by Qiu Xiaolong
‘It’s an incredible stroke of luck for us,’ she said with grateful tears in her eyes, putting the ring on her finger with difficulty.
‘It did not take too long for them to doubt, however, whether it really was such “an incredible stroke of luck”.
‘With the Communists taking over Shanghai in 1949, Fu was labeled a “capitalist” because of his seafood company – even with the company having gone through the nationwide campaign of socialist, state-transformation of private enterprise. Black in his class status, he no longer mixed with neighbors like before. People called him Mr Fu. Not so much out of respect as out of the difference in the class system. “Comrade” was politically popular, but only for some of us, the working-class people, which he was not. Considering the circumstances, I don’t think he had too much of a choice at the time he started that company in the courtyard of the shikumen house.
‘In 1966, in the campaign of “Sweeping Away the Four Olds” at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards raided his home for whatever “olds” they could lay their hands on – jewelry, foreign currency, gold, mahogany furniture – as the criminal evidence of his exploiting the working-class people in the pre-1949 era. In order for him to write a detailed guilt-pleading statement, a Red Guard gave him a list of the “Four Olds” stuff seized at the shikumen house. But before he was through with the first paragraph, another Red Guard overheard his wife telling her children to take a last look at the jewelry.
‘“I’ve not shown any of them to you before. So just take a look and you may never see them again.”
‘“What, you evil, black-hearted capitalist wife!” the Red Guard snapped. “You want your children to remember and to seek revenge?”
‘As a result, she had to stand out in the lane, holding overhead a blackboard with her name written and crossed out, plus a line beneath: “For my resistance against the Cultural Revolution, I deserve to die thousands and thousands of times.” Later that same night, she collapsed while still holding the blackboard, and hit her head against the common concrete sink in the lane. She never regained consciousness. The Red Guards did not even raise a finger to help. Believe it or not, the one who had snapped at her earlier bent to wrench the diamond ring from her cold and stiff finger before her body was sent to the funeral home.
‘And it turned out to be the bleakest funeral in the history of our lane, with no one except Fu himself standing at the funeral parlor. Neither of her children chose to attend, unwilling to be seen close to her, and complaining about the horrible humiliation and discrimination she had brought upon them. In short, people in the neighborhood avoided Fu like the black plague. I was the only one that sent a wreath to the funeral as a neighbor, but to tell the truth, I wasn’t brave enough to go there myself.
‘Shortly afterward, Xiaoqiang moved out. Hongxia denounced Fu in another mass criticism before she married a worker, claiming that it was for the sake of obtaining the working-class status through marriage.
‘So Fu was left all alone here, with nothing else to do except go on pleading guilty, hanging his head low under Mao’s portrait on the lane wall every morning, sweeping the neighborhood on the weekend, too benumbed to care about what was happening around him, and increasingly withdrawn like a hermit crab forever shut up in its broken shell.
‘After Nixon’s visit to China in 1971, things began to improve a bit for people like Fu. A new government policy came into effect regarding so-called compensation for the loss they had suffered during the campaign of “Sweeping Away the Four Olds”. But it was easier said than done. At the time, the Red Guards had been so anxious to seize the “Four Olds” in response to Chairman Mao’s call, but with no idea about what to do with the seized stuff. Most of the things had been chaotically disposed of, and hence were unrecoverable. Fu was considered as extraordinarily lucky because he had been handed a list of seized “Four Olds” with which to write the guilt-pleading statement, and then the list was forgotten and left with Fu because of Mrs Fu’s sudden death. In contrast, most of the affected families did not have such a list.
‘To the surprise of the lane, Fu stubbornly declined the compensation offered by Xiahou, the new director of the state-run company. Even after 1976, with the Cultural Revolution ending in a whimper, Fu did not budge from his position. So Xiaoqiang wanted me to accompany Director Xiahou to Fu for a discussion about the large sum of compensation in accordance with the list.
‘“The Cultural Revolution’s over,” Director Xiahou argued. “It’s a national disaster. So many suffered or died, including Comrade Liu Shaoqi, Chairman of the People’s Republic of China. Still, our Party proves to be a great one, capable of turning over a new page for our socialist country. We all have to take a correct attitude toward it and accept the compensation in accordance with the Party policy.”
‘“What’s the correct attitude?” Fu retorted defiantly. “Not everything can be compensated in terms of money. What about my wife’s death?”
‘“I understand, Mr Fu. But you have to think about your children, especially your daughter. She divorced for ‘irreconcilable differences’ the first time, and her second marriage seems not to be going well, either. Her husband has been losing steadily in cricket gambling. Enough punishment for her, I have to say. If you don’t need the money, it may greatly help her.”
‘“No. They did not even come to their mother’s funeral. That nailed it. Like in an old proverb: no wealth can last for three generations. Compensation or not, that’s not the end of the world for them.”
‘“It’s the government policy that all the affected families should take the compensation, or the authorities would blame me for not doing a good job. And that’s so unfair for me. I was not one of the Red Guards that came to your home that night, you know that.”
‘“Well, what was seized that night had all come from the capitalistic exploitation in the old society, according to the editorial of the People’s Daily at the time. Why should I take it back today? I’m now retired with a pension, thanks to the Party and the government. What more do I need?” Fu said in a satirical yet adamant manner. “If you really want to do something about it, just give me back the diamond ring taken from her finger by one of the Red Guards as she lay cold, dead in the courtyard.”
‘The diamond ring turned out to be unrecoverable, unfortunately. The Red Guard denied taking it, and as a result, Director Xiahou’s responsibility remained unfulfilled.
‘But the amount of compensation appeared to be incredibly large, much more than an ordinary worker could have made during their whole life. Fu must have been pushing for more, as was commonly believed in the lane. With most of the black families in the city having accepted the compensation, Fu still held out. Anxious to wrap up the issue, Director Xiahou approached the Shanghai office of the United Front Work for help. As it happened, the official there had recently come across Fu’s name in a letter from overseas. An American billionaire businessman named Cai had contacted the office about Fu. According to Cai, with his father being classified as a landlord in the countryside in the early days of 1949, he managed to flee to the United States, but he would not have made it there without the help of his “sworn brother” Fu, who gave Cai the money he had saved for a new apartment on Huaihai Road. In the subsequent years, for fear of causing trouble to Fu on the mainland, Cai made only indirect enquiries about his friend, with no success due to the continuous political movements in China. It was not until after the end of the Cultural Revolution that he made renewed enquiries, and this time, directly to the city government. And Cai also stressed his intention to invest in China’s economic reform, so his request was taken seriously.
‘At Director Xiahou’s suggestion, I double-checked with those neighbors acquainted with the Fus in the late forties. The part about Fu’s help to his friend proved to be true. At the time, Mrs Fu had talked to them about a plan to move out to a new apartment complex on Huaihai Road. While Red Dust Lane was not without its status, it was not consider
ed a high-end area, so it was a matter of course for the prosperous to move up from here. Then all of a sudden, she dropped the subject, without explaining to the neighbors about the abrupt change of plan. When pressed, she simply said that Mr Fu was allowed to spend the money whatever way he liked. So he must have spent it to help Cai out.
‘Now the city government saw it as a political task to reassure Cai of Fu’s wellbeing in Shanghai, and a dramatic difference was immediately made.
‘Because of Fu’s demand for the return of the diamond ring as the precondition for acceptance of the compensation, the police arrested the Red Guard surnamed Zhu who had been seen snatching the ring from Mrs Fu’s finger, and discovered it at his home along with the other jewelry seized from Fu’s home that long-ago night. As a result of governmental insistence, the compensation turned out to be extraordinary, with all the bank savings returned carrying the highest interest rate at the time. Because of the recovered ring, Fu could not fail to accept the compensation.
‘But what’s more, a notarized certificate of stock shares was then officially delivered to Fu through the city government. Cai declared that Fu’s loan so many years earlier had been in reality an investment in his companies in the United States. The message from such a move was unmistakable. Fu was not just a “capitalist” here, but a Big Buck partner in American companies.
‘For the long and the short of it, Fu proved to be so well off on the interest from the compensation alone, that he did not have to touch the shares at all. Unsurprisingly, speculation about the incredible fortune pulled his children back to the lane, again and again, but there was no bringing Fu around. One evening, Xiaoqiang left curses under the Red Dust blackboard newsletter: “The old man’s brains must have been damaged by the blackboard hung around his neck.” And the next day, Hongxia reacted more theatrically, storming out and screaming over the trash bin near the lane exit, “The old man died in 1966.”
‘They kept coming back, nevertheless. So Fu went to the neighborhood committee to make a formal statement to the effect that he wanted nothing to do with them – in a deliberate move to forestall their continuing attempts to return – but it did not seem to work out.
‘In addition to the reconciliation efforts on the part of his children, there also came long-out-of-contact or out-of-the-blue visitors. For instance, the head of the Huangpu District Education Committee, who approached him with a proposal for a neighborhood kindergarten pending donations from “generous people like Mr Fu”. Then the ex-Red Guard surnamed Pei, who had forgotten to take back the list of the seized stuff that long-ago tragic night during the Cultural Revolution, also came to claim that his negligence had actually made the subsequent compensation possible, and then everything else as well. As the first link in a long chain, at least so it appeared in Pei’s logic, he maintained that Fu should reward him with a small part of the stock shares—’
‘Oh what a penniless, pathetic alcoholic that ex-Red Guard named Pei is. I happen to know him, a frequent visitor to the cheapest eatery on Yunnan Road,’ a red-nosed man named Zhang in the audience cut in. ‘Like in an old saying, “He who tries to drown the sorrow in the liquor inevitably drowns himself in it.” Pei tells his story in the eatery too, saying it’s so unfair to him. More than fifteen Red Guards went to Fu’s shikumen house that night, all of them wholeheartedly following Chairman Mao’s call to take revolutionary action against the class enemies with “Four Olds” at home. Pei just happened to be the one who ordered Fu to write the guilty plea with the list. Years later, however, Pei was singled out for punishment and then dumped by his wife. Nothing but a scapegoat for the Cultural Revolution, period. Now down and out, he cannot afford even the cheapest booze on Yunnan Road but for the pity a waitress there takes on him, saving leftover liquor from the bottle bottoms at other tables, and occasionally bits and pieces of food possibly untouched from the leftover dishes. As the waitress works nights, he comes there close to midnight—’
‘Don’t interrupt, Red-nosed Zhang!’ A young man called Little Huang cut him short. ‘Let Old Root go on with the story.’
‘Anyway, none of these visitors, Pei or others, left the lane with any success, though all of them vowed to return. Fu had to avoid them by dining out, one day for fried milk at Xingya, the next day for salted duck tongues at North Cloud Pavilion, and the third day for spicy fish head pot at Old Sichuan – like waging a guerrilla war, except that he was too rich, too old to be a guerrilla soldier. Besides, it was no fun to eat out the whole time. At least that’s what Fu told me.
‘As you see, good or bad luck, no one can really tell, so it’s just like in Tao Te Ching,’ Old Root concluded, taking a long, deliberate sip of his tea, as if inspired by the green tender leaves unfolding in leisure like a dream in the cup.
‘But what’s the point from Tao Te Ching?’ Little Huang said, adding more water to the narrator’s dented cup.
‘Wasn’t his life stocked with ironies? The loss of his job in the forties actually worked in his favor – the start of his company of shrimp and fish balls. Only not for too long – he turned into a capitalist because of it in the light of Chairman Mao’s class system. Then the misfortune reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution, but that list of the things seized by the Red Guards actually brought about the reunion of two old friends, not to mention the stock fortune from overseas.’
‘Indeed there’s no telling or foretelling the causality of misplaced yin and yang,’ a serious-looking man in his mid-forties observed, adjusting the black-rimmed glasses along the edge of his nose. ‘Who could say that his death was not related to his incredible wealth?’
‘Exactly,’ Old Root said, picking at a green tea leaf stuck between his tea-stained teeth, looking at the bespectacled observer. ‘He was killed after a visit to an expensive restaurant, according to Comrade Jun. So the way things work out in this world of red dust is way beyond us. But now it’s your turn to continue, Four-eyed Liu, with all the details observable in the same shikumen house you have lived in with Fu during the last years of his life. More than fifteen years, I think.’
It was already quite a long story, and Chen wondered at its relevancy to the investigation. But back in the police bureau, there was nobody waiting for him to make a report, and back at home, it could be unbearably hot and humid in the attic, especially when he knew he would not be able to fall asleep there any time soon. Earlier, he had left a message for his mother through the public phone service, saying that he would work late on the translation at the bureau, and that she would not have to stay up waiting for him.
So why not stay on for Liu’s part in front of Red Dust Lane? Liu had lived in the shikumen house with Fu – possibly with more immediate and up-to-date information. If nothing else, at least it could be an intriguing way to spend a summer evening. A different perspective could dramatically change the meaning of a story.
‘You’re the one on speaking terms with Fu, Old Root,’ Liu said, seemingly reluctant to start the part two, ‘not me.’
‘Hot stinking tofu. So hot, so stinking, so delicious, you’ll bite off your tongue …’
A peddler came over to them unexpectedly. Stinking tofu was a popular snack among Shanghainese. Smelling so pungent even from a distance, but once in the mouth, the special taste and texture could turn out to be addictive. The peddler was pushing a wooden cart with a small coal briquette stove, and on top of it, a large wok of sizzling oil. Upon getting an order from a customer, he would put into the oil a bamboo stick with four pieces of tofu, and in a minute or two, the fried tofu would be pulled out hot, shining, crisp and stinking. Perhaps the peddler too was familiar with the evening talk in front of the lane.
‘I’m a visitor this evening,’ Chen said, taking in the smell with a deep breath. ‘The stories here are absolutely wonderful. So one round of stinking tofu for each of us here – on me.’
It was inexpensive, ten cents for four pieces per stick. With about ten people in front of the lane, it was a treat Chen th
ought he could afford. And he himself liked it too. As a child, his father had once treated him to the special snack, he recalled, while listening spellbound to the Suzhou opera performance in the Old City theater.
The peddler, apparently overjoyed with the ‘big order’, was quick to produce the sticks of tofu generously strewn with red pepper sauce.
Chen’s might have been a gesture not that common for the evening talk. Old Root took a stick, looked up at him, and then sideways at Liu, who was busy smacking his lips over the hot spicy tofu. ‘It really tastes like nothing else. You have to tell your story now, Four-eyed Liu. Such a rare treat is surely not for nothing.’
Liu turned to Old Root with a sudden challenge in his tone. ‘From your perspective, Fu’s impeccable. Nothing wrong with your loyalty to a late friend, Old Root. But being his neighbor in the same shikumen house for years, I could not but have seen things from a closer distance.’
‘Isn’t that what makes our evening talk unique? Multiple perspectives, I mean. That surely contributes to the depth of a story. What Doctor Watson sees must be so different from Sherlock Holmes,’ Old Root said with a throaty chuckle. ‘You know Fu’s children pretty well too, I’ve heard.’
‘Yes, I met them before the Cultural Revolution, but they moved out shortly afterward, as you have described in that story of yours,’ Liu said, nibbling at the tofu. ‘So I’ll start from where you left off. With the compensation, the pension and the stock shares, Fu became so incredibly rich. But he just wanted to be left alone – an old man in an old lane. If there was any change about him, he was seen dining out much more than before, being capable of indulging in any of his gastronomical fantasies. His frequent visits to those expensive restaurants made no dent to his bank account. Only it’s not that fun to eat out for three meals a day, seven days a week.
‘After a couple of months, he could not help coming back to the common kitchen in the shikumen house, but preparing meals turned out to be too much work for the old man. Besides, he still appeared uncomfortable talking to his “proletarian neighbors”. Somebody suggested he hire a maid for help, which became politically OK in the new reform age for socialist China. And it was not difficult for him to make the arrangement. In the wing unit, he needed for himself just the front room looking out to the courtyard, while the maid could take the back room with the living room and dining room in the middle.
