Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

“Who do you think that might have been?”

“His identity is still to be determined, but he was not local. Now, any news from your side, Inspector Rohn?”

“Feng did make a phone call to Wen on April fifth. We’re having it translated and analyzed. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear more.”

“That may contain the answer to Wen’s disappearance,” Chen said, taking a look at his watch. “Tell me, what’s your plan for the morning.”

“I have no plan.”

“Have you had your breakfast?”

“No, not yet.”

“Excellent. My plan is to have a good breakfast,” Chen said. “After my long discussion with Detective Yu this morning. I hurried over without having had a bite.”

“We can have something downstairs,” she proposed.

“Forget the hotel dining room. Let me take you to another place-genuine Chinese flavor, typical Shanghai atmosphere. Only a few minutes’ walk away.”

She looked for reasons for not going out with him, but came up with none. And it would be easier for her to ask to have a part in his investigation over a congenial breakfast. “You keep amazing me, Chief Inspector Chen, a cop, a poet, a translator, and now a gourmet,” she said. “I’ll change.”

It took her a few minutes to shower, to don a white summer dress, and to comb her hair into obedience.

Before they left the room, Chen held out a cellular phone to her. “This is for your convenience.”

“A Motorola!”

“You know what it is called here?” Chen said. “Big Brother. Big Sister if the owner is a woman. The symbols of upstarts in contemporary China.”

“Interesting terms.”

“In Kung Fu literature, this is what the head of a gang would sometimes be called. Rich people are called Mr. Big Bucks nowadays, and Big Brother and Sister carry the same connotation. I have a cell phone myself. It will make it easier for us to contact each other.”

“So we’re a Big Sister and a Big Brother, going out for a walk in Shanghai,” she said with a smile.

Strolling along Nanjing Road, she saw the traffic was completely snarled. People and bikes kept cutting in and out of the smallest spaces imaginable between cars. The drivers had to keep braking all the time.

“ Nanjing Road is like an extended shopping center. The city government has imposed restrictions on traffic here.” Chen spoke like a tourist guide again. “It may become a pedestrian mall in the near future.”

It took them no more than five minutes to reach the intersection of Nanjing Road and Sichuan Road. She saw a white Western-style restaurant on the corner. A number of young, people were sipping coffee behind the tall, amber-colored windows.

“Deda Cafe,” Chen said. “The coffee here is excellent, but we are going to a street market behind it.”

She looked up to see a sign at the street entrance, the central market. It marked a narrow street. Shabby, too. In addition to a variety of tiny stores with makeshift counters or tables displaying goods on the sidewalk, there was a cluster of snackbars and booths tucked into the corner.

“Formerly, it was a marketplace for cheap and secondhand goods, like a flea market in the United States.” Chen continued plying her with information. “With so many people coming here, eating places appeared, convenient, inexpensive, but with a special flavor.”

The snackbars, food carts, and small restaurants seemed to fill the air with a palpable energy. Most appeared to be cheap, low-class, in sharp contrast to those near the Peace Hotel. A curbside peddler spread out skewers of diced lamb on a makeshift grill, adding a pinch of spices from time to time. A gaunt herbalist measured out ancient medicinal remedies into a row of earthen pots boiling under a silk banner declaring in bold Chinese characters: medical meal.

This was where she wanted to be, at a clamorous, chaotic corner that told real stories about the city. Fish, squid, and turtles, were all displayed alive in wooden or plastic basins. Eels, quails, and frog legs were frying in the sizzling woks. Most of the bustling restaurants were full of customers.

They found a vacant table in a bar. Chen handed her a dogeared menu. After looking at the strange names of the items listed, she gave up. “You decide. I’ve never heard of any of them.”

So Chen ordered a portion of fried mini-buns with minced pork stuffing, shrimp dumplings with transparent skin, sticks of fermented tofu, rice porridge with a thousand-year-egg, pickled white squash, salted duck, and Guilin bean curd with chopped green scallions. All in small dishes.

“It’s like a banquet,” she said.

“It costs less than a continental breakfast in the hotel,” he said.

The tofu came first, tiny pieces on bamboo sticks like shish kebabs. In spite of a wild, sharp flavor, she started to like it after the first few bites.

“Food has always been an important part of Chinese culture,” Chen mumbled, busily eating. “As Confucius says, To enjoy food and sex is human nature.’”

“Really!” She had never come across that quotation. He could not have made it up, could he? She thought she caught a slight suggestion of humor in his tone.

Soon she became aware of curious glances from other customers-an American woman devouring common food in the company of a Chinese man. A pudgy customer even greeted her as he passed their table with an enormous rice ball in his hand.

“Now I have a couple of questions for you, Chief Inspector Chen. Do you think Wen married Feng, a peasant, because she believed so devoutly in Mao?”

“That’s possible. But for things between a man and a woman, I don’t think politics alone can be an explanation.”

“Did many of the educated youths remain in the countryside?” she said, nibbling at the last piece of tofu.

“After the Cultural Revolution, most of them returned to the city. Detective Yu and his wife were educated youths in Yunnan, and they came back to Shanghai in the early eighties.”

“You have an interesting division of labor, Chief Inspector Chen. Detective Yu is busy working in Fujian, and you stay in Shanghai to enjoy delicious snacks with an American guest.”

“It is my responsibility as a chief inspector to welcome you on the occasion of your first trip to China, and of the first instance of anti-illegal-immigration cooperation between our two countries. Party Secretary Li made a special point of it. ‘Make Inspector Rohn’s stay in Shanghai a safe and satisfactory one’ are my orders.”

“Thank you,” she said. His self-mockery was apparent now, which made their talk easier. “So when I go back home, I’m supposed to talk about the friendship between our two countries, and the politics in your newspapers.”

“That is up to you, Inspector Rohn. It’s the Chinese tradition to show hospitality to a guest from a faraway country.”

“In addition to entertaining me, what else are you going to do?”

“I’ve made a list of Wen’s possible contacts here. Qian Jun, my temporary assistant, is arranging for me to interview them this afternoon or tomorrow morning. In the meantime, I will keep exchanging information with you.”

“So I am to sit in the hotel all day, waiting for phone calls, like a switchboard operator?”

“No, you don’t have to do that. It’s your first trip to China. Do some sightseeing. The Bund, Nanjing Road. I’ll serve as your full-time tour escort over the weekend.”

“I would rather join you in your work, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“You mean take part in the interviews?”

“Yes.” She looked him in the eye.

“I don’t see any reason why not, except that most people speak the Shanghai dialect here.”

His answer was a diplomatic one, she thought, but nonetheless an excuse.