Qiu Xiaolong - Death of a Red Heroine

The most unexpected call came from Old Hunter, Detective Yu’s father.

“You recognize my voice, Chief Inspector Chen. I know you’re busy, but I want to discuss something with you. Guangming, that young rascal, is going to send my gray hair into the grave.”

“What! Guangming? He’s the most filial son under the sun.”

“Well, if you can spare me half an hour of your precious time, I will tell you all about it. Now you’re having your plastic box of lunch again, I guess. No good. What about coming to the Mid-Lake Teahouse, you know the one, behind the City God’s Temple. I’ll buy you a cup of genuine Dragon Well green tea. It will agree with your stomach. I’m calling from a pay phone there.”

It was a request to which Chen could hardly say no, and not just because of his friendship with Detective Yu. Old Hunter had served in the force for over thirty years. Though retired, the old man still considered himself an insider, with his connections in the bureau and out.

“Okay, I’ll be there in about twenty minutes. Don’t worry, Guangming’s fine.”

In the case of serious trouble between father and son, however, Chen didn’t think that he was the best choice as a mediator, nor was it the right time for him to intervene. The talk he had just had at the Discipline Committee weighed heavily on his mind. But he swallowed his plastic-box lunch, then made his way to the temple in a hurry.

The City God’s Temple was said to have been built during the Southern Song dynasty in the fifteenth century. The temple had been rebuilt and refurbished a number of times, the last in 1926. The main hall had been reinforced with concrete, the clay images gilded. In the early sixties, the images had been smashed to pieces as a result of the Socialist Education Movement, and in the early eighties the temple had undergone another drastic renovation after being used as a general storage place, for it was then turned into an arts-and-crafts shopping center. The original appearance of the temple was now restored, with black-painted doors and yellow walls. Its interior presented a dazzling array of shining glass counters and stainless steel shelves. On the door was a couplet engraved in bold brush strokes: Be an honest man so that you can enjoy a peaceful sleep,/ Do something good so that God will know about it.

Communists, of course, did not believe in God, Oriental or Occidental, but it was nonetheless good advice to people to do something good and to have a clear conscience, especially from a cop’s point of view.

So a marketplace had been made from a temple.

In front of the temple, however, he saw a group of elderly women gathering around something like a cushion. Several were kneeling on the ground. One was kowtowing before the cushion with bunches of burning incense in her hands and murmuring something almost inaudibly:

“City God… protect… family… stock…”

It was obvious that the temple was still a temple-at least to these worshippers.

Appearance and reality.

Some people said that sooner or later a temple would be made out of the market. Maybe this was a metaphor for commodity fetishism. Maybe not. He was becoming befuddled.

The surrounding bazaar consisted of numerous small shops selling a variety of local products, but what made the bazaar special was an incredible number of Chinese snack shops, bars and booths. The snacks were not expensive, but delicious in their unique flavors. In his high-school years, Chen had once invited Overseas Chinese Lu and Four-Eyed Jiang to an ambitious campaign- to sample every snack shop in one afternoon. Their tactic was to share everything. Each tried no more than one small bite. So in one afternoon they had tasted chicken and duck blood soup, radish-shred cake, shrimp and meat dumplings, beef soup noodles, fried bean curd and vermicelli… They had not succeeded. Halfway through, their joint funds ran out. But that had been one of their happiest days.

Four-Eyed Jiang had thrown himself into a well during the Cultural Revolution, Overseas Chinese Lu had his restaurant now, and he, he was a police inspector.

The Mid-Lake Teahouse was a place they had not visited during that campaign, but he knew it to be a two-storied pavilion shaped like a pagoda in the middle of a man-made lake, opposite the Crane and Pine Restaurant. There was a nine-turn stone bridge with a flight of steps leading to the teahouse. He made his way across the bridge, which was full of tourists at every turn: People pointing at the lotus flowers swaying in the breeze, throwing bread crumbs to the golden carp swimming among the blossoms, or posing for pictures with the teahouse in the background.

There were only a few tea drinkers on the first floor. Chen looked around without catching sight of Old Hunter, so he walked up the vermilion-railed stairs. On the second floor there were even fewer customers, and he saw the old man sitting by the window with a teapot.

“Come and sit with me, Comrade Chief Inspector,” the old man said, waving his hand, as Chen moved toward a seat beside him.

“Thank you,” Chen said. “It’s so elegant here.”

Their table overlooked the lake filled with lotuses. The view was serene.

“On the second floor everything costs twice as much. But it’s worth it. A cup of tea here is the only indulgence I’ve permitted myself since retirement.”

Chen nodded. A cup of tea here was different from one in the crowded, stuffy room that contained the retired old man’s daily life since he had relinquished the front room to his son.

There was a whisper of southern bamboo music in the teahouse, perhaps from a tape player somewhere. A silver-haired waiter carrying a heavy shining brass kettle poured the water in a graceful arc into the tiny cup before Chen. There was lore to this. In ancient China, teahouse waiters had been called Doctors of Tea, and the teahouse was a place of spiritual cultivation, as well as where people exchanged daily information.

“I know you also like good tea,” Old Hunter said. “I do not know how to say this without sounding too condescending, Comrade Chief Inspector. There are not too many people I’m willing to drink tea with.”

“Thank you,” he said.

That’s true, he thought. The old man had always been proud in his way, but nice. And helpful to him.

“I’ve something for you, Comrade Chief Inspector. Since I cannot get hold of Guangming, I may as well tell you.”

“He’s so busy,” Chen said. “I have not seen him today, either.”

“Working on that model worker case?”

“Yes, but what’s the problem?”

“It’s not really about Guangming, but about the case.

Guangming has discussed it with me. I’m no outsider, you know. I have some information about it.”

“Really, older ginger is spicier than young, Uncle Yu,” Chen said, resorting to a cliche. “You surely have the knack of digging out information.”

“A woman called Jiao Nanhua told me that Guan was having an affair shortly before her death.”

“Who is Jiao Nanhua?”

“She’s a dumpling vendor on Guan’s street, on the corner, in front of the grocery shop. A night vendor with a miniature kitchen on her shoulder. She literally carries everything on a bamboo pole. On one end of the pole, a stove, and a pot of steaming water, and on the other, a shelf with dumpling skins, ground pork, vegetables, bowls, spoons, and chopsticks. She does her business when restaurants are closed, making dumplings then and there for the customer on the street. In three minutes, she’ll have a steaming bowl in your hands.”

“That’s nice! I wish there was one like that in our neighborhood, too,” Chen said, aware of Old Hunter’s other nickname, “Suzhou Opera Singer,” a reference to a popular southern dialect opera known for its performers’ tactics of prolonging a story through endless digression. “So what did she say?”