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Controlled completely by the elder sisters, they did not drink rice wine or fornicate. Their discipline was absolute, and their punishment swift and brutal.
    The peaceful and efficient running of his mill he owed to Superintendent Ah-Jeh, who oversaw the weavers as diligently as the abbess of a sacred temple watching over her novices. For this, her personal rewards were considerable. What punishment or promotion she meted out was done in private, unseen and unheard. It was she who decided whichgirls among the mui-mui should leave the groves for the more delicate work of the sheds, perhaps to become a spinner or even a weaver if she accepted the comb and the mirror of sau-hai .
    From this small number, so carefully chosen, if a young girl shone brightly enough among her sisters, she might be selected as a “lantern girl,” whose charms would be wasted at the loom and better suited to the master’s bed. In this, as in other matters, Ming-Chou relied on the judgment of his superintendent and paid her handsomely if that judgment pleased him.
    To attract the eye of the Master of Ten Willows for even an instant was thought to be ordained by kindly gods. When such a child was found, she would be prepared by amahs skilled in the expectations of the bedchamber, dressed in a robe of white, and given a paper lantern, to be carried to the house of Ming-Chou on the night of a propitious moon. If she was found acceptable, she might become part of a privileged few, and join other favorites in accommodations of their own. Neither concubine s nor mistresses, these were comfort girls in the Pavilion of Pleasure, called upon when needed and offered as gifts to the mandarins who were sometimes sent to meet with the prefect and gather taxes.
    If she was not found acceptable, the superintendent lost much face. The girl might be considered as a sister of sau-hai , but if she lacked the hummingbird hands and butterfly fingers and subservient soul of a sau hai weaver, she would be whipped and sent back to the huts to live out her usefulness among the mulberry groves.
    If a girl resisted, she was deemed to be bewitched and her fate was decreed by ancient laws: She would be beaten and tethered beside a goat for the sport of others. When her humiliation was complete, she would be trussed in a weighted pig basket and drowned in the river. The Master of Ten Willows had never witnessed such a ritual, nor did he wish to hear of it, leaving all things female to the judgment of Ah-Jeh. The conscience of Ming-Chou the silk merchant was as untroubled as his garden was at peace with the universe.
    The other half of his female workers were the mui-mui , the little sisters; they were thought to be aged from eight to fourteen, but most hadno age as well as no name. Among them were many who had not escaped the abuse of men—their fathers or brothers or those they called uncle—but had found the courage to run away and seek shelter in the nearest temple. The monks fed such children before handing them over to the silk farm or another employer. The mui-mui were also fifty in number, some brought to the Ten Willows silk farm by parents who could no longer feed them, accepting a paltry sum in return. Others, whose parents had died or whose families had abandoned them, came seeking the sisters of sau-hai . His mui-mui were fed well, clothed, and given shelter. For this they worked from sunrise to sunset—feeding the silkworms and harvesting cocoons, and sorting and cleaning them for the boiling vats, the spinning wheels, and the weaving mill.
    Some, whose hands were fast and nimble—too valuable to waste in the harshness of the groves—were taken into the spinning sheds to learn the secret of the golden thread. From their numbers, when a loom lost its weaver to illness, death, or old age, one would be chosen for the mirror and the comb. It was the dream of all of the mui-mui to spin the golden web and be taken into the lifelong sanctuary of sau-hai .

    The sun,