虚争空言，不如试之易效

Twentieth of May, Chang's yard. Two days only. This year's rule: twenty days on the ground, no looking at goods, handovers and nothing else. One thing to do: Chang Bin re-picks the reference string in front of his father. This is the second time round. In 2030 he took the string over at thirty-one — four minutes, five lines written down — and the fifth line was called across the yard by the old man: pick a middling one; pick the best and next year you can't reach it. Two years since, and the son has picked it both years, with his father watching and never once saying anything. I told Chang Bin I wanted a witness this time. He asked why in front of his father. Because he is still here. He looked at me a moment and said: all right.

Afternoon, at house five — the one with refrigeration since 2030, third year now. Two stools out, one for his father, one for me; he stands. Chang Yushan is sixty-five. Sitting down, he wiped his hand on his trousers first — the movement he makes before touching goods, which I have watched many times. Today he touches nothing. Today he sits and watches. Ten minutes inside, and the son comes out with a string of forty-odd on a thread and hangs it on the doorframe. This year's. The father says nothing, looks at it about twenty seconds, gets up, and goes inside.

Ma Jun appeared while he was in there. Forties. Very old straight-cut robe, shiny at the knees. Thick hands, big knuckles, a pad of callus at the web of the thumb. He was holding a wooden mechanism — a shaft, teeth, something that turned — and he kept turning it the whole time without looking at it. He was looking at the string. Then: that old man has gone in to fetch something.

He had. He came back with a string of his own, hung it beside his son's, sat down, and said not one word from beginning to end. The son looked at the two of them a long time. Dad, what you picked isn't the same as what I picked. A nod. Where's the difference? — He opened his mouth and nothing came out. He sat looking at the two strings for a long while, and finally: can't say it.

Ma Jun turned the mechanism half a turn. I have said those words. — A man named Pei once argued with him about the south-pointing carriage: that no such thing had existed in antiquity and the books were lying. I said it existed and later men simply hadn't thought about it. And then? He argued with me. He had read more books than I had. And: after a while I could not out-argue him. And, and I picked up the pen: my mouth was defeated and I could not answer. And: in front of a good many people. And then? I said one sentence and left. Empty argument in the air is not as good as testing it, which is easily done. And: afterwards I was ordered to build one, and I built it. In bronze. The carriage was finished. And: the day it was finished nobody mentioned the argument again. And: that sounds to you as though I won. And, five times into the book: I did not win. I only moved the thing off our mouths and onto the ground.

I said the family's difficulty was the same — thirty-one years, not a word written, and asked where the difference is he says he can't say it. He is not unwilling. I know. You do not know. And he lifted the mechanism. I rebuilt a damask loom. The old ones needed fifty treadles for fifty heddles. Fifty pedals under your feet, and think how many times you press to weave one bolt. What did you reduce it to? Twelve. — Then the patterns must have got fewer. More. And: stranger figures than before, because with fewer pedals the weaver can think about the pattern instead of about his feet. And: if you ask me how I did it, I cannot tell you. I sat there treading for half a year and it came out of the treading. And, six times into the book: skill is not a thing that speech can get out.

So how is it handed on? Not with the mouth. He pointed at the doorframe. Two strings hanging there and no labels. Ask him in a few days which one is his. Can he tell? If he can, he will have something to say. If he cannot, that is also something to say. And: either of those is worth a great deal more than the three words he could not get out today. — M.

Memo to file. Chang's, 20–28 May 2032. The blind test, and what it found.

1. The design, and the best part of it was not mine. Two strings on one doorframe, no labels, identical in appearance. I would have asked him the next morning. Chang Bin said six days. His reasoning: my father doesn't remember shapes, he remembers the feel. After six days both strings have changed a little, and they've changed by the same amount. — In the book: whoever sets the test has to know first how the person being tested stores things.

2. Result, 26 May. Four seconds. He pointed left: that one's mine. Correct.

3. And then the sentence, which is the most valuable thing anyone has said to me in three years. "Yours came out of the basket. Mine came off the racks."

4. What that means, and it is a defect in the instrument, not in the man. The basket holds goods already taken down, already through the sieve, already picked over once. The racks hold everything that is still hanging. The son has been sampling his reference from a population that had already been filtered. Whatever the sieve removes — the genuinely poor end — was gone before he ever reached in. His string has no bad end. A ruler missing one end cannot measure a year that falls toward that end. Two years of comparisons have therefore all leaned slightly toward "good." That is a computable error and I have not computed it yet.*

5. Why he did it, and it is the mundane reason, which makes it worse and more general. "The basket's in the room. The racks need a ladder." Not carelessness, not laziness in any culpable sense — the biased sample was the one within reach, and nothing in the procedure said which one to draw from, because nobody had ever needed to say it.

6. The father knew, and said nothing for two years, and gave his reason on 27 May. "What you work out yourself is yours. What I tell you, you'll have to come and ask me again next year." The cost of that decision was borne entirely by him: two years of a reference string he knew to be skewed, used against every batch. He paid for his son's ownership of the skill out of his own accuracy, and told nobody that he was the one paying.

7. And the piece that makes the loom relevant. Fifty treadles to twelve, and the patterns increased, not decreased, because the weaver stopped spending attention on his feet. The son also simplified — one reach into a basket instead of a ladder and the racks — and his simplification removed variety instead of freeing attention. Both are simplifications. One takes cost out of the operator; the other takes range out of the instrument. The test for which is which: did the thing being measured get narrower?

8. Added to the notebook as question fourteen (question three stays untouched, still marked Luo could not answer): "Where was the reference string you're holding picked from — the basket or the racks? How many steps apart are those two places? How many years have you been using this string?" Luo, next day: I can answer that one. And: when I was young in the purchasing station I grabbed from the basket too. And, and then he stopped: for eleven years.

"Empty argument in the air is not as good as testing it, which is easily done."
The occasion was a dispute about whether a mechanical south-pointing carriage had ever existed. A better-read opponent held that it had not and that the texts were fabrications; the artisan held that it had, and that later ages had simply stopped thinking about it. They argued in company, and the artisan lost — his biographer records it without softening: his mouth was defeated and he could not answer.
He then said the one sentence, went away, and when he was eventually ordered to build the thing, built it in bronze. After that nobody raised the argument again.
The temptation is to read this as a vindication, and the more interesting reading is the one that refuses it. Nothing about the debate was settled by the debate. What changed was the location of the question — it stopped being a matter of who could speak better and became a matter of whether a carriage pointed south.
The same biography is unusually frank about what its subject could not do. He was the most famous artisan in the empire, he replaced fifty loom treadles with twelve and got more patterns out of the machine rather than fewer, and he could not explain any of it. Asked how, the honest answer was that he had sat and worked the pedals for half a year and it had come out of the working.
Master Ma's mouth could not speak, and skill is not a thing that speech can get out.
Which is a genuine problem and not merely a charming one, because a skill that cannot be spoken also cannot be argued for, budgeted for, or defended when someone articulate decides it is unnecessary. His biographer's complaint, at the end, is that most of what the man proposed was never built — not because it was tested and failed, but because it was never tested at all, and the people with authority preferred to settle it by discussion.
The remedy in the sentence is narrow and worth keeping narrow. It does not say the inarticulate man is right. It says the question can be taken off the table and put on the ground, where being able to talk stops being an advantage.