page and I found that everything I had cut was a number. Four through eight went back and forth between long and numerate. Draft nine: one side of A4. Ten clauses. None longer than two lines. Every clause has a number in it. It is not sent, because I have not settled who administers it.*

Fan Zhongyan came about nine — sixty or so, thin, an unhealthy colour, an old Song everyday robe, very clean, the cuff worn through in one place and mended. A roll of paper in his hand. He picked my sheet up and read it fast. Clause nine doesn't count. Sir. Fan Zhongyan.

On the thousand mu: at fifty-nine I bought a thousand mu outside Suzhou. Charitable Fields. To keep the clan — ninety mouths then. A thousand mu brings in eight hundred hu of rice a year. Enough? Abundantly. And, setting the roll down: I meant to do this at thirty. For thirty years I couldn't. Why not? No money. Perfectly flat. Later I commanded in the west and entered the central government; there was salary and there were grants, and then it was done.

I said I understood a thousand mu keeping ninety people; surely the hard part was buying the land. Buying land isn't hard. The hard part is after I'm dead. He unrolled the paper — dense writing. So I wrote this. What is it? Rules. Thirteen of them.

He read some out, slowly. One sheng of grain a day per person. One bolt of silk a year per person. Fifty strings for a daughter's first marriage, thirty for a remarriage. Thirty for a son's first wife, fifteen for a second. For a burial, the same as a remarriage; for a child's burial, ten. Every clause has a figure in it. Yes. The ones without figures, I didn't write. Such as? Such as "the clansmen should live in harmony." Anybody can write that. And, and I picked my A4 back up: put that in, and by the next year nobody reads the book at all. Why? Because it has no purchase on anything. And: let three clauses in a book have no purchase, and people take the whole book for exhortation. Once it is exhortation, the ten clauses that do have figures stop being kept either. Pressing his hand flat on the roll: one clause without a number drags the numerate ones down with it.

I asked the thing I have always wondered about that list: why thirty strings for a remarriage? Because a woman remarrying has the hardest time of it. But you give her less than the first time. Less, but she gets it. And: what matters is not thirty or fifty. And, three times into the book: what matters is that it is written down. And: written down, she doesn't have to ask anyone for it when she comes. She only has to say: I'm claiming under clause such-and-such.

Then he pointed at one I had not thought about. Those who have withdrawn and are at home awaiting a posting are included; those actually holding office and drawing salary receive nothing. Fair enough, I said. It is not only fairness. And: when I wrote that clause I was holding office myself. My son held office afterwards. And, and I stood up: the first person a book of rules stops has to be the person who wrote it. And: otherwise it is a stick for beating other people with.

Last: the thousand mu was still there when I died. When I died there was not enough in the house to bury me. Said like somebody else's business. Why not touch the land? The land isn't mine. It says in the rules that it belongs to the clan. And, rolling the paper up: one more. Choose an elder of the clan who is capable, and let him manage the accounts. The accounts are not yours? No. Why not? And going: because I am going to die. — M.

Memo to file. Chengdu, 24–25 March 2031. A written charter for the four remaining leaders — the thing Chen said on 20 March I had never printed.

1. Nine drafts, and the diagnostic is worth keeping. Draft one contained zero numbers and was indistinguishable from last year's handbook. Every time I shortened it I deleted numbers; every time I made it numerate it grew. The resolution was not compromise but structure: ten clauses, two lines each, one number in every clause.

2. The ten, as sent (before amendment). (1) despatch within 3 days of receipt; (2) don't order more than you can clear in 3 days; (3) no balcony, no sun, indoors and shaded, ≤25°C; (4) above 25°C, from day 8, three in ten repeat buyers report "faint" — my own May 2029 experiment, 620 bags; (5) hold one sealed dated bag per lot somewhere inconvenient to yourself, ¥50; (6) one screenshot every Monday, four lines, "none" if none; (7) refunds via the code, direct to me, invisible to you; (8) I will ask "what do you remember" on each refund — don't remember is an acceptable answer and costs nothing; (9) if a clause doesn't work where you are, tell me and I'll change it — until then, do it; (10) commission 20%, unchanged.

3. Fan Zhongyan's structural objection, which I had not seen in nine drafts. Not that a clause was wrong — that a clause without a number contaminates the ones that have numbers. Let three clauses have no purchase and people take the whole book for exhortation; once it is exhortation, the numerate clauses stop being kept too. Checked against my own history: last year's handbook had two clauses about the goods, both unnumbered, and both were ignored — and so, it turns out, was everything else in it.*

4. Why the number matters to the person claiming, which is the opposite of why I thought it mattered. I had numbers in there for enforcement. His account is about the cost of speaking: written down, she doesn't have to ask anyone for it. She only has to say: I'm claiming under clause such-and-such. Which is Hé's "you should have said" and the man last August who used a refund code in order to pay a compliment, arriving from a third direction. Without a clause, anyone who opens their mouth must first invent a role for themselves — complainer, supplicant, nuisance. With a clause they are only "claiming under clause four." Written rules are cover for the person who has to speak.*

5. The clause I did not have, and the reason it is the hard one. Those awaiting a posting are included; those holding office and drawing salary get nothing — written by a man who was at that moment holding office, and binding on his own sons. The first person a book of rules stops has to be the one who wrote it. Otherwise it is a stick for beating other people with.

6. Administration, and I did not see this coming either. He does not administer his own fund: choose a capable elder of the clan to manage the accounts. Why not you? Because I am going to die. Applied: I asked Chen to hold it. Her objection was sound — "I sell the least. Xiao Lei sells 620, I sell 180. How is he going to feel when I'm the one asking him?" Resolution, written into the text rather than smoothed over: (11) whoever administers this is not chosen on sales; the administrator's own returns are checked by Marco, and Marco's are checked by the administrator. And (12) failure to file: asked once; second time recorded; third time that run doesn't ship. Sent as photographs, not a document, because a document can be edited.

7. Responses. Guo: received, ten minutes. Wang: all doable, half an hour. Chen: ok. Xiao Lei, 9 p.m., a fifty-second voice message, and he did the one thing none of the rest did — he counted. — "Better than last year's handbook by a long way." And: "I'm printing clause four and sticking it up in my ten square metres. Twenty-seven degrees, day eight — I want that where I can see it every day." — And then: "But there's something wrong. I counted. Of the twelve, eleven govern us. There's half a clause in eleven that governs you — the half about your returns going to Chen." — And the two questions I have no clause for: "What happens if you can't ship in three days?" and "What happens if the goods you bought are wrong? We do everything right and it's still wasted."

8. He is correct and the charter is not finished. I wrote twelve clauses about what four other people owe me, and one half-clause about what I owe them, and I did it two days after concluding that I had cut two leaders for breaking rules I never wrote. The failure repeated itself inside the document meant to fix it. What has to go in tomorrow is not a gesture. It has to have a number in it, and the number has to cost me something on the days I am wrong — because the only clause anybody will believe is the one that has already been used against the man who wrote it.

"The first person a book of rules stops has to be the one who wrote it."
The fund was a thousand mu of reliable farmland outside the city, bought at fifty-nine to keep ninety members of a clan; it paid one sheng of grain a day per person, one bolt of silk a year, fifty strings of cash for a daughter's first marriage, thirty for a remarriage, thirty for a son's first wife, fifteen for a second, a burial at the remarriage rate and ten for a child's. It ran, in one form or another, for something like eight hundred years.
Asked what the hard part had been, he did not say the land. Buying land isn't hard. The hard part is after I'm dead. Which is why the document that survives him is not a deed but a list of thirteen rules, and why every one of them carries a figure.
He was explicit about the exclusions. The ones without figures, I didn't write. Such as? Such as "the clansmen should live in harmony." Anybody can write that. And the damage such a clause does is not that it is ignored, but that it is infectious: let three clauses have no purchase and people take the whole book for exhortation — and once it is exhortation, the clauses that do have figures stop being kept either.
On why a remarrying daughter received thirty strings rather than fifty: because a woman remarrying has the hardest time of it. But less than the first time. Less, but she gets it. What matters is not thirty or fifty. What matters is that it is written down — because *written down, she doesn't have to ask anyone for it. She only has to say: I'm claiming under clause such-and-such.
And then the clause that is easy to read past: those who have withdrawn and are at home awaiting a posting are included; those actually holding office and drawing salary receive nothing. It sounds like ordinary fairness until you notice who wrote it. When I wrote that clause I was holding office myself. My son held office afterwards.
Otherwise it is a stick for beating other people with.
The land was still intact on the day he died, and there was not enough money in his house to bury him. Asked why he had never touched it: the land isn't mine. It says in the rules that it belongs to the clan. And asked why he had not kept the accounts himself, he answered on his way out.
Because I am going to die.