Enigma of China

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Yes. He’s known for one particular attribute: he holds fast to his own rules. There are things he will do, and things he won’t do. For instance, it’s said that he makes a point of protecting his sources—which in turn adds to the popularity of his site. Then again, one never really knows: according to some sources, Melong also has connections in the government, and that’s why he’s been able to run it his way all along.”

  “What else?”

  “What else?” she repeated, smiling, picking up a piece of beef in oyster sauce. “Like you, he’s a filial son.”

  How did she know that about him?

  An unexpected toast made by that aunt of Peiqin’s provided an excuse for Chen not to respond to Lianping’s comment.

  “I want to thank you, Party Secretary Chen, and your beautiful journalist girlfriend. When the pictures appear in Wenhui, Peiqin’s parents will be so happy in the netherworld.”

  He stood up in a hurry, cup in hand, but he didn’t know what to say in response, or whether it was even appropriate to make a toast back.

  Peiqin smiled across the table apologetically. Yu scratched his head.

  Lianping pulled out her cell phone again, looked something up, then picked up a pink napkin and scribbled something on it. She pushed it over to him as he sat down again awkwardly.

  “Here’s Melong’s phone number. You may as well call him. You can tell him you’re my friend.”

  “Thank you.”

  The lunch came to an end, fortunately before someone else tried to make another toast.

  Everyone walked across the street and back to the temple. Some carried boxes of food, and they didn’t forget to put the boxes in their cars before reentering the temple.

  Instead of going back into the room where the service was held, they now gathered around a huge bronze burner in the courtyard. It was time for people to burn the sacrifices for the dead. They started putting into the fire the boxes of netherworld money, along with some other imitation sacrifices, including a vividly detailed paper mansion.

  “Look at the address,” Lianping said, standing beside him.

  “123 Binjiang Garden.”

  “The most expensive subdivision in the city of Shanghai.”

  “So the dead can enjoy the top luxuries in the netherworld, if not in this world. I don’t think that has a lot to do with Buddhism, the burning of symbolic sacrifices for the dead. Perhaps it has more to do with Confucianism.”

  “There is something I don’t understand about Confucianism. Confucius said, ‘A gentleman doesn’t talk about ghosts or spirits,’ but at the same time, he urges people to offer sacrifices to their ancestors.”

  “These days, we’re in an age of spiritual and ideological vacuum, and ours is a society with no religion to fall back on. For most people, nothing exists or matters but this present world. So this service, influenced as it is by the materialistic considerations of the here and now, provides a sort of cold comfort.”

  So saying, he leaned toward the burner. Among the sacrifices being consumed in the roaring flame, he was astonished to see a carton of imitation cigarettes.

  “What? 95 Supreme Majesty!”

  “You know, there’s a new picture of cigarettes online,” she said, her face flushed with the heat.

  “Another photo related to Zhou?”

  “No. Not directly. It’s of some other Party officials in a conference room. For a conference, drinks and cigarettes on the dais are a given. The expensive ones are provided for free as a necessary government expense. In this new picture, however, the cigarettes have been taken out of the pack and placed on a small saucer. Why? So that people can’t recognize the top brands. The conference organizers must have been nervous about causing another scandal. But they were foolish. No smoker ever dumps their cigarettes out of the pack like that, so the cover-up effort only drew more attention to it. It resulted in another avalanche of sarcastic comments from netizens about the picture.”

  She had a point. He himself would never have dumped the cigarettes out into a saucer, and he was no stranger to such things being provided at the government’s expense. Fortunately, she was changing the topic.

  “By the way, I’ve just heard that there will be a new bronze Confucius statue erected soon in Tiananmen Square. I wonder whether people will burn incense there as well.”

  “That’s impossible,” Chen said. “Think about the May Fourth movement, and Mao’s denunciation of Confucianism.”

  “Nothing is impossible in today’s miraculous China. Remember the old saying? When one is seriously sick, one can’t afford to choose a doctor. But do you think resurrecting such an ancient idol will really solve the ideological crisis in our country?”

  Her brows were arched. She was sharp. He saw the cynical humor in her eyes, and he liked that.

  Whatever sacrifice was still burning in the containers in the temple courtyard, it was dying out.

  FIFTEEN

  MONDAY MORNING CAME, AND it was back to the office routine for Chief Inspector Chen. His work was interrupted by a number of expected and unexpected calls, making his day more fragmented than usual. In the midst of all that, he managed to spend some time working on various theories about the Zhou case. However, none of them seemed to be leading anywhere.

  Party Secretary Li returned Chen’s call regarding Wei’s death.

  “I have no objection to you looking into the cause of Detective Wei’s death. Wei was a good comrade. But policy is policy. Unless you can prove that he was pursuing his investigation at that particular intersection, there’s nothing we can do about providing compensation.”

  Chen could guess why the Party boss was so adamant. There was no use arguing with Li.

  Later, an unexpected call came from Shan Xing, a Wenhui journalist who covered the crime beat. He, too, had heard of something about Wei’s death and was trying to establish a possible connection to Zhou’s death. Chen didn’t say anything in response. Shan Xing went so far as to speculate about the timing of the arrival of the Beijing team in Moller Hotel. Again, Chen refused to make any comment.

  Hanging up, Chen turned on his computer. Among the incoming e-mails was one from Lianping with a number of pictures of the temple service. Her message was a short one: “I’ve not yet decided which one to use for the profile. My boss approved the idea.”

  Instead of going through the pictures, however, Chen decided to compose an e-mail to Comrade Zhao in Beijing. The tone he intended to take was that of a very respectful long-time-no-report letter to the ex-secretary of the Party Central Discipline Committee. In fact, there was very little Chen could really report. He didn’t mention the Zhou case in any detail, but he did express his concern about absolute corruption coming out of the absolute power of the one-party system. In passing, he touched upon the Beijing team now at the Moller Hotel. He hoped that Comrade Zhao would write back, throwing him some hints about what was going on at the top or the true reason for the Beijing team’s having been sent.

  To his surprise, Lieutenant Sheng of Internal Security gave Chen a call just as he was about to send the e-mail. Sheng was some sort of computer expert dispatched from Beijing, but he seemed to have bogged down in his assignment in Shanghai. Sheng didn’t discuss his work in any detail; it was just a polite, base-touching phone call. Could Sheng’s work or the call have something to do with the Zhou case? Chen didn’t push for clarification. He hadn’t been on too-friendly terms with Internal Security.

  Shortly after noon, Detective Yu popped into his office with a brown paper bag containing some of the sacrifice cakes from the previous day.

  “According to Peiqin, it’s a time-honored convention that anyone present at the service must have some of the cakes from the sacrifice table. It’s called heart-comforting cake. In our hurry, we forgot all about it. If it’s convenient, Peiqin also wants you to take some to your journalist girlfriend.”

  “Peiqin never gives up, does she?” Chen said. “I only met Lianping a week ago—as an author
meeting his editor.”

  “I simply repeat what Peiqin told me to say, Chief,” Yu said, “but the cake isn’t too bad. It’s made of sticky rice. According to her, you can eat it as it is, but if you prefer, you can also steam or warm it first, and it will taste better.”

  After Yu left, Chen took out a cake shaped like a silver ingot with a red imprint in the center. He might as well have it for lunch.

  He had hardly taken one bite of the slightly sweet cake when he got a call from Lianping. It turned out to be an invitation to a concert at the new Oriental Art Center in Pudong.

  “A ticket for a concert there costs more than a thousand yuan, but they gave me two for free. It would be too much of a waste if I were to go by myself.”

  It was a tempting invitation. A trip to the concert hall would be an acceptable excuse for him to take a break. He’d worn himself out thinking and speculating about all the possibilities, but to no avail. A change of scene might help to clear his mind.

  Besides, considering her willingness to come over to the temple last Saturday and her promptness in delivering the pictures to him and Peiqin, he wasn’t in a position to say no.

  “That’s nice. I’ll be there.”

  When he put down the phone, he noticed that it had started raining outside, a slow drizzle. He wondered at the promptness with which he had accepted her invitation. A siren was sounding in the distance.

  He went back to the unfinished e-mail. It took longer than he expected to compose one to Comrade Zhao. He experienced a sense of relief when he finally sent it out.

  Then he settled back to concentrate on the paperwork on his desk.

  It was near four o’clock when he looked up again. The drizzle seemed to have continued off and on.

  It could be a headache getting hold of a taxi on a rainy day, especially during rush hour. The Oriental Concert Hall was in Pudong, an area relatively new to him. He wasn’t sure if he could get there by subway or how bad the traffic would be. It would be better to leave early, he concluded, putting a paperback and a paper-wrapped heart-comforting cake into his shoulder bag.

  He decided not to take the bureau car. It would be too much to have the driver wait there until the end of the concert, and he might also tell stories afterward. It took Chen more than forty minutes to get there by the subway, but it was still faster than he’d expected. When he emerged from the subway, the rain was finally easing off, with a suggestion of a rainbow stretching out against the dismal horizon.

  To Chen, Pudong was almost like another city. The map he brought with him didn’t help much. Some of the streets and street names hadn’t existed when the map was printed about two years ago. The surrounding high-rises jostled together into an overwhelming oppression. At least, it felt that way to him. He looked up at the gray clouds sailing precariously among the concrete and steel skyscrapers.

  He thought he might as well wander about a little, just like Granny Liu lost in the Grand View Garden in the Dream of the Red Chamber. But he soon got weary of bumping around aimlessly. He glanced at his watch again. There was still more than an hour before the concert.

  He saw a small Internet café tucked in behind a construction site. Originally, it might have been a temporary place for the workers to take a short break. It would probably be pulled down once the high-rise was finished. It might not be a bad idea for him to check his e-mail here, he thought, before going on to the concert hall.

  When he stepped up to the front desk, a young man asked him to show his ID.

  “I just want to check my e-mail,” Chen said.

  “It’s a new regulation just put into effect this month. It was under the strict orders of the city government, and there’s nothing we can do about it.”

  “Really!”

  He produced his ID, and the young man recorded the ID number on a worn-out register before giving Chen another number.

  “Fifty-one.”

  That must refer to the computer assigned to him. He walked over to number 51, toward the end of a row of desks.

  Chen recalled what he’d heard from others during the investigation. Apparently this new effort on the part of the government was another step in the ever-tightening control of the Internet. It was no surprise that such a regulation had gone into effect without his knowledge. Internet control, too, was beyond the domain of the police bureau.

  He sat down at the computer and pressed the power button. A boy sitting next to him was noisily wolfing down a steaming bowl of instant beef noodles, his eyes still locked onto a game in a crisis as it played out across his screen.

  Signing on to his account, Chen found among his incoming mail a reminder from Lianping about this evening’s concert. She was also still pushing him to write something for her from the point of view of an ordinary cop.

  He then decided to check his Hotmail account, which he had acquired while visiting the United States as part of a delegation. Some of his friends in the States kept complaining about difficulties reaching him through his usual Sina e-mail account. He didn’t check the Hotmail regularly, but it was still early, and he had some time to kill.

  But he had problems gaining access to the Hotmail account. An assistant came over, tried several times, but with no more success than Chen. Chen was ready to give up when the assistant pointed him to another computer.

  “Try that one.”

  Chen moved to the new one, which seemed to work better but was still mysteriously slow. After three or four minutes, he conceded defeat. He decided to do some research through Google instead but was again informed that he couldn’t have access to it.

  Shaking his head, he switched back to his Sina account and retrieved a draft he’d saved.

  Crumpling a rejection slip, I step back into my role / shadowed by the surrounding skyscrapers. / I try in vain to make the case reports yield / a clue to the bell tolling over the city. / For all I know, what makes a cop makes me. / And I investigate through the small lanes / and side streets, the scenes once familiar / in my memories: a couple snuggling like / paper-cutouts on the door, a loner connecting / cigarettes into an antenna for the future, a granny / bending over a chamber pot in her bound feet / like a broken twig, a peddler hawking out of debris, / almost like a suspect … A sign DEMOLITION / deconstructs me. Nothing can avert the coming / of a bulldozer. It is not an easy task to push, / amidst the disappearing scene, the round to an end.

  He wondered whether the poem had been inspired by Lianping’s insistence. The images weren’t new, but the idea of an ordinary cop’s persona provided a framework, in which he found it easier to put what he wanted to say. He still wasn’t satisfied with it, but he thought that was about all he could afford to do with it for the moment. After reading it one more time, he sent it out as an attachment.

  He then noticed a new e-mail from Peiqin, who had also received the pictures Lianping had taken of the Buddhist service.

  Thank you so much, Chief, for coming to the service, and for bringing along your pretty, talented girlfriend. The digital pictures she took are high-resolution. They can be enlarged as much as you like. On one of the pictures I discovered something I didn’t even see at the temple—the address on the paper villa.

  Chen turned to click Lianping’s photo file. The picture Peiqin talked about was that of the paper villa burned as sacrifice in the temple courtyard. He enlarged the picture and, sure enough, could see the address clearly on the door—123 Binjiang Garden. It was the same thing Lianping had pointed out to him at the time. It was one of the most expensive subdivisions in Shanghai, a symbol of wealth and status in the city.

  Once again, an elusive idea flashed through his mind like a spark. He stared hard at the screen. Possibly there was something he’d overlooked. However, the idea vanished before he could really get hold of it. The screen stared back at him.

  Finally, he stood up from the computer.

  At the front desk, the clerk checked the time he spent on “Computer 51” and another clerk charged him accordingly. T
hey didn’t bother to record that he’d moved to a different computer, he observed. After all, the employees weren’t netcops. For them, the regulation was only an inconvenience, so it wasn’t realistic to expect them to observe it conscientiously. He pushed over a five-yuan bill, and the clerk handed him the change.

  He stepped out and made his way back to the concert hall. He was still about twenty minutes early. The concert hall was an ultramodern construction with a huge glass façade that incorporated metal sheeting of variable density. From where he stood near the entrance, he caught a glimpse of the interior partially covered with enamel ceramic, which alone must have cost an obscene amount of money.

  He was startled out of his observation by a car pulling up alongside him, a slender hand waving out of the window.

  “Have I kept you waiting long, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “Oh, no.”

  “Sorry, the traffic was terrible,” Lianping said. “I’ll park the car in the back and join you in one minute.”

  In four or five minutes, she emerged from the crowd with two tickets in her hand. She was wearing a light beige cashmere cardigan over a white strapless satin dress, and she had on silver high-heeled slippers, as if she was walking around in her living room.

  She belonged to a different generation: “born in the eighties,” as it was sometimes called. The term wasn’t just about the time but about the ideas and values imbued by that time.

  The lights in the concert hall were dimming as they entered and took their seats.

  Tonight it was Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 by the Singaporean Youth Orchestra. He had read and heard about Mahler, but he didn’t usually have time to go to concerts in the city.

  Somewhere backstage, a musician was erratically tuning his instrument. Lianping opened the program and studied it. In the semidarkness, Chen found himself beginning to miss, somehow, the career he’d once designed for himself. It was during his college years, when he went to concerts and museums quite regularly. Like the rest of his generation, he had a lot to catch up on because of the ten years lost to the Cultural Revolution. But then he was assigned to the police bureau. Half closing his eyes, he tried in vain to recover the dream of his youthful days …