At the end of the bingxu year, a new female colleague named Xiao Wu joined our office. She was thin and quiet, hardly spoke to anyone, and always walked with both hands thrust into her pockets, carrying with her a faint smell of Chinese medicine. None of us knew much about her beyond the fact that she was a woman PhD just back from her studies. Perhaps she was not in very good health. Within only half a month of arriving, she had already spent more than half her time asking leave to go see doctors. Even when she was at work, she leaned sideways against the edge of her desk, writing and drawing with her right hand braced on the tabletop, while her left hand remained in her pocket and never once came out. Seeing how often she kneaded the back of her neck and clutched her arm, I guessed she suffered from some rheumatic complaint.
One noon, after the rest of us had finished lunch and returned to the office, we found that Xiao Wu had not gone home but had fallen asleep at her desk. Her head rested on her right arm. Her left hand lay on the desk, palm up, with the thumb turned inward toward her chest. But how could a left hand lie palm-up while the thumb pointed inward? I rubbed my eyes, and at once understood why Xiao Wu always kept that hand in her pocket. She had two right hands.
I did not rashly go ask her about it, but instead sought the advice of Teacher Guan, far away on the Gan River. Teacher Guan said that the Miscellaneous Wanderings of a Physician and the Juxi both record surgeries for replacing limbs, and that legends from the Tang speak of the wandering knight Jing Jing’er with three arms. Yet according to the Inner Canon, Chinese medicine divides the pulses of the two hands into six positions, cun, guan, and chi on each side, governing different organs such as heart, liver, gallbladder, kidneys, lungs, and stomach. To lack one hand would disturb the harmony of the five viscera. There were also tales in antiquity of decoctions specially compounded for soldiers who had lost limbs in battle; once drunk, they would grow new ones. As for whether such things had really existed, even Teacher Guan could not say.
Another day, because our supervisor was away, Xiao Wu came to me and asked if I could later help her make up a leave request. Seeing how she held her arm in pain, I could not help asking whether it was her left hand that hurt. Noting her startled expression, I hurriedly added that if she could find some ground Yusuan of the King of Yue and apply it to the affected spot, it would be very beneficial to bone growth. If she needed it, I might be able to help her obtain some. She looked overjoyed and told me that she had long known the herb was good for her condition, but had never been able to find any.
Xiao Wu quietly told me the story of her right hand. According to her, the Wu clan had practiced medicine for generations. Their ancestor became famous for taking the pulse and diagnosing with the left hand, while compounding medicines with the right, and he laid down a family rule: the medical art should pass to men, the pharmaceutical art to women. In one generation, a granddaughter secretly learned medicine. The clan elder enforced family law and had her left hand cut off. In fury, she devoted herself wholly to the art of drugs and became a renowned apothecary of her age. Throughout her life she took a formula preserved in ancient books, and from the stump of her severed wrist there grew an inch-long malformed new hand, capable only of simple motions, and yet it was a right hand, meant to show that she would not betray the ancestral rule. Thereafter, the women of the Wu clan in every generation were required to drink “Right Hand Decoction,” and the formula was continuously refined. By Xiao Wu’s generation it could grow a complete and flawless right hand, though still accompanied by severe pain and many other side effects.
After hearing all this, I felt deeply angry. It was a shame that the miraculous Right Hand Decoction had degenerated into a vile custom no better than footbinding. For those who make a living by writing, to grow two right hands might increase efficiency; but to force left-handed people, or women, to drink the Right Hand Decoction was a form of oppression. Xiao Wu, born in a more enlightened age, loathed the customs of the Wu clan and resolutely abandoned medicine for literature. Even so, for twenty years she had continued studying the difference between the formulas of the Right Hand Decoction and the Left Hand Decoction, hoping that in time she might return herself to normal. One of the ingredients unique to the Left Hand Decoction was precisely Yusuan of the King of Yue. I gave her all the little stock I had left and wished her a speedy recovery.