Enigma of China(82)

On the street corner, he saw a white-haired man in rags shuffling out of a sordid lane across Yunnan Road, despite the superstition that people should avoid walking under wet clothing, which was hanging from bamboo poles that crisscrossed the alley overhead. But what could an old man do, moving slowly, leaning on a bamboo cane? Possibly born, raised, and then grown old in that same narrow lane, he would have had to enter and exit the lane here, day in and day out, likely to be down and out until the very end.

Chen was about to cross the street when a black BMW convertible sped along Jinling Road, splashing muddy rainwater on him.

“You’re blind!” The young driver cursed at him with one hand on the wheel and the other on the shoulder of a slender girl sprawled beside him, her bare legs stretched out like fresh lotus roots.

That such a contrast had become a common sight in the city depressed him.

Perhaps he was blind. At the moment, he really had no idea where he was heading. Then he got a phone call from Young Bao at the Writers’ Association.

“I’ve got it, Master Chen,” Young Bao said breathlessly. “And something more—hopefully, something that will surprise you.”





TWENTY-FOUR


LIANPING WAS WAITING FOR Chen in an elegant private room at a high-end restaurant he had suggested. It seemed to her to be quite new. It was near the front entrance of Bund Park, and the window of the second-floor room overlooked a panorama of ships coming and going along the distant Wusongkou, the East China Sea.

Her mind was in a turmoil. So much had happened the last few days, and it was as if it had happened to somebody else. She thought back on all of it in disbelief.

But one thing proved that it really had happened—the dazzling diamond ring on her finger. Xiang had proposed, and she had accepted. He’d put the ring on her finger without waiting for a response. She hadn’t taken it off.

She didn’t know what to say to Chen, but she had to tell him about her decision. She owed it to him, and for that matter, she owed it to Xiang too.

On a fitful May breeze, a melody came wafting over from the big clock atop the Shanghai Custom Building. Her left eyelid twitched again. She must be stressed out, or perhaps it was just another omen. She remembered a superstition from back home in Anhui about twitching eyes.

Agreeing to marry Xiang wasn’t an easy decision for her. It was more like an opportunity she couldn’t afford to miss than something she really wanted. After all, she lived in materialistic times, having read and heard all the tabloid stories about pretty young girls hooking up with Big Bucks and living “happily ever after.”

Tapping her fingers on the table, she wished she could have lived in the world of the poems recited by Chen back in Shaoxing, but she had to face reality. Just the day before, her father had written to her about the problems his factory was facing with both a shrinking market and the rocketing price of commodities. She could no longer bring herself to ask him for help with her mortgage payments. The subdivision committee had just increased parking fees, but it was still difficult to find an open spot, so they suggested, as an alternative, that she buy a permanent spot for thirty thousand yuan. And gas prices kept going up too. The list went on and on.

Still, she had to achieve the Shanghai dream—not just for herself but for her family too. Xiang represented an opportunity she couldn’t let slip by, as her colleague Yaqing had repeatedly pointed out. Even though he was always busy and business-oriented, this could also bode well for his future. He was just like Chen in that he was overwhelmed by his work.

Looking back on it, she realized that the flirtation with Chen was perhaps the result of a vain, vulnerable moment. A connection to a high-profile Party cadre like Chen would be helpful to her as a journalist, and publishing his work in her section would also be to her credit. Add to this the fact that Xiang had vanished without telling her first or contacting her for days.

Then it developed further than she anticipated.

But now Xiang was back with an explanation for his behavior—a reasonable one—and with the surprise proposal, accompanied by a passionate speech as he slipped the ring onto her finger: “In Hong Kong, after finally signing the business deal, I realized that all the success in the world meant nothing without you.”

To be honest, she’d been waiting for Xiang to make a move. Xiang hadn’t done so earlier because his father had wanted him to make a different choice, one that made more business sense. Specifically, he wanted an alliance with another rich family in the city. Xiang finally made his own move, though, when she least expected it. She couldn’t afford not to accept.

So what explanation could she offer Chen?