Enigma of China (24 page)

still so green under the bridge
,

the ripples that once reflected her arrival

light-footed, in such a beauty

as to shame wild geese into fleeing.

II

It’s forty years since we last met
,

the dream broken, the scent vanished
,

in Shen Garden, the withered willows

produce no more fluffy catkins.

An old man about to turn into the dust

of Mount Ji, I still burst into tears

at this old scene.

“The poems are autobiographical,” Chen said, starting in again. “In his youth, Lu You married his cousin, Tang Wan, whom he deeply loved. Because of opposition from his mother, however, they were forced to divorce, though they still cared for each other, even after each of them remarried.”

“They both remarried? Didn’t the institution of arranged marriage forbid women from remarrying?”

“Not exactly, at least in their case. Neo-Confucianism didn’t gain momentum until after Chen and Zhu in the Ming dynasty. In Lu You’s time, it was still permissible for a woman like Tang Wan to remarry.

“In 1555, they met in the garden by chance. They were both remarried by then, and they had to observe the etiquette of the time. Still, she served him a cup of yellow rice wine in her delicate hand, all that was unsaid between them rippling in the cup. Lu You wrote a ci poem, lamenting a ‘spring still so green,’ to which Tang Wan composed one in response, and died of a broken heart not long afterward. Many years later, at the age of seventy-five, he revisited the garden and wrote the lines carved in the rocks here. Their ill-starred romance added to the popularity of the poems.”

“It’s a sad story.”

“Oh, I forgot,” he said abruptly, before turning back to the path along which they had come. “Wait in the pavilion for me,” he said, as he walked away.

She stepped into the pavilion, wondering what he was up to.

Then she saw him hurrying back, carrying two cups.

“Huang Teng wine. The wine served by Tang Wan in Lu You’s ci poem.”

“What’s Huang Teng?” She took one of the cups from his hand.

“It’s possible it was the name of the place where the wine was brewed at the time.”

They sat down in the pavilion, which didn’t provide comfortable seating. The stone bench was narrow, cold, hard. Also a bit too high-Lianping sat with her feet dangling, barely touching the ground. She shifted and tucked her feet up under her, the cup still in her hand.

Once again she tried to conjure up the ancient scene between the lovers in the garden-the same pavilion, the same pine tree, the same stone bridge, thousands of years ago. Lu and Tang met on a day just like today, aware of a message, perhaps the same as today, drawing nearer to them in the late afternoon.

“The gardens have been rebuilt a couple of times,” Chen said, as if reading her thoughts again. “
The pond and the pavilion appear / no longer to be the same.
”

The pavilion must have been rebuilt too. Relatively new graffiti, comments, and lines written by tourists decorated the posts and railings. Some wrote sentimental lines in imitation of Lu You’s, and some simply left their names with a red heart beneath.

“It’s nothing but clichés,” he said with a cynical note in his voice.

“You translated the love poems into English, didn’t you?”

“No, not me. They were translated by Yang, a talented poet and translator like Xinghua. I happened to get his manuscript while working on a murder investigation. He died during the Cultural Revolution, and the manuscript had been kept by his ex-Red Guard lover, who was murdered several years ago. That in itself was a touching story. I made some changes to the manuscript, added a few poems, and then sent the collection to the publisher. The editor insisted on adding my name to the book as a political cushion, since Yang’s name could be too much of a reminder of the atrocities committed during the Cultural Revolution.” He resumed after a short pause, “By the way, you should see the Shaoxing opera version of the love story. My mother is a loyal fan. I’ll have to buy a bunch of postcards for her.”

“That’s a good idea. I’ll buy some for my mother too. But I have a question for you. When Lu You and Tang Wan met again, she not only had remarried but also was no longer that young. Why was he still smitten?”

“Good question. In his mind, she was still what she was when he first saw her, just like that little…” he said, trailing off at the end.

“Just like who?” she pushed, in spite of herself, wondering whether he was thinking,
Just like Wang Feng
, the ex-
Wenhui
journalist whom Chen was said to have dated. Wang Feng had recently come back to Shanghai for a short visit. They could have met up again.

“Oh, somebody I met here this morning,” he said, and then added, “whom I didn’t meet until this morning.”

In the short silence that ensued, the light drizzling rain was letting up. A bird started chirping somewhere among the glistening foliage. So it wasn’t someone from his past, she reflected. But who was it, then? Possibly someone involved in the investigation.

Did he come to Shaoxing just for her company? Or did he have other motives?

Quickly, she let the thought pass, saying to herself that if he wanted to tell her about it, he would.

“I interviewed someone here for the investigation I’m working on.”

She felt a wave of disappointment rippling through her, which was followed by a wave of relief. He didn’t come because of her or because of her suggestion after all.

Looking over at him, she saw he was hurriedly taking out his cell phone.

“Sorry, I have to take this call. It’s from the doctor at East China Hospital. It could be urgent-”

“Oh, go ahead.”

He pushed the button, then stood up and walked two or three steps out of the pavilion. A short distance away, he started talking, his brows knitted.

It was difficult for her to guess the content of the phone conversation from the fragmented words she occasionally overheard. He seemed to be saying little except “yes,” “no,” and other terse, disjointed words.

While he talked to the doctor, she turned to look at the distant hills wrapped in light mist. The mist came rolling off the hills like a scroll of traditional Chinese landscape painting, as if what wasn’t painted in the space was telling more than what was.

Finally, he came back, putting his hand on her shoulder absentmindedly as he joined in and gazed at the same view.

“Is everything fine with your mother?”

“She’s fine. The doctor had something else to discuss with me.” He then changed the subject abruptly, “Oh, we’d better go to the festival for the dinner party. Otherwise, people will start complaining about Inspector Chen.”

“Whatever you say, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“I had a cup of Shaoxing rice wine during lunch. It was extraordinarily mellow and sweet. I had it with a small dish of peas flavored with aniseed, just like Kong Yiji in a Lu Xun story. It makes me think that the dinner won’t be too bad here.”

“Of course, you are first and foremost a cop,” she said, barely concealing the satirical edge in her voice, “always covering yourself meticulously, while at the same time, an epicurean enjoying yourself at every opportunity.”

Whether he took that as a compliment or something else, she didn’t know, but it put a period to their moment in the secluded garden.

He helped her to her feet.

The trail ahead of them appeared slippery, treacherous, and moss-covered here and there.

An indistinct sound came from behind them, hardly audible, perhaps bubbles from the fish bursting on the surface of the pool.

TWENTY-ONE

Chen returned to Shanghai the next morning. Once there, one of the first things he did was check his e-mail. In his in-box was a response to his e-mail to Comrade Zhao, the retired secretary of the Central Party Discipline Committee in Beijing.

Thank you for your note. For a retired Party cadre of my age, I’ve been doing fine. I don’t want to get involved in too many things, and of late, I’ve been reading Wang Yangming. Your father was a neo-Confucianist, so you must be familiar with Wang Yangming. I particularly like a poem he wrote in his youth.
“The mountains nearby make the moon appear small, / so you think the mountains larger than the moon. / If you have a view stretching out to the horizon, / you’ll see the mountains against the magnificent moon.”
While reading the poem, I thought of you. You, too, should have a view reaching all the way to the horizon.

As for the team you mentioned, there’s nothing I can tell you. You’re an experienced police officer and you know better. At your age, Wang Yangming was already playing an important role in maintaining the well-being of his country.

It was an enigmatic e-mail. There was nothing surprising about Comrade Zhao being tight-lipped about the Beijing team. It wasn’t like the retired Party leader, however, to quote a poem in his e-mail.

Despite the fact that his father was a neo-Confucianist, Chen didn’t know much about Wang Yangming. What he did know was that he was an influential Ming dynasty Confucian philosopher who advocated the concept of innate knowing, arguing that every person knows from birth, intuitively but not rationally, the difference between good and evil.

Chen decided to spend some time researching Wang Yangming on the Internet. It turned out that Wang Yangming embodied the Confucianist ideal of a learned person who is both a scholar and an official. In 1519 AD, while serving the governor of Jiangxi province, he suppressed the uprising of Prince Zhu Chenhao, saving the dynasty from a huge disaster.

It was gratifying that Comrade Zhao expected Chen to have a career as prominent as Wang Yangming’s, but why express this now, all of a sudden?

The poem itself didn’t impress Chen. Wang Yangming wasn’t known as a poet, but the context in which Zhao quoted the poem made Chen think. Chen was sure that it meant something.

Writing Zhao for an explanation, however, would be useless.

With the sun obscured by the floating clouds, / I’m worried for not seeing Chang’an
.

Chen picked up the phone, thinking for a minute, and then dialed Young Bao at the Writers’ Association.

“I need to ask you a favor, Young Bao.”

“Whatever I can do, Master Chen.”

“You’ve got a friend who works at the Moller Villa Hotel.”

“Yes, a good friend. In fact, I’m going to meet him at the hotel canteen for lunch today.”

“Can you copy a couple of pages from the visitor registry for building B? Specifically, last Monday and Tuesday.”

“That’ll be a piece of cake. He works in building B, and from time to time, he works at the front desk, keeping the register. I’ll call you as soon as I get it.”

That afternoon Chen went to meet with Lieutenant Sheng of Internal Security. The meeting had been requested by Sheng, and the meeting place was the hotel where he was staying. It was the City Hotel, located on Shanxi Road, only a two or three minutes’ walk from the Moller Villa Hotel. Perhaps it was just a coincidence-something that Chen, as a cop, didn’t believe in.

The request was a surprise. Chen had crossed paths with Internal Security on previous occasions, but rarely had it been on friendly terms. In the last analysis, Chen was a cop before all else.

Internal Security had different priorities. For them, the Party’s interests were first and foremost. In the name of the Party, they were capable of doing anything and everything.

So, Chen wondered, what was the purpose of the meeting?

Chen arrived at the hotel and was promptly ushered in to see Lieutenant Sheng. Sheng was a tall man in his late thirties or early forties. His receding hairline highlighted a broad forehead covered with lines. His accent revealed his origins-it was unmistakably from Beijing.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Chief Inspector Chen. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“I’m glad to meet you, too, Lieutenant Sheng. You’re here on special detachment from Beijing, I hear.”

“Oh, there’s nothing special about it. If anything, I think I was sent because of the computer science classes I took at night school.”

“That can be important these days.”

“You’re a capable and experienced police officer, so there’s no point in beating around the bush,” Sheng said. “I was sent here because of the Zhou case, but I’m to focus on a different aspect. You know how all this trouble started. It was that search-the human-flesh search engine-which started on that Web forum. These witch hunts have become an Internet mass movement, and they are getting out of control. They are tearing the image of our Party and government to shreds. The bloggers and forum users-those so-called netizens-will use any and every excuse, no matter how flimsy, including a pack of high-priced cigarettes, to vent their frustration and fury against the Party authorities. If it keeps on like this, the stability of our socialist country will be destroyed.”

Chen listened without responding immediately. It was always easy to talk about motives, no matter what sort of investigation it was, and as far as Internal Security was concerned, the motive behind the Internet pile-on in the Zhou case was obvious.

Jiang, who was in charge of the team from the city government, seemed to be inclined toward the same conclusion. Sheng should have talked to Jiang instead.

“So what are you going to do?” Chen said, choosing to avoid a confrontation for the moment.

“We are going to nail the troublemaker who first sent the picture of the pack of 95 Supreme Majesty to the Web forum. As for Zhou, whatever he might have done, he has already been punished to the fullest.”

“Tracing the photo shouldn’t be too difficult for you. There are many Internet experts working for the government, and they should be able to trace it back to the source.”

“It’s not that easy. We’ve traced it only as far as the Web forum on which it was originally posted. The moderator claims that he received the picture from an anonymous sender.”