Boatman of the Grand Canal

✦ Your Soul Summary ✦

You spent thirty years moving goods along the Grand Canal between Hangzhou and Beijing, the largest canal network in the world, and in that time you heard almost everything that traveled with the cargo — the gossip of merchants, the complaints of minor officials, the plans of anyone who needed to talk and assumed the boatman wasn't listening. You were always listening. Your knowledge of the empire's politics and commerce, accumulated over three decades of transit, was more complete than that of most court ministers, and you kept it entirely to yourself.