Shanghai Story

by Alexa Kang

  The only drawback was, the Old City was under Chinese control. Without French or English street signs, Eden felt a little lost. She couldn’t easily find her way by looking at the landmarks either. Here, nothing distinguished one shop from another except for the different types of goods they sold. None had fancy interiors, pretty store signs, or display windows like the fashion and luxury boutiques on Avenue Joffre. There were no French cafes and restaurants serving high tea and dainty desserts either. The streets were lined with only simple retail units which at best could be described as practically arranged. The owners obviously gave no thought to décor or beauty. If Madam Yuan hadn’t suggested for her to come to this part of Shanghai, she wouldn’t have even known the local Chinese here lived such a different life.

  The clutter of Chinese signs hanging above the stores was of no help. Maybe she should have listened to everyone and hired a taxi, but how could she claim this city as her new home if she couldn’t function like a local? She wasn’t like the British, the French, or the others who could return to their home countries whenever they wanted. She might very well spend the rest of her life here. If that was the case, she wanted to learn her way around. She couldn’t confine herself within the foreign concessions like Shanghailanders who sheltered themselves in replicas of their own worlds until they’d had enough fun and decided to leave.

  Anyway, hiring a taxi would erase a large portion of the discount. How pointless would that be?

  She looked to her right. Not a single foreigner in sight. A chubby woman came out of a noodle shop carrying a bucket of water. She set the bucket down on the ground next to a crate holding a pile of dirty dishes. With no regard to hygiene or cleanliness, she rolled up her sleeves and began washing the plates right there on the street.

  Eden looked away, trying not think about the unwitting customers who’d be eating off those plates.

  Next to the sidewalk, a bicycle coming down the block at full speed struck a little girl, knocking her down to the ground. The girl screamed but the cyclist continued on.

  “Hey!” Eden called out to the cyclist. Was he deaf? Before she could call out to him again, he turned the corner and disappeared.

  How could he! He didn’t even stop to see if the girl was okay.

  She turned toward the girl. Still crying, the child pushed herself up, only to be knocked down again, this time by a car.

  “Oh, no!” Eden ran toward her. She couldn’t believe this. The car didn’t stop either. The driver drove on and vanished down the street.

  Where did this girl come from? Eden quickened her steps. “Help!” she yelled to the passersby. “Help!” She shouted louder. They gave her odd looks but nobody stopped.

  What was happening? The girl was crawling on the open road, struggling to get up. Where were her parents? Why wasn’t anybody helping her?

  Another vehicle came rolling toward the girl. Eden got to her just in time to pull her off the road onto the pavement. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?” She crouched down to check if the girl was injured.

  The girl turned to face Eden. Strange. The child should be terrified. Instead, there was no fear in her eyes. She blinked, then opened her mouth and wailed.

  A middle-aged woman ran up to them and snatched the child away.

  “Ma!” The child threw her arms around the woman’s waist.

  Eden breathed a sigh of relief, but her relief was short-lived. For reasons she couldn’t understand, the woman was pointing at her and shouting in Chinese. Confused by her loud and angry voice, Eden stood up. She watched the woman’s thick lips move, unable to make out what she was saying. All the words and phrases she’d learned in Chinese class—apples, berries, birds, cats, dogs, good morning, and how are you. None of them was of any use.

  A scrawny man in an ill-fitting suit had now joined them. He seemed to be asking the woman questions. The woman answered and pointed at Eden again. The man nodded and glanced at Eden with a look of disapproval on his face.

  A crowd of onlookers had now circled them, pointing or gawking at her. Laowai, laowai, they repeated. Old foreigner, it was the only word she recognized. What was happening? Eden clutched her purse.

  The girl let go of the woman. While the man and the woman talked, she looked Eden in the eye. Her lips curled up into a tiny devious smile before they turned downward again into sobs as a police car pulled up. A policeman got out and pushed his way through.

  Eden watched the little girl. Her blood chilled.

  The policeman asked something in Chinese. The woman pointed at Eden, shouting furiously. The scrawny man chimed in, gesticulating wildly as he spoke. The policeman listened and eyed Eden several times as they talked. The entire scene only confused her further.

  “I tried to help her,” Eden said. Even though she knew they couldn’t understand her, she felt compelled to explain. “A bike and a car hit her and ran her over.”

  The policeman came up to her and pointed her to the police car.

  “What?” Eden frowned. A drop of sweat slid down her temple. “Why?”

  The policeman opened the door to the front passenger seat and signaled her to get in. Eden held her breath and glanced at the woman. The woman lifted her chin, tightened her lips, and crossed her arms over her chest. Behind her, the crowd of onlookers had grown. Eden searched for a sympathetic eye, but found none.

  The policeman yelled out at her. She had no idea what he was saying. He was a policeman for the Chinese Public Security Bureau, not one who worked for Shanghai Municipal Police under British and American control in the International Settlement, or the Garde Municipale in Frenchtown.

  The crowd continued to stare at her and all she wanted was to escape. Without thinking anymore, she relented and entered the car.

  The police closed the door, then let the woman, the little girl, and the scrawny man into the backseat.

  What in the world was happening? Eden held onto her purse on her lap as the policeman got into the driver’s seat and drove them away. Behind her, the woman and the scrawny man continued rambling in accusatory tones over the girl’s sobs and sniffles.

  Eden turned around and squinted at them. Whatever they were saying about her, it wasn’t true.

  The girl looked back at her. “Waaah!” she cried out, startling Eden. The woman responded with her own cries as she pulled the girl into her embrace. The scrawny man glared at Eden and began yelling at her. The policeman, having had enough, raised his voice and they all quieted down. Eden turned back toward the front and gazed down the road. What had she gotten herself into?

  When they pulled up to the police station, Eden still did not know what she’d done wrong. She prayed someone here could help her and sort everything out.

  The policeman led them inside and another officer took her to a small room with a folding table, two chairs, and no window. Two hours passed. Why didn’t anyone come in to question her? She tried to open the door to seek help. The door was locked. Had they forgotten her?

  She paced around the room. How much longer did they plan to keep her here?

  The white clock on the wall continued to tick. Restless, she sat down, then got back up. “Hello!” She banged on the door. “Is anybody there?” She held her hand up to knock again. Her fist hit empty air as the door opened. A policeman entered, not the same one who brought her to the station or the one who took her to this room. He walked over to the table and pulled out a chair. “Take a seat.”

  He spoke English! Eden’s heart skipped a beat. Quickly, she complied and sat down.

  “I’m Officer Zhou.” He sat down across from her and laid out his notebook. “What’s your name?”

  “Eden.” She leaned forward. “Eden Levine.”

  The policeman scribbled down her name. “Citizenship?”

  Eden squeezed the edges of her seat. “I . . .” What should she tell him? If she told him she didn’t have any, would she get into trouble?

  Zhou glanced up. His eyes looked too sharp to be fooled. She might as
well tell him the truth. Besides, she had nothing to hide. “I’m Jewish. I came from Munich.”

  The officer studied her face, then lowered his eyes. “Stateless,” he said and jotted a note in Chinese under her name.

  “Yes.” She held up her head. So what if she was stateless? It wasn’t a crime and it certainly wasn’t her fault.

  Officer Zhou stared at her. Unwilling to back down, she stared back as he flicked the pen between his fingers.

  “Why am I here?” she demanded to know.

  The policeman’s forehead loosened. He sat back, still studying her face. “You pushed a child on the street. Her mother said you caused the child to fall and suffer injuries.”

  “That’s not true!” Eden grabbed the edge of the table. “It has to be a misunderstanding. I didn’t push the girl. I was trying to help her. A bicycle ran her over. She tried to get up and a car hit her. Nobody came to her rescue except me.”

  Zhou peered into her face. “There was a witness. He said he saw you push the child out of your way when you were crossing the street.”

  “What? That’s impossible. Who’s the witness?”

  “He came with all of you to the station.”

  That scrawny man? Why? Why would he say that? “He’s lying! I would never hurt a child.”

  Zhou put down his pen. “The girl said you pushed her.”

  “No!” Eden shook her head. Then she remembered. The tiny devious smile. “She’s lying.”

  The policeman crossed his arms. “The mother, the witness, the child. They’re all lying?”

  “Yes.” How could she convince him all three of them were liars? “I’m telling you the truth. What reason would I have to push a child and hurt her?”

  Zhou cocked his head. “Maybe you were in a hurry? Maybe she got in your way?” he asked as if testing her. “She’s only a Chinese child. So what if she fell and got hurt? Foreigners think they can get away with anything.”

  “No!” Eden stood up. “No! No! No! I would never think that.” She fell back down into her seat and dropped her head into her hands.

  Officer Zhou uncrossed his arms. “Miss Levine.” He softened his voice. “I want to help you, but we have a child accusing you and a witness affirming what she said. We can’t appear to be letting foreigners off if they’ve harmed our people.”

  Eden raised her eyes. “Will I go to jail?”

  Zhou gave her an uneasy smile. “There’s an alternative solution. The child has a broken arm. She’s also traumatized. Her mother said she’ll drop the charges if you compensate them for her medical costs.”

  “Compensate them? I’m not responsible for the girl’s injuries. Why are they accusing me? Doesn’t she want to go after the people who really hurt her child? You’re the police. Don’t you want to find the real culprits?”

  “The real culprits.” The officer clasped his hands on the table. “Miss Levine, you said the child was hit by a bike and a car, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The girl’s five years old. Could a child really survive if she was indeed hit twice the way you described?”

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Eden said, thinking back to what happened when the girl was hit. “Maybe not. Probably not.”

  “At the least, the girl should be gravely injured. And yet she isn’t. Why do you think that is?”

  Eden stared at the table. She didn’t know. Everything happened so fast. All she could think of at the time was to save the kid.

  “Now, you can try to defend yourself with this improbable story that no one else can confirm—”

  “It’s not a story—” she started to argue, but Zhou held up his hand, signaling her to hear him out.

  “Or, you can pay the mother her demand of three hundred dollars.”

  “Three hundred dollars!”

  “Yes. Paying the mother is one way to make this all go away.”

  Eden bit her lips. The amount the woman was asking for was outrageous. Three hundred dollars was more than a year’s salary for an ordinary Chinese worker. This was practically a scam.

  A scam. It all made sense now. The woman, the scrawny man, the girl with her little evil smile. This was a scam to wrest money from her.

  She glanced at Zhou. Was he in on this too?

  Zhou gazed back at her. It dawned on her, he was trying to tell her this was a scam without saying it in so many words.

  Was he trying to pressure her into paying?

  “Unless—” Zhou threw a quick glance at the door.

  “Unless what?”

  “Unless you can think of anyone who can negotiate on your behalf. Can you call on any foreign authority? The Chinese police don’t like to confront foreign authorities.”

  He lowered his voice to a whisper. “If you have connections to anyone who can help you, tell me now. I’ll contact them for you. Otherwise, when my superior finds out you’re a stateless person with no one behind you, he’s going to make sure you’re punished so he can tell our people he doesn’t give foreigners special treatment.”

  Eden hunched her shoulders. No one. She could think of no one who could come to her aid. Like Zhou said, she was stateless. No embassy would claim her. No foreign authority would protect her.

  She almost wanted to laugh. Laugh at herself. How foolish of her. All this time, she thought she was no different from any other Shanghailander. She’d almost come to believe she was now one of them.

  “Miss Levine?” Zhou asked, seemingly confounded by her reaction.

  She kept her ironic smile. There was no way to get around it. Her parents would have to pay a small fortune to those liars to save her.

  But wait.

  Clark.

  Could he help her? He’d been kind and helpful to her and her family. Could she call on him?

  She grabbed her purse from the table and dug through the wallet, keys, and other items to find the business card he’d given her the night she had dinner at his home. “This is a friend of mine. He’s a foreign relations officer for the Chinese government. Can you call him?”

  Zhou examined the card. When he saw the name on the card, he looked at Eden again. “Excuse me. I’ll be right back.” He gathered his notes and pen and hurried out of the room.

  Fifteen minutes later, he returned. This time, his voice was noticeably warmer. “Sorry to keep you waiting, Miss Levine. Would you please come with me?”

  Still having no idea what would happen next, but sensing her situation had improved, Eden picked up her purse and followed him. Zhou took her to a waiting room with an open window and invited her to sit down on the couch against the wall. A clerk entered with a tray of tea and set it on the coffee table.

  “Counselor Yuan’s on the way,” Zhou said as the clerk left the room.

  Eden’s body eased. She’d just been thrown a lifesaver.

  “There might’ve been some misunderstanding about what happened earlier today. We’ll question the child and the witness again to make sure we have all the facts correct. I’m sorry if we’ve caused you any grief. I promise we’ll investigate and clear up any errors.” Zhou gave her back Clark’s business card with both hands.

  Eden put the card back into her purse. What a hundred-eighty-degree turnaround. Was Clark this influential?

  “Please, have some tea. Counselor Yuan should be here soon. Is there anything else you need while you wait?”

  “No,” she said, her voice more curt than she intended. She couldn’t bring herself to sound gracious. Nothing about this ordeal or the way it’d been handled was acceptable. First, it was a scam. Then, the police wanted to penalize her, a foreigner, as an example to show they were fair. And now, they were all too willing to exculpate her simply because she knew someone they deemed important? What about the truth? What about the real culprits who should be held accountable for this mess?

  Zhou bowed his head and left the room, leaving the door open to the sounds of policemen talking, their staff shuffling paper and typing, and the incessant ringin
g of the phones. The traffic noises outside poured in through the window. She could hear the voices of the people on the streets. Everything sounded so loud, so unfamiliar, and so harsh.

  Back in Munich, on a summer afternoon like this, she would’ve been at a beer garden, having a picnic with her friends under the chestnut trees. She could almost hear herself and her friends laughing as they passed the mass and radler around.

  A sour lump began to choke her throat.

  Half an hour later, Clark walked in. “Eden.”

  “Clark.” Eden stood up. “I hope it was okay I told the police to call you. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “It’s no problem at all. Are you all right?” He came closer, nearly knocking the cup of tea on the coffee table.

  “I don’t know. I was about to cross the street earlier today when I saw a bike hit a little girl. Before I could get to her, another car hit her. The bike and the car left, and no one else stopped to see if the girl was okay. When I tried to help her, her mother came with a man they say was a witness. Next thing I know, they were all accusing me of pushing the child and injuring her.”

  “I’m so sorry this happened.” He reached out his hand to comfort her, but drew back before he touched her.

  “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “Nothing. I told Officer Zhou I can vouch for you. This is a common scheme to extort money. Someone weak, either a child or an old person, would pretend to fall or get hurt. If someone kind-hearted tries to help, they’ll accuse him of being the one who caused the fall and injured the victim. That’s why you didn’t see anyone else try to help the girl.”

  “What madness!” Eden exclaimed. “They let a child run into open traffic? Weren’t they afraid the girl might get killed?”

  “That’s hard to say. Who knows if the woman who claimed to be her mother was even her mother? The girl might have been sold to her, or kidnapped. Someone probably taught her to run into oncoming traffic and get hit on purpose.”

  “That’s terrible.”

  “Maybe the bicyclist and the driver were in on the scheme and the accidents weren’t real.”