Person · Hidden Mountain

Gull

Birthday: 22nd day of the Sixth Month

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Mohist Hill
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The Myriad Flavors of Mohism
Ask around Mohist City whose classes are the best, and every disciple will give you a different answer. But ask who makes the Mohist Canons the most entertaining, and eight out of ten will name Grand Artisan Gull. When Grand Artisan Gull lectures on the Canons, he quotes widely, explains things clearly, and somehow always manages to bring food into it. By the end of class, everyone is hungry. From what Mozi and his followers ate on the road to the banquets rulers prepared for them, he can cite and cross-reference it all. As he likes to put it, Mozi had fifteen disciples, and later generations followed in great numbers, so what exactly they were eating when they wrote "I Have Heaven's Will" is obviously a matter of great importance to Mohism itself. Besides, old mechanism blueprints are all more or less the same, and there is only so much novelty to be found in them. Recipes are another matter. The range of ingredients, the endless combinations, the sheer variety of flavors all suit the Mohist way of change and adaptation far better than most ordinary mechanisms ever could. So outside of class, he is forever applying the Mohist spirit of experimentation to tracking down lost recipes, testing ingredients, testing heat, testing seasoning... The disciples have not been idle either. Every six hours, someone takes a turn going to ask Grand Artisan Gull a question. Not because they are especially diligent, but because his food experiments fail at an alarming rate. If no one checks on him, there is no telling when he might faint in the middle of a pile of strange ingredients and start muttering nonsense again. Outside, the clouds are beginning to clear, mountain pheasants are calling in the morning, and a few disciples are, as always, out in the courtyard reciting "Universal Love, Mutual Benefit." They talk about the latest mechanisms in Mohist City, or spend the whole day arguing over matters like opening the mountain or sealing it off again. Grand Artisan Gull has handed this cookbook of the Mohist Canons over to his disciples and let them season it for themselves, with the hardship of rising at dawn, the toil of labor and practice, the sharpness of debate, and a little sweetness from walking the same path together. Some would rather pour in handful after handful of salt, while others might mix in the river waters of all the places they have traveled... "Whether you pick up a plane or a ladle, what matters most is making a dish of your own." Having left them with that, Grand Artisan Gull ducks back into his little room, leaving the disciples staring at one another, and at the pot of rather questionable food before them. At times like this, some of the older disciples cannot help but think back to the days before Grand Artisan Gull wandered so far down this particular path. How did such a steady, learned master, after spending half his life studying mechanisms, end up so obsessed with old recipes instead? To this day, none of the disciples has solved that mystery.
Journal of a Guardian Spoiler · Cramming Champion
Rule No. 75: Do not leave hot soup anywhere she can reach it. Rule No. 160: Milk should only be made into pastries. If she drinks it as is, she will end up with an upset stomach. Rule No. 310: No cucumbers. No scallions. Still, if no one tells her, or if she is fooled a little, she can sometimes be coaxed into eating them. ... Grand Artisan Gull lets out a long sigh. He has already filled twelve notebooks with notes like these. Mechanisms and fine food can both be worked out by following plans and recipes. Raising a child, though, comes with no ready-made blueprint for him to consult. If a mechanism goes wrong, a few firm pats or a careful dismantling will usually fix it. If a dish goes wrong, at worst you get half-cooked rice or a burnt cake and a stomachache for two or three days. That passes soon enough. But raising a child does not allow for carelessness. No one ever told him how tightly to hold a baby, how many years he ought to keep feeding her, how many words of comfort she needs each day, how many words of scolding, or how much pocket money to give her... What kind of troublesome mechanism is this? Grand Artisan Gull refuses to believe he cannot handle it. He has taught for years, can interpret Mohist texts from the highest principles down, can build all kinds of ingenious devices. How could he possibly lose to one picky little girl? So, in a fit of determination, he gathers more than a dozen old recipe books. Remedies for crying at night, tonics to improve the appetite, anything the old texts mention, he learns to cook up for Xiaoxiao. Before long, the room that used to be piled high with mechanism parts is filled instead with all manner of strange ingredients. And just like that, the great artisan of Mohist Hill finds himself on a one-way road into the study of ancient recipes. Research, after all, is what he does best. Once he straightens out his notes, surely raising a child by the book cannot be that hard. By then, he thinks to himself with no small satisfaction, no one in all Mohist City will understand child-rearing better than he does. And with that, he buries his head in the old recipes once more. ... Only, this child has not grown up the way the books said she would. Her tastes change, her temper changes too. She has even learned how to coax and outwit her father, borrowing one trick to set up another and slipping past him when he least expects it. And yet, when he sees Xiaoxiao lifting a rice paddle longer than her arm and deftly turning the fish in the pan, all the pride, relief, and quiet guilt this child has stirred in him rise at once into his heart. It is a taste no recipe in the world has ever recorded. Grand Artisan Gull decides to write all of it into his notes. This is a brand-new recipe, one no one has ever written before. Perhaps all it takes is some time, some companionship, and a little patience. Then those feelings that are so hard to name will simply grow, little by little, out of the child herself, and quietly spread through her father's heart.
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