by Qiu Xiaolong
“Oh, thank you so much,” he said, in a rush. “But I’ve only recently started doing this kind of work. You can easily find a more experienced private investigator.”
“Well, since you’re such a filial son, I’m sure you’ll be a conscientious private investigator.”
She was sharp and practical. It was even possible that she had picked him up with this conversation in mind.
“On your last assignment, you mentioned that the pay wasn’t bad,” she went on. “How about ten thousand as a guarantee? For the job, I’d be willing to pay you eighty yuan an hour plus any necessary expenses. If, after a couple of days, your progress is satisfactory to both of us, then we can discuss the hourly rate again.”
It probably wasn’t a bad offer for a PI—which Chen wasn’t. If he took the job, and the Party found out that he was “moonlighting,” it could mean even more trouble for him.
“But I’m in Shanghai—”
“Actually, you’re going to investigate in Shanghai, not in Suzhou.”
“But I might have to travel here frequently over the next two weeks—you know, for the renovation of my father’s tomb.”
“Why do you keep coming up with one excuse after another to say no? The job I have for you is not one that is to be done in a hurry. And if you need to make frequent trips to Suzhou, well, that may even help. We can discuss your progress while you’re here in Suzhou, and, of course, we can talk about your rate as well.”
“The rate is not the important thing,” he said, feeling trapped. “As a rule, I don’t take a case without having at least some background information.”
“Yes, you are special,” she said. She paused, leaned back, and looked Chen over carefully, as if reappraising him.
“You don’t have to tell me everything right now. Still, some basics will be necessary.”
“I want you to check up on someone in Shanghai—and not just her, but the people she meets with as well. In particular, a man she’s seeing.”
“What’s her name and address?”
“Jin Jiani, and she lives in Gubei. This is her address.” She scribbled the address on a pink paper napkin.
He could guess what this was all about. She wanted him to catch a cheating husband. Once she had evidence of his infidelity, she could make her move.
But Qian’s here in Suzhou, he reflected. “So the man goes to Shanghai to meet her?”
“No, he lives in Shanghai. You’ll find out more about him.”
That’s strange, Chen thought, but he refrained from commenting.
“He’s somebody, I can tell you that much. But for the moment, you don’t have to do anything regarding him. For that matter, you don’t even have to know his name. Focus on the woman instead. When you find out more about her, you’ll decide whether you want to move forward or not.”
She was reasonable and persuasive, carefully taking into consideration his earlier statement about professional taboos. He found it difficult to respond with an outright no.
“Alas, it’s most difficult not to return a favor to a beauty,” he quoted in spite of himself.
“What a flattering line!”
“It’s not mine, but I forget the poet’s name. Fine, I’ll take a look for you. Don’t worry about the hourly rate or paying me a retainer, since I might not take the case. Give me your phone number, and I’ll call you if I think I can be of any real help.”
Such a vague promise wasn’t really a commitment at all, he told himself.
Soon, they finished the noodles, and she had the remaining shrimp boxed. Chen paid the bill and picked up one of the restaurant’s business cards on their way out.
When they reached the street, the rain had stopped. To Chen’s surprise, right next to the restaurant, there was a bus stop for a route going directly to the train station.
“Oh look, there’s a bus stop right here. I can just take the bus, and you won’t have to go any farther out of your way,” he said. “I’ll contact you once I know if I want to take the case.”
A silence ensued. She gave him a wan smile. He heard a faint sound behind him, like something had burst. It was a bubble of mosquitos. He looked over his shoulder, and saw the air bubbles burst on the surface of the green water pond.
FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, BACK in his apartment in Shanghai, Chen woke up quite late.
A glance at the clock on the nightstand showed that it was past nine thirty. Stretching in the morning light, he felt refreshed and reenergized.
He hadn’t been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep for a long time. Perhaps it was due to satisfaction of doing something for his father and to exhaustion as well. Yesterday, all the trains to Shanghai had been sold out except for the last one of the night. Chen had to wait hours at the station, so he spent some time with a cup of coffee in a station café, stirring up the details of the Special Case Squad’s latest cases. Detective Yu had a point—there might be something in one of these cases that would explain the reason for Chen’s sudden transfer. Chen jotted down a lot of notes, most of which would probably turn out to be irrelevant. He kept going over those cases in his mind during the trip back to Shanghai, and then again as he waited in the long line for a taxi at the train station. He didn’t get home until after midnight, where, exhausted, he fell asleep almost immediately.
Now well rested, he got up and went to check his e-mail. It was no great surprise when he found more than thirty messages waiting in his in-box.
A number of them were enthusiastic congratulations on his new position. Was it possible that so many people had no clue what this new assignment really meant? Some of them were probably sent as a formality, but at least it seemed that people weren’t trying to avoid him. Perhaps they were thinking that since power struggles within the Party were unpredictable, there was no telling if, or when, Chen would stage a comeback. Whatever interpretation one placed upon recent events, Chen was still a Party cadre with the rank of a bureau head.
There were already several e-mails marked “urgent” from his new office, along with a number of attached documents. He didn’t open any of them immediately.
On his answering machine, Chen found a number of phone messages waiting for him, including several from senior Party officials in the Shanghai city government. The messages all sounded more or less the same, perfunctory expressions of congratulations. Chen knew better than to take any of them seriously.
There were no calls or e-mails from Beijing, though.
He made himself a pot of coffee, took a sip, then sat back down at his computer and began surfing the Internet. He was looking for articles about legal reform. In China, the first sign of change would have appeared in cyberspace. There was still a week before he was to start his new job, but Chen might as well get a head start and do some research.
After an hour or so, he gave up in resignation. He hadn’t found anything interesting, except some old news about Zhongtian. Zhongtian was an “independent scholar” who had posted articles on his blog about the idea of separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The People’s Daily had responded with an editorial declaring that this idea would never work in China. Zhongtian had argued that under the one-party system, where it was taken for granted that the Party’s interest was above the law, any talk of legal reform was just a show, full of politically correct language, yet empty of anything real. As a result, Zhongtian had been invited by Internal Security to meet them for “a cup of tea,” which meant a serious warning delivered in person. When Zhongtian continued posting, he got into some “tax trouble”—at least, that was the word on the Internet.
That incident spoke to the possible role of the Legal Reform Committee, Chen thought, with a frown. Reform was just another umbrella word in the politics of China, capable of referring to anything, or nothing. At bottom, the legal system was part and parcel of the Party system.
Annoyed at the whole concept, he began replying to the e-mails from his new off
ice, using similar, equally empty language. He didn’t bother to download, much less read, any of the attachments.
It soon wore him out. He got up and put a bowl of instant noodles in the microwave. While waiting, he sent his pictures from Suzhou electronically to a nearby convenience store to have prints made for his mother. He selected same-day service, so he could pick them up later that afternoon.
He called his mother to tell her about his visit to Suzhou. He made a detailed report about the planned renovation of his father’s tomb and promised to bring the pictures over soon, possibly that evening. She sounded pleased.
Afterward, as he was throwing the paper bowl of the noodles into the trash bin, he started going through the pile of junk mail he’d let collect on his kitchen counter. Among the piles, he found an invitation from White Cloud for the grand opening of her high-end hair salon on West Huaihai Road. The envelope contained a VIP voucher in the amount of five thousand yuan. He’d already missed the event.
He’d met White Cloud on a case several years ago. At that time he was an “emerging cadre”—a man on the rise—and she was a “college/karaoke girl” working in a KTV salon. Afterward, she briefly worked as a “little secretary” for him while he was doing a translation project. They’d kept in touch ever since. On several occasions, she’d been helpful, and he was sure it wasn’t because of his position. She had no need to curry favor with him. This invitation was yet another of her generous gestures.
It really wasn’t easy for a provincial girl, with no connections or background, to become a successful entrepreneur in Shanghai. Now she had her own salon, and on West Huaihai Road at that. The very location spoke volumes. On impulse, he ordered a large bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her salon.
And with that, he was ready to set out.
* * *
Half an hour later, Chen arrived at the Shanghai Foreign Liaison Office on Shanxi Road.
The visit was related to a recent incident assigned to the Special Case Squad, the so-called dead pig case. The trouble had all started when a British visitor came down with food poisoning from some sausage made with bad pork. Then everything got out of control: pictures of thousands of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River turned up online, creating an embarrassing international scandal for the Shanghai government. Interpretations and speculations flew around the Internet. People panicked, and there were rumors that there was a plague going around. The government and local farmers denied the rumors repeatedly, but the question remained unanswered: why were there so many dead pigs if there was no plague?
Finally, the matter was sent to the squad as a “special case.” Assuming it was a damage control assignment, Chen had barely looked at it. Still, as Detective Yu had pointed out, it was one of the newest cases. So this morning, Chen was going to make a few inquiries—not in his former role as chief inspector, but in his new one as the director of the Legal Reform Committee. He thought he could come up with a plausible enough pretext to get away with it.
The director of the Shanghai Foreign Liaison Office was a man named Sima, known as a capable, hardworking cadre who started out as an ordinary clerk. He was also rumored to be connected to Internal Security, which would be no surprise given his job. He still managed to keep good working relations with everyone, including Chen, who, as a member of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, sometimes met with Western writers.
In the early days of China’s economic reform, the main function of Sima’s office was to make arrangements for people either coming into or leaving the country. It wasn’t easy in those days for regular Shanghainese to get a passport approved. Applicants had to pass a rigorous political screening. State-arranged junkets abroad, in contrast, were very important to the officials making those government-funded trips, and required swift processing. In recent years, however, making those travel arrangements was no longer an important role of the Foreign Liaison Office. Nowadays people had little trouble getting a passport and international travel approved, and as more and more Western expatriates moved to Shanghai, the work of the office had shifted. Foreigners had to apply for a Shanghai residency permit—something like the United States’ green card—in order to move here. In addition, the office also had some say regarding which foreign enterprises were allowed to set up offices or factories in Shanghai. Rumor had it that director of the Foreign Liaison Office was a lucrative position, but Chen knew better than to be too nosy about such things.
In a spacious office basking in the morning light, Sima stood up with an affable smile and reached out his hand to Chen as he arrived for his unannounced visit.
“Congratulations, Director Chen.”
“For what?”
“Your new position.”
“Come on. Surely you know better, Director Sima.”
“Well, I’ve just read an article from the Associated Press saying that Beijing is determined to give China’s legal system a thorough overhaul. The article said that it’s possible that new judges at the highest level will be appointed. So your transfer to this new position may be another step toward that reform.”
“Really! I’ve not heard anything about that.”
“But it’s possible, right?” Sima said. “What favorable wind brings you here today?”
“Oh, I’m here to familiarize myself with some aspects of my new responsibilities.”
“Great! What can I do for you, Director Chen?”
“To start with something specific, are there any regulations involved in the matter of the dead pigs?” He added in a hurry, “I’m just curious.”
“You mean the dead pig scandal? What a shame that was! I’m not an expert in that sort of thing, but when the scandal broke out, I did look into it. Because there were Westerners involved in the background, as you know. What I found out is that the regulations are vague. Theoretically, the farmers should see to the proper disposal of any livestock that dies, in this case the dead pigs, but that means extra labor and money. It was simply more cost-effective to throw carcasses into the river.”
“Is there any legal recourse? A law requiring proper disposal or a penalty for dumping them in the river like that?”
“None that I know of,” Sima said, shaking his head. He shifted the topic easily. “There are so many foreigners in the city these days that I really have my work cut out for me. It’s not even possible to effectively control all the hotels.”
“The pig scandal started with a British tourist, right?”
“Oh yes. He actually posted a picture of his hotel meal online, just an hour before he was taken to hospital. From there it just spread like a virus. The Internet can really create trouble. Pictures and blog posts were forwarded and reposted God knows how many times. Someone even posted the patient’s diagnosis from his hospital records. And then, after all that, the pictures of the pig carcasses floating down the river showed up. The city government lost a lot of face, and they had to conduct some sort of internal investigation.”
“Tell me more about that investigation.”
“The dead pigs were traced back to Jiaxing. In the past, farmers there raised only a few pigs, perhaps five or six per family. Pig farming is now a matter of mass production. There are thousands of them, maybe even more, crammed together. They are now raised on chemical feed and whatnot. So naturally there are more sick or dead pigs in the picture. Some ‘entrepreneurs’ saw an opportunity there. They bought the pig carcasses from the farmers for practically nothing, and with their special connections, they sold the pigs to food companies at a slightly lower price. After all, once it was made into sausage, who could tell the difference?”
“Then why were all the dead pigs suddenly floating down the river?”
“The National Party Congress is scheduled for the end of the year. After the British tourist’s bad sausage situation became so public, the city government tried to do something to address food safety issues. They arrested a couple of the businessmen who were selling the dead pigs. Those arrests scared the others,
so they simply dumped the remaining pig carcasses into the river.”
“But what about all of the others?” Chen said. “I mean, it’s a long chain of corruption, starting with the farmers and then moving on to the middlemen, the food companies, and the supermarkets. How can all of them be so unethical and irresponsible?”
“People don’t believe in anything these days except the money in their own hands. As the proverb says, everyone is just sweeping the snow in front of their own door. Secretary Lai is right. There’s something wrong with the introduction of Western capitalistic ideas and values into our society. The result has been a spiritual vacuum. We have to reintroduce revolutionary ideas to the people.”
There was something to Sima’s analysis. But whatever it was that had caused this general “spiritual vacuum,” singing the old red songs wouldn’t be the solution. Sima was just using the official language and speaking the Party line. Chen saw no point in discussing it with him any longer and quickly made his farewells.
* * *
Emerging from Sima’s office, Chen decided to walk for a while and try to sort out what he’d learned from Sima. The story of the dead pigs was absurd, conceivably another blow to the prestige of the local Party government, but he couldn’t see how it could possibly be related to him. He was still wondering what the invisible connection was, when he got a phone call from Wuting, the acting head of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.
“I’ve got great news, Chen. The new T. S. Eliot translation is coming out. We are going to have a book launch party tonight. As one of the main translators, you have to come to the party and speak about it.”
Chen had started translating Eliot in the mid-eighties. His collection of translations had turned into an accidental bestseller at the moment China was becoming interested in the concept of modernism. The surprise success was attributable to a misleading statement by an old scholar: “Without modernism, without modernization.” The latter referred to the Party’s call for four modernizations—in industry, agriculture, national defense, and science—which was the principle political slogan at the time. But it befuddled censorship officials, who approved the translation as a result. Afterward, however, the translation disappeared from the bookstores for more than a decade because of copyright issues. Now, the publishing house had finally cleared the rights to the poems, and a new edition was coming out. It included most of Chen’s earlier translations, along with some by other translators.