by Brian N. Cox
Chan Meng was by no means an attractive man. He almost seemed to have no chin, over which was a long pointed nose, very uncharacteristic of Chinese people. He wore thick glasses with thick black rims and his ears seemed too large for his face. He was, however, a smooth talking man with good social skills and his many lovers were attracted by his wealth and power, not his physical appearance.
“How long will you be gone?” enquired Zhang Mei, a slim, attractive women of forty-three years whose shiny black hair was always worn long and straight.
“About five days or a week. I’ll see you on the weekend.”
Zhang Mei never asked where he was going, not only because he would lie to her, but also because she didn’t care. Although Chan Meng and Zhang Mei didn’t love each other, they weren’t enemies and seldom quarreled. They were comfortable living independent lives within the same household as it served both their purposes.
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Zhen Xiaomei was very excited to have a two week holiday in her home town of Chongqing. Not only because she could visit her grandmother and her aunt, but also because the man she loved, Sean McNamara, was coming to visit her. Sean was an American FBI agent stationed in Seattle and this was his first trip to China. She had decided not to take him to her home and introduce her to her family even though she desperately wanted to do so. Her grandmother and her aunt knew she had fallen in love with an American policeman, and were anxious to meet him, but she could not take the chance. If either she or Sean were being followed, and both were a possibility, it could expose her family to great risk. Sean did not even know Xiaomei’s real name, but she intended to tell him very soon. How could they plan a future together if he didn’t even know her name? Sean had always known Zhen Xiaomei by her cover name, Li Mei. On the other hand, the less people who knew her real name, the safer she and her family were. At some point in time she would have to tell Sean but it was not urgent.
Chongqing was the largest municipality in China with a population of about thirty-four million but few people in the west had ever heard of it. Those who did often called it by the Anglicised name of Chungking.
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Air China Flight 94 from Beijing began its decent into Chongqing International Airport. It had been a long flight across the Pacific from Vancouver to Beijing, a four hour wait in the Beijing Airport, and then a two and a half hour flight to Chongqing. FBI Special Agent Sean McNamara had decided to go up to Vancouver to fly to China in order to visit some friends in Vancouver before departing. Sean, who held dual American and Canadian citizenship, had been a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for five years and still had many RCMP friends in the Vancouver area. He had left the RCMP to attend Harvard Law School and then joined the FBI. He often wondered if he did the right thing by leaving the RCMP and pursuing a career in the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He loved his job as Assistant Special Agent in Charge (ASAC) of the Seattle Field Office, but he still missed life in the RCMP, and in particular, his best friend, Bill Dowey, who was a member of the RCMP now stationed in Vancouver. They had often got together over the almost twenty years or so since they had first met as students at Northwest Law Enforcement Academy in Winnipeg.
After leaving the plane and collecting his single suitcase, he entered the arrival area but didn’t see Li Mei….although he didn’t expect to. As he walked towards the exit, Li Mei suddenly appeared walking beside him with a big smile on her face. They wanted to hug each other, but not only was this not the custom in this traditional region of China, but they didn’t want anyone watching to suspect their relationship was anything other than a business acquaintanceship.
“I have a car in the parking lot,” said Li Mei. “I will take you downtown to Jeifangbei, which is the center of town, where I have booked a room at the Yangtze Island Hotel.”
“I am in your hands Li Mei,” replied Sean. “Without you I would be totally lost. I can’t speak the language and can’t read one word. I hope they have the silhouette drawings of a man and woman on the washroom doors,” he added with a chuckle.
“It is my pleasure to be your guide,” laughed Li Mei. “My plan is to show you around my great city for two or three days. After that, they are forecasting heavy rains for a week, so I thought we would fly to Sanya on Hainan Island.”
“Isn’t that a tropical city; won’t it be too hot in May?”
“No. The cool breeze coming off the South China Sea keeps the temperatures quite moderate. It is actually cooler in Sanya in July and August than in Chongqing,” replied Li Mei. “I guarantee you will like Sanya. It is Hawaii without all the tourist traps, although that will probably change eventually. Many Europeans, and even a few Americans and Canadians, go to Sanya in the winter. Most of the Europeans are Russian. In Sanya, you will be approached by local street vendors who will speak to you in Russian. They will assume we are a Russian couple.”
Sean and Li Mei went to bed early that night, but didn’t go to sleep until about four hours later. Despite the intense desire they had for each other, they made love slowly and repeatedly, both entirely uninhibited. If Sean had jet lag, he showed no sign of it although they both slept in the next day until eleven am, which was unusual for both of them. Although both Sean and Li Mei had worked many long nights throughout their respective careers, they were both actually morning persons who were usually ready to go at the crack of dawn.
They were too late for the hotel breakfast, but bought some jiaozi, dumplings filled with meat and vegetables, and baozi, pork filled white buns, from a street vendor before driving out to the old town of Ciqikou at the northwest outskirts of Chongqing.
“You are walking on a walkway that is probably a thousand years old,” said Li Mei. “All these buildings are hundreds of years old. Ciqikou is one of the few areas of Chongqing that escaped bombing by the Japanese during World War Two, or the War Against Japanese Aggression as it is known here.”
“I love the old style architecture,” said Sean. “It’s amazing that buildings that are hundreds of years old are still in use and in good shape.”
“Tomorrow I will take you to the museum honoring the American General Joe Stillwell. He is much beloved by the people of Chongqing as are the other Americans who helped us repel the Japanese. The famous Flying Tigers have a museum also, very close to the Stillwell museum. I won’t take you to the museum about the Japanese War however. I can’t bear to see those photos of Japanese soldiers playing catch with Chinese babies on their bayonets, and the beheading of grandfathers and grandmothers. I don’t want to talk about that era of our history.”
Sean didn’t pursue the conversation as he saw that Li Mei’s eyes were welling up with tears.
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That evening, Li Mei took Sean to a Hot Pot restaurant, famous in Chongqing as a mouth- watering delight in the region. Hot Pot, known in Chongqing as “Huo Guo”, is similar in style to fondue whereby vegetables and meat are put in a boiling hot, spicy broth. You can always tell if someone is from Chongqing or nearby Sichuan Province because they hold their chopsticks at the end so the boiling, bubbling hot pot broth doesn’t burn their hands.
After dinner, they sat on a bench together overlooking the Changjiang, which westerners call the Yangtze River. Although it was after dark, the opposite side of the river was brightly lit with numerous large, two and three story restaurants side by side for about a mile, each one so well lit the area looked like daylight. There were so many questions Sean had for Li Mei, he hardly knew where to start.
“There is so much more I want to know about you,” said Sean. “In some respects, you are very outgoing, but much of your life is secret.”
“That’s the nature of my job, as I’m sure you know. You too are not exactly an open book. You can ask me anything, Sean. As long as it is about me and not my job, I wil
l answer truthfully.”
“I’ve often wanted to mention this, but I never did, probably because it is of little importance, just observations,” began Sean. “You are one of the most upbeat, positive persons I have ever met, always laughing and in good humor, yet when I see you walking down the street alone, you have a haughty, almost unfriendly look about you, as if you are sending a signal ‘Don’t approach me.’ I notice a lot of Chongqing women look this way.”
“I can’t speak for other women, but I don’t feel the way you describe my appearance,” replied Li Mei. “I am always in a good mood. I may be concerned or even worried about something, but I am never depressed.”
“Another thing I wanted to mention,” said Sean. “I have difficulty reading your face. When you are concerned about something, serious about a situation, or angry about something, I don’t see that reflected in your face. Is that part of your training as an Intelligence Officer, or have you always been like that?”
“Hiding my feelings and emotions is something I developed both from training and experience. There is no benefit in my line of work letting people around you know how you feel or what you are thinking.”
“I am not complaining,” replied Sean. “I love your normal look…rather sexy with a hint of a smile. I am sure I am not the first man whose heart you have melted.”
Li Mei just laughed at that remark but didn’t reply.
“All I can say,” continued Sean, “I sure wouldn’t want to play poker with you.”
“Poker. I have heard of that game. I hope you will teach me to play some day.”
“Ha! Now you are playing me,” Sean laughed. “Bill Dowey told me you wiped everyone out two evenings in a row at the meeting you were at when the assassination took place in Minneapolis.”
“Oh, oh! I guess I won’t be able to get you to contribute money to my vacation fund,” Li Mei laughed.
After they both stopped laughing, Sean said, “Let me change the subject a minute. You have told me that the language of Chongqing is Mandarin but it does not sound like the Mandarin I have heard you and Gary using. The language here is much harsher and people talk very loud.”
“Gary and I were talking the national dialect of Mandarin, which is called Putonghua. Here, they are talking in the Mandarin local dialect. It sounds different but it is all Mandarin so everyone can communicate well enough to be understood. Everyone in Chongqing can also speak Putonghua, but most people still retain the local accent. It is no different than America where the accents of Seattle, Boston and Alabama are quite different. There are probably hundreds of dialects of Mandarin throughout China differing primarily in pronunciation and a handful of phrases.”
“You are right,” continued Li Mei, “that the people here talk very loud. I didn’t notice it growing up here, but since I have lived in other places, I realize now how loud they talk. It is as if the person they are talking to is twenty yards away. I have no idea why they do this. The traditional urban dwellers don’t yell when they talk but it is quite pronounced amongst the migrant workers who move in from the rural areas.”
“I will never grow tired of listening to you,” said Sean. “There is so much I want to know about China and so much I want to know about you.”
“We have talked about me, now, how about you. I had previously assumed that FBI agents would be of the view that your country and your government could do no wrong, but having spent time with you and Gary, you both seem quite cynical.”
“I love my country but it is run by a bunch of idiots,” replied Sean. “I believe politicians are, for the most part, self-serving, incompetent liars. Of course I suppose they can’t be blamed for their incompetence and stupid decisions because there are no qualifications required for their jobs, other than getting more votes than the other guy.”
“I think there is no country that has discovered a system of government that actually works as well as it should,” said Li Mei.
“True, but the scary thing is that no one is looking to improve it. I’d feel a lot better if there was some think tank in the US researching to discover or create a better system. Anyway, I’m apolitical and will leave that to others. I love my job and always do it to the best of my ability.”
“Yes, I have observed that about you and that is one of the reasons I love you,” said Li Mei. “You have the integrity and fire in your system that I hope I have in myself.”
This was probably the first very serious conversation they had between each other, that wasn’t job related. They were both very attractive people, but their growing attraction to each other had very little to do with physical appearance. They sat closely together for another half hour looking over the big river and then walked slowly back, hand in hand, to the hotel in nearby Jeifangbei.
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The day after visiting the museums, they awoke to a dark cloud cover and light rain began to fall as they drove to the Jiangbei Airport. At eleven am their Airbus 711 took off and Sean and Li Mei flew down to the tropical resort city of Sanya on Hainan Island and booked into the Holiday Inn on Yalong Bay which was rated as a five star hotel. On the first day, Li Mei took Sean to see the giant white Buddha built offshore, and in the evening, they walked along the seaside boardwalk until they decided upon a restaurant from about fifty side-by-side outdoor restaurants on the boardwalk. Eating fresh seafood under the stars allowed them time to relax after walking almost all day. In the open-air restaurant they selected, a singer from the Philippines was the main entertainment and both Li Mei and Sean thought she was excellent.
“Even though this is a Chinese city,” said Sean, “I notice that most of the people on the beaches are white people. Where are the Chinese tourists?”
“Most of the people on beaches are Russians,” replied Li Mei. “The Chinese people don’t like exposure to the sun. Melanoma cancer is very rare here. I never go out in the sun for any length of time without a wide brimmed white hat, sometimes even long sleeves. I do love the warm weather however. I love to come here in the winter.”
“This is a place I could get used to living,” said Sean. “It is as beautiful at night as it is during the day, and if you love seafood, it would be hard to beat this place.”
“I love Hainan Island and have often thought of retiring here. It is as beautiful as Hawaii but much less expensive. Maybe we can retire together here,” said Li Mei with a big smile.
“Now that’s a plan I can go for, although retiring anywhere is OK as long as you are with me.”
The next day, after breakfast at the hotel, they joined a group practising Yang Style taijiquan near the seaside for forty minutes and then spent the morning walking on the water’s edge of the white sand beach. As noon hour approached dark clouds rolled in from the west and it started to drizzle. Subsequently, they chose a secluded little indoor restaurant where they could talk in privacy. Most Chinese restaurants are set up with tables for eight or ten people and the resulting noise from each table doesn’t allow for private conversations, but this restaurant had only tables for two and four.
Due to their occupations, whenever Li Mei or Sean ate in a restaurant, each wanted to sit with their back to the wall so they can see everyone entering the restaurant. When they first dated in Seattle, they both tried to take the seat with their back to the wall, which became a private joke between them. Subsequently, unless there was a specific reason for one of them needing this seat against the wall, they took turns. Today it was Li Mei’s turn to take the seat which allowed a view of the other patrons in the restaurant.
It wasn’t long before she noticed a man who was familiar to her sitting at a table in the corner talking to another man she did not know.
“Don’t turn around, Sean, but sitting at the far corner table to my right is one of the most corrupt politicians in the country. He is probably more the concern of the Ministry of Public Security, but we are all well aware of him at State Security,” said Li Mei.
“His name is Chan Meng and he is Deputy Party Secretary in Beijing,” she continued. “I don’t understand how he has survived this long without being arrested; he must have very powerful friends.”
“Is he sitting alone or is he with other people?” enquired Sean.
“He is sitting with a large middle-age man I have never seen before.”
“You’re on holidays, Li Mei. Besides why do you care about a corrupt politician? That is not your area of responsibility is it.”
“No, you’re right, Sean. I’m sorry; I will give you my undivided attention,” replied Li Mei with a big smile that almost melted Sean’s heart.
“Li Mei, I know you too well; once a cop, always a cop. You want to identify the man he is talking to, so let’s follow them when they leave. It will be easy; everyone will think we are a Russian couple of which there are thousands around here. Before coming here, I didn’t realize how many Russians there were who looked Chinese in their appearance.”