Qiu Xiaolong - Shanghai Redemption

This wasn’t the moment to get lost in self-pity, he told himself. Yet he couldn’t shake off the sense of foreboding, the feeling that this was not the end of his troubles.

As an “emerging Party cadre,” he was not without connections-some of them within the Forbidden City, near the very top. But his “promotion” had come out of the blue, which in itself suggested the seriousness of the situation. None of his connections had tried to help or to warn him. Even Comrade Zhao, the retired secretary of the Central Party Discipline Committee, with whom Chen had worked closely on politically sensitive cases, had chosen to remain silent.

Two lines by Li Bai came back to Chen unexpectedly:

The cloud drifting, obscuring the sun, / it worries me that there’s no visibility of Chang’an.

Chang’an was the capital during the Tang dynasty. Li Bai, though a brilliant poet, got himself into political trouble during the An Shi rebellion, which marked the beginning of the downward turn for the once-powerful Tang empire.

In the present-day world, however, Chen couldn’t come up with a specific reason for his own troubles. As a chief inspector, he had ruffled enough high feathers, unwittingly or not, that any number of actions could have come back to haunt him. Any number of powerful people could have been waiting for the right moment to retaliate, now tackling him from the dark and putting a stop to his career. He was known to be “liberal,” and in recent years, increasingly disillusioned with the contemporary politics of China, he’d made a point of shirking his duty to the Party. But he didn’t think he posed a direct threat to those above him.

Still, Chen sensed there was an unusual urgency to the move to sideline him. With the national Party conference scheduled for the end of the year, there might be something brewing that conflicted with the Party’s undisclosed political agenda. Perhaps a certain case being investigated by the chief inspector spelled serious trouble to someone high up. But as far as he could see, there was nothing special among the investigations waiting for his attention in his Special Case Squad.

The cemetery bus was not the best place for Chen to mull over possibilities. Abruptly, the pungent smell of salty fish surged up, derailing his thoughts. He glanced around, noticing a covered bamboo basket at the foot of an old woman across the aisle. Probably in her late sixties or early seventies, she had a sallow, deeply lined face and a prominent mole on her shrunken chin.

“My late husband likes salted fish,” she said with an apologetic grin, aware of Chen’s gaze. “I bought it at Three Sun. His favorite store. It’s so expensive, but it doesn’t taste like it used to.”

Salted fish was supposed to be a special Qingming offering. It was traditional for people to bring the once-favorite foods to the dead. Chen hadn’t brought anything with him this trip, a realization that hit him hard.

“Tastes different? Little wonder,” a elderly man sitting behind her cut in. “You know how they preserve the fish? By spraying it with DDT. With my own eyes, I saw a fly land on a salt-covered belt fish. It twitched and died in two or three seconds. Poisoned instantly. No exaggeration.”

“What rotten luck!” The woman started crying. “I can’t even serve a bowl of untoxic salted fish to my poor old man.”

“Don’t cry your heart out here, old woman,” another man said. “In an hour, you can weep and wail as loudly as you like at his tombstone.”

Chen didn’t know what he could say to comfort her, so he turned away, rolled down the window, and took out the pack of cigarettes again. A noise broke out behind him.

“No one in this bus is a Big Buck. Don’t put on any damned airs. If you’re a Big Buck, why are you huddled up in a stuffy, smelling bus?”

“We’re all poor. But so what? You may have an iron and steel fence that lasts for thousands of years, but you’ll still end up in a mound of earth.”

“Come on, it’s a mound in the Eight Treasure Hills in Beijing. What feng shui! No wonder their sons and daughters are inheriting powerful positions today.”

It sounded like the onset of a squabble. People could so easily become querulous. And not without reason, including the ever-increasing gap between the rich and poor. The passengers on the bus had found themselves at the bottom of society. The myth of Maoist egalitarianism, promoted by the Party authorities for so many years, was fading into a lost dream.

His cell phone rang. It was Skinny Wang, the veteran chauffer of the police bureau.

“Where are you, Chief? It’s so noisy in the background.”

“I’m on a cemetery bus to Suzhou. Qingming.”

“How can you leave without telling me?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m your driver. Why are you taking the bus?”

“I no longer work for the bureau.”

Chief Inspector or not, Chen could still have arranged a bureau car and a chauffer for the trip. He hadn’t cleaned out his office yet. But it wasn’t a good idea to arrange a bureau car for a personal trip.

“You’re the one and only police officer that makes me feel proud about my job, Chief.”

“Come on. You don’t have to say such things.”

“Let me tell you a true story. I went to a class reunion last month. At such events, people like talking about their jobs and about the money they make. Those of my generation, with ten years wasted by the Cultural Revolution, consider themselves lucky to have a steady job, though a job as a driver is nothing to brag about, let alone as a driver for the police department. But I got to declare, ‘I drive for Chief Inspector Chen.’ Several people stood up and came over to shake my hand. Why? Because of you. They’d heard and read about you. That you are a capable and conscientious cop-an almost endangered species nowadays.

“And then Xiahou, a multimillionaire businessman, toasted me. ‘To your extraordinary job.’ Seeing that I was flabbergasted, Xiahou explained, ‘You mentioned Chief Inspector Chen. Now, you must have heard about “singing the red,” the movement to make people sing patriotic songs. I could have been thrown in jail for refusing to have my company sing these songs like rituals. It was Chen that spoke out for me. Mind you, he didn’t even know about me, he was just speaking out as a honest cop. He’s a qingguan-like Judge Bao or Judge Dee.’”

“Qingguan,” Chen murmured. In ancient China, qingguan meant incorruptible officials, those rare, practically nonexistent officials who were not the product of the system, rather an aberration of it. Consequently, they frequently got into trouble. That was probably why Skinny Wang brought this up just now. But Chen didn’t remember any businessman named Xiahou.

“Anyway, you’re my Chief Inspector,” Skinny Wang went on. “I don’t see anything improper in asking me to drive for you.”

“But grave-sweeping is something personal. I don’t think I should use the car for personal matters, even if I keep my office in the bureau.”

“If you say so. Next time, I’ll drive you in my own car, but you have to let me know.”

“I will. Thank you so much, Skinny Wang.”

Closing the phone, he turned back to look out the window at the passing landscape. Suddenly the bus erupted in noise again. A loudspeaker started broadcasting a red song called “No Communist Party, No New China.”

Oh the Communist Party, it works so hard for the nation, / It wholeheartedly tries to save the country, / It points out the way of liberation for the people, / It leads China to a bright future…

It was one of those old revolutionary songs that sang the praises of the Party, though this version had a suggestion of jazz in its modified rhythm. It was surprisingly familiar yet strange. The message, however, was unmistakable. Only the Party can rule China, and whatever it does is justified and right.