CHEN WOKE UP, BLINKING in the glaring sunlight streaming in through the half-drawn curtain. Still lying in bed, he reviewed his unsuccessful “approach” to Jiao in the restaurant the previous night.
In spite of the “romantic” dinner in the well-preserved attic room under the time-sobered beams allegedly from Madam Chiang’s days, with a couple of tiny red paper lanterns dangling overhead, he had learned little that was new. Sitting opposite, in a pink tank top and white pants, her shoulders dazzling against the candlelight, Jiao appeared preoccupied, “the autumn waves” in her eyes reflecting something far away. Tossing a wisp of hair back from her forehead, she brushed off his efforts to bring the talk around to her family background. “No, let’s not talk about it,” she said. A silver knife lay beside her plate, like a footnote, the waiters and waitress coming and going, all dressed in the fashion of the thirties.
Perhaps she had met people like him – more interested in her grandmother than in her. He knew better than to pressure her further. Besides, their conversation was disturbed by a loud Manila band and other louder diners, bantering tales about Madam Chiang, popping off the corks on expensive champagne like in the old days.
At the end of the meal, Jiao let him pay the bill like the ex-businessman he claimed to be. He didn’t really worry about the expense since the staggering bill might function, for once, as proof of his conscientious work. She told the waiter to box the leftovers – “For Mr. Xie, who doesn’t know how to cook.”
It was yet another confirmation of her being considerate of Xie. Parting outside the restaurant, they shook hands, and he had a feeling that her hand lingered in his for a moment. He saw a wistful smile flick across her face, as if touching a string, a peg in a half-forgotten poem.
But that wasn’t enough for Chief Inspector Chen, far from the breakthrough he needed, as he concluded as he got up from the bed.
He checked the cell phone first. No message. The information from Old Hunter so far, including the little indirectly from Detective Yu, didn’t appear promising.
So he decided to sally out onto his second front, a move first contemplated after his talk with Jiao in the garden, supported in his thoughts about Eliot’s poetry, and necessitated by his unsuccessful approach at the restaurant.
For the first attempt along that new front, Chen had actually done his homework. Before and after the dinner the previous day, he’d come up with a list of scholars’ works on Mao’s poetry. Though it could be said he had done some of the homework long before: He had read a number of books on the subject as early as his middle school years, when Quotations of Chairman Mao and Poems of Chairman Mao were his textbooks. Upon graduation, he had copied several lines in his diary as self-encouragement: The mountain pass may be made of iron, / but we are crossing it all over again, / all over again, / the hills stretching in waves, / the sun sinking in blood. After the Cultural Revolution, Chen, like many others, chose not to think too much about Mao or his poems. It was a page finally turned. Besides, Mao wrote in the traditional verse form, different from Chen’s free verse. Now, those poems of Mao’s came crowding back, fragmented more or less in the mind of the worn-out cop.
Most of Mao’s were “revolutionary,” at least in the official interpretations, including the poem composed for his second wife, Kaihui, and another poem written about a picture taken by his fourth wife, Madam Mao. The two poems were the only ones he could remember that had any relation to Mao’s personal life.
Some critics thought otherwise, perhaps. In traditional Chinese literary criticism, there was a time-honored tradition of suoying, i.e., an effort to find the true meaning of a work in the author’s life. Such an approach to Mao’s work might not have been practicable, for there was only the official version of his life. Still, a scholar in the field might know something inaccessible to Chen.
On the list of Mao poetry scholars Chen had made, some were so established that it was beyond Chen to attempt a quick contact, let alone a quick breakthrough; some of them were high in their Party positions, having worked with Mao, which also excluded the possibility of Chen’s learning anything from them; some had passed away; and some were too far away from Shanghai. So the only one approachable at the moment was Long Wenjiang, a “scholar” quite different from all others, but in Shanghai, and a member of the Writers’ Association too.
As a Mao poetry critic, Long had come to the fore during the Cultural Revolution. Not because of his academic studies but because of his class status as a worker. Having spent years collecting various annotations and interpretations of Mao poetry, he put them together into a single volume. The publication of the annotated edition immediately established him as a Mao scholar in the years when workers and peasants were encouraged to be the masters of the socialist society. He became a member of the Writers’ Association, as well as a “professional writer.”
But Long’s luck dipped after Mao’s death in 1976. For several years, few were interested in anything related to Mao. Mao scholars started working on different projects, like Tang or Song poetry, but Mao was the only subject Long knew anything about. Instead of giving up, he plodded on, betting on a revival of interest in Mao. The revival finally came with Mao’s becoming a brand name in the materialistic age, with Mao restaurants and Mao antiques and people collecting Mao badges and stamps for their potential value in the market. Plastic Mao images had even become potent charms for taxi drivers, dangling in front of windshields, supposedly effective against traffic accidents. Chen, too, had a lighter made in the shape of the Little Red Book – click it and a spark would shoot up, like Mao’s prediction about the red revolutionary flame sweeping over the world.
But there was no market value for Mao poetry in the collective revival. No publishing house showed any interest in Long’s revised edition, despite his passionate speeches and protests, both in and out of the Writers’ Association.
That was not the only trouble for Long. In the last few years, the Writers’ Association had suffered several cuts in their government funding. People began to talk about reforming the system of “professional writers.” In the past, those acknowledged as professional writers could get their monthly pay from the association until retirement, regardless of their publications. Now a contract period was suggested, with each member’s qualifications being examined and determined by a committee. Long was desperate, beginning to write something like short anecdotes – totally unrelated to Mao – in his effort to remain in the contract.
Chen happened to remember Long because of such a short piece published in Shanghai Evening. It was a vivid anecdote about river crabs, but “politically incorrect” in the judgment of the committee of the Writers’ Association, of which Chen was a member. So he dug the newspaper out and began rereading it. For a change, he added half a lemon and a spoonful of sugar into his tea.
Several years before the economic reform started in the eighties, my old neighbor, Aiguo, a Confucianist middle school teacher disappointed with the political banishment of Confucius from the classroom, began to develop a crab complex. He made a point of enjoying the Yangchen river crabs at least three or four times during crab season. His wife having passed away, his son having just started working in a state-run steel plant and dating a girl, Aiguo justified his one and only passion by making reference to well-known writers like Su Dongpo, a Song-dynasty poet, who declared a crab feast the most blissful moment of his life, “Oh that I could have crabs with a wine supervisor sitting beside me,” or like Li Yu, a Ming-dynasty scholar, who confessed that he wrote for the purpose of making the crab-money – his life-saving money. As an intellectual immersed in what “Confucius says,” Aiguo had to restrain himself from lecturing about the sage in public, but he followed Confucius’s ritualistic rules for crab-eating at home.
“Do not eat when the food is rotten; do not eat when it looks off-color; do not eat when it smells bad; do not eat when it is not properly cooked; do not eat when it is off season; do no eat when it is not cut right; do not eat when it is not served with the appropriate sauce… Do not throw away the ginger… Be serious and solemn when offering a sacrifice meal to one’s ancestors…” Aiguo would quote from the Analects by Confucius at the dinner table, adding, “It’s about the live Yangcheng crabs – all the necessary requirements for them, including a piece of ginger.”
“All are excuses for his crab craziness. Confucius says,” his son commented with a resigned shrug to the neighbors, “don’t believe him.”
Indeed, Aiguo had such a weakness, suffering a peculiar syndrome with the western wind rising in November, as if his heart were being pinched and scratched by the crab claws. He had to conquer the craving with “a couple of the Yangcheng river crabs, a cup of yellow wine,” and only then would he be able to work hard for the year, full of energy to throw himself into what ever “Confucius says,” until the next crab season.
Aiguo retired at the beginning of the economic reform. The price of crabs had rocketed and a pound of large crabs cost three hundred yuan. For an ordinary retiree like him, a pound of crab cost more than half of his monthly pension. Crabs became a luxury affordable only for the newly rich of the city. For the majority of the Shanghai crab eaters, like Aiguo, the crab season became almost a season of torture.
In the same shikumen house lived Gengbao, a former student of Aiguo’s. Gengbao hardly acknowledged Aiguo as his teacher, for he had flunked out of school, having received a number of Ds and Fs from Aiguo himself. As it is said in Taodejing, “In misfortune comes fortune”: because of his failure at school, Gengbao started his cricket business in the early days of the reform and became rich. In Shanghai, people gamble on cricket fights, so a ferocious cricket could sell for thousands of yuan. Gengbao was allegedly catching his most fierce crickets in a “secret cemetery,” where the crickets, having absorbed all the infernal spirits, fought like devils. Anyway, it proved to be a fabulous niche market for him. Despite all the money he made, however, he chose not to move away from this feng shui attic room of his, which he believed had brought his fortune, though he bought a new apartment somewhere else. In the old building, he still shared the common kitchen as well as a common passion with Aiguo: the crab. Unlike Aiguo, Gengbao could afford to enjoy crabs to his heart’s content, of which he made an ostensible show, parading crabs through the kitchen, nailing crab shells like monster masks on the wall above the coal briquette stove. Aiguo suffered all this, sighing and quoting from a Confucian classic, “It’s the teacher’s fault to have not taught a student properly.”
“What do you mean?” Aiguo’s daughter-in-law responded. “Gengbao is a Big Buck nowadays. Your ancestors must have burned tall incense for you to have such a successful student.”
If there was any cold comfort for Aiguo, it would be that he could talk about Confucius openly again. However, retired, he could give his lecture only to his grandson, Xiaoguo, a third-year elementary school student.
The array of the mysterious crab shells on the kitchen wall seemed to be more appealing than Confucius to Xiaoguo, who had never tasted a crab before.
“What does a crab taste like, Grandpa?”
It was an impossible mission for the retired teacher. There’s no tasting a crab without putting it into your mouth. Aiguo adored his grandson, and as Confucius says, “You have to do what you should do, even though it’s impossible to do so.” Finally, Aiguo managed to demonstrate how delicious a crab could be by concocting a special crab sauce of black vinegar, sugar, ginger slice, and soy sauce.
“It’s somewhat like that,” Aiguo said, letting Xiaoguo dip a chopstick into the sauce and suck on the tip, “but much better.”
Unexpectedly, that experiment developed for Aiguo into an ongoing pursuit of a way to satisfy the crab-craving. All the crab-rich memories had come back to him the moment that the chopstick tip touched his own tongue. He pushed the experiment further by stir-frying the egg yolk and white separately in a wok and mixing them with the special sauce. It resulted in a special dish richly redolent of the celebrated Fried Crab Meat at Wangbaoh restaurant. And to his surprise, small shrimp or dried tofu dipped in the special sauce could occasionally produce a similar effect too. On those days when he could not find anything in the refrigerator, which was under the strict surveillance of his daughter-in-law, he would simply dip the chopsticks in and out of the special sauce, sipping at his yellow wine, and chewing the ginger slices.
Needless to say, all the experiments added to the curiosity of the close-observing Xiaoguo.
“Living in a poor lane, and dipping in nothing but the crab sauce, one still enjoys life,” Aiguo said, seemingly absorbed in Confucius again, to his bewildered grandson. “Confucius says something very close to that about one of his best students.”
One day, on the way to school, Xiaoguo passed by a new house with the door open and caught sight of people busy making huge banquets of sacrifice to their ancestors. It had to be a rich family, with so many luxurious cars parked in front, and with scripture-chanting monks engaged from a Buddhist temple too. He could not help taking a closer look. To his surprise, he saw a crab scurrying out of the door to the sidewalk. It must have escaped from the kitchen in the midst of the hustle-bustle. No one paid attention to it. So Xiaoguo took off his hat and, like a streak of lightning, picked up the vicious-looking crab. Instead of going to school, he ran back home, prepared the special sauce after a fashion, and boiled the crab. After devouring it without really tasting it, he painted a multicolored face on the crab shell with a Chinese character beneath it – swear. He hung the shell like a primitive mask on the wall. When Aiguo came back, seeing the mask, and learning the story from Xiaoguo, who was still washing his hat in the sink, he snapped and slapped his grandson in fury.
“How can you skip school for a crab? Shame on you! And a stray crab from others’ offering to their ancestor too! That’s totally against the Confucian rites. What’s more, you put the crab in your hat. Not one of Confucius’s students had to straighten his hat before dying.” Aiguo softened as the kid sobbed in a heartbreaking way. “Study hard. When you get into college, I’ll buy crabs for you.”
“What’s the point?” Xiaoguo said, sobbing and smacking his lips, “Both you and Father studied at college, but what good was it?”
“Then what are you going to do?”
“I’ll be a Big Buck, so I’ll buy crabs for you then. Tons of crabs, I swear. That’s why I pledged on the crab shell.”
“Confucius says -”
“Crap!”
It was a realistic piece. Chen looked in the Analects for the many “do not eats” about crabs, and he found all of them in the chapter “Old Home,” though Confucius talked about meat and fish in general, not about crab. At least not about crab exclusively, despite what Aiguo told his grandson. Long had clearly read other books beside Mao. The committee at the Writers’ Association didn’t like the narrative because it “joined the complaining crowd without representing the immense progress the reform has achieved in China.” Nor did it read like a story with any plot or craftsmanship, to be strict about it. Still, Chen liked the mouth-watering anecdote, suspecting that those vivid details had come from Long’s own passion for crabs. Chen, too, liked crabs, and though he was not a successful entrepreneur like Gengbao, he was far luckier than Aiguo. As a chief inspector, he was acquainted with Big Bucks who would occasionally treat him to crabs and other delicacies.
As if through mysterious correspondence in the wireless space, his cell phone vibrated with a call from Gu. Gu was a prosperous entrepreneur who owned several companies, restaurants, and clubs. Chen couldn’t help mentioning the story of crabs during the course of the conversation, wondering whether people could still purchase crabs at the state price nowadays.
Afterward, he dialed the Shanghai Writers’ Association. He had a long talk with the executive secretary, and got the information he needed about Long.
Chen started preparing a list of questions for his visit. Halfway through it, he heard a knock on the door. To his surprise, a bamboo basket of live river crabs was waiting there – at least ten pounds of live crabs. Attached was a short note from Gu.
You’re too busy to come to my restaurant, I know. Another basket was sent to your mother’s place.
Chen regretted mentioning the crab story to Gu. The cost of such a basket could be exceedingly high, though it came without a price tag – at least not yet. But for now Chen chose to tell himself a cliché: the end justifies the means. After all, it was a Mao case, and the basket might come in handy for the important visit to Long.
Chen dialed Long’s number and proposed coming over for a visit. The two had met at the association before, but his call must have come as a surprise to Long, especially when Chen added at the end, “I’ll bring along something to eat, so we’ll talk over a cup.”