Death of a Red Heroine [Chief Inspector Chen Cao 01] (40 page)

“Wonderful!” Ouyang extended his hand to him. “Fancy meeting a poet today.”

“You are a novelist, then?”

“No, I am not—um, as a matter of fact, I’m a businessman.” Ouyang fumbled in his vest pocket and came out with an impressive card. His name was printed in gold beside a long list of companies. “Every time I come to Guangzhou, I choose to stay here. The Writers’ Home is not just open to writers. You know why? I come in the hope of meeting writers. And my dream has come true tonight! Oh, by the way, have you had your dinner?”

“Yes, down in the cafeteria.”

“What? That cafeteria’s an insult to writers.”

“I did not eat much.”

“Good,” Ouyang said. “There’s a sidewalk restaurant just a few two blocks away. A small family business, but the food there is not too bad. The rain has ceased. So let us go then, you and I.”

The evening was spreading out against the sky, Chen observed, as he followed Ouyang to a street lined with red-and-black-lettered food booths illuminated by paper lanterns. Pots were broiling over small coal stoves, several labeled with signs advertising “stamina” or “hormone” or “male essence” in Guangdong style. These food booths, like other private enterprises, had mushroomed in Guangzhou’s streets since Deng Xiaoping’s visit to the south.

The booth Ouyang took him to was rather simple: several wooden tables with seven or eight benches. A big coal-burning stove and two small ones comprised the open kitchen. Its only sign was a red paper lantern with the traditional-style character “happiness” embossed on it. Beneath it were live eels, frogs, clams, and fish squirming and swimming in water-filled wooden basins and buckets. There was also an impressive glass cage with several snakes of various sizes and shapes. Customers could choose, and have their choice cooked in a specified way.

A middle-aged woman was peeling a water snake by the cage. With its head chopped off, the snake was still twitching in a wooden basin, but in a couple of minutes, a coil of white meat would be steamed in a brown earthware pot. An old man wearing a white hat was flourishing a ladle and frying a carp in a sizzling wok. A young girl was serving the customers, bustling about with several platters placed on her slender bare arm, her wooden sandals clacking on the sidewalk. She called the white-hatted cook Grandpa. A family business.

More diners were arriving; soon every table was occupied. The place obviously had a reputation. Chen had seen the booth earlier in the afternoon, but he had guessed that the cost was beyond his standard meal allowance.

“Hi, Old Ouyang. What favorable wind has brought you here today?” The young girl coming over to their table appeared to know Ouyang well.

“Well, today’s favorable wind is our distinguished poet, Chen Cao. It’s really a great honor for me. As usual, your special dishes. And your best wine, too. The very best.”

Ouyang took out his wallet and put it on the table.

“The best, of course,” the girl echoed, walking away.

In less than fifteen minutes, an impressive array of bowls, dishes, pots, saucers, and platters appeared on the rough, unpainted table.

The paper lantern cast a ruddy light on their faces and the tiny cups in their hands. In Guangzhou, Chen had heard, there was nothing with four legs that people had not found a way to turn into a delicacy. And he was witnessing such a miracle: Omelet with river clams, meatballs of four happiness, fried rice field eel, peeled shrimp in tomato containers, eight-treasure rice, shark’s fin soup, a whole turtle with brown sauce, and bean curd stuffed with crabmeat.

“Just a few simple dishes, sidestreet cooking,” Ouyang said, raising his chopsticks, and shaking his head in apology. “Not enough respect to a great poet. We’ll go to another place tomorrow. It’s too late today. Please try the turtle soup. It’s good for
yin,
you know, for us men.”

It was a huge softshell turtle. No less than two pounds. At about eighty Yuan per pound in the Guangzhou market, the dish must have cost more than a hundred Yuan. The exorbitant price arose from the medical folklore. Turtles, stubborn survivors in water or on land, were considered to be beneficial to
yin,
hence a possible boost to human longevity. That it was nutritious Chen could accept, but why it was good for
yin,
in terms of the
yin
and
yang
system in the human body, was totally beyond him.

But Chen didn’t have time to muse. An eager host, Ouyang kept putting what he believed were culinary delights on Chen’s plate. After the second round of the Maotai wine, Chen, too, felt a sense of elation rising in him. Excellent food, mellow wine, the young waitress serving, light-footed, radiant as a new moon. The aromatic breath of the Guangzhou night was intoxicating.

Perhaps more than anything else, Chief Inspector Chen was intoxicated with his new identity. A well-established poet being worshipped by his devotee.

“‘By the wine urn, the girl is the moon,
/
Her bare arms frost-white.’“
Chen quoted a couplet from Wei Zhuang’s “Reminiscence of the South.” “I’m tempted to think that Wei was describing a scene in Guangzhou, not too far from this booth.”

“I have to put down those lines in my notebook,” Ouyang said, swallowing a spoonful of shark fin soup. “That is poetry.”

“The image of a street tavern is quite popular in classical Chinese poetry. It could have originated from the Han dynasty love story of Zhuo Wenjun and Sima Xiangru. At the lowest point of their life, the lovers had to support themselves by selling wine in a side street tavern.”

“Wenjun and Xiangru,” Ouyang exclaimed. “Oh yes, I have seen a Guangzhou opera about their romance. Xiangru was a great poet, and Wenjun eloped with him.”

The dinner turned out to be superb, accompanied by a second bottle of Maotai that Ouyang insisted on ordering toward the end. Chen was becoming effusive, talking poetry shop. In the office, his literary pursuit was regarded as a distraction from his profession, so he seized the chance to discuss the world of words with such an eager listener.

The young waitress kept pouring wine for them, her white wrists flashing around the table, her wooden sandals making pleasant sounds in the night air, the same sights and the sounds that Wei Zhaung had been intoxicated by thousands of years earlier.

Over the cups and chopsticks, Chen also pieced together parts of Ouyang’s life story.

“Twenty years ago, it’s just like yesterday—” Ouyang said, “as fast as a snapping of your fingers.”

Twenty years earlier, a high-school student in Guangzhou, Ouyang had set his mind on becoming a poet, but the Cultural Revolution had smashed his dream as well as his classroom windows. His school was closed. Then, as one of the educated youths, he was sent down to the countryside. After a total waste of eight years, he was allowed to come back to Guangzhou, an unemployed returned youth. He failed the college entrance examination, but succeeded in launching his private enterprise, a plastic-toy factory in Shekou, about fifty miles south of Guangzhou. A prosperous entrepreneur, Ouyang had everything now but time for poetry. More than once he had thought about quitting the business, but his memory of working ten hours a day for seventy cents as an educated youth was too fresh. He decided to make enough money first, and in the meantime tried various ways to keep his literary dream alive. This trip to Guangzhou, for instance, was made for business, but also for a creative writing seminar sponsored by the Guangzhou Writers’ Association.

“The Writers’ Home is worth it,” Ouyang said, “for I have finally met a real poet like you.”

Not really, Chen reflected, tearing the turtle leg off with his chopsticks. But sitting beside Ouyang, he felt he was a poet, a “pro.” It did not take him long to discover Ouyang to be an amateur, seeing poetry as no more than an outpouring of personal sentimentality. The few lines Ouyang showed him presented a spontaneous flow, but suffered from a lack of formal control.

Ouyang obviously wanted to spend more time discussing poetry. The next morning Ouyang brought up the topic again over their morning tea—
dimson
in the Golden Phoenix Restaurant.

A waitress came to a stop at their table with a stainless-steel cart presenting an amazing display of appetizers and snacks. They could choose whatever they wanted in addition to a pot of tea.

“What would you like to have today, Mr. Ouyang?” the waitress said.

“Steamed ribs with bean sauce, chicken with sticky rice, steamed beef tripe, mini-bun of pork, and a pot of chrysanthemum tea with sugar,” Ouyang said, turning to Chen with a smile. “These are my favorites here, but choose for yourself.”

“We’re having too much, I’m afraid,” he said. “It’s just morning tea.”

“According to my research, morning tea originated in Guangzhou, where people used to have a cup of good tea the first thing in the morning,” Ouyang said. “‘Better to have something that goes along with the tea,’ somebody must have thought. Not a full meal, but a delicious bite. So these tiny appetizers were invented. Soon people became more interested in the variety of the small dishes. Tea’s secondary now.”

The room was abuzz with people talking, drinking tea, discussing business, and eating appetizers, carts of which were continuously wheeled around. Young waitresses kept introducing the new dishes. It was not an ideal place for a poetry discussion.

“People are so busy in Guangzhou,” Chen said, “so how can they afford the time for the morning tea?”

“Morning tea is a must.” Ouyang smiled expansively. “It’s easier for people to talk business over their tea. To cultivate the feeling before they cut the deal. But we can just talk poetry to our hearts’ content.”

Chen was a bit disturbed, however, when he was not allowed to pay. Ouyang stopped him with a passionate speech: “I have made some money. But what then? In twenty or thirty years, what will be left? Nothing. My money will be somebody else’s. Dog-eared, worn-out, and torn in half. What did our dear Old Master Du Fu say? ‘Nothing but your writing lasts forever.’ Yes, you are a nationally known poet, so let me be your student for a couple of days, Chen, if you do not consider me below your standard. In ancient times, a student was also supposed to offer a whole Jinhua ham to his teacher.”

“I’m not a teacher, nor a well-known poet.”

“Well, let me tell you something. Last night I did a little research in the library of the Writers’ Home—that’s one of the advantages there, open shelf, all night. You know what? I’ve found no less than six essays about you, all praising your poems highly.”

“Six! I did not know there were so many.”

“Indeed, I was so excited, as it says in the
Book of Songs,
‘Turning and turning in bed, I cannot fall asleep’.”

Ouyang’s allusion to the
Book of Songs
was not exactly right. It was actually a love poem. Still, there was no doubting his sincerity.

After morning tea, Chen went to the hotel where Xie had stayed. The hotel had a run-down facade, a likely choice for job-hunting girls. The desk clerk looked stoically through the register until he found the name. He pushed the book across the desk so that Chen could read it himself. Xie had left there on July 2. Where she went, no one knew.

“So she left no forwarding addresses?”

“No. Those young girls don’t leave any forwarding address.”

So Chen had to resort to his door-knocking technique, going from one hotel to another, holding a picture in one hand and a city map in another. In an unfamiliar and fast-changing city, it was a much tougher job than he had expected, even though he had a list of the names of the possible hotels.

The answer came, invariably, with a head-shaking.

“No, we don’t really remember ...”

“No, you should try the Metropolitan Security Bureau . . . .”

“No, I am sorry, we have so many guests here ...”

In short, no one recognized her.

In the afternoon, Chen went into a small snack bar tucked away in a side street and asked for a bowl of shrimp dumplings with several steamed buns. Sitting there, he became more aware of something characteristic of Guangzhou. It was not one of the main streets in the city, but business was good. People were moving in and out all the time, picking up plastic boxes of various lunch combinations, and starting to eat with disposable chopsticks on their way out. Chen was the only one sitting there, waiting. Time seemed to be more important here. Whatever might be said about the changes in the city, Guangzhou was alive with a spirit that could hardly be called socialist, in spite of the slogan “Build a socialist new Guangzhou” seen everywhere, even on the gray wall of the small restaurant.