Qiu Xiaolong - Enigma of China

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. They 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…