Enigma of China

TWENTY

It never rains but it pours.

Lianping thought this as she sat in a Shaoxing taxi, toying with the cell phone in her hand.

While on the way to Lanting Park, where she was going to meet Chief Inspector Chen, she’d received an unexpected call from Xiang.

Xiang offered no explanation about why he had left Shanghai so abruptly and had neglected to call her for almost two weeks, except to say that he’d been extremely busy. Not just during the day but also late into the night. It was no secret that a lot of business deals were done at the dinner table, by the karaoke machine, or in the massage room at the baths. These were all characteristic of China’s socialism, and she knew better than to probe or protest. For a young man of the so-called “wealthy second generation,” his devotion to business was commonly seen as a plus.

The reason he finally called her was that, according to him, he’d just signed a major deal crucial to the future of his company and he wanted to celebrate with her. He also said that he would have a huge surprise for her when he returned early next week.

She was reminded of a Tang dynasty poem from the collection translated by Chen.

How many times / I have been let down / by the busy merchant of Qutang / since I married him! / The tide always keeps its word / to come, alas. / Had I known that, / I would have married the tide rider.

She hadn’t expected the call from Chen, either. For that matter, Chen was just as busy, if not more. She’d invited him to the Shaoxing festival in an impulsive moment. He promised he’d think about it, but that usually meant no, especially considering how overwhelmed he was by the investigation.

Still, she was amazed at how many times he’d seen her the past week. That could be because of his work, she told herself. His visit to the Wenhui office might have been mainly because of the cop killed on a nearby street, and his last-minute request that she join him at the temple because Detective Yu was a close friend and coworker. But to her surprise, Chen had come to Shaoxing, even though he’d missed the major event of the festival-the meeting at Lu Xun’s residence.

Could that have been deliberate? She had to be at that meeting for her article, but there would be no point in his wasting his time with those empty political talks. Unlike her, he didn’t have to worry about the expense involved in coming to Shaoxing. So it was possible he’d come there because of her.

The taxi was pulling up along a quaint street. Looking out, she saw Chen standing near the park entrance and waving to her, tickets in hand. However she might interpret the motives for his trip to Shaoxing, he was here, waiting for her, and that was what really mattered.

He came over and opened the taxi door for her.

“I wanted to surprise you, Lianping.”

“You certainly did that. I thought you’d abandoned me. But you must have already had plans for the day.” She waited, her brows tilting when he failed to respond immediately.

“We have the afternoon to ourselves,” he said. “Later, we could rent a black-awning boat, like in Lu Xun’s stories, and sail into the eventide.”

At the moment, she couldn’t recall any stories about a black-awning boat sailing into the dusk, but it was enough to be walking in the park with him.

“Sorry I missed the morning event,” he said.

“No big loss for you. You know how boring conference speeches can be,” she said.

The elderly gateman of the park didn’t even look up from the local newspaper he was reading with intense absorption. He just waved them in after Chen dropped the tickets into the green plastic box. They were just another tourist couple wandering around looking for something interesting to do on a rainy afternoon.

The park matched the description in the brochure Lianping had glanced through. There were pavilions with tilted eaves, white stone bridges arching over green water, and verdant bamboo groves scattered here and there, with memories of the area’s history whispering through it all.

Wang Xizi, a celebrated calligrapher, spent most of his life in Shaoxing during the Jin dynasty in the fourth century. He was commonly called the sage of calligraphy, unrivaled in caoshu, the semicursive script. His most renowned work was the “Preface to the Poems Composed at the Lanting Orchid Pavilion,” an introduction to the poems composed by a group of writers during a gathering at Lanting. The original calligraphy was long lost, but some finely traced copies and rubbings remained.

“Look at these statuettes of white geese in the green meadow. There are so many stories about them in classical Chinese literature,” Chen said in high spirits. Perhaps his mood was due to the change of scenery, Lianping thought. She didn’t think he was trying to impress her. There was no need for him to do so. “According to one legend, Wang learned how to turn the brush from watching the geese parading around here.”

She wasn’t that intrigued by these stories, which were from so long ago and far away. Chen was walking close to her, though, and that made all the difference. But Xiang was coming back, something she decided not to think about at the moment.

Despite the many legends about the park, they were the only tourists there. They sauntered over to a stream embosomed in trees and bamboos, where a fitful breeze brought down a flutter of glistening raindrops from the green boughs above.

“It’s here. This is Lanting,” he exclaimed. “Wang and the other poets gathered at this stream, engaged in a wine-poem game.”

“A wine-poem game?”

“They let wine cups flow down from the head of the stream. If a cup came to a stop in front of someone, he had to write a poem. If he failed to do so, he had to drink three cups as punishment. The poems were then collected, and Wang composed a preface to the collection. He must have been very drunk, flourishing his brush pen inspired by the exquisite scene. That preface marks the very peak of his calligraphy.”

“That’s incredible.”

“Many years later, in the Tang dynasty, Du Mu wrote a poem about the scene. ‘Regretfully we cannot stop time from flowing away. / Why not, then, enjoy ourselves in a wine game by the stream? / A blaze of blossom appears, indifferent, year after year. / Lament not at its withering, but at its burgeoning.’”

“I’ve never read it, Poet Chen. That’s a marvelous poem, but the last line is a little beyond me.”

“When I first read the poem, probably at your age, I didn’t understand the ending, either. Now I think I do. When it first blooms, it’s still full of dreams and hope, but there’s nothing you can do to slow the journey from blooming to withering. That’s something to lament.”

She was intrigued by his interpretation. She tried to conjure up the ancient scene of the poets reading and writing here, but she failed.

“The times have changed,” he said, as if reading her thoughts.

It was engaging to have him talking like an experienced guide, she thought as they strolled in sight of a yellow silk banner streaming in the breeze over an antique-looking hall. The banner read, “Calligraphy and Painting-Free to People Who Really Appreciate Chinese Art.”

“Free?” she said. “Perhaps people here at Lanting still practice art for art’s sake, like in ancient days. We might find a scroll of the poem you just recited to me.”

They entered the hall. The front part of it had been turned into an exhibition room, with scrolls hanging from the walls. To their puzzlement, each of the scrolls was marked with a price, not exorbitant but not cheap, either. Behind a glass counter near the entrance, a man wearing an umber-colored Chinese gown stood up, grinning. He read the question in their eyes and said, “They’re free. We just charge for the cost of making them into scrolls.”

“Exactly. Writers and artists cannot live on the northwest wind,” Chen commented. “If you add up all the paintings and calligraphies in this hall, you couldn’t buy one square meter in the subdivision of Binjiang Garden.”

“Ah yes, the Binjiang Garden in Pudong. The paper mansion that the Yus burned at the temple was in that subdivision,” Lianping said.

Another peddler emerged from the back room of the hall, gesticulating, swearing, and pushing on them a brocade-covered box containing brush pens, an ink stick, an ink stone, and a jadelike seal.

“There are four treasures of our ancient civilization. They are instilled with the feng shui of the culture city. An absolute must for the ‘scholar and beauty’ romance,” the peddler said, making his unrelenting sales pitch.

They left quickly, like a fleeing army.

“It’s more commercial than I thought,” she said with a touch of regret. She was intrigued by the peddler’s reference to the “scholar and beauty romance,” which was a popular genre in classical Chinese literature.

“It’s too close to Shanghai to be any different, and day trippers like us don’t help. Here, there, everywhere, green grass spread out to the horizon.”

The line probably referred to commercial activities, Lianping thought. But he didn’t have to cite a Tang dynasty line for that. He was extraordinarily exuberant, coming across not unlike one of those scholars in a classical romance, eager to sweep a young girl off her feet with allusions and quotations.

“Let’s go to Shen Garden,” he suggested. “It might be quiet there, without the commercial hustle and bustle.”

“The other garden shouldn’t be too far away,” she said as they walked out of the park, “but I don’t know how to get there.”

Outside, they couldn’t find a taxi. A rickshaw-or, rather, a rickshaw-like tricycle with a man pedaling in the front-pulled up to the curb. They got in, even though the seat in the back was hardly wide enough for the two of them. They were sitting close.

It started drizzling. Chen pulled up the all-around awning, as if wrapping them in a cocoon. Still, they were able to watch the shifting scene outside through a transparent curtain, shimmering in the light haze of rain.

“This is the best vehicle for sightseeing in the old city,” the tricyclist said, winding his way through side streets lined with rustic houses with white walls and black tile roofs. “If you reserve for half a day, I can give you a huge discount, taking you to East Lake and Dayu Temple, all for one hundred yuan.”

“Dayu Temple?”

“Dayu was one of the great emperors in Chinese history. He succeeded in controlling the flooding that was ravaging the country. A huge temple was recently built in his honor in Shaoxing. In fact, it’s a splendid palace.”

Lianping knew who Dayu was-he was a legendary figure in ancient Chinese history. She knew nothing, however, about the connection between Dayu and Shaoxing. In recent years, a number of cities built temples or palaces to attract tourists, making far-fetched claims of connections to legendary figures.

“I don’t think we’ll have the time,” Chen said, making the decision for both of them.

The vehicle pulled up next to Shen Garden, and they got down. They purchased entrance tickets and noticed, through the open gate, that the garden appeared to be rather deserted.

It turned out to be smaller than Lianping had expected, though it was probably just like other gardens designed in the tradition of southern landscaping. It had vermilion-painted pavilions, stone bridges, and fantastically shaped grottos in groves maintained in a style of cultivated nature that had appealed to the literati in the Ming and Qing dynasties. Not far from the entrance, she saw a billboard with a history of the garden focusing on the romance between Lu You and Tang Wan during the Song dynasty.

The garden appealed to tourists because of the romantic poems composed by Lu You that were connected to the garden. There was also a Shaoxing opera based on the classic love story, which she had heard about from her mother, a Shaoxing opera fan, though Lianping herself hadn’t seen it.

After several turns along the moth-covered path, they passed a solitary stall selling local rice wine and then came to a pavilion with a large, oblong rock beside it, the flat surface of which had two poems engraved on it and highlighted in red paint.

I

The sun is sinking behind the city wall

to the sad notes of a shining bugle.

Here in Shen Garden,

the pond and the pavilion appear

no longer to be the same,

except the heartbreaking spring ripples

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.