Qiu Xiaolong - Red Mandarin Dress

“The Spring is most beautiful here.” On the screen, the slender nurse, played by the actress Linfeng, was humming the song, her face lit up with the passion of the socialist revolution. Years later, Linfeng emigrated to Tokyo, where she was said to be running a Chinese vegetarian restaurant. There she sang the song occasionally for overseas Chinese customers, her figure out of shape and too much makeup on her face. Of course, it would be naïve to expect an actress to keep playing such a role-or showing such a figure-all her life.

As it turned out, in the movie the dress was worn by the nurse’s mother, a middle-aged lady of the upper class in the old society, still resistant to the socialist revolution. But Peiqin was not exactly disappointed. As in her initial impression, mandarin dresses-in movies and in life-were mostly for those women moving about in fashionable upper-class.

As she was about to watch Golden Lock, her glance fell on a book she had brought home. The white-haired author looked strangely like her late father. She read the short biographical information beneath the picture on the cover. “Shen Wenchang, a well-known poet before 1949, and after 1949, an internationally known expert on the history of Chinese clothing.”

She opened the book, but it touched on the mandarin dress in only two short paragraphs. In the notes at the back of the book, she did not find a single scholar dealing exclusively with the mandarin dress. So perhaps the best she could get would be a paragraph here and there.

The old man must be in his eighties. She put down the book, gazing at the picture. If only she could consult an expert like him, she thought wistfully.

Around dinnertime, the phone rang. It was Chen, who expressed regret upon learning that Yu was still at work.

“Yu’s been so busy the last few days that he often comes back late. Don’t worry about him,” she said. “How is your paper going?”

“Slowly but steadily. I am so sorry about the timing, but it may be the last chance to try my hand at something different,” Chen said. “How are things with you?”

“Not that busy. I’m just reading some books. Everybody is talking about the red mandarin dress, so I thought I might learn something about it.”

“You are trying to help again, Peiqin. Have you found anything interesting?”

“Nothing yet. I’ve just started reading a book on the history of Chinese clothing. The author used to be a poet too.”

“Shen Wenchang?”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. A great scholar. There’s a new documentary movie about him.”

“I haven’t seen that movie. Oh, I bought a DVD, Random Harvest, from the novel you like. Yu told me about your days in the park.”

“Thank you, Peiqin. It’s so thoughtful of you. I can’t wait to watch it.” Chen added, “When Yu gets home, tell him to call me-oh, and to bring the movie over to me at his convenience.”

CHEN WOKE UP DISORIENTED, as if still floundering in a sea of thoughts.

With the second body found in the center of the city, with the media clamoring like cicadas in the early summer, he had to do something to help. He owed that to Yu. And to Hong too, who had kept him updated with the latest developments, smiling a radiant smile in spite of Liao’s grouchiness.

Having reviewed all the measures taken by his colleagues, however, Chen concluded he could hardly do any more than they, at least not as an “outside consultant.” He was still too much engaged with his paper. Running an investigation could be like writing a paper; ideas come with undivided concentration.

A bitter taste returned to his mouth. Brushing his teeth vigorously, he was struck with an idea-Peiqin’s idea. He happened to know Shen, the authority on the history of Chinese clothing.

Shen had been a poet in the forties, writing in a then-fashionable Imagist style. After 1949, he was assigned a job at the Shanghai Museum, where he denounced his earlier poetry as decadent and threw himself into the study of ancient Chinese clothing. Probably a neck-saving choice in the deteriorating political climate of the mid-fifties. As in Tao De Jing, misfortune leads to fortune. Because of his abrupt disappearance from the literary scene, the young Red Guards in the mid-sixties failed to recognize him as a “bourgeois poet,” and he was spared the humiliations and persecutions. In the eighties, he reemerged with a multivolume work on the history of ancient Chinese clothing, which was translated into several foreign languages, and he became an “internationally known authority.” The literary scene was busy with new voices and faces and few remembered him as a poet anymore.

Chen would not have remembered him either but for a meeting with a British sinologist who raved about Shen’s earlier literary work. Chen was impressed by a short poem about Shen’s early days:

Pregnant, happy / for the coming baby / who’ll be able to be / a Shanghainese, his wife’s touching / the blue veins streaking / her breasts, like-//the mountain ranges / against the pale clouds the day / he left, his grandmother / stumbling after him / in her bound feet, putting / a chunk of the soil /in his hand, saying, / “It-(a mutilated earthworm / wriggled out of the lump)-will / bring you back.”

As an executive member of the Writers’ Association, Chen took it upon himself to arrange for a reprint of Shen’s collection. It was not an easy job. The old man was nervous about poetry, like a man once bitten by a snake, and the publisher, hesitant about possible financial loss, was like a man in fear of a snake. Still, the collection came out and was caught up in the city’s collective nostalgia. People were pleased to rediscover a poetic witness of those golden years before the revolution. A young critic pointed out that the American Imagist poets were indebted to classical Chinese poetry and that Shen, labeled an Imagist, was actually restoring the ancient tradition. The article appealed to a group of “new nationalists,” and the collection sold fairly well.

Chen took out his address book and dialed Shen’s number.

“A gentleman’s request I cannot refuse,” Shen agreed, quoting from Confucius. “But I have to take a look at the mandarin dress.”

“No problem. I’m not in the bureau today, but you can talk to Detective Yu, or to Inspector Liao. Either of them will show you the dress.”

He then informed Yu of Shen’s visit. As Chen expected, Yu was pleased with the unexpected help, promising to show the dress to the historian. At the end of their call, Chen added, “Oh, it’s so thoughtful of Peiqin-she had the copy of Random Harvest specially delivered to me. I’ve been looking for that movie for a long time.”

“Yes, she’s been watching a lot of DVDs, trying to find clues there.”

“Anything new?”

“No, nothing so far, but the DVDs might give her a break from her job.”

“You’re right about that,” Chen said, though he didn’t really think so. It was like his reading for the last two weeks. Once he took it seriously-as something he had to do, something with a purpose-it gave him no break.

Before he could leave for the library to continue his work, there was another special delivery to his home. It was a package of new information about Jia Ming from Director Zhong.

Mostly it was speculation about Jia’s motive for making trouble for the government. Jia and his entire family had suffered during the Cultural Revolution; Jia ultimately lost his parents. He had become a lawyer in the early eighties, when such a career choice was uncommon. During the sixties and seventies, attorneys were hardly existent or relevant in China. Lawyers, like stocks, were considered part and parcel of capitalist society: hypocritical and for the rich. Major cases were determined or predetermined by the Party authorities, all in the name of the proletarian dictatorships. Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the People’s Republic of China, had been thrown in jail without a trial, and there he died alone, without a notice sent to his family for years. Jia had deliberately chosen to become an attorney at a time when it was far from a popular profession: he had planned to make trouble for the government from the beginning.