Shanghai Redemption

FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING, BACK in his apartment in Shanghai, Chen woke up quite late.

A glance at the clock on the nightstand showed that it was past nine thirty. Stretching in the morning light, he felt refreshed and reenergized.

He hadn’t been able to enjoy a good night’s sleep for a long time. Perhaps it was due to satisfaction of doing something for his father and to exhaustion as well. Yesterday, all the trains to Shanghai had been sold out except for the last one of the night. Chen had to wait hours at the station, so he spent some time with a cup of coffee in a station café, stirring up the details of the Special Case Squad’s latest cases. Detective Yu had a point-there might be something in one of these cases that would explain the reason for Chen’s sudden transfer. Chen jotted down a lot of notes, most of which would probably turn out to be irrelevant. He kept going over those cases in his mind during the trip back to Shanghai, and then again as he waited in the long line for a taxi at the train station. He didn’t get home until after midnight, where, exhausted, he fell asleep almost immediately.

Now well rested, he got up and went to check his e-mail. It was no great surprise when he found more than thirty messages waiting in his in-box.

A number of them were enthusiastic congratulations on his new position. Was it possible that so many people had no clue what this new assignment really meant? Some of them were probably sent as a formality, but at least it seemed that people weren’t trying to avoid him. Perhaps they were thinking that since power struggles within the Party were unpredictable, there was no telling if, or when, Chen would stage a comeback. Whatever interpretation one placed upon recent events, Chen was still a Party cadre with the rank of a bureau head.

There were already several e-mails marked “urgent” from his new office, along with a number of attached documents. He didn’t open any of them immediately.

On his answering machine, Chen found a number of phone messages waiting for him, including several from senior Party officials in the Shanghai city government. The messages all sounded more or less the same, perfunctory expressions of congratulations. Chen knew better than to take any of them seriously.

There were no calls or e-mails from Beijing, though.

He made himself a pot of coffee, took a sip, then sat back down at his computer and began surfing the Internet. He was looking for articles about legal reform. In China, the first sign of change would have appeared in cyberspace. There was still a week before he was to start his new job, but Chen might as well get a head start and do some research.

After an hour or so, he gave up in resignation. He hadn’t found anything interesting, except some old news about Zhongtian. Zhongtian was an “independent scholar” who had posted articles on his blog about the idea of separation of powers between the legislative, executive, and judicial branches of government. The People’s Daily had responded with an editorial declaring that this idea would never work in China. Zhongtian had argued that under the one-party system, where it was taken for granted that the Party’s interest was above the law, any talk of legal reform was just a show, full of politically correct language, yet empty of anything real. As a result, Zhongtian had been invited by Internal Security to meet them for “a cup of tea,” which meant a serious warning delivered in person. When Zhongtian continued posting, he got into some “tax trouble”-at least, that was the word on the Internet.

That incident spoke to the possible role of the Legal Reform Committee, Chen thought, with a frown. Reform was just another umbrella word in the politics of China, capable of referring to anything, or nothing. At bottom, the legal system was part and parcel of the Party system.

Annoyed at the whole concept, he began replying to the e-mails from his new office, using similar, equally empty language. He didn’t bother to download, much less read, any of the attachments.

It soon wore him out. He got up and put a bowl of instant noodles in the microwave. While waiting, he sent his pictures from Suzhou electronically to a nearby convenience store to have prints made for his mother. He selected same-day service, so he could pick them up later that afternoon.

He called his mother to tell her about his visit to Suzhou. He made a detailed report about the planned renovation of his father’s tomb and promised to bring the pictures over soon, possibly that evening. She sounded pleased.

Afterward, as he was throwing the paper bowl of the noodles into the trash bin, he started going through the pile of junk mail he’d let collect on his kitchen counter. Among the piles, he found an invitation from White Cloud for the grand opening of her high-end hair salon on West Huaihai Road. The envelope contained a VIP voucher in the amount of five thousand yuan. He’d already missed the event.

He’d met White Cloud on a case several years ago. At that time he was an “emerging cadre”-a man on the rise-and she was a “college/karaoke girl” working in a KTV salon. Afterward, she briefly worked as a “little secretary” for him while he was doing a translation project. They’d kept in touch ever since. On several occasions, she’d been helpful, and he was sure it wasn’t because of his position. She had no need to curry favor with him. This invitation was yet another of her generous gestures.

It really wasn’t easy for a provincial girl, with no connections or background, to become a successful entrepreneur in Shanghai. Now she had her own salon, and on West Huaihai Road at that. The very location spoke volumes. On impulse, he ordered a large bouquet of flowers to be delivered to her salon.

And with that, he was ready to set out.

Half an hour later, Chen arrived at the Shanghai Foreign Liaison Office on Shanxi Road.

The visit was related to a recent incident assigned to the Special Case Squad, the so-called dead pig case. The trouble had all started when a British visitor came down with food poisoning from some sausage made with bad pork. Then everything got out of control: pictures of thousands of dead pigs floating down the Huangpu River turned up online, creating an embarrassing international scandal for the Shanghai government. Interpretations and speculations flew around the Internet. People panicked, and there were rumors that there was a plague going around. The government and local farmers denied the rumors repeatedly, but the question remained unanswered: why were there so many dead pigs if there was no plague?

Finally, the matter was sent to the squad as a “special case.” Assuming it was a damage control assignment, Chen had barely looked at it. Still, as Detective Yu had pointed out, it was one of the newest cases. So this morning, Chen was going to make a few inquiries-not in his former role as chief inspector, but in his new one as the director of the Legal Reform Committee. He thought he could come up with a plausible enough pretext to get away with it.

The director of the Shanghai Foreign Liaison Office was a man named Sima, known as a capable, hardworking cadre who started out as an ordinary clerk. He was also rumored to be connected to Internal Security, which would be no surprise given his job. He still managed to keep good working relations with everyone, including Chen, who, as a member of the Shanghai Writers’ Association, sometimes met with Western writers.

In the early days of China’s economic reform, the main function of Sima’s office was to make arrangements for people either coming into or leaving the country. It wasn’t easy in those days for regular Shanghainese to get a passport approved. Applicants had to pass a rigorous political screening. State-arranged junkets abroad, in contrast, were very important to the officials making those government-funded trips, and required swift processing. In recent years, however, making those travel arrangements was no longer an important role of the Foreign Liaison Office. Nowadays people had little trouble getting a passport and international travel approved, and as more and more Western expatriates moved to Shanghai, the work of the office had shifted. Foreigners had to apply for a Shanghai residency permit-something like the United States’ green card-in order to move here. In addition, the office also had some say regarding which foreign enterprises were allowed to set up offices or factories in Shanghai. Rumor had it that director of the Foreign Liaison Office was a lucrative position, but Chen knew better than to be too nosy about such things.

In a spacious office basking in the morning light, Sima stood up with an affable smile and reached out his hand to Chen as he arrived for his unannounced visit.

“Congratulations, Director Chen.”

“For what?”

“Your new position.”

“Come on. Surely you know better, Director Sima.”

“Well, I’ve just read an article from the Associated Press saying that Beijing is determined to give China’s legal system a thorough overhaul. The article said that it’s possible that new judges at the highest level will be appointed. So your transfer to this new position may be another step toward that reform.”

“Really! I’ve not heard anything about that.”

“But it’s possible, right?” Sima said. “What favorable wind brings you here today?”

“Oh, I’m here to familiarize myself with some aspects of my new responsibilities.”

“Great! What can I do for you, Director Chen?”

“To start with something specific, are there any regulations involved in the matter of the dead pigs?” He added in a hurry, “I’m just curious.”

“You mean the dead pig scandal? What a shame that was! I’m not an expert in that sort of thing, but when the scandal broke out, I did look into it. Because there were Westerners involved in the background, as you know. What I found out is that the regulations are vague. Theoretically, the farmers should see to the proper disposal of any livestock that dies, in this case the dead pigs, but that means extra labor and money. It was simply more cost-effective to throw carcasses into the river.”

“Is there any legal recourse? A law requiring proper disposal or a penalty for dumping them in the river like that?”

“None that I know of,” Sima said, shaking his head. He shifted the topic easily. “There are so many foreigners in the city these days that I really have my work cut out for me. It’s not even possible to effectively control all the hotels.”

“The pig scandal started with a British tourist, right?”

“Oh yes. He actually posted a picture of his hotel meal online, just an hour before he was taken to hospital. From there it just spread like a virus. The Internet can really create trouble. Pictures and blog posts were forwarded and reposted God knows how many times. Someone even posted the patient’s diagnosis from his hospital records. And then, after all that, the pictures of the pig carcasses floating down the river showed up. The city government lost a lot of face, and they had to conduct some sort of internal investigation.”

“Tell me more about that investigation.”

“The dead pigs were traced back to Jiaxing. In the past, farmers there raised only a few pigs, perhaps five or six per family. Pig farming is now a matter of mass production. There are thousands of them, maybe even more, crammed together. They are now raised on chemical feed and whatnot. So naturally there are more sick or dead pigs in the picture. Some ‘entrepreneurs’ saw an opportunity there. They bought the pig carcasses from the farmers for practically nothing, and with their special connections, they sold the pigs to food companies at a slightly lower price. After all, once it was made into sausage, who could tell the difference?”

“Then why were all the dead pigs suddenly floating down the river?”

“The National Party Congress is scheduled for the end of the year. After the British tourist’s bad sausage situation became so public, the city government tried to do something to address food safety issues. They arrested a couple of the businessmen who were selling the dead pigs. Those arrests scared the others, so they simply dumped the remaining pig carcasses into the river.”

“But what about all of the others?” Chen said. “I mean, it’s a long chain of corruption, starting with the farmers and then moving on to the middlemen, the food companies, and the supermarkets. How can all of them be so unethical and irresponsible?”

“People don’t believe in anything these days except the money in their own hands. As the proverb says, everyone is just sweeping the snow in front of their own door. Secretary Lai is right. There’s something wrong with the introduction of Western capitalistic ideas and values into our society. The result has been a spiritual vacuum. We have to reintroduce revolutionary ideas to the people.”

There was something to Sima’s analysis. But whatever it was that had caused this general “spiritual vacuum,” singing the old red songs wouldn’t be the solution. Sima was just using the official language and speaking the Party line. Chen saw no point in discussing it with him any longer and quickly made his farewells.

Emerging from Sima’s office, Chen decided to walk for a while and try to sort out what he’d learned from Sima. The story of the dead pigs was absurd, conceivably another blow to the prestige of the local Party government, but he couldn’t see how it could possibly be related to him. He was still wondering what the invisible connection was, when he got a phone call from Wuting, the acting head of the Shanghai Translation Publishing House.

“I’ve got great news, Chen. The new T. S. Eliot translation is coming out. We are going to have a book launch party tonight. As one of the main translators, you have to come to the party and speak about it.”

Chen had started translating Eliot in the mid-eighties. His collection of translations had turned into an accidental bestseller at the moment China was becoming interested in the concept of modernism. The surprise success was attributable to a misleading statement by an old scholar: “Without modernism, without modernization.” The latter referred to the Party’s call for four modernizations-in industry, agriculture, national defense, and science-which was the principle political slogan at the time. But it befuddled censorship officials, who approved the translation as a result. Afterward, however, the translation disappeared from the bookstores for more than a decade because of copyright issues. Now, the publishing house had finally cleared the rights to the poems, and a new edition was coming out. It included most of Chen’s earlier translations, along with some by other translators.

“It was a compromise born out of necessity,” Wuting said, going on at the other end of the call. “We had to include some work from other translators so we could present it as a collective effort, but yours are definitely the best, so we put your name on the cover.”

“That’s great. A variety of translation styles collected in a single volume,” Chen said, though he didn’t really believe it. But it was by no means easy to get a collection of poetry in translation published these days, so Chen felt obliged to at least attend the party. “I’ll come, of course, but you can’t expect me to give a talk on such short notice. I haven’t even seen a copy of the book.”

“We can’t afford to let the opportunity slip by, Chen. Guess who is sponsoring the party tonight?”

“Who?”

“Rong Pan, a Big Buck fan of T. S. Eliot-and to be exact, of your translations of Eliot. He’s going all out for the launch party tonight, sparing no expense. Do you know where he wants to hold it?”

“Where?

“The Heavenly World.”

“You’re kidding, Wuting. I’ve heard about that place. It’s a notorious nightclub, rumored to be exotic and obscenely expensive.”

“Obscenely expensive, indeed! You’re right about that. And quite exotic as well.”

“Then why drag T. S. Eliot to such a place?”

“In today’s age of conspicuous consumption, an invitation to this nightclub is worth a lot of face. Just to be invited is a recognition of one’s elite status. Those who are invited will definitely come. What’s more important, they are financially able to buy books-a lot of books. Rong promised to buy five hundred copies himself as an encouragement to others. Now, if the party were held somewhere appropriate, like a library, then some people might still come, but how many copies do you think they’d buy?”

It was an invitation to which Chen couldn’t say no, not when it involved five hundred presold copies of the book. The party was essential to book sales. Poetry couldn’t make anything happen in this age, but money always could.

Personal reasons were also contributing to Chen’s feeling that he couldn’t decline the invitation. It was his translation of Eliot that had first made him known among then-young readers, and it was under Eliot’s influence that Chen himself started writing.

“You owe it to Eliot to give a talk at this party,” Wuting concluded. “You don’t have to speak for very long. Ten to fifteen minutes will be more than enough.”

“When you put it that way, I don’t have any choice.”

Chen flapped the phone closed. Whatever reasons he might have for not going to the party were outweighed by his desire for the collection to succeed.

So he hurried back home to prepare for the talk he’d have to give at tonight’s party.

The more he worked on it, however, the more unsure he was about tonight’s event. At a bookstore, he’d have no problem holding the interest of the audience. Not so at the Heavenly World. What would the Big Bucks who showed up there want to know, particularly about a modernist poet like T. S. Eliot?

Also, he didn’t know how to dress for the occasion. Looking at his disheveled reflection in the mirror, he thought he’d better at least get his hair cut.

He picked up the phone and dialed.

“Oh, thank you so much, Chief Inspector Chen,” White Cloud said, recognizing his number. “I’ve just received your flowers.”

“Thank you for the invitation to your opening, White Cloud. My hearty congratulations, and my apologies too. Sorry to miss it-I wasn’t in Shanghai.”

“Don’t worry about it. You’re always busy, traveling here and there. But it’s been such a long time. You may have forgotten what I look like.”

“How can that possibly be?”

“Then come see me at my salon.”

There seemed to be a subtle complaining note to her words. Did she think he’d been avoiding her? Perhaps, he admitted to himself, he had been, for a number of reasons. It wouldn’t do a high-ranking police officer any good even to be seen in the company of White Cloud, given her background as a karaoke girl, let alone get entangled in a close relationship.

But now that he was no longer a cop, was he still going to worry about what people might think?

He put the question aside: right now, he had a more immediate agenda. White Cloud, in addition to helping with his hair, might also be able to tell him something more about the nightclub, since she moved in those circles.

“Drop by any time you like,” she repeated. “I’ll be here every day-and at your service.”

“I will. You’ve come a long way, White Cloud. The first time we met was at a salon, as I recall, and now you have your own salon.”

“You still remember, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“I’m no longer a chief inspector, as you might have heard.”

“Mr. Gu has mentioned that, but so what? You’re still a Party cadre. If anything, you might have more time for yourself, and you’ll be able to do what you really want.”

“I hope so. In fact, there’s something I have to do this evening. A new volume including my translations of T. S. Eliot is coming out, and the publisher wants me to attend a book launch party at the Heavenly World.”

“A party for T. S. Eliot at the Heavenly World? That’s mind-boggling.”

“It really is, isn’t it? So let me ask you a question. What can you tell me about the nightclub?”

“Well, a lot of Big Bucks go there. There are a lot of high-ranking Party officials there too, but they usually keep a low profile. The officials, that is, not the Big Bucks. There are a lot of stories about the place, so many that it’s hard to know which, if any, are true.

“The owner is a middle-aged man named Shen, and he allegedly is connected to people both at the top of the Party and to people in the black way. He’s untouchable, and his customers don’t have to worry about police raids or anything like that. That’s why the elite are willing to pay so much for an evening at the Heavenly World. I’m told that there’s even a secret passage connecting the garage and the club’s most ‘private suite.’ So for those that really want privacy, they can get in without being seen. I can find more about it you if you like-”

“No, don’t worry about it. I don’t need any secret passage. I’m just going there for the poetry. But what’s the dress code?”

“The dress code is either formal or fashionable, but it doesn’t really matter to the upstarts who hang out there. They’re just like monkeys, wearing and doing the same thing as all the others. Though I will say that there’s no such thing as ‘too expensive’ for that crowd.”

“Thank you. That helps. You know what? I thought about coming by to get a haircut at your place, but then I realized I wouldn’t have enough time. I have to prepare a talk about Eliot for tonight’s party.”

“Come by any time you like. We have a number of well-trained hairdressers. Or, if you prefer, I’ll take care of you myself.”

He thanked White Cloud again for her help and they said their good-byes.

While there wasn’t time for a cut today after all, it might not be a bad idea to pay her a visit someday, he thought, as he put down the phone. Certainly before he officially started his new job and put in an appearance at the new office.

He picked up the phone and called the convenience store again, this time asking them to deliver the printed photos to his mother. It was already five thirty, and he wouldn’t have the time to take them to her himself.

Chen stared out the window and watched a lone bat flipping by, flying erratically. The light outside was getting dim.