When Red is Black

by Qiu Xiaolong

  “Of course, the city government is all for the project. When the New World goes up, it will not only enhance the image of our great city, but also bring in huge tax revenues.” Gu lit a cigarette before he added, “Well, I’ll let you in on a secret. I applied for the use of the land for cultural preservation. After all, shikumen-style architecture is an integral part of Shanghai ’s history. One or two small museums may be included in the concept as well. A museum for ancient coins is one idea; I have already been contacted by someone. But most of the new shikumen houses will be for commercial use. Really high-end, luxury premises.”

  “Like those in Rome?”

  “Exactly. In my proposal to the city government, I did not dwell on those details, or the land price would have soared. From another perspective, however, you can say that it really is for the preservation of Shanghai ’s culture.”

  “How true,” Chen said. “There are so many perspectives from which one may examine one and the same thing, and you can choose the perspective you like.”

  “The city government has approved the plan. The next step is to get loans from investment banks abroad. Large loans. It is a huge gamble, I admit, but I’m betting on it. China ’s entry into the World Trade Organization will open its doors even wider. No one can turn the clock back. Several American venture-capital companies are interested in the New World, but none of them knows anything about Shanghai ’s culture. So I want to give them a detailed business proposal, fifty pages long in English. Everything depends on the translation. You alone are up to the task, Chief Inspector Chen.”

  “Thank you, General Manager Gu.” Indeed, it was a high compliment. Chen had majored in English in college, but, through a combination of circumstances, had been assigned to a job at the Shanghai Police Bureau. Over the years, he had only done translations in his spare time, and he felt flattered by Gu’s choosing him.

  “But there are many qualified translators in Shanghai,” Chen protested. “Professors at Fudan or East China universities. I don’t think you need me to introduce one of them to you.”

  “No, they are not really up to the task. That’s not just my own opinion. As a matter of fact, I asked a retired professor from Fudan University for help, and faxed his sample translation to an American associate. No good. ‘Too old-fashioned, too literal’ was his conclusion.”

  “Well, I studied under those old-fashioned professors.”

  “But for the government’s college-graduate-assignment policy at the time, you would have been a well-known professor by now. Of course, things have worked out very well for you. An emerging Party cadre, a published poet, a renowned translator; you are the envy of those professors. And you are different. As a government representative, you have been in frequent contact with American visitors. Your American friend, Catherine-I remember her name-says your English is absolutely wonderful.”

  “American exaggeration. You cannot take her word for it,” Chen said. “Besides, I have served only as a representative of the Shanghai Writers’ Association. Nor have I done that often.”

  “Yes, that’s another reason I need your help. This business proposal has a lot to do with Shanghai ’s culture and history. The Chinese text is written in quite poetic language. And you are a poet. That’s no exaggeration, right? I honestly cannot think of a better candidate for the job.”

  “Thank you,” Chen said, as he studied Gu over the rim of his glass. Gu must have given this offer some serious thought. “It is just that I’m overwhelmed with work at the bureau.”

  “I’m asking a lot, I know. Take a week’s leave for me. Rush service! We’ll pay one and half times the rate I offered for rush service: seventy-five cents a word. I’ll tell my American partner. I know it will not be a problem.”

  This was a small fortune, Chen calculated quickly. At the rate of seventy-five cents per word, at about a thousand Chinese characters per page, for a total of fifty pages, this would be over thirty thousand American dollars, equivalent to three hundred thousand Yuan, an amount that it would take him thirty years to earn as a chief inspector, including all the bonuses he might get.

  As he had attained the rank of chief inspector in his mid-thirties, Chen was generally viewed as a success: an emerging Party cadre with a promising future, with a bureau car at his. disposal, a new apartment in his own name, and an occasional photo appearance in local newspapers. As an iron-rice-bowl holder, however, his monthly income of around five hundred Yuan was sometimes barely enough to cover his needs. But for the extra money from his translations of foreign mysteries and the occasional short technical translation, as well as the “gray area” perquisites of his position, he didn’t know how he could have managed.

  And, as an emerging Party cadre, he also felt the need to live up to certain unwritten standards. When he met with connections like Gu, for instance, he considered himself obliged to offer to pay occasionally, even though those businessmen would invariably insist on picking up the check.

  Of late he’d also had sizable expenses due to the increasing cost of medical treatment for his mother, whose former employer, a state-run factory, had fallen into terrible shape and was unable to reimburse its retirees for their medical bills. She had talked to the factory director a number of times without success. The company was on the brink of bankruptcy. So Chen had taken it upon himself to pay. The money from the translation of the New World business plan would be like timely rain in the dry season.

  “You have to help me,” Gu pleaded with utter sincerity. “I cannot turn in an unreadable proposal to an American banker. The translation must be first-class.”

  “I cannot guarantee anything. To translate a total of fifty pages will take time. I doubt I will be able to manage in just one or even two weeks, even if I take a leave from the bureau.”

  “Oh, I forgot. For such a large project, you will surely need help. What about White Cloud? That girl you danced with in the Dynasty Club, remember her? She’s a college student. Bright, capable, and understanding. She will be a little secretary for you.”

  A “little secretary”-xiaomi-another current term, which actually meant a “little mistress.” Newly rich businessmen-Mr. Big Bucks-like Gu made a point of having young, beautiful “little secretaries” in their company. A necessary sign of one’s social status, if not of something else. Chen had met White Cloud-a “K girl”- in the private karaoke room at Gu’s Dynasty Club while pursuing an earlier investigation with triad ramifications.

  “How I can afford secretarial assistance, General Manager Gu?”

  “It’s in the interest of the New World that you have help. I will take care of it.”

  The fragrance from her red sleeves accompanies your uniting deep in the night… a Tang dynasty line rose from the recesses of his mind, but Chen pulled himself back to the present. A free little secretary. Like a bottle of Maotai in addition to the moon cake falling from the skies.

  So far, there had been no strings attached, Chen thought. A shrewd businessman like Gu might not play all his cards too obviously, so early, but the chief inspector believed he did not have to worry yet. It seemed that he was being offered a straight business proposition, albeit a very favorable one. If something came up later, he would then decide how to deal with it.

  There are things a man can do, and things a man cannot do. That was one of the Confucian dictums his father, a Neo-Confucian scholar, had taught him at the time of the Cultural Revolution, when the old man refused to write a dictated “confession” incriminating his colleagues.

  “Let me to talk to Party Secretary Li,” Chen said. “I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  “He won’t refuse you, I know. You are a rising star, with a most promising future. Here is part of the advance.” Gu took a bulging envelope out of his brief case. “Ten thousand Yuan. I’ll have the rest delivered to you tomorrow.”

  Chen took the envelope, making up his mind not to worry about it. There were other things to concern him. He would buy a box of red ginseng for his mothe
r. That’s the least he could do as her only son. Perhaps he should also engage an hourly maid for her; she lived alone in an ancient attic, and was in poor health. He drained his cup, saying, “Drinking with you, we talk to our hearts’ content, my horse tied to a willow tree, by a high building.”

  “What is the allusion? You have to enlighten me, my poetic chief inspector.”

  “It’s just a quote from Wang Wei,” Chen said without further explanation. The couplet referred to a promise given by a gallant knight in the Tang dynasty, but he and Gu had merely concluded a business deal, which was anything but heroic. “I will try my best.”

  Chapter 3

  The bus, full of people packed like sardines, was stuck fast in an early-morning traffic jam. As a low-level cop, Detective Yu had no access to a bureau car, unlike his boss Chief Inspector Chen. This morning, Yu considered himself lucky when he obtained a seat in the overcrowded bus shortly after he boarded. Now, unbuttoning the top button of his uniform, he had plenty of time to think about the new murder case.

  Party Secretary Li had called earlier in the morning, informing him that Chief Inspector Chen was on vacation, and that Yu would be in charge of the Yin case. Chen had also phoned, explaining that he was too busy translating a business proposal at home to come to work. Yu would have to investigate the Yin murder by himself.

  Information had been gathered about Yin Lige already. He had been given a fat folder full of material from the Shanghai Archives Bureau, as well as from other sources. Detective Yu was not surprised at this evidence of bureaucratic efficiency. A dissident writer like Yin must have been the subject of secret police surveillance for a long time.

  The folder contained a picture of Yin, a bamboo-thin, tallish woman in her mid-fifties, her high forehead and oval face deeply lined, sad eyes looking out through a pair of silver-framed eyeglasses. She wore a black Mao jacket and matching black pants. Her photo was like an image copied from an old postcard.

  Yin had been a Shanghai College graduate, class of 1964. Because of the enthusiasm she displayed in student political activities, she had been admitted to the Party and, after graduation, assigned a job as a political instructor at the college. Instead of teaching classes, she gave political talks to students. It was then considered a promising assignment; she might rise quickly as a Party official working with intellectuals who forever needed to be reformed ideologically.

  When the Cultural Revolution broke out, like other young people she joined a Red Guard organization, following Chairman Mao’s call to sweep away everything old and rotten. She threw herself into criticism of counterrevolutionary or revisionist “monsters,” and emerged as a leading member of the College Revolutionary Committee. Powerful in this new position, she pledged herself to carry on “the continuous revolution under the proletarian dictatorship.” Little did she suspect that she herself was soon to become a target of the continuous revolution.

  Toward the end of the sixties, with his former political rivals out of the way, Chairman Mao found that the rebellious Red Guards were blocking the consolidation of his power. So those Red Guards, much to their bewilderment, found themselves in trouble. Yin, too, was criticized and removed from her position on the College Revolutionary Committee. She was sent to a cadre school in the countryside, a new institution invented by Chairman Mao on an early May morning, after which May 7th Cadre Schools appeared throughout the country. For Mao, one of their purposes was to keep politically unreliable elements under control or, at least, out of the way.

  The cadre students consisted of two main groups. The first was composed of ex-Party cadres. With their positions now filled by the even more left-wing Maoists, they had to be contained somewhere. The other was made up of intellectuals, such as university professors, writers, and artists, who were included in the cadre rank system. The cadre students were supposed to reform themselves through hard labor in the fields and group political studies.

  Yin, a college instructor, and also a Party cadre for a short while, fit into both categories. In the cadre school, she became the head of a group, and there Yin and Yang met for the first time.

  Yang, much older than Yin, had been a professor at East China University. He had been in the United States and had returned in the early fifties, but soon he was put on the “use under control” list, labeled a Rightist in the mid-fifties, and a “black monster” in the sixties.

  Yin and Yang fell in love despite their age difference, despite the “revolutionary times,” despite the warnings of the cadre school authorities. Because of their untimely affair, they suffered persecution. Yang died not too long afterward.

  After the Cultural Revolution, Yin returned to her college, and wrote Death of a Chinese Professor, which was published by Shanghai Literature Publishing House. Although described as a novel, it was largely autobiographical. Initially, as there was nothing really new or unusually tragic in the book, it failed to sell. So many people had died in those years. And some people did not think it was up to her-as an ex-Red Guard-to denounce the Cultural Revolution. It was not until it was translated into English by an exchange scholar at the college that it attracted government attention.

  Officially, there was nothing wrong with denouncing the Cultural Revolution. The People’s Daily did so, too. It had been, as the People’s Daily declared, a mistake by Chairman Mao, who had meant well. The atrocities committed were like a national skeleton in the closet.

  To be aware of the skeleton, at home, was one thing, but it was quite another matter to drag it out for Westerners to see. So Party critics labeled her a “dissident,” which worked like a magical word. The novel was then seen to be a deliberate attack on the Party authorities. The book was secretly banned. To discredit her, what she had done as a Red Guard was “uncovered” in reviews and reminiscences. It was a battle she could not win, and she fell silent.

  But all that had happened several years earlier. Her novel, filled with too many specific details, did not attract a large audience abroad. Nor had she produced anything else, except for a collection of Yang’s poetry she had earlier helped edit. Then she was selected for membership in the Chinese Writers’ Association, which was interpreted as a sign of the government’s relenting. Last year, she had been allowed to visit Hong Kong as a novelist. She did not say or do anything too radical there, according to the files.

  Closing the folder, Detective Yu failed to see why the government might be implicated in her murder. He could see, however, why the Party authorities were anxious to have the case solved quickly. Anything to do with a dissident writer might attract attention, unpleasant attention, both at home and overseas.

  When the bus finally arrived at his destination, Detective Yu found that Treasure Garden Lane, where Yin had lived, was only half a block from the bus stop. It was an old-fashioned, medium-sized lane accessed through a black iron grillwork gate, possibly a leftover from the French Concession years. Its location was unfashionable, and the neighborhood had been going downhill in the last few years. As new buildings appeared elsewhere, the lane had become something of an eyesore.

  Yu decided to take a walk around the area first. He would be working with a neighborhood cop, Old Liang, who had been stationed nearby for many years. Old Liang was to meet him at nine thirty in the neighborhood committee office, close to the back entrance of the lane. Yu was fifteen minutes early for their appointment.

  The front entrance to the lane was on Jinling Road. At the intersection of Jinling and Fujian Roads, two or three blocks away, he could see the Zhonghui Mansion-the high-rise once owned by Big Brother Du of the Blue Triad-standing on the corner. The back entrance of the lane led into a large food market. There were also two side entrances along Fujian Road, lined with tiny shops and stalls. In addition to the main lane, he saw several sub-lanes crisscrossing each other. Most of the houses were built in the shikumen style, like his own home, a typical Shanghai two-storied house with a stone door frame and a small interior courtyard.

  Looking into the
lane from the front entrance, Yu saw an elderly woman pushing open the black-painted door of a shikumen house with one hand, carrying a chamber pot in the other. It was an eerily familiar sight, as if he had been transported back to his own lane, except that Treasure Garden Lane was even shabbier, its winding tributary lanes more full of twists and turns. More full of noises too. Near the front entrance, a green-onion-cake peddler hawked his wares loudly, clanging on the large flat pan with a steel ladle. A little girl of five or six stood alone in the middle of the lane crying her heart out, for reasons Yu would never discover. Conducting an investigation here would be difficult, he realized. With the constant flow of people, and all sorts of ceaseless lane activities too, a criminal could have easily sneaked in and out without being noticed.

  As Yu turned in the direction of the neighborhood committee office, he saw a short, white-haired man stepping through the doorway, waving his hand energetically.

  “Comrade Detective Yu?”

  “Comrade Liang?”

  “Yes, that’s me. People here just call me Old Liang,” he said in a booming voice. “I am just a residential policeman. We really have to depend on you to investigate, Comrade Detective Yu.”

  “Don’t say that, Old Liang,” Yu said. “You have worked here for so many years, it is I who must rely on your help.”

  Old Liang was in charge of residential registrations and records for the area. At times, his job was to provide liaison between the neighborhood committee and the district police station. So he had been assigned to work with Detective Yu.

  “Things are not like in the past, you know, when the registration rules were really effective.” As he spoke, Old Liang led Yu into a small office, which looked like it must have been partitioned off from the original hallway, and offered him a cup of tea.