looking, dressed in a beige jacket, white shirt, and khaki pants. Nothing conspicuous, yet with an air of prosperous distinction that fit well with his clothes. Slightly bookish, well read, poetry-quoting in his conversation, and well connected too, considering his stay at the center. But he wasn’t one of those upstarts, who wouldn’t have revisted Uncle Wang’s place.
“By the way, have you received any more phone calls like the one yesterday?” he said abruptly, with genuine concern on his face.
“No, not today,” she said. It was strange. She’d been getting the sinister messages for the past two weeks. Every day, around the same time. But not today. Could it have something to do with the death of Liu Deming, the general manager of the chemical company?
The police had questioned her earlier in the morning, focusing on her recent arguments with Liu. Her work as an environmental engineer, she admitted, hadn’t been agreeable to Liu. It was also true that Liu had been making things hard for her. But she’d never even thought of murdering him.
A dog’s barking in the distance, fierce, persistent, broke her reverie.
No one had accused her of anything yet, but how it would play out, no one knew. She was under a lot of pressure. Not only from the cops, but from her coworkers as well. People were talking and pointing stealthily behind her back, as though she were the prime suspect.
So it wasn’t such a bad idea to let Chen accompany her to the ferry. It distracted her, albeit temporarily, and kept her from dwelling too much on those disturbing thoughts. He turned out to be not unpleasant to walk with.
“Oh, something happened at your company today?” Chen asked, as if reading her thoughts.
She didn’t want to talk about it, but she responded nonetheless.
“Liu Deming, the general manager of our company, was murdered last night.”
“Oh, that’s horrible.” He added, “Has the murderer been caught?”
“No, there are no suspects or clues so far. He was murdered at home-or, to be exact, at his home office not far from the company office.”
“Did he have enemies or people who really hated him?”
“You’re talking like a cop, Mr. Chen.”
“Sorry, I was just being curious,” he said. “You’re right. It’s not a pleasant topic.”
After another turn in the road, they came within view of the lake. Chen pointed at a flat-bottomed sampan and, like a tourist, declared, “Look.”
The sampan dangled on a frayed rope tied to a stunted tree at the edge of the water, which looked impenetrable. As they moved closer, however, there seemed to be a swirl of movement down there with a silver glimmer under the surface. He picked up a pebble and flicked it into the water.
“It’s so peaceful here,” he said. “The air contains a sort of quietness unimaginable in Shanghai.”
“The ferry is further to the south. We’re taking a different route from the usual tourist path.”
“That’s great,” he said, then changed the subject again. “You said something about the water quality earlier.”
“So you’ll be able to see for yourself. We are walking there now.”
Several minutes later, she slowed down.
“See the green stuff over the water, Mr. Chen?”
“Yes, green algae, but please call me Chen, Shanshan.”
“Can you smell it?”
He squatted down, inhaled deeply, and frowned.
“Oh, it’s horrible,” he said, shaking his head. “The lake used to be a scenic attraction because of its clear water. When I was a kid, even tea made with lake water was better because of it, or so my father told me.”
“Would you now make tea with the lake water?”
“No. Now I understand why you carry a bottle of water with you. But how could it have become so heavily polluted?”
“The algae blooms that are ruining Tai Lake, like other Chinese freshwater lakes, are mainly caused by high concentrations of nitrogen and large amounts of phosphorus in the water. In the past few years, industrial emissions have been getting more and more out of control. The result is what you see today.”
“Nitrogen is a main ingredient in soap powder and fertilizer, right?”
“Yes, it is also found in many other chemical products and wastes,” she said. She pointed to the buildings looming along the far shore of the lake. “Look at them. Paper mills, dyeing factories, chemical companies, and whatnot. In the last twenty years or so, those plants have sprung up like bamboo shoots after the rain. Now they make up more than forty percent of the city’s total economic output. Relocating them is out of the question-there are too many of them. The local officials aren’t eager to do anything about it.”
“How do you explain that, Shanshan?”
“As the old saying goes, when there are too many people involved, the law cannot punish. For the local government, the most important thing is to show off their accomplishments to the Beijing authorities-particularly in terms of the local economy. The city government has pledged an annual revenue increase of ten percent. At what expense the increase is achieved is not their concern. On the contrary, any environmental effort that could reduce the income is unacceptable to them. They’re concerned only with how they’ll move up as a result of the ‘economic success.’ All they care about is this particular moment while they are here. They don’t care about what might happen in ten years, or even one year after they leave Wuxi. Last year, the former mayor was promoted to a ministerial position in Beijing because he presided over a revenue increase for three years in a row. All the officials know this only too well. And that’s not even to mention all the ‘red envelopes’ that they receive from businesspeople.”
“But there must be some government agency in charge of taking care of the situation.”
“Sure, there’s a city environmental office, but it exists only for appearance’s sake. Some of the factories are equipped with wastewater processing facilities, but they generally choose not to operate those facilities. The cost of doing so would wipe out their profits. So they have the facilities for the sake of appearances, but continue to dump waste into the lake in spite of the worsening crisis. From time to time, when the central government in Beijing issues some red-letterheaded documents, the local environmental office may put up a show of checking pollution levels, but it informs those companies beforehand. So before they arrive, the waste treatment facilities start operating, and the sample they take will then be up to the government standard.”
Talking, they crossed an old stone bridge in the shape of a crescent moon, which looked to be in bad repair, and skirted along the bank where willow tree limbs hung like a curtain.
“I’m no expert,” he said deliberately. “But I’ve seen green algae in other lakes, I think. Even in the tiny pond in the Old City God’s Temple Market in Shanghai. Of course, never anything so serious as here.”
“Let me tell you something. The water in Tai Lake contains two hundred times more harmful material than the national standard, and even the Wuxi disease control center can’t deny that figure,” she said, taking a drink from her bottle. “Of course, there’s more than a single cause. In addition to the industrial pollution, sewage treatment measures also lag far behind the social and economic development of the Yangtze River delta. In the early nineties, the annual industrial sewage entering the lake was estimated at 540 million tons, and household sewage at 320 million tons. But nowadays, the total sewage is more than 5.3 billion tons. Only thirty percent of the household sewage is treated before being dumped into the lake.”
“Wow, you keep all of those figures in your head?” With an apologetic smile, he asked, “Do you mind if I smoke? I need to digest those figures. This is a serious problem for China.”
“Go ahead,” she said, noticing that he took out a soft pack of
Perhaps it wasn’t just a subject that she was passionate about; talking about it also gave her a sense of self-justification. She was unpopular at the company, where people took her as something of a Cassandra figure, and that morning she almost became a murder suspect.
“No, you don’t have to apologize. On the contrary, I’m grateful for your conversation-or your lecture, if you want to call it that. It’s something I could never have learned from the official publications. It’s really shocking.”
She couldn’t help noting the look of serious attention on his face, bookish yet sincere. She hadn’t had an
