Xiao Bai - French Concession

This story is set in 1931, or Year 20 of the Republic, the twentieth year after the revolution that overthrew the Ch’ing Dynasty and created the Republic of China. It takes place in the foreign concessions established by Britain, France, and the United States in the mid-nineteenth century, extraterritorial jurisdictions in the heart of Shanghai. The British and American settlements were soon combined to form what was known as the International Settlement, whereas the French Concession remained independent. Both concessions were returned to the Chinese government during or shortly after the Second World War.

Spelling of Chinese names throughout mostly accords with the Wade-Giles system in use at the time, except where certain conventional names or spellings (such as the Whampoa) are more widely used.

WEISS HSUEH/HSUEH WEI-SHIH, a French-Chinese photojournalist who becomes an unofficial detective for the Political Section of the French Concession Police

THERESE IRXMAYER/LADY HOLLY, a White Russian firearms dealer and Hsueh’s lover

LENG HSIAO-MAN, a member of a revolutionary cell and Hsueh’s lover

TS’AO CHEN-WU, Leng’s second husband

WANG YANG, Leng’s first husband

KO YA-MIN, a member of the cell

LIEUTENANT SARLY, head of the Political Section of the French Concession Police

INSPECTOR MARON, head of a detective squad under the Political Section of the French Concession Police

KU FU-KUANG, leader of the revolutionary cell

PARK KYE-SEONG, a Korean member of the cell and Ku’s right-hand man

LIN P’EI-WEN, head of one of the cell’s units

CH’I, an ex-prostitute and Ku’s lover

ZUNG TS-MIH, Therese’s business partner from Hong Kong

YINDEE ZUNG/CH’EN YING-TI, Zung Ts-Mih’s sister

AH KWAI, Therese’s maidservant from Hong Kong

TSENG NAN-P’U, a functionary in Nanking’s Central Bureau

CHENG YÜN-TUAN, a secretary at Nanking’s Investigative Unit for Party Affairs

SECRETARY CH’EN, a senior member in the Communist Party and former leader in the student movement

THE POET FROM MARSEILLE, a member of Inspector Maron’s detective squad

COMMISSIONER MARTIN, an English commander at the International Settlement’s Municipal Police

BARON FRANZ PIDOL, Luxembourg United Steel Company’s chief representative in Shanghai

MARGOT PIDOL, Baron Pidol’s wife and Therese’s close friend

BRENEN BLAIR, Margot’s lover

CONSUL BAUDEZ, the French consul in Shanghai

COLONEL BICHAT, head of the Shanghai Volunteer Corps

SERGEANT CH’ENG YU-T’AO/POCK-FACED CH’ENG, head of North Gate Police Station

M. MALLET, Chief of the French Concession Police

SAWADA-SAN, First Secretary at the Japanese consulate

LI PAO-I, a newspaper reporter at the Arsène Lupin

TAO LILI/PEACH GIRL, a prostitute at Moon Palace Dancing Hall

BARKER, an American

THE BOSS, head of the Green Gang

MORRIS JR., prominent member of the Green Gang

CH’IN CH’I–CH’ÜAN, a member of Lin’s unit

FU, a member of the cell

LI, a member of the cell

CHOU LI-MIN, a member of the cell

PEARL YEH, a famous actress

YAN FENG, a cameraman at the Hua Sisters Motion Picture Studio

PIERRE WEISS, Hsueh’s father

MR. AND MRS. ROMANTZ, proprietors of the restaurant Bendigo

HUGO IRXMAYER, Therese’s deceased husband

MAY 19, YEAR 20 OF THE REPUBLIC.

2:24 A.M.

The walls of the cabin were trembling. A steam whistle piped two short blasts. Hsueh opened his eyes. He still had the covers pulled over his head, and the ebb and flow of waves sounded like thunder in a distant world. The world beneath the covers was warm and rocked gently. Therese’s naked back shivered in the darkness. The ship’s engine must be restarting.

A thick fog had blotted out the stars. Going out onto the deck right now would be like stepping into a freezing dark dream. The deck would be treacherously slippery, and he would have no sense of direction — he would barely even know where his own hands and feet were. He would hear the waves but be unable to see them in the endless darkness. He might see a buoy flickering dimly several hundred yards away, as if through uncountable layers of black gauze.

The Paul Lecat set off at full steam. In only a few hours, it would be high tide on the Yangtze, the only time when a large ship could sail safely through the Astraea Channel. There was a sandbank on the northern side of the channel, and the whole channel was sandlogged. When the tide was at its lowest, the shallowest stretches of river would be less than twenty meters deep. The Paul Lecat weighed 7,050 tons, and displaced about twenty-eight meters of water. It thus had two hours to reach the next anchorage site at Wu-sung-k’ou, the mouth of the Wu-sung River.

Sea lanes at the mouth of the Yangtze River

Halfway through the journey up the river, it had a close brush with disaster. A German cargo ship sailing out to sea passed it very narrowly—“pass port to port” was the entry the pilot would make in his logbook that day. The river was foggy. The pilot did not hear the other ship sound the horn at its bridge, and by the time he saw the red light on its port side, they were on course to collide. The Paul Lecat hastily turned fifteen degrees starboard to let the other ship pass. In so doing, it was nearly forced out of the channel and onto the muddy sandbanks.

With the door just a crack open, a sliver of red light filtered in. Hsueh opened the cabin door and was immediately terrified by the sight of the other ship advancing toward him like a huge building.

He crept back under the sheets. Therese was sleeping like a mother hog, her snores long and gentle.

His fingernails brushed across the cloud-shaped purple birthmark between her shoulder blades.

Although they were traveling together, he knew little about her apart from her name. After all, she had engaged his services as a lover, not as a spy.

She likes to chain-smoke, especially in bed. She knows a lot about antique jewelry. Her ink green garnet stone has a pattern like a horse’s mane. She knows some mysterious people in Hong Kong and Saigon. Granted, some of these were his own inventions — strangers always stimulated Hsueh’s imagination. He was a photographer, and he made his living peddling photographs to all the newspapers and magazines in Shanghai. If he was lucky, a single photograph of a burglary-murder scene might fetch fifty yuan.

The first time they had met was at the scene of a shooting, standing over the corpse. The second time was at Lily Bar in Hongkew, next to a massage place with lanterns outside that read PARIS GIRLS . She wasn’t all that different from the Paris girls inside, he thought.