Li Shi
Li Shi was born on September 17, 1125, in a farming hamlet on the low plain near the Liaodong coast, under the last days of Khitan Liao authority. Before she could remember anything, Jurchen troops and officials replaced Liao rule and the district answered to the Jin. The speech in her lanes was Chinese, with a few Jurchen words traded across market stalls and in the mouths of men who carried loads for the army. Her family burned incense at the household altar, fed the Kitchen God at year’s end with bowls of millet porridge, and set out food for ancestors on festival days.
She was the eighth child of ten. Five older siblings had died before her—some in infancy, others as small children. Her mother, Madam Li from the Wang family, kept the household moving by the light of the stove: boiling grain, mending, spinning, and watching which child’s nose ran and which one’s breath sounded wrong. Li Shi grew up hearing the names of the dead said quietly over bowls of steamed millet. The living ones crowded the kang bed in winter. Her eldest surviving brother was Li Shun, born in 1114, already grown when she arrived. Her closest older brother by age was Li Qiang, born in 1123, strong and quick to push her away from his work. A younger brother, Li Yong, was born in 1127, and another boy, Li Jiu, in 1129, though Li Jiu died in infancy. Their father, Li De, kept the field boundaries in his head and measured harvest by bundles rather than numbers on paper. He could not read; neither could she.
They lived with Li Shi’s paternal grandparents. Her grandfather Li Guo ran the yard with a stick and a loud voice. If a tool went missing, he lined the children up and demanded answers. Li Shi learned early to keep her hands on what mattered: a knife, a spindle, a bucket. She also learned to answer back. When she was six, she refused to carry water twice in a row and told her brother to do it; her grandfather slapped her shoulder and called her stubborn. She carried the bucket anyway, jaw tight.
In 1137 her grandfather died after a winter illness. His body was washed, wrapped, and carried to a grave on the slope beyond the fields. After that, authority shifted. Her father took fuller charge, and her grandmother, Madam Li from the Zhao family, became the one who set tasks and corrected mistakes in the women’s work. The grandmother showed her how to lay out offerings: a small plate of dried fish when it could be spared, two cups of wine for the ancestors, a pinch of salt and a stick of incense for the local earth god. When Li Shi was angry, she swept hard, raising dust, and her grandmother told her to stop wasting strength.
By nine, Li Shi was in the fields at planting time, dropping seed into furrows behind the men. She liked the early morning when the air was cool and the water jars were full. She ate pickled cabbage with cold millet cakes without complaint. She saved the sweet parts for later and hid them from smaller children. She talked constantly while working, making sharp jokes that made her brothers snort and her mother frown. Li Qiang teased her about her short legs and called her a magpie for all her chatter, but he also let her carry his hoe when her arms got tired. They fought over who had worked harder after harvest, shouting until their father silenced them both. If a neighbor child wandered into their yard, she asked what they wanted and demanded payment in gossip or a favor.
At seventeen, Li Shi married Zhang Wen and moved to his county, a moderate journey inland through fields and villages. Zhang Wen’s family farmed dry fields and kept a few pigs. His younger brother Zhang Bao lived in a house across the same yard, sharing tools and labor. Their mother, Madam Zhang of the Sun family, treated the new bride as another pair of arms and watched her for signs of laziness or insolence. Li Shi rose before dawn, fed the pigs, lit the stove, and ground grain. She also fought. If Madam Zhang took a larger share of cooked millet for herself, Li Shi said so, aloud. Her husband pulled her aside and told her to hold her tongue. She did not.
Her first child, a daughter, was born in 1144 and died the same day. Li Shi washed the tiny body herself and did not let her mother-in-law do it. Two years later another daughter came, and she died before the first month was out. That same year, her grandmother died back in her natal village. After that, Li Shi stopped speaking of names for babies until they had lived long enough to crawl. She kept a small bowl by the stove and made offerings there: crumbs of cake, a smear of pork fat when there was pork, asking the Kitchen God to protect what remained in the house.
A son, Zhang San, arrived in 1148 and lived. Li Shi dragged him through chores early, scolding when he cried. She liked it when he followed instructions the first time. She also took him on market days and bought him fried dough when she had the coins, then made him repeat to other children that his mother paid for it with her own cloth. Her father Li De died in 1152, after the harvest. Li Shi did not attend the funeral; married daughters were expected at the grave, but she had a sick child and a husband who resisted travel. Her mother sent word later.
The next year she bore Zhang Wu, and he lived. Then Zhang San died of a fever in 1154, six years old. Li Shi did not speak his name for days afterward, then spoke it often, correcting Zhang Wu when he forgot how his brother had held a hoe or fed the pigs. She lost another son who lived only a year, and another who died at birth. By the time Zhang Qi was born in 1157 and survived infancy, she had carried seven children and buried five. Her mother-in-law Madam Zhang had died in 1155, leaving Li Shi as senior woman in the household. Zhang Bao still watched her dealings with suspicion from his side of the yard, tallying what she spent and questioning her decisions about seed grain.
Jin soldiers and their Jurchen officers came through the village twice a year demanding grain and labor for transport. Traders spoke of fighting farther south between Jin and Song, and of bandits who wore no uniform and took what they wanted. Li Shi learned the few Jurchen terms needed to bargain with armed men—how much, how many sacks, when they would leave.
In 1159 armed men moved through their district and took what they wanted. Two villagers tried to block them from the grain storehouse near the road. Li Shi saw one man cut down with a blade to the neck and another struck until he fell. The bodies were left in the open as a warning. The same day she was seized with other civilians and forced to march to a supply camp. Guards set her to carrying water, cooking coarse grain, and sorting sacks. She watched men beaten for moving too slowly. After several weeks, local intermediaries negotiated the return of captives when the troop group shifted position. She came back to find fields trampled and stores thinned. That year, she slept lightly and woke at footsteps.
Word came from her natal village that Li Qiang, her closest brother in age, had died in 1160. She sat alone behind the house that evening and thought of him calling her a magpie, of the times they had shouted at each other and the times he had carried her hoe. Li Shun, the eldest, died the following year. She burned paper for both of them but could not travel to mourn properly. Only Li Yong, the youngest of her brothers, was still alive.
Zhang Wen died in 1163, after a fever that left him too weak to stand. His brother Zhang Bao pressed immediately about land and obligations. Li Shi refused to yield the best strip of field. She took control of what she could: she sealed seed grain in jars, kept the household’s tools under her eye, and sent Zhang Wu to work harder and earlier. A poor harvest followed. Taxes and levies did not shrink to match hunger. She pawned cloth, then a cooking cauldron, and borrowed grain at harsh terms. She leased out part of the fields to cover what she owed, counting the rows and making sure the renter did not steal boundary land. That crisis lasted until 1167, and she ate thin porridge more days than she wanted to admit.
In 1165 she began walking to a nearby temple more often than before. She still kept the household offerings, but she added fast days and regular incense at the temple gate. An older woman called Auntie Qiu showed her how to repeat a short chant and how to dedicate offerings for dead children. Li Shi brought small bundles of millet, a strip of cloth, sometimes a coin. Monk Daocheng accepted them and spoke of merit for the dead. She listened, then demanded he write her a talisman for cough and fear. She could not read the characters, but she knew where to place it: over the door beam.
From 1166 to 1170, during another run of bad harvests, she began hiding part of her grain when the tallying team came. Headman Han’s men measured the fields and asked questions. Li Shi stored sacks in the shed of Liu Shun’er, a neighbor who liked her talk and feared her temper. At night, she moved the sacks back. She told Liu Shun’er she would remember the favor and also remember betrayal. That was how she kept alliances.
Her mother died in 1168. Li Shi heard weeks later. She had not seen her in years.
In 1169 her younger brother Li Yong died back in her natal area. She was forty-four years old and had no family left from the household where she was born.
That same year she developed a cough that returned each winter with fever and exhaustion. She stopped doing the heaviest field labor and focused on managing: sorting seed, directing her sons, arranging labor exchanges with neighbors, and spinning when her hands were steady. She drank bitter herbal decoctions from Auntie Qiu and argued with anyone who suggested she rest more.
Zhang Wu died in 1176 at twenty-three. Li Shi struck the doorpost in anger when she heard, then went straight to the stove and began cooking for mourners. She insisted the funeral offerings be correct: bowls of grain, incense, paper money burned outside. After his death, her household shrank. Zhang Qi carried more of the burden, but he did not bring a wife to live with them, and he spent stretches away doing transport work. Li Shi kept herself fed with what she could grow and what neighbors traded. She sat in the sun beside the south wall in late autumn, shelling beans, listening for footsteps. She enjoyed hot scallion broth and would pay extra for a pinch of salt when the market had it. She laughed once in a while, a short sharp laugh, when someone else’s child tried to cheat at a game of stones and she caught them.
In 1189 Zhang Qi died at thirty-two. After that, Li Shi stayed alone in her house and relied on neighbors for help with heavy tasks. In early winter, her cough worsened after a spell of cold rain. She spent more time on the kang, wrapped in quilts, still giving instructions when someone brought her water. On December 5, 1189, she died after days of weakness and infection layered on long decline. Her neighbors washed her body and placed it in a simple burial, with a bowl of millet and incense set near the grave before the earth was packed down.