by Qiu Xiaolong
He walked over to the bed assigned to him. A pair of plastic slippers stood underneath it. An iron-hard bed covered with a thin sheet, which somehow reminded him of a go board.
Despite the fatigue of the journey, he was not ready for a nap. So he decided to shower. It was a suddenly-hot-and-cold one, due to the vagaries of the electric water heater, but it refreshed him. Afterward, with a bath towel wrapped around his waist, he propped himself up on the bed with a couple of pillows and closed his eyes for just a few minutes. Then he called the front desk, asking how to get to Guangzhou Police Bureau. The clerk seemed a bit surprised, but Chen explained that he wanted to visit a friend there. So he got directions, dressed, and left.
Inspector Hua Guojun received him in a bright, spacious office. Hua was a man in his late forties, with a broad smile constantly on his face. Chen had faxed Hua some information before he left Shanghai.
“Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, I welcome you on behalf of my colleagues here.”
“Comrade Inspector Hua, I appreciate your cooperation. It’s my first trip to Guangzhou. As a total stranger here, I cannot do anything in Guangzhou without your help. Here is the official letter from our bureau.”
Chen explained the situation without mentioning Wu Xiaoming’s family background. Leafing through the file folder, he produced a picture. “That’s the girl we are looking for, Xie Rong.”
“We have made some inquiries,” Hua said, “but with no success yet. You are taking this very seriously, to come all the way from Shanghai, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen.”
It was true. Normally a fax to the Guangzhou police bureau would have been enough. The local officers would do the job in their way. If it was important, a few more phone calls could be made. But no more than that. A chief inspector’s presence was uncalled for.
“At present, she is our only lead,” Chen said, “and it’s such a political case.”
“I see, but it is a difficult search. Heaven knows how many people have come to Guangzhou in the last few years. And only about one-fourth of them, or even fewer, have showed their identification cards or other documents to local neighborhood committees. Here is a list of the people we’ve checked, but your potential witness is not included.”
“So she could be among the others,” Chen said, taking over the list. “But why don’t they report themselves?”
“They come with no intention of showing their identification cards. It’s not illegal for them to come, but some of the professions they’re engaged in are illegal. They just want to make money. As long as they can find someplace to stay, they will not bother to report themselves to the local authorities.”
“So where can we look for her?”
“Since your witness is a young girl, she may have landed a job in a small hotel or restaurant,” Hua said. “Or maybe in a karaoke club, massage salon, or something like that. These are fashionable professions for these gold-diggers.”
“Can we check those places?”
“Since the case is so important to you, we’ll send a couple of people around to check. It may take weeks, and it will probably be futile.”
“Why?”
“Well, the employer and employee are both trying to avoid taxes. So why should they tell you who works there? Especially those karaoke clubs and massage salons, they will shun you like plague.”
“What else can we do?”
“That’s all we can do right now. Patience pays.”
“And what can I do—in addition to being patient?”
“It’s your first trip to Guangzhou, so just relax and enjoy yourself here. Special zones like Shengzhen and Shekou are close by. A lot of tourists go there,” Hua said. “Check with us every day if you want. But if you want to look around yourself, why not?”
Perhaps Chen had been taking the case too seriously, as Inspector Hua had implied. Outside the Guangzhou Police Bureau, Chen made a call to Huang Yiding, an editor at a local literary magazine that had published some of his poems. Huang had quit to run a bar called Nightless Bay in the Gourmet Street, a young woman who answered the phone said. It was not too far away. So he took a taxi there.
The so-called Gourmet Street was a living menu. Underneath a multitude of signs, a variety of exotic animals were exhibited in cages of different sizes outside the restaurants along the street. Guangdong cuisine was well-known for its wild imagination. Snake soup, dog stew, monkey brain dip, wildcat, or bamboo-rat dishes. With the live animals exhibited in the cages, customers would have no doubt about the freshness of the fare.
Nightless Bay was there, but he was told that Huang had left for a new career in Australia. That meant the end of Chen’s connections in Guangzhou. Strolling along the street, Chen saw people eating and drinking, inside as well as outside the restaurants. Some of the wildlife delicacies might have come from endangered species, he suspected. The People’s Daily had recently reported that, in spite of government policies, a large number of restaurants were still serving them to their customers.
He turned around, aimlessly, walking toward the river, and then to a landing stage. Along the shore stood a row of wooden benches, and several couples were waiting there for their turns in the boats. He was not in the mood to row alone. After sitting on a bench for a few minutes, he left for the hotel.
A mass of black clouds was gathering along the horizon. The hotel room was sultry. He made himself a cup of green tea from the lukewarm water in the thermos flask. After he had a second cup of tea, it started to rain, with thunder rumbling in the distance. Outside, the streets were covered with muck. There was no point in trying to go out. He decided to have something in the hotel canteen. The dining room was clean, the tables set with starched cloths and shining glasses. There were few choices on the menu. He had a portion of rubbery fish with steamed rice. The food was not the greatest, but it was edible. More important for him, it was inexpensive. Soon, however, he found the lingering aftertaste of fish not so agreeable. He poured himself another cup of tea, hoping that it would quiet his stomach, but the lukewarm water did not help. There were still two or three hours to kill before bedtime.
Leaning against the bed, he turned on his portable radio. The local news was broadcast in the Guangdong dialect, which he could hardly understand. He turned it off. Then he heard footsteps moving down the corridor and coming to his door. There was a light knock, but before he could say anything, the door was pushed open. In came a man in his early forties, tall, gaunt, prematurely bald, wearing an expensive gray suit with an imported label still attached to the sleeve—a sign of his wealth—and an embroidered silk tie. He had no luggage except for a leather briefcase.
A popular novelist with one or two books on the bestseller list, Chen guessed.
“Hi, I’m not disturbing your writing?”
“No, not at all,” Chen said. “You are also staying in the hotel?”
“Yes, and in the same room too. My name is Ouyang.”
“Chen Cao.” He handed over his card. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“So you are a poet—and whoa—a member of the Association!”
“Well, not exactly.” Chen was going to explain, but he thought better of it. There was no point revealing his identity as a police chief inspector. “I’ve written just a couple of poems.”
“Wonderful!” Ouyang extended his hand to him. “Fancy meeting a poet today.”
“You are a novelist, then?”
“No, I am not—um, as a matter of fact, I’m a businessman.” Ouyang fumbled in his vest pocket and came out with an impressive card. His name was printed in gold beside a long list of companies. “Every time I come to Guangzhou, I choose to stay here. The Writers’ Home is not just open to writers. You know why? I come in the hope of meeting writers. And my dream has come true tonight! Oh, by the way, have you had your dinner?”
“Yes, down in the cafeteria.”
“What? That cafeteria’s an insult to writers.”
“I did not eat much.”
; “Good,” Ouyang said. “There’s a sidewalk restaurant just a few two blocks away. A small family business, but the food there is not too bad. The rain has ceased. So let us go then, you and I.”
The evening was spreading out against the sky, Chen observed, as he followed Ouyang to a street lined with red-and-black-lettered food booths illuminated by paper lanterns. Pots were broiling over small coal stoves, several labeled with signs advertising “stamina” or “hormone” or “male essence” in Guangdong style. These food booths, like other private enterprises, had mushroomed in Guangzhou’s streets since Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the south.
The booth Ouyang took him to was rather simple: several wooden tables with seven or eight benches. A big coal-burning stove and two small ones comprised the open kitchen. Its only sign was a red paper lantern with the traditional-style character “happiness” embossed on it. Beneath it were live eels, frogs, clams, and fish squirming and swimming in water-filled wooden basins and buckets. There was also an impressive glass cage with several snakes of various sizes and shapes. Customers could choose, and have their choice cooked in a specified way.
A middle-aged woman was peeling a water snake by the cage. With its head chopped off, the snake was still twitching in a wooden basin, but in a couple of minutes, a coil of white meat would be steamed in a brown earthware pot. An old man wearing a white hat was flourishing a ladle and frying a carp in a sizzling wok. A young girl was serving the customers, bustling about with several platters placed on her slender bare arm, her wooden sandals clacking on the sidewalk. She called the white-hatted cook Grandpa. A family business.
More diners were arriving; soon every table was occupied. The place obviously had a reputation. Chen had seen the booth earlier in the afternoon, but he had guessed that the cost was beyond his standard meal allowance.
“Hi, Old Ouyang. What favorable wind has brought you here today?” The young girl coming over to their table appeared to know Ouyang well.
“Well, today’s favorable wind is our distinguished poet, Chen Cao. It’s really a great honor for me. As usual, your special dishes. And your best wine, too. The very best.”
Ouyang took out his wallet and put it on the table.
“The best, of course,” the girl echoed, walking away.
In less than fifteen minutes, an impressive array of bowls, dishes, pots, saucers, and platters appeared on the rough, unpainted table.
The paper lantern cast a ruddy light on their faces and the tiny cups in their hands. In Guangzhou, Chen had heard, there was nothing with four legs that people had not found a way to turn into a delicacy. And he was witnessing such a miracle: Omelet with river clams, meatballs of four happiness, fried rice field eel, peeled shrimp in tomato containers, eight-treasure rice, shark’s fin soup, a whole turtle with brown sauce, and bean curd stuffed with crabmeat.
“Just a few simple dishes, sidestreet cooking,” Ouyang said, raising his chopsticks, and shaking his head in apology. “Not enough respect to a great poet. We’ll go to another place tomorrow. It’s too late today. Please try the turtle soup. It’s good for yin, you know, for us men.”
It was a huge softshell turtle. No less than two pounds. At about eighty Yuan per pound in the Guangzhou market, the dish must have cost more than a hundred Yuan. The exorbitant price arose from the medical folklore. Turtles, stubborn survivors in water or on land, were considered to be beneficial to yin, hence a possible boost to human longevity. That it was nutritious Chen could accept, but why it was good for yin, in terms of the yin and yang system in the human body, was totally beyond him.
But Chen didn’t have time to muse. An eager host, Ouyang kept putting what he believed were culinary delights on Chen’s plate. After the second round of the Maotai wine, Chen, too, felt a sense of elation rising in him. Excellent food, mellow wine, the young waitress serving, light-footed, radiant as a new moon. The aromatic breath of the Guangzhou night was intoxicating.
Perhaps more than anything else, Chief Inspector Chen was intoxicated with his new identity. A well-established poet being worshipped by his devotee.
“‘By the wine urn, the girl is the moon, / Her bare arms frost-white.’“ Chen quoted a couplet from Wei Zhuang’s “Reminiscence of the South.” “I’m tempted to think that Wei was describing a scene in Guangzhou, not too far from this booth.”
“I have to put down those lines in my notebook,” Ouyang said, swallowing a spoonful of shark fin soup. “That is poetry.”
“The image of a street tavern is quite popular in classical Chinese poetry. It could have originated from the Han dynasty love story of Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru. At the lowest point of their life, the lovers had to support themselves by selling wine in a side street tavern.”
“Wenjun and Xiangru,” Ouyang exclaimed. “Oh yes, I have seen a Guangzhou opera about their romance. Xiangru was a great poet, and Wenjun eloped with him.”
The dinner turned out to be superb, accompanied by a second bottle of Maotai that Ouyang insisted on ordering toward the end. Chen was becoming effusive, talking poetry shop. In the office, his literary pursuit was regarded as a distraction from his profession, so he seized the chance to discuss the world of words with such an eager listener.
The young waitress kept pouring wine for them, her white wrists flashing around the table, her wooden sandals making pleasant sounds in the night air, the same sights and the sounds that Wei Zhaung had been intoxicated by thousands of years earlier.
Over the cups and chopsticks, Chen also pieced together parts of Ouyang’s life story.
“Twenty years ago, it’s just like yesterday—” Ouyang said, “as fast as a snapping of your fingers.”
Twenty years earlier, a high-school student in Guangzhou, Ouyang had set his mind on becoming a poet, but the Cultural Revolution had smashed his dream as well as his classroom windows. His school was closed. Then, as one of the educated youths, he was sent down to the countryside. After a total waste of eight years, he was allowed to come back to Guangzhou, an unemployed returned youth. He failed the college entrance examination, but succeeded in launching his private enterprise, a plastic-toy factory in Shekou, about fifty miles south of Guangzhou. A prosperous entrepreneur, Ouyang had everything now but time for poetry. More than once he had thought about quitting the business, but his memory of working ten hours a day for seventy cents as an educated youth was too fresh. He decided to make enough money first, and in the meantime tried various ways to keep his literary dream alive. This trip to Guangzhou, for instance, was made for business, but also for a creative writing seminar sponsored by the Guangzhou Writers’ Association.
“The Writers’ Home is worth it,” Ouyang said, “for I have finally met a real poet like you.”
Not really, Chen reflected, tearing the turtle leg off with his chopsticks. But sitting beside Ouyang, he felt he was a poet, a “pro.” It did not take him long to discover Ouyang to be an amateur, seeing poetry as no more than an outpouring of personal sentimentality. The few lines Ouyang showed him presented a spontaneous flow, but suffered from a lack of formal control.
Ouyang obviously wanted to spend more time discussing poetry. The next morning Ouyang brought up the topic again over their morning tea—dimson in the Golden Phoenix Restaurant.
A waitress came to a stop at their table with a stainless-steel cart presenting an amazing display of appetizers and snacks. They could choose whatever they wanted in addition to a pot of tea.
“What would you like to have today, Mr. Ouyang?” the waitress said.
“Steamed ribs with bean sauce, chicken with sticky rice, steamed beef tripe, mini-bun of pork, and a pot of chrysanthemum tea with sugar,” Ouyang said, turning to Chen with a smile. “These are my favorites here, but choose for yourself.”
“We’re having too much, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s just morning tea.”
“According to my research, morning tea originated in Guangzhou, where people used to have a cup of good tea the first thing in the morn
ing,” Ouyang said. “‘Better to have something that goes along with the tea,’ somebody must have thought. Not a full meal, but a delicious bite. So these tiny appetizers were invented. Soon people became more interested in the variety of the small dishes. Tea’s secondary now.”
The room was abuzz with people talking, drinking tea, discussing business, and eating appetizers, carts of which were continuously wheeled around. Young waitresses kept introducing the new dishes. It was not an ideal place for a poetry discussion.
“People are so busy in Guangzhou,” Chen said, “so how can they afford the time for the morning tea?”
“Morning tea is a must.” Ouyang smiled expansively. “It’s easier for people to talk business over their tea. To cultivate the feeling before they cut the deal. But we can just talk poetry to our hearts’ content.”
Chen was a bit disturbed, however, when he was not allowed to pay. Ouyang stopped him with a passionate speech: “I have made some money. But what then? In twenty or thirty years, what will be left? Nothing. My money will be somebody else’s. Dog-eared, worn-out, and torn in half. What did our dear Old Master Du Fu say? ‘Nothing but your writing lasts forever.’ Yes, you are a nationally known poet, so let me be your student for a couple of days, Chen, if you do not consider me below your standard. In ancient times, a student was also supposed to offer a whole Jinhua ham to his teacher.”