Qiu Xiaolong - A Loyal Character Dancer

“Qian can also help with the paperwork,” Li added with a smile. “Oh, there’s a clothing subsidy for this job. Don’t forget to go see the bureau’s accountant.”

“Isn’t that allowance only for people going abroad?”

“You will have to put on your best suit for people coming from abroad. Remember, present a worthy image of our police force. You can also have a room at the Peace Hotel. That’s where Inspector Rohn will stay. It will be more convenient for you.”

“Well-” The prospect of staying in that famous hotel was tempting. Staying in a room overlooking the Bund would not only be a treat for him. He had invited Detective Yu’s family to come over to take a hot bath when he had stayed at the Jing River Hotel. Most Shanghai families did not have a bathroom, much less hot water. However, it would not necessarily be wise, Chen concluded, for him to stay in the same hotel as a female American officer. “That won’t be necessary, Party Secretary Li. It’s only ten minute’s walk from here. We can save money for the bureau.”

“Yes, we should always follow the time-honored tradition of the Party: Live simply and work hard.”

As he left Li’s office, Chen was disturbed by the elusive memory of what had happened to him, not too long ago, in another hotel.

What can be recaptured in memory / If it’s lost there and then?

He pounded at the elevator button. The elevator was stuck again.

The airplane was delayed.

Things were going wrong from the outset, Chen thought, as he waited at Shanghai Hongqiao International Airport. He stared at the information on the departure/arrival monitor, which seemed to stare back at him, reflecting his frustration.

It was a clear, crisp afternoon outside the windows, but local visibility at Tokyo ’s Narita airport, according to the information desk, was extremely poor. So passengers changing planes there, including Catherine Rohn flying via United Airlines, had to wait until the weather improved.

The closed gate looked inexplicably forbidding.

He did not like the assignment, though everyone else in the bureau might have agreed, for once, that he was the very candidate for it. Wearing a new suit, uncomfortable in a tightly knotted tie, carrying a leather briefcase, struggling to rehearse what he would say to Inspector Rohn upon her arrival, he waited.

Most of the people sitting around the airport, however, appeared to be in high spirits. A young man was so excited that he turned his cellular phone over and over, switching it from hand to hand. A group of five or six people, apparently of one family, kept sending one and then another, in turn, to the departure/arrival monitor. A middle-aged man tried to teach a middle-aged woman a few simple words in English, but finally gave up, shaking his head with a good-humored grin.

Sitting in a corner seat, musing about Wen’s probable whereabouts, Chief Inspector Chen was inclined toward kidnapping by the local triad as the explanation for her disappearance. Of course, Wen might have met with an accident. In either case, the clues would be in Fujian. But his job was to keep Inspector Rohn safe and satisfied in Shanghai. Safe as she might be, how could she be satisfied? If the Fujian police did not succeed in finding Wen, how would he be able to convince her that the Chinese police had done their best?

As for the possibility of Wen having gone into hiding, it seemed unlikely. According to the initial information, she had been applying for a passport for months, and had made a couple of trips to Fuzhou for the purpose. Why should she voluntarily disappear at this stage? If she’d had an accident, by now she should have been discovered.

There was, of course, another possibility: The Beijing authorities wanted to back out. When national interests were involved, anything was possible. If so, his job would be pathetic at best, like a marble go piece placed on the game board to distract the opponent’s attention.

He decided not to speculate further. There was no point. In a speech on China ’s economic reform, Comrade Deng Xiaoping had used the metaphor of wading across the river by stepping on one stone after another. When there’s no foretelling the problems ahead, no planning can avoid them. That was the only course Chen could follow now.

Opening his briefcase, he reached for Inspector Rohn’s picture for another look, but the photo he pulled out was of a Chinese woman-Wen Liping.

A haggard thin face, sallow, hair disheveled, with deep lines around her lusterless eyes, whose corners seemed weighed down by invisible burdens. This was the woman in the recent picture used in her passport application. So different from those in her high-school file, in which, Wen, looking forward to embracing her future, appeared young, pretty, spirited, her red armband flashing as she raised her arms to the skies during the Cultural Revolution. In high school, Wen had been a “queen,” though that was not a term used in those years.

He was particularly impressed by a snapshot of her taken at the Shanghai Railway Station: Wen danced with a red paper heart bearing a Chinese character- loyal -in her hand. A long, graceful neck, terrific legs, strands of her black hair curled against her cheek, and a red armband on her green sleeve. She was in the center of a group of educated youths, her almond-shaped eyes squinting in the sunlight, with people beating drums and gongs in a sea of red banners in the background. Underneath the picture was a caption: Educated Youth Wen Liping, graduate of the class of ‘70, the Great Leap Forward High School. The picture had appeared in Wenhui Daily in the early seventies, when high-school graduates from cities, the “educated youths,” were sent to the countryside in response to Chairman Mao’s declaration: It is necessary for the educated youths to receive reeducation from the poor and lower-middle-class peasants.

Wen went to Changle Village in Fujian Province, as a “relative-seeking” educated youth. Soon afterward-in less than a year-she had married Feng Dexiang, a man fifteen years her senior, the head of the Revolutionary Committee of the Changle People’s Commune. There were different explanations for the marriage. Some described her as a too ardent believer in Mao, but others claimed pregnancy was the cause. She had a baby the following year. With her newborn infant bundled on her back, in sweat-soaked black homespun, laboring barefoot in the rice paddies, few would have recognized her as an educated youth from Shanghai. In the following years, she returned to Shanghai only once-on the occasion of her father’s funeral. After the Cultural Revolution, Feng was removed from his position. In addition to her toil in the rice paddy and vegetable plots, Wen started working in a commune factory to support the family. Then their only son died in a tragic accident. Several months ago, Feng had left on board The Golden Hope.

Little wonder, Chen observed, that her passport picture looked so different from those in her high-school file.

The flower falls, the water flows, and the spring fades, / It’s a changed world.

Twenty years gone in a snap of one’s fingers, Wen had graduated from high school just two or three years earlier than he. Chief Inspector Chen thought now that he had comparatively little to complain about in his life, despite this absurd assignment.

He glanced at his watch. Still some time before the airplane arrived. At a phone booth, he dialed Qian Jun at the bureau. “Has Detective Yu called in?”

“No, not yet.”

“The flight is delayed. I have to wait for the American and then accompany her to the hotel. I don’t think I will make it back to the bureau this afternoon. If Yu calls, tell him to reach me at home. And see if you can also speed up the report on the autopsy of the body in the park.”