Becoming Inspector Chen

by Qiu Xiaolong

  The translation would mostly likely be shelved, untouched, dust-covered into oblivion, and turned to its own dust, eventually, Chen supposed. With the Party interest placed above everything else, no one really wanted to bother about so-called procedure, which in fact was a word hardly used in China’s official discourse. No one here seemed to be interested in the translation. Still, that was what Chen had been doing from day one in the bureau. And for that he was given, instead of an office or a cubicle, a shaky desk in the reading room. With few visitors coming into the reading room, he was alone there most of the time, translating, reading, undisturbed, though more and more aware of his awkward role, like an idle librarian in the name of a cop.

  After a cup of lukewarm tea, he resumed the translation mechanically, with only half his mind on the work, and the other half wandering far away.

  He thought of a popular political catchphrase: ‘We each of us should be just like a screw fastened by the state wherever it chooses to.’ But a human being is not a screw. For that matter, what about the screw being a misfit? Useless, it would soon become rusted, unusable.

  It was twelve thirty when Chen rose from the desk to move down to the bureau canteen.

  The canteen appeared crowded as usual. He spotted Dr Xia sitting in a corner waving a hand at him from afar. Chen stepped over in a hurry so they would share the table with no one else approaching them – two different, lone ducks.

  Perhaps the only ‘other’ like him among the cops, Dr Xia had been assigned to work in Forensics in the early sixties, despite his college major in surgery. Like Chen, he was in no position to complain about the assignment, though he’d hardly had anything to do for years, with most of the cases being predetermined in accordance with political needs. After Deng’s reform gained momentum in the early 1980s, things began to improve in China, but Dr Xia had already reached his mid-fifties and was ready to retire soon.

  ‘The pork steak braised in brown sauce looks like an excellent choice, but …’ Xia said with a chuckle, pointing a black-painted chopstick at Chen’s chipped enamel bowl.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘You came too late. Guess what else the canteen served earlier today? Pork brains. I had two portions of it. Well steamed with lots of yellow rice wine and chopped golden ginger and green onion. Sold out in just two minutes.’

  That was one more thing the two had in common: neither could resist the temptation of exotic food.

  ‘You surely know the folk belief?’ Dr Xia went on. ‘According to it, whatever animal part you eat is supposed to be a boost to the corresponding part in your human body.’

  That Chen happened to know well. In the early sixties, when his mother had suffered hepatitis, he had had to go to the street food market early in the morning, time and again, for a slice of pork liver, standing in a long line for hours because of the severe food shortages at the time.

  ‘But you don’t have to worry about that, Dr Xia. You’re the recognized brains of the bureau.’

  ‘Well, the pork brains could be quite harmful because of high cholesterol. I simply cannot resist the texture, so soft yet creamy when it’s steamed well. But there’s also something inexplicable about that folk belief, you know. Fish roes are actually said to be harmful to the human brain. What’s the possible connection between the two? And if that’s true, the Western foodies must all be dummies.’

  Xia was talking about caviar, Chen guessed, having had it in the Friendship Hotel in the company of a literature professor from Scotland. He could not say he really liked it, but it might be a matter of acquired taste.

  ‘High cholesterol or not, who cares? Not me. A soon-to-be retiree. “Alas, years gone by with no achievement, / no opportunity until one’s gray and old. / Had General Li served under the First Emperor of the Han dynasty,”’ Xia sighed, quoting his favorite lines from the Song dynasty poet Liu Kezhuang. General Li, as mentioned in the poem, was a brilliant one in the Han dynasty, but also an unlucky one, without the due recognition from the untrusting emperor at the time. That was perhaps another reason that the two had struck up the unique canteen companionship in spite of the fact that Dr Xia had a passion for classical Chinese poetry, but no appetite for the modernist poems written by Chen.

  ‘But you may have more opportunities, Chen, in the changed times of ours. You are still young. If you care that much about your T.S. Eliot, how about taking an MA program in Western literature?’

  ‘My mother also wants me to make an MA application at Fudan University, but for that, you have to get the approval of Party Secretary Li first. Even with his approval secured, I may or may not be able to pass the MA entrance test. Then what will other people say about it in the bureau? And what about Party Secretary Li?’

  ‘That’s true. In the system of ours, you may have to make do with whatever job you’re given for the present moment. After all, there’s no telling how long you have to wait for something else to happen to you— Oh, there’s another reason I had the pork brains today,’ Xia said, changing the subject. ‘Guess what? I was just reminded of the latest case of the homicide squad.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Dr Xia?’

  ‘About exotic food, of course. This morning, I had a body sent into the lab from the homicide squad. When I cut it open, the mixed cuisines in his stomach more than astonished me.’

  ‘Mixed cuisines, you mean?’

  ‘Much more than that. So inexplicably mixed indeed,’ Xia said emphatically. ‘To begin with, a not-too-tiny amount of undigested fish roes, bigger and blacker than you can possibly imagine.’

  ‘Caviar!’

  ‘Exactly. Obscenely expensive, you know. Then something else – like Chinese transparent green bean noodles, but much tastier, I would say, before getting soaked and sodden like a mess of paste in the gastric juice. Guess what it could have possibly been?’

  ‘That surely sounds weird. Now let me take a wild guess – shark fin?’

  ‘Right again. For a young gourmet, Chen, you’re fairly well informed.’

  ‘I just happen to know something about it through an embarrassing mistake I made. Last year an overseas Chinese uncle took me to a high-end restaurant in Beijing and treated me to a tiny bowl of soup, which I finished in two or three large spoonfuls without tasting anything that special. Nothing but transparent green bean noodles, I assumed. Not until the end of the meal did I realize that it was the pricy shark fin. But that’s truly strange – I mean the mixing of the two in one’s stomach. Caviar and shark fin.’

  ‘Exactly. West and East! Now imagine throwing the drunken shrimp into it. That’s typical Ningbo cuisine. Simply unbelievable.’

  ‘That surely beats me. Drunken shrimp! Uncooked but drunken with liquor, the shrimp still twitching on a gourmet’s tongue. Anything else you have learned about the dead?’

  ‘No, nothing else, the identity is not established yet.’ Xia added, shaking his head, ‘Possibly just another cold case in a week or two.’

  After lunch, Chen checked the mail that had been delivered to the reading room. There was a package from Shang, his friend and college mate with a French major. It contained a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being in English, and a letter suggesting the two of them should join forces translating the French novel.

  ‘The novel is so poetic, Chen. It takes a poet like you to do it justice in the Chinese language. You have a lot of time on your hands right now, haven’t you?’

  A lot of time on his hands, that was true. He did not have to spend every minute translating the police procedures – at least the Party Secretary seemed not to be in any hurry for it. And he too had heard a lot about the novel. It could be a really worthy project. But it should be up to someone well-versed in the French language to do a proper job of the translation. Besides, what if he was caught moonlighting in the reading room?

  If the book was professionally related, he might be able to claim he was reading or translating in an effort to familiarize himself with police procedures. In fact, he
’d begun reading mysteries in the reading room in earnest, and that with a good conscience. Some of them proved to be quite thought-provoking, especially those with a sociological focus, greatly expanding the whodunit horizon for him.

  And it might have been a coincidence that a publisher in Guilin contacted him about the possibility of his translating a mystery at a tempting royalty rate. It appeared to be a workable idea for him to read it in the bureau first, and then translate it in the attic back home.

  Then his train of thought shifted back to the talk with Dr Xia in the canteen. In spite of his personal interests, Dr Xia was now seen as an acknowledged authority in the forensic field, having done a remarkable job over the last several years. Hence his presence in the police bureau was justified. What about Chen? Why couldn’t he try to do something in the line of a cop in addition to the translations assigned to him? Realistically, he’d better make the best of his present job in the police bureau before any other career opportunity presented itself.

  He decided to pay a visit to Detective Ding, the head of the homicide squad, with the ready-made excuse of consulting him about those investigation terms for the translation project, which happened to be true.

  A veteran cop in his mid-forties with rugged features, Detective Ding let him into the office with a suggestion of not-too-pleasant surprise on his face. After his rehearsed questions about the proper terms in the translation of police procedures, Chen brought up the topic of the body recently examined by Dr Xia.

  ‘Something I’ve just heard from Dr Xia today in the canteen, I cannot help feeling curious about it.’

  Nothing new came from Detective Ding, however, except a note of impatient frustration about what he took as a case of a mugging gone wrong.

  ‘So far nothing reported matches the description in the missing person’s file,’ Detective Ding said, taking out a close-up of the dead. A bespectacled man in his late sixties or early seventies, with a clean-shaven, deep-lined face. ‘We’ll have to post it for possible information.’

  ‘Any signs on the body?’

  ‘No signs of a struggle on the body or at the scene. A fatal stab to the heart from behind. Presumably with a sharp kitchen knife. Possibly died instantly.’

  ‘When was it reported?’

  ‘The following morning. According to Dr Xia, death occurred before midnight. Four days now. It does not add up. None of his family members have noticed or reported him missing so far, unless he lived by himself.’

  ‘Where was the body found?’

  ‘North Zhejiang Road, near Tianmu Road.’

  ‘The location is fairly close to the railway station—’

  ‘Well, we’ve thought about the possibility of his being a traveler who was passing through Shanghai. If that’s the case, more days may go by before people will contact us about it,’ Ding said, with noticeable irritation, looking Chen in the eye for the first time.

  ‘You’re right, Detective Ding.’

  Still, Ding seemed not to be taking that possibility seriously. The squad was short-handed. In the case of someone traveling here from another province, it could also prove to be out of the squad’s jurisdiction.

  ‘You’re truly experienced, Detective Ding,’ Chen said, standing up. ‘In spite of my college major in English, I’m a cop now, and I think I have to learn the basics of the profession. Particularly from a veteran like you.’

  ‘If you’re really that interested,’ Ding said, rising and turning back to the desk to pick up a manila folder, ‘here’s a copy of the crime scene report. Possibly not as interesting as those mysteries in English.’

  ‘Thank you so much,’ Chen said, taking the manila folder. Detective Ding must have heard something about his ‘work’ in the reading room.

  That same evening, Chen paid a visit to his middle school buddy Lu, nicknamed ‘Overseas Chinese Lu’, an even more impossible foodie than Dr Xia. For Dr Xia, it was a matter of eating for living, but for Lu it was the other way around – a matter of living for eating.

  Chen and Lu were quite different, but ‘birds of the same black feather flocked together’ in their middle school years, and they became friends because of their black family backgrounds. Still, while Chen kept his tail humbly tucked in, Lu struck another pose, holding his head high, his hair mousse shining. Lu might have been a ‘black puppy’ too, but he turned out to be one with the tail wagging in defiance. Far from feeling ashamed, Lu took an obstinate pride in coming from that ‘good old family’ of his, maintaining that his father ‘Ludwig’ was the ‘white fox fur king’ in the pre-1949 era. In contrast, Chen would have never dreamed of bragging and boasting of his father as an internationally known Neo-Confucianist scholar. That accounted for the origin of Lu’s nickname. ‘Overseas Chinese’ was unmistakably a negative term during the days of the Cultural Revolution. Nevertheless, Lu managed to openly cultivate ‘the decadent bourgeois taste’, coming to school in a jacket made out of a Western-style three-piece suit of his father’s, brewing coffee, tossing fruit salad, frying onion rings, and treating Chen to those delicacies at home.

  That evening Lu was making a pot of fish soup at home, greeting Chen with the pot lid grasped in his hand, hardly looking up from the steaming soup.

  ‘The mandarin fish was barely dead when I bought it at the food market, its eyes still clear in the late-afternoon light. For the soup, I fried the fish, added boiling water, and threw in a slice of Jinhua ham left over from the Chinese New Year. According to the recipe, it should take two or three hours for the soup to simmer over a small fire. Almost two hours now, you won’t regret waiting for just fifteen minutes more with me. You’ll relish it like nothing else, I give you my word. The milky white soup will be so delicious, so palatable, so tasty, you’ll simply bite off your tongue.’

  Lu’s impassioned exaggeration was nothing new to Chen, who readily agreed, smiling, taking a seat for himself.

  ‘While we are waiting for the soup, Overseas Chinese Lu, let me tell you something really intriguing about the food in someone’s stomach on the autopsy table.’

  ‘Wow, a food mystery! Yes, you’re a cop now, little wonder about it. Go ahead, I’m all ears.’

  With the soup bubbling on the fire, Chen recounted what Dr Xia had told him in the canteen. For some important parts, he practically repeated Xia’s description verbatim with all the details included.

  ‘Now you have come to the right man as your consultant,’ Lu said, with unmistakable pride in his voice. ‘I too have got a large piece of shark fin from my cousin in Hong Kong. We’ll do it together next time, Chen. It has to be immersed in water beforehand for several hours. I’ve been experimenting with special recipes of the exotic stuff—’

  ‘But that’s more than exotic. I mean, what was discovered on Dr Xia’s autopsy table,’ Chen hastened to shift back to the question he wanted to ask. ‘In just one meal with both caviar and shark fin left in his stomach. One typical of the West, and one symbolic of the East. Not to mention the drunken shrimp as well. How could such a combination have been possible? I cannot visualize them together even in my wildest imagination.’

  ‘Well, that’s a new trend you know nothing about in this magical city of Shanghai. Now let me ask you this question first. What’s the cuisine for Xinya Restaurant on Nanjing Road?’

  ‘Guangdongese. We’ve been there quite a few times, why?’

  ‘Yes, you love the beef in oyster sauce, I know. So tender, it practically melts on your tongue. Then, what about North Cloud Pavilion?’

  ‘Pekingese, I mean the cuisine.’

  ‘You have not forgotten the Peking duck that nearly finished us there, have you?’

  ‘Of course not.’ It had happened toward the end of their middle school years. The two of them had finally saved enough for a ‘duck enjoyable in three ways’ – duck skin wrapped in a pancake, duck meat slice fried with green bean sprout, and duck soup made of the bones, but at the end of the meal, the restaurant charged them for the pancake, the green oni
on and the special sauce as well – all extras not listed in the menu. So Lu had had to run back home for three more yuan.

  ‘Those days, one specific cuisine for one restaurant only, no question about it, that’s the traditional way in China. But not any more, whether fortunately or unfortunately. Last week in a meal with an old friend, we ordered beef in oyster sauce plus roast Peking duck plus Fujian fish ball soup, all of them exquisitely spread out on the same table. The experience is really not bad, I have to say, just like visiting three restaurants of different cuisines all at once. For the latest fashionable person, it is called fusion, you know.’

  ‘But the fusion of Occidental and Oriental?’

  ‘True, that’s a bit weird. Not conceivable even in one of the most fashionable fusion restaurants …’ Lu said, nodding in deep thought. ‘Oh, there’s a new restaurant called “Imperial Recipes” that’s increasingly popular among the newly rich in China.’

  ‘Imperial recipes?’

  ‘The ancient Chinese emperors believed they were the rulers of the whole world. So the delicacies of every cuisine imaginable would have been served in the palace. Some chefs nowadays claim that their ancestors served in the royal households. No one could tell whether it was true or not. Anyway, the trick is to put the expensive or exotic dishes of various cuisines on the one and only imperial table. The drunken shrimp, for instance, may appear to be too homely for a high-end restaurant, but there’s a tale about the Qianlong emperor of the Qing dynasty falling for the sensation of the shrimp jumping and kicking on his tongue with a young, half-naked boat girl kneeling beside, sucking him. So a present-day customer enjoys not just a simple dish of live liquor-drunken shrimp, but all the imagination of enjoying a sensationally sensual delicacy that the Qing emperor fell for. And you may also know the story about Songjiang river perch—’