A New Alliance

The Boat Of A Million Years, X, In The Hills.

A young-looking woman, who turns out to be Asagoa, tracks down a Methuselan "Master," who turns out to be Tu Shan. Thus, no new immortals in this chapter but a new alliance. Now there are two teams: Hanno and Rufus; Asagoa and Tu Shan. In the latter partnership, it is she that has to save him from stagnation and to motivate movement:

"'Change rushes through the world unbridled...We'll find advantages to take.'" (4, p. 220)

Neither Tu Shan's primitive village nor the whole Chinese Empire can last forever. The immortals might lend money at interest...! 

Wind punctuates dialogue:

"[Elder Tsong] nodded. The wind ruffled his thin white beard." (1, p. 205)

When Asagoa has declared herself and the two immortals stare at each other:

"The wind boomed outside." (2, p. 210)

That ever expressive wind ruffles the Elder but booms for his elders!

Seasons pass:

"Autumn comes early in the high hills." (1, p. 204)

"Winter struck with blinding snow..." (3, p. 213)

""Springtime came back, and that year it was mild..." (5, p. 220)

That mild spring marks their departure from the village whose folk tally months but not years. Asagoa has shown Tu Shan that there are social and civilizational changes beyond the merely cyclical seasonal changes.

He had said:

"'The years blur together, they become one, the dead are as real as the living and the living as unreal as the dead." (2, p. 211)

The living unreal! That is a sinking down into an undifferentiated sameness instead of a rising up into an enhanced clarity. Tu Shan has let the sacred texts succumb to damp and decay because he cannot read them although his villagers believe that he can. Dishonesty has set in. Asagoa saves/rescues/liberates the supposed Master instead of vice versa. Maybe these immortals are starting to go somewhere at last. (Maybe.)