Enigma of China(30)

“This case is directly under your supervision, Party Secretary Li, just as you said that first day. Like Detective Wei, I have to report in to you regularly.”

Another thought crossed Chen’s mind. If Wei had called Li that morning, Wei must have had his cell phone with him. But in the report submitted by the hospital, there was nothing on Wei’s body to identify him. If they had found his cell on him, they could have identified him easily.

Was Wei making a call when he was run down? Was his cell phone knocked out of his hand and out of sight?

There was something else Chen had to do. He took a deep breath, then pulled the tiny jasmine blossom out of his blazer pocket and tossed it toward the accident scene.

A gray pigeon was flying by, its whistle trailing in the air. Chen looked up, but it was already out of sight.

He was reminded of a couple of lines in a Song dynasty poem, which he had thought about not too long ago, in the garden of the Writers’ Association.

But what made him think of those lines here and now was something else. Another person and another life. In the days when he’d just been assigned to the bureau, Wenhui Daily was in another building, one near the Bund. There Chen met with a journalist who later went to Japan.

How far you have traveled, / I don’t know. Whatever I see / fills my heart with melancholy. / The further you go, the fewer / your letters for me. The expanse / of the water so wide, no message-carrying / fish in sight, where and whom / can I ask for your news?

That was the first stanza of a poem composed by Ouyang Xiu in the eleventh century. At that time, people still liked the romantic legend of fish carrying messages across rivers and seas for lovers. Having to wait weeks or months for communication was something almost unimaginable now, in the age of e-mail.

Chief Inspector Chen turned and walked into the newspaper’s current office building, trying to pull himself together. It was a most magnificent lobby, like that of a five-star hotel. In the middle of the hall, he noticed a black and white photo exhibition, and past it, a small café, which seemed to be a convenient place for journalists to relax or meet with their visitors.





ELEVEN


LIANPING STARTED HER DAY with a visit to Yaqing, the literature editor of Wenhui Daily, who was on maternity leave. Yaqing lived in a high-end apartment that was about a five-minute walk from the newspaper office building.

Yaqing answered the door with a smile, standing slender, suave in a red silk robe embroidered with a golden phoenix, and in soft-heeled leather slippers. A huge diamond dazzled on her finger. She looked like an elegant, high-class lady, and Lianping didn’t immediately recognize her.

Her place was a huge two-story apartment overlooking a small man-made lake. Ji Huadong, Yaqing’s husband, was one of the “successful elites” in the city, dealing in exports and imports.

A nanny served them Dragon Well tea in the spacious living room, along with a platter of fresh lychee.

“This is this year’s new tea,” Yaqing said, breathing lightly into the cup. “Before the Rain.”

“It smells so refreshing. How is Little Ji?”

“A wet nurse is feeding him in the nursury.”

“That’s so nice. I won’t take up much of your time, Yaqing. I just wanted to catch you up on how things are going with the literature section of the newspaper.”

“Don’t worry about it, Lianping. At Wenhui, the literature section is symbolic at best. Few people read it, and that’s why our boss didn’t bother to bring in another editor to work on it while I’m out on leave. I know it has added so much to your workload. I’m sorry.” After taking a sip of tea, Yaqing resumed casually, “I may or may not come back to the newspaper after my leave. I haven’t yet told anybody at the paper, but Ji thinks it’s not worth it. He’s been so busy with his work, and when he comes home, he wants me to be there for him.”

“But what about your journalist career? It’s hard for me to imagine an intellectual like you living the life of a full-time wife. For a couple of months, perhaps, but in the long run, wouldn’t it be boring?”

“No, not at all. At least, not for me. With his business expanding, Ji has a lot of social obligations that require my attention and company,” Yaqing said, and then changed the subject. “Your boyfriend Xiang has an even bigger family business. Remember that tide and time wait for no man—or no woman.”

“There you go again.”

“I’ll tell you what. I just received the officially approved list of 170 new expressions compiled by the Beijing Education Ministry. According to it, if a girl hasn’t married by the age of twenty-six, she’ll be called a ‘leftover.’ And at age of thirty, a ‘senior leftover.’ And after thirty-five, ‘a leftover saint,’ which is a sarcastic reference to the Monkey Saint from Journey to the West.”