The Cook, the Crook, and the Real Estate Tycoon

by Liu Zhenyun

  A newsstall next to the post office sold ninety different newspapers and magazines. The previous day’s tabloid with the pop singer and Yan Ge was still displayed prominently, and many people bought it instead of the latest issue. When Liu walked by, he saw a crowd looking at the paper and smiled knowingly at the thought that the readers only knew half the truth. They believed what the paper said, which he’d helped change into something false; it had just been a show and he’d made it seem real. The sight of people reading the paper gave him a superior feeling, like the proverbial sage who was the only sober person in a world of drunks.

  A familiar sound in the air made him pause on his way up the post office steps. A man in his fifties was playing the two-stringed erhu in front of a post box on the corner, with a porcelain bowl on the ground containing a few coins. Seeing someone playing for spare change on a Beijing street was nothing special, but this man was different; he was singing a popular song in a Henan accent. The erhu was out of tune, so was the man, producing the squeals of a pig being butchered, and it grated on Liu’s ears. Normally he wouldn’t have paid the man any attention, but after two great performances he felt good enough to do something. Sticking your nose into other people’s business is related to status; don’t try if it’s someone more powerful than you, but go ahead and jump in when it’s someone inferior. A mere cook at a construction site, Liu nevertheless felt superior to a street musician, essentially a beggar. Besides, the man was also from Henan, a familiarity that further bolstered Liu’s confidence. Turning around, he walked down the steps and went up to the post box, where the man continued singing with his eyes closed.

  “Stop!” Liu yelled. “Stop! I’m talking to you.”

  The old man, who had been under the spell of his own voice, was startled by Liu, whom he mistook as an official from Urban Management. He stopped playing and snapped his eyes open, only to discover that Liu was not in uniform.

  “What?”

  “What were you singing?” Liu asked.

  The man stared blankly before replying: “It’s ‘Love and Dedication,’ of course!”

  “You’re from Henan, aren’t you?”

  “So what? You unhappy with that?” The man stiffened his neck.

  “Unhappy with that? Have you ever listened to yourself? Who cares if you lose face, but you’re bringing great shame to all the people from Henan.”

  “Who do you think you are?” The man bristled at Liu’s criticism. “What business is it of yours?”

  “See that over there?” Liu pointed to the construction site. “I built that.”

  He was bragging, of course, but vaguely enough for it to be acceptable. There were several CBD buildings in the area, all under construction, one of which was Liu’s—not his alone, but his, as in his crew. His declaration could lead a person to think that he was either the boss or a construction worker, but he was neither; yet it was acceptable because he was the cook at the site. In any case, the man was bluffed by Liu’s posturing, especially because Liu was dressed in a suit and tie, giving the impression of a construction foreman, his better, which led him to say dispiritedly:

  “I was a folk singer back home in Henan.”

  “Then you should keep singing folksongs.”

  “I did.” The man sounded unhappy. “But no one wants to hear them.”

  “I do.” Liu took out a coin and tossed it into the bowl.

  The man looked at the coin, rolling around in his bowl, and then at Liu, before tuning his instrument and playing the Henan folksong, “Second Sister Pines for Her Husband.” He’d been out of tune with the pop song, but now he hit every note and sounded every word correctly, which, to his surprise, drew a crowd, something he’d been unable to do when he was butchering “Love and Dedication.” They gathered not to hear him sing, but to watch two men from Henan engaged in a debate. And yet the singer, thinking they liked what they were hearing, really got into it. Eyes closed, head raised, he bellowed out Second Sister’s feelings until the veins in his neck bulged.

  As for Liu Yuejin, he felt quite good about correcting one of the world’s mistakes, so he looked around to size up the crowd, spotting a man by the newsstall who’d been there awhile, flipping through the paper. The noise drew him to look in Liu’s direction. When their eyes met, he smiled, obviously amused by the scene with the folk singer. Liu returned a knowing smile. Tossing the paper aside, the man came over and stood behind Liu to listen to the Henan tune. No one really knew what the singer was singing, because it was in the Henan dialect, but Liu Yuejin had heard the tune before in his hometown. As the only one who truly enjoyed the song, he closed his eyes and swayed with the music, when he felt a nudge at his waist. He ignored it at first but then, sensing something was wrong, he opened his eyes and reached for his belt. The man behind him had cut the strap on his fanny pack and taken off with it. Liu looked around for the man, but he had snaked his way through the crowd and run off. It happened so fast all Liu could manage to yell was “Thief!”

  Then it occurred to him that he had feet and that he ought to give chase. The thief was obviously a pro, for instead of running along the main street, he sprinted to the back of the post office and ducked into a clothing market specializing in wholesale imported garments. Although located in a back alley, the market dealt exclusively with famous brands, which, of course, were fake, but in high demand owing to the low prices. There were crowds of people with bags of various sizes, including a substantial number of Russians. By the time Liu had run into the market, the thief had disappeared amid the crowds of shoppers among the seemingly endless clothing stalls.

  Liu did not even have time to get a clear view of the thief’s face; the only thing he could recall was a large dark green mole shaped like an apricot flower on the left side of his face.

  9

  Lao Lin and Chief Jia

  Yan Ge, thin to begin with and a vegetarian to boot, was skinnier than his peers. Born into an impoverished peasant family in Henan, as a child he’d sometimes subsisted on rice and fried chili peppers for three days because his family could not afford to buy anything else. The spicy taste made the bland rice go down easier, and when they couldn’t afford chili peppers, they made do with lumpy pickled vegetables.

  After college, but before his marriage, he moved from job to job; life was hard because much of the little money he earned he sent home to help his family out. During this period, he ate mostly turnips and cabbage with rice, so later on, after he made his fortune, he ate lots of meat, then seafood. For a while he was addicted to an extravagant dish called saucy rice with shark’s fins, which he’d have for lunch and dinner, with guests or when he was alone. He finally reached his saturation point after three years, when he realized that most of the shark’s fins he’d consumed were fake, for there couldn’t possibly be that many sharks in the ocean. He came full circle back to turnips and cabbage, and lost the weight he’d gained during his feasting days. As we’ve seen, he was a fan of Liu Yuejin’s turnips and stewed cabbage, which differed not just from the turnips and cabbage he’d had to eat as a child, but from what his personal chef cooked as well. During the lean days, he’d eaten them every day; they were tasteless. Now his chef made the dish into a delicacy, slowly stewing the ingredients in a pot suspended over a fire, like decorative art. Only Liu’s dish at the dining hall was to Yan’s liking; it was prepared in a huge, communal pot into which mounds of turnips and cabbage were thrown to stew until piping hot and mushy, producing a taste that conjured up the act of mingling and eating with the masses. All he needed to comfort his stomach and soothe the beast were two steamed buns or a bowl of soupy rice.

  Lao Lin in Chief Jia’s office, on the other hand, had been a carnivore all his life, with an appetite only for such delicacies as crab, lobster, sea urchin, abalone, and, of course, saucy rice with shark’s fins. He never touched turnips stewed with cabbage. Whenever Yan Ge invited him out, they went to restaurants that offered plenty of meat or seafood. Obviously, Lao Lin had yet to m
ove to the next level in dietary evolution. On this day, instead of a seafood café—Lin had eaten seafood for lunch—they went to a hotpot restaurant, where, once the water was bubbling hot, they each dipped in his favorite, meat for Lin and vegetables for Yan.

  The two men had known each other for six years. Thirty-eight-year-old Lin had started out as Chief Jia’s secretary and was later promoted to office director. Originally from Shandong, where men tend to be big and tall, Lin was an exception; he was short and small-boned, the sign of a dirt-poor childhood, like Yan Ge. He had once been scrawny, but you would not know it by looking at his current roly-poly figure. His face, though, remained thin, as if chiseled by a knife, and that, along with his small bones, gave the illusion that he was slim.

  Another trait that marked him from other Shandong men was his soft voice, so soft you might miss something if you didn’t listen carefully. At least he spoke slowly, pausing after every phrase to give you enough time to figure out what he was saying. With a pair of white-framed glasses for extreme myopia, he reminded Yan of an old party member from his childhood, Zhang Chunqiao, one of the Gang of Four. Yan had known Jia first, so Lin treated him politely, though Yan was fully aware of Lin’s temper.

  Once, when they were sharing a meal of saucy rice with shark’s fins (or maybe Lin was eating shark’s fins while Yan had vegetables), Lin received a call from one of Chief Jia’s bureau chiefs. At one point the conversation took a wrong turn. Lin changed his tone and began to speak rapidly, like a machine gun, to the point of rattling the glass in the window. How the man on the other end reacted, Yan did not know, but he got a fright, and began to see Lin in a new light.

  Yan had met Chief Jia fifteen years earlier, when Jia was a section chief and Yan was a branch manager for a private company. They met at a dinner hosted by a mutual friend with more than a dozen people in attendance, which meant that no serious business could be discussed. After a few rounds of drinks, they began telling dirty jokes, bursting into laughter after each one. Everyone was having a great time, all but Jia, who quietly kept his head down the whole time. When someone asked him why, he sighed and said:

  “You’re all managers at private companies and I envy you. I work in a government office, with a salary that’s barely enough to get by on.”

  No one thought much about his complaint, which to them was common knowledge, not some elevated truth, so they ignored him and continued to eat and drink. Yan Ge was the only one who sensed something beneath the man’s complaint and, as they happened to be sitting next to each other, Yan got Jia to talk. It turned out that Jia’s mother, who had been diagnosed with liver cancer, needed an operation, but he was eighty thousand yuan short, with nowhere to get the money. Jia was worried sick and in no mood for merriment; he’d come that night only because he’d hoped to touch up some of his wealthy friends for a loan. Now that everyone was having so much fun, he couldn’t broach the subject and could only sigh.

  The response made Yan rue his curiosity, as he did not know what to say. Jia didn’t ask him for a loan, but his intention was clear after telling him the whole story. At the time, a mere employee at a private company with a fixed salary, Yan did not have that kind of money, and besides, they had just met. He let the subject drop, though he felt awkward.

  Yan forgot all about Jia’s situation after the dinner ended. The next day, when he was sorting business cards he’d collected the night before, he was surprised to learn that Jia, though only a section chief, worked in a department that was at the heart of China’s economy. That triggered something in Yan’s mind and, as if seized by a premonition, he put away the cards and drove to Tong County, then east to Hebei, where a college friend, Dai Yingjun, lived. They had shared a dorm room, and in their sophomore year Dai had attempted suicide over a failed romance, after which his father came to take him home. Who could have predicted that a possibly tragic event would turn into a blessing? Dai and his father opened a paper mill producing sanitary napkins and were rich within a few years. Yan saw him several times after college; good food had ballooned Dai to the point that his eyes were as tiny as mung beans. He had also developed a dirty mouth, no longer the genteel young man who had tried to kill himself over love.

  Dai was happy to see Yan that day—at first—but pulled a long face as soon as Yan mentioned a loan.

  “Why the fuck are so many people coming to me for money? It doesn’t blow in on the wind, you know. It’s not easy selling sanitary pads one at a time for women to stain with their blood.”

  “I’d never ask your help for just anything, but my pa is in the hospital.”

  Feeling cornered by the mention of a sick father, Dai continued to grumble while calling over his bookkeeper to get eighty thousand yuan for Yan. With the money in hand, Yan returned to Beijing and went straight to the government office, where he called for Jia at the gate, telling him he happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to stop by to say hello. Jia came out of the office building and invited Yan in, but Yan said he had another engagement. He handed him the money wrapped in newspaper.

  Jia was momentarily speechless. “I was just venting yesterday, but you took it seriously.”

  “I’m glad the money will be put to good use.” Yan added, “You can put off other matters, but not when your mother is ill.”

  Deeply moved, Jia said with moist eyes:

  “I’ll accept your help then.” He held Yan’s shoulder tightly. “I’ll never forget it.”

  Jia’s mother had the operation but did not live long after that; about six months later the cancer spread and she did not recover. But Jia never forgot Yan’s kindness. When the two men first met, Jia was forty-six, seemingly too old for any kind of career advancement, but for some reason his luck changed and he was promoted to deputy bureau chief the following year; two years later he was bureau chief. After that, he became the deputy director, a ministerial rank, and eventually the director. When they first met, they were friends who shared difficult times. Then, along with Jia’s promotion, their friendship entered an elevated state. When making friends, it is always better to start with a humble background together, for no one in a high position will be in need of friends. Once, during a meal after Jia’s latest promotion, he pointed at Yan with his chopsticks.

  “You’re someone with a long view.” He added, obviously having had too much to drink, “Other people mean nothing, but you are a lifelong friend, all because of that eighty thousand yuan.”

  “That was nothing, Director Jia.” Yan waved him off. “I’ve forgotten all about it, so please don’t bring it up now.”

  Jia’s office was in charge of construction permits for commercial and residential real estate. After Jia’s promotion, Yan Ge quit his job at the computer company and started his own real estate development company, which made him a billionaire in a mere twelve years. Jia, in other words, was the special person in Yan’s life, his angel, his patron saint. A patron saint is never someone who walks up to you with a smile to lend a helping hand; no, he exists for people with a long view who know to make advanced preparations.

  Yan detected subtle changes in their relationship during that period, not caused by him, however. Jia was the one who initiated the changes, to which Yan had to passively react; he had no choice. They were friends, but the difference in status meant that Yan was a friend to Jia but that Jia could not really be a friend to Yan. Put differently, before Jia’s promotion, they had been friends, but no longer. Or put yet another way, they could treat each other as friends in private, but in public the distinction in status must be maintained. As someone who was well versed in social etiquette, Yan showed Jia the requisite respect in public, but was mindful of propriety in private. To be sure, Jia got wealthy right along with Yan. Yan would never have gotten rich if not for Jia, which was why Yan was so generous with his money where Jia was concerned. He gave it to him on several occasions, with a fixed set of rules: cash only, no bank transfers or deposits to credit cards, and always face to face, leaving no tra
ce. Naturally, pleasures of the flesh were generously funded. Over a period of twelve years, Yan believed he had gained insights into a man’s insignificance in the face of money and power. Take sex for example. Some people do not need to go looking for it; it comes looking for them, pants off.

  Jia became an even gentler person after his promotion, always eager to extend a soft hand with a moist palm for anyone to shake. When he smiled, his round face took on the shape of a watermelon. In the past, he had been straightforward, saying what was on his mind. But no longer. He developed a fondness for metaphors and bullet points, even for jokes. For instance, when talking about the type of woman he preferred, he would say she must be doe-like: one, a small head; two, a long neck; three, a big chest; and four, slender legs. His audience had no trouble conjuring up an image. Then he’d add:

  “All society’s warlords chase after the doe.”

  He sounded contemptuous and sinister, as well as confusing, and it was hard to tell whether he was talking about women or something more important. That was when Yan realized that Jia was not the same man.

  One weekend, Yan drove Jia and his family to Beidaihe for the ocean air. The two men were walking along the beach at night, the wind playing with Jia’s hair, when Jia blurted out under his breath:

  “You can’t know how humble an official is until you’re one yourself.”

  Unsure what Jia was referring to, Yan held his tongue. And Jia was not done:

  “You think you’re with the powerful, the wolves and jackals, but in fact you’re down there with the worms and maggots.”

  Now Yan understood that Jia was talking about the difficulty of being an official.