Qiu Xiaolong - Red Mandarin Dress

“No, I don’t. In our business, people usually don’t ask and don’t answer. She was young and inexperienced, that’s why I gave her a suggestion or two. Now that she’s dead, I don’t think I should tell-even if I knew something.”

“Whatever you tell me goes only into the background of my story. No real names will be given. I give you my word, Rong.”

“So it does not have to be about her?”

“No, not necessarily.” Peiqin understood her reservation, for people could sell the information about Qiao to a tabloid magazine. “Zhang knows me well. Otherwise he would not have given your name to me. It’s just for my fictional story.”

“Well, here’s a fictional story,” Rong said, draining her cup in one gulp and holding a golden-fried oyster in her fingers, “but with real background information about the profession. I won’t give the girl’s name. For a story, you don’t have to take it too seriously.”

It was smart of Rong, whose insistance on its being fictional meant she was not responsible for whatever she was going to say.

“She was born in the early seventies,” Rong started, nibbling at the fried oyster. “The maxim that ‘beauty is not edible’ was a favorite one for her parents. On the wall above her cradle was a poster of Chairman Mao’s ‘iron girl,’ tall and robust, muscles hard like iron. Indeed, when people have a hard time feeding themselves, beauty is like a picture of cake. In her elementary school, she drew a magnificent restaurant as her dream home, which she didn’t step in until she was fifteen.

“Her beauty blossomed in the mid-eighties. While her parents’ maxim might no longer be universally true, it still applied to her. In an age of connections, it took much more than looks to become a model or a star. She had no connections. For a girl from an ordinary worker family, a state-run factory job was considered an ideal ‘iron bowl.’ So upon high school graduation, she started working in a textile mill, a job made available through her mother’s early retirement.

“There, her beauty meant nothing. She worked three shifts, dragged her tired feet around the shuttles, back and forth, like a fly circling the same spot. Back home, she kicked off her shoes and clasped her callused soles. Outside the window, the willow shoots barren in the autumn wind, she knew one thing for a fact: a textile worker grows old quickly. Soon, the spring splendor fades / from the flower. There’s no stopping / the chill rain, or the shrill wind.

“But that was also the period when things started changing. Deng Xiaoping was launching China ’s reform. She started to have dreams unimaginable to her parents. Looking through fashion magazines, she couldn’t help feeling left out. In the descriptions of the neighborhood matchmakers, she made the clothes beautiful, rather than the other way round.

“So she came to a decision. She would make the most of her youth. An elaborate plan evolved out of Shanghai dating conventions. Young people would customarily dine out on their first one or two dates. The expense varied in proportion to his wallet or to her glamour. As in a proverb, a beauty’s smile is worth a thousand pieces of gold, especially at the early stages of a possible romantic relationship. The man would be generous with his money like a Sichuan chef with his black pepper. Once the relationship grew more stable, a Shanghai girl would urge her lover to save for their joint future. Occasionally, they might still go out to a good yet inexpensive place, like Nanxiang Soup Bun in the Old City God’s Temple Market, where they would spend two hours contentedly standing in a long line, waiting for their turn to savor the celebrated buns. It was only for a short period, she concluded, that a working-class girl like her might enjoy herself.

“Her mother was worried about her showing no sign of settling down. ‘I’m not ready yet,’ she said to her mother, ‘for a life with my family squeezing in a room of nine square meters, the baby crying, the wok smoking, the diaper dripping, and the walls peeling like irrecoverable dreams. No, I’m not looking forward to it. I will marry, eventually, like anybody else, but let me first enjoy life a bit.’

“And she enjoyed herself by trying those dates out in restaurants, insisting on expensive food and wine in the company of each man. The bill cut like a sharp knife, but if he winced, it was his problem. She kept her relationship with each man short and sweet. Well, short, though not that sweet when he could no longer afford her company. She had oyster sauce beef in Xingya Restaurant, roast Beijing duck in Yanyun Pavilion, baked crab meat with cheese in Red House, sugar silk apple in Kaifu Hotel, sea cucumber with shrimp ovary in Shanghai Old House, and so on and on.

“Her fifth date, allegedly with a wealthy uncle in Hong Kong, proved capable of taking her to one restaurant after another. At the end of two months, however, he, too, failed to show up in front of the Cathay Hotel. She was a little disappointed, but the next week, she met her sixth date in Spicy and Hot Pot, enjoying slices of lamb, beef, eel, shrimp, and all other delicacies imaginable, in a boiling pot of chicken broth between them. ‘The spring bamboo shoot looks so shapely,’ she said, picking one with her chopsticks. ‘So do your fingers,’ he said fatuously, holding her other hand. She did not withdraw it. After all, he spent so much for the meals. The following month, she met her seventh date in Yangzhou Pavilion, billing and cooing over a turtle steamed with ice sugar and ham, a celebrated special known for its supposed boost to sexual energy. She smiled, putting a piece of turtle meat onto his plate, and another into her mouth.

“Before long, she had a problem in the circle she had been moving. Those men introduced to her by her neighbors or colleagues were of similar social levels. None of them could really meet her expectations. One of them sold blood, it was said, before making the last appointment with her at Red Earth Restaurant.

“‘It’s not my fault,’ she defended herself. ‘They don’t have to hang on like that. Why are those restaurants so expensive? The quality. Why me? My beauty. I eat out not just for the taste in the mouth. In a factory, in front of a machine, I am like a screw, fixed there, lusterless, lifeless. In a high-end restaurant, I am a human being, a real woman being served and pampered.’

“With high-end hotels and restaurants appearing like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and with young beautiful girls hanging around them like wild weeds-three-accompanying girls-she soon made another decision. She was attractive, and knowledgeable about food too, and as an eating girl, her company at the dinner table was desirable. Also, she might be able to meet, at one of those Big Buck dinners, her future ‘gold-turtle’ husband instead of waiting for matchmakers to introduce to her another man incapable of paying the bill for her.

“It turned out to be quite a profitable profession. Choosing ten-year-old Huadiao wine, or the chef’s secret specials, such as dragon fighting tiger-with cat and snake meat in a pot, you know-or abalone with shark fin, she would get a sizable bonus. If the customer wanted some additional service, it was discussable. Soon she began to ‘turn adrift with the waves and currents.’

“One night, after a light meal with a Japanese customer, she followed him out to a five-star hotel, where she enjoyed for the first time the room service of sushi and saki. To oblige him, she changed into a Japanese kimono, kneeling on a soft cushion until she was rigid like cracked plastic lotus flower. After three cups of saki, however, she began feeling as if burgeoning out like a real night flower, fragrant with the knowledge that the meal cost thousands of Yuan. Later on, he had her take a shower, lie on the rug, and spread wasabi on her bare toes. He took them one by one into his mouth, sucked it like a baby, and declared it more delicious than the salmon sushi. He then moved to spread the green mustard on the other parts of her body while she giggled and gasped under his ticklish touch. He swore by his mother’s name that the ‘female body banquet’ was based on a time-honored Japanese gourmet tradition. Drunk, she missed the details of the ‘sensual feast.’ The next morning, when he offered her money, she declined. Her grandfather had been killed in the anti-Japanese war, she suddenly recalled. Instead, she took hotel restaurant vouchers equal to the amount.