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.”