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the earth.
    The ginseng hunter must display the purity of his intentions right from the start, so he
     carries no weapons. He wears a conical hat made from birch bark, and shoes of tarred
     pigskin, and an oiled apron to protect him from dew, and a badger skin attached to his
     belt, on which he sits when the ground is wet. He carries small spades made from bone and
     two small pliable knives that are quite useless for defense. Along with a little food and
     wine, that is all he has, and his quest takes him into the wildest mountains where no men
     have dared to pass before. Tigers and bears are his companions, and the hunter fears
     strange creatures that are even more dangerous than tigers - such as the tiny owls that
     will call him by name and lead him into the Forest of Oblivion from which no man returns,
     and the bandits that are more brutal than savage bears and who crouch beside the few paths
     in order to murder an unarmed hunter and steal his roots.
    Ginseng hunters, when they have thoroughly searched an area and found nothing, will mark
     the barks of trees with
    
    
     kao chu kua
    
    
     , which are tiny secret signs that tell other hunters not to waste their time there.
     Hunters would not dream of deceiving each other, because they are not competitors but
     fellow worshippers. Where a find has been made a shrine is raised, and other hunters who
     pass will leave offerings of stones, or scraps of cloth. If a hunter finds a plant that is
     not mature enough he will put stakes around it with his mark on them. If other hunters
     find the place they will pray and offer gifts, but they would rather cut their throats
     than take the plant for themselves. The behavior of a man who makes a find is very strange.
    A weatherworn, clawed, half-starved ginseng hunter will occasionally have the good fortune
     to make his way through dense underbrush and come upon a small plant with four branches
     that have violet flowers and a fifth branch in the center that rises higher than the
     others and is crowned with red berries. The stalk is deep red, and the leaves are deep
     green on the outside and pale green on the inside, He will drop to his knees, his eyes
     streaming with tears, and spread his arms wide to show that he is unarmed. Then he will
     kowtow and bang his head three times upon the ground, and he will pray,
    “O Great Spirit, do not leave me! I have come with a pure heart and soul, after freeing
     myself from sins and evil thoughts. Do not leave me.”
    Then the hunter covers his eyes and lies still for many minutes. If the ginseng plant does
     not trust him, and wishes to change into a beautiful woman or a plump brown child and run
     away, the hunter does not want to see where it has gone. At length he opens his eyes, and
     if the plant is still there his joy is not so much from the fact that he has found a
     valuable root as it is from the fact that he has been judged and found to be pure in heart.
    He takes the seeds and carefully replants them so that the ginseng can grow again. The
     leaves and flowers are stripped and ceremoniously burned, with many prayers. The hunter's
     bone spades are used to dig up the root, which is forked and has something of a human
     shape - skeptics point to the shape as the basis of an ignorant folk religion - and the
     small pliable knives are used to clean the tiny tendrils called beards, which are supposed
     to be crucial to the curative powers. The root is wrapped in birch bark and sprinkled with
     pepper to keep insects away, and the happy hunter begins the long, dangerous trek back
     toward the safety of civilization.
    “Where his throat will probably be slit by somebody like Ma the Grub,” the abbot said
     sourly. “Who will be swindled by somebody like Pawnbroker Fang, who will sell the root to
     somebody like the Ancestress, who will squat like a huge venomous toad upon a folk deity
     whose sole purpose in life is to aid the pure in