high school, Chen was not sent to the countryside “to be reeducated by poor and lower-middle peasants” in the early seventies. As an only child, he had been allowed to stay in the city, where he had studied English on his own. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, Chen entered Beijing Foreign Language College with a high English score on the entrance examination and then obtained a job at the Shanghai Police Bureau. And now there was another demonstration of Chen’s good luck. In an overpopulated city like Shanghai, with more than thirteen million people, the housing shortage was acute. Still, he had been assigned a private apartment.
The housing problem had a long history in Shanghai. A small fishing village during the Ming dynasty, Shanghai had developed into one of the most prosperous cities in the Far East, with foreign companies and factories appearing like bamboo shoots after a spring rain, and people pouring in from everywhere. Residential housing failed to keep pace under the rule of the Northern warlords and Nationalist governments. When the Communists took power in 1949, the situation took an unexpected turn for the worse. Chairman Mao encouraged large families, even to the extent of providing food subsidies and free nurseries. It did not take long for the disastrous consequences to be felt. Families of two or three generations were squeezed into one single room of twelve square meters. Housing soon became a burning issue for people’s “work units”-factories, companies, schools, hospitals, or the police bureau-which were assigned an annual housing quota directly from the city authorities. It was up to the work units to decide which employee would get an apartment. Chen’s satisfaction came in part from the fact that he had obtained the apartment through his work unit’s special intervention.
Preparing for the housewarming party, slicing a tomato for a side dish, he recalled singing a song while he stood beneath the portrait of Chairman Mao in his elementary school, a song that had been so popular in the sixties-”The Party’s Concern Warms My Heart.” There was no portrait of Chairman Mao in this apartment.
It was not luxurious. There was no real kitchen, only a narrow corridor containing a couple of gas burners tucked into the corner, with a small cabinet hanging on the wall above. No real bathroom either: a cubicle large enough for just a toilet seat and a cement square with a stainless-steel shower head. Hot water was out of the question. There was, however, a balcony that might serve as a storeroom for wicker trunks, repairable umbrellas, rusted brass spittoons, or whatever could not be decently squeezed inside the room. But he did not have such things, so he had put only a plastic folding chair and a few bookshelf boards on the balcony.
The apartment was good enough for him.
There had been some complaining in the bureau about his privileges . To those with longer years of service or larger families who remained on the waiting list, Chief Inspector Chen’s recent acquisition was another instance of the unfair new cadre policy, he knew. But he decided not to think about those unpleasant complaints at the moment. He had to concentrate on the evening’s menu.
He had only limited experience in preparing for a party. With a cookbook in his hand, he focused on those recipes designated easy-to-make. Even those took considerable time, but one colorful dish after another appeared on the table, adding a pleasant mixture of aromas to the room.
By ten to six he had finished setting the table. He rubbed his hands, quite pleased with the results of his efforts. For the main dishes, there were chunks of pork stomach on a bed of green napa, thin slices of smoked carp spread on fragile leaves of jicai, and steamed peeled shrimp with tomato sauce. There was also a platter of eels with scallions and ginger, which he had ordered from a restaurant. He had opened a can of Meiling steamed pork, and added some green vegetables to it to make another dish. On the side, he placed a small dish of sliced tomatoes, and another of cucumbers. When the guests arrived, a soup would be made from the juice of the canned pork and canned pickle.
He was selecting a pot in which to warm the Shaoxing wine when the doorbell rang.
Wang Feng, a young reporter from the Wenhui Daily, one of China’s most influential newspapers, was the first to arrive. Attractive, young, and intelligent, she seemed to have all the makings of a successful reporter. But at the moment she did not have her black leather briefcase in her hand. Instead, she held a huge pine nut cake in her arms.
“Congratulations, Chief Inspector Chen,” she said. “What a spacious apartment!”
“Thanks,” he said, taking the cake from her.
He led her around for a five-minute tour. She seemed to like the apartment very much, looking into everything, opening the cupboard doors, and stepping into the bathroom, where she stood on her tiptoes, touching the overhead shower pipe and the new shower head.
“And a bathroom, too!”
“Well, like most Shanghai residents, I’ve always dreamed of having an apartment in this area,” he said, giving her a glass of sparkling wine.
“And you have a wonderful view from the window, “ she said, “almost like a picture.”
Wang stood leaning against the newly painted window frame, her ankles crossed, holding the glass in her hand.
“ You are turning it into a painting,” he said.
In the afternoon light streaming through the plastic blinds, her complexion was matte porcelain. Her eyes were clear, almond-shaped, just long enough to be suggestive of a distinct character. Her black hair cascaded halfway down her back. She wore a white T-shirt and a pleated skirt, with a wide belt of alligator leather that cinched her “emancipated wasp” waist and accentuated her breasts.
Emancipated wasp. An image invented by Li Yu, the last emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty, also a brilliant poet, who depicted his favorite imperial concubine’s ravishing beauty in several celebrated poems. The poet-emperor was afraid that he might break her in two by holding her too tightly. It was said that the custom of foot-binding also started in Li Yu’s reign. There was no accounting for taste, Chen reflected.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“ ‘Waist so slender, weightless she dances on my palm,’” he said, changing the reference as he recalled the tragic end of the imperial concubine, who drowned herself in a well when the Southern Tang dynasty fell. “Du Mu’s famous line fails to do justice to you.”
“More of your bogus compliments copied from the Tang dynasty, my poetic chief inspector?”
This sounded more like the spirited woman he had first met in the Wenhui building, Chen was happy to note. It had taken quite a long while for her to get over the defection of her husband. A student in Japan, the man had decided not to return home when his visa expired. Wang had taken it hard, naturally.
“Poetically alone,” he said.
“With this new apartment, you no longer have an excuse to remain celibate.” She drained the glass with a toss of her long hair.
“Well, introduce some girls to me.”
“You need my help?”
“Why not, if you are willing to help?” He tried to change the subject. “But how are things with you? About your own apartment, I mean. Soon you will get one for yourself, I bet.”
“If only I were a chief inspector, a rising political star.”
“Oh, sure,” he said, raising his cup, “many thanks to you.”
But it was true, or at least to a certain extent.
They had first met on a professional level. She had been assigned to write about the “people’s policemen,” and his name had been mentioned by Party Secretary Li of the Shanghai Police Bureau. As she talked with Chen in her office, she became more interested in how he spent his evenings than in how he did his day job. Chen had had several translations of Western mystery novels published. The reporter was not a fan of that particular genre, but she saw a fresh perspective for her article. And then the readers, too, responded favorably to the image of a young, well-educated police officer who “works late into night, translating books to enlarge the horizon of his professional expertise, when the city of Shanghai is peacefully asleep.” The article caught the attention of a senior vice minister in Beijing, Comrade Zheng Zuoren, who believed he had discovered a new role model. It was in part due to Zheng’s recommendation that Chen had been promoted to chief inspector.
It was only partially true, however, that Chen had chosen to translate mysteries to enrich his professional knowledge. It was more because he, an entry-level police officer at the time, needed extra cash. He had also translated a collection of American imagist poetry, but the publishing house offered him only two hundred copies in lieu of royalties for that work.
“You were so sure of the motive for my translations?” he said.
“Of course, as I declared in that article: a ‘people’s policeman’s sense of dedication’.” She laughed and tilted
