相其阴阳

Eighteenth of August, 2037, three in the afternoon, Fresno. Out of the airport the heat hit me, dry and scorching, the same smell as Turpan in July. Nora with the pickup, bundles of paper trays tied in the bed: "A hundred and three. A hundred and five tomorrow." Forty degrees. In January the vines were rows of people holding up their arms; in August the arms were loaded and bowed. In some fields cutting had begun, white trays laid out between the rows like a fall of snow. "They're two days ahead. We start the day after tomorrow."

Rose wasn't on the porch. At the head of the first row, the same chair, Rose under a wide straw hat with a light blanket on her knees and, new since January, a cane. This time she didn't feel my palm. "You've come. Look and tell me if it's levelled right." Between each pair of rows the ground had been shaped: not flat but sloping, down from the north row to the south row, smooth, like boards of earth laid in order, every one facing south. Nora: terracing. Before cutting, a machine scrapes the middles into a slope facing south, toward the sun; trays laid on it get the sun square on and dry faster. "When Grandma was small they scraped it with a board behind a mule."

I gave her Aynur's bag, half the string picked at night. She pinched one, held it to her eye, pinched again: "Picked at night?" Picked at night: whichever bunches sweat at night and are dry before dawn. She chewed a long time. "Sweeter than the other bag. Tell her I ate it." Next morning she walked the rows on Nora's arm and stopped at row seven: "This one's too flat." Nora: it's the same as the others; I measured it with the instrument. "Come and look at noon." At noon in row seven the shadow of vine and trellis fell a hand's width further onto the slope than in the other rows; a tray laid there would lose, along its north edge, the best hours of the day. At the end of the row a tall thin man in coarse hemp, a straw rope for a belt, dusty straw sandals, had planted a pole taller than himself at the top of the slope and was crouching to mark the tip of its shadow in the soil with his finger. "This piece of ground doesn't face true enough." Gong Liu. — M.

Memo to file. Fresno, 18–22 August 2037. Orientation before effort.

1. Terracing. Before cutting, the soil between east-west rows is scraped into a smooth slope facing south, so trays laid on it take the sun square on. Rose's grandfather's generation did it with a board behind a mule. Rose's test isn't the instrument; it's the noon shadow.

2. Row seven. Nora: same as the others, measured with the instrument. Rose: come at noon. At noon the vine's shadow fell a hand's width further onto row seven's slope; the north edge of every tray there would miss the best hours. "The instrument measures the soil. I look at the sun." Martin re-scraped it that evening; "that'll do."

3. The precedent. Gong Liu led his people to Bin. Tired, everyone wanted to dig and plant at once. He didn't let them: first a pole on the ridge and its shadow, shortest at noon and pointing north, to fix the directions; then which slopes faced the sun and which lay in shade; then where the springs rose and where rain would run. Only then the low ground and the high, and what to plant where. Could tired people wait? "Those who can't wait still have to. Plant the wrong way the first year, on the shady slope, and the shoots come up and don't thrive: a year wasted. Move them the second year: another. Wait three days and read the shadow, and you save two years."

4. Two ends, one sun. Turpan's drying houses want shade and wind, yet which wall is hung first is chosen by the sun: the east wall catches the morning. Fresno's trays want sun, and the slope's direction and steepness are chosen by the sun too. One side hides from the sun, the other chases it; both look first at where the sun is.

5. The line. "First see where the shadow falls, then where the water goes, and only then pick up the hoe. If the orientation is wrong, the more effort you put in, the more you waste." Rose didn't use the instrument; she came at noon and looked at the shadow. "That old woman at the end of the row understands shadows. Let her decide."

6. Cutting. 20 August from five in the morning: Martin, Nora, me, and young people from two neighbouring farms, shears and a basin each; cut, fill the basin, carry it to the slope, spread a tray, lay the bunches one layer deep, no stacking, about twenty pounds a tray, then the next tray beside it. White paper, green grapes, from the head of the row to the end.

7. The ribboned vine. I cut it myself: three trays and a bit. Rose had her chair moved to the head of row five: "Half a tray more than the one next to it. The canes you kept bore well. The southern one was crowded; small bunches. Come in January and prune it, and see what's left where you cut the stub."

8. Carol. Retired, she came as she had said she would. She stood at the edge of the slope looking at trays laid one after another, the green bunches, the bloom on the skins in the sun, and said nothing for a long time. "Thirty years, four hundred thousand bins. I never once saw them on the ground." Rose waved her over; Nora brought a second chair. Two old women at the head of row five, watching the field.

9. Breakfast, 22 August. Seven o'clock in Fresno; Alim's photo: house three hung from floor to roof, the east wall first, light coming through the holes in squares; on the doorframe the new string on a new nail at left, Aynur's night-picked string at right with a probe clipped to it; in a corner He Yuan against the wall, hands behind his back, watching. "Done. East wall first. Dad sat at the door and watched all day." Rose studied it: which way do their houses face? East wall first; it catches the morning sun. "Then they understand the sun too."

10. Why the instrument missed. Nora at dinner: "What I learned at school is measuring slope, and I measured it right. But row seven is next to row eight, which is by the ditch and grows rank, so seven grows rank too; the canopy is thicker and the shadow longer. The slope can be right and the shadow still wrong. Grandma looks at the shadow." Gong Liu, asked what if you reckon wrong: correct it next year, but write down which year and where the error was, or the third year you'll make it again.

11. Two ledgers. Carol brought her own notebook, thirty years of the Kazarians' defect figures, one number a year. Rose had Nora fetch her weather books from 2007 on. In every year whose last page says "rain", Carol's number is higher: 2010, rain on 21 September, one day, a tenth lost, 3.1. In dry years, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5. Carol circled them: "My numbers were written by the sky." Rose: "Half by the sky. Half by how fast we got the trays in." And before that: "What you inspected was what we dried right. What we dried wrong you never saw: rained on, stacked and not turned, mouldy underneath; it rotted in the field and never reached your plant." "Thirty years, and everything I saw was what survived."

12. The other half. Nora's vine-dried half, canes cut two weeks earlier, bunches wrinkling and browning in mid-air; in mid-September a machine shakes them down. Rose has never walked that half. Her "not the same", explained at last: "what hangs on the trellis never touches the ground; it has no taste of the soil." "I don't know what soil tastes like."

13. Small things. Rose at ten laid one tray double; her father didn't scold, but next morning lifted the top bunch to show her the bottom one gone soft overnight. She never stacked one again. From her chair she spots a stacked tray by the darker patch. Martin, on the porch: "My father said once the trays are down you're not the master any more; the sky is. All you can do is run faster than it when it turns." He Yuan: I didn't touch anything; I watched all day; which wall first, Alim's father showed with his left hand. Aynur, through Alim: the ninety-one-year-old ate it, so next year she'll pick her another. My mother in her notebook, after Aynur's name: Rose, ate it, sweet. "Both of them work at night."

14. Next. Nora at noon, frowning at the forecast: a storm off Mexico heading north; next week its tail may brush the valley; chance of rain fifteen per cent. Rose said nothing. That night her light was still on; she was sitting at the window, not asleep.

"First see where the shadow falls, then where the water goes, and only then pick up the hoe."
An ode in the Book of Songs describes Gong Liu, an ancestor of the Zhou people, leading his clan to settle at Bin. Before any field was opened he measured the shadows on the ridge, surveyed which slopes were sunny and which shady, and traced where the springs flowed. The poem is one of the oldest descriptions in any literature of siting a settlement by the sun and water.
California raisin growers still begin the drying season this way. Before harvest the soil between vine rows is shaped into a smooth slope facing the sun, so that paper trays laid on it receive the most direct light. A grower of seventy years' experience checks the work not with an instrument but by standing in the row at noon and seeing where the vine's shadow falls on the slope.
Investors would call this positioning: the same asset held at a different angle to the prevailing forces produces a different result, and effort spent after a poor orientation is largely wasted. Reading the conditions first, even when everyone is tired and eager to start, saves more time than it costs.
"The instrument measures the soil. I look at the sun."