Yin-niang

Yin-niang was born on November 26, 1263, in a farming hamlet near the tidal creeks of the Pearl River Delta in Guangdong, under Southern Song rule. Her family spoke a local Yue Sinitic tongue and kept the household rites of their neighbors: offerings to the kitchen god and door spirits, incense at the family tablets, and visits to a small temple when trouble pressed.

Her father worked the family’s plots with his older sons. Da-ge and Er-ge were already grown men; San-ge and Si-ge were nearly so. Da-jie, a girl of thirteen, stayed close to her mother’s side, grinding grain, carrying water, and minding the smallest tasks that kept the household fed. Another brother, Wu-ge, had been born and lost years earlier, and the memory of that infant never left the women’s talk at births.

That late autumn day the mother labored inside the house while the men kept to the yard. An older woman from nearby, Po-po, came to help. The baby arrived small, her cry thin and brief. Da-jie warmed cloth by the brazier and held the child against her mother’s chest while Po-po rubbed her back and pressed a finger to her mouth to clear it.

Yin-niang breathed in shallow pulls. Her eyes opened once, unfocused. She did not take milk. Before nightfall she died.

Her father dug a narrow grave on the edge of the family land. They wrapped her in a plain cloth, set a few grains of rice beside her, and burned a short stick of incense to the earth god before covering the soil.