Red Mandarin Dress Read Free

years.
    “This is far from enough to show my respect to you, Professor Bian,” Chen said, holding up the ham. He then tried to find a place to put it down, but the new expensive furniture appeared too good for the ham wrapped in the oily tung paper.
    “Thank you, Chief Inspector Chen,” Bian said. “Our dean has talked to me about you. Considering your workload, we have just decided that you don’t have to sit in the classroom like other students, but you still have to turn in your papers on time.”
    “I appreciate the arrangement. Of course I’ll hand in papers like other students.”
    A young woman walked light-footed into the living room. She looked to be in her early thirties, dressed in a black mandarin dress and high-heeled sandals. She relieved Chen of the ham and put it on the coffee table.
    “Fengfeng, my most capable daughter,” Bian said. “A CEO of an American-Chinese joint venture.”
    “A most unfilial daughter,” she said. “I studied business administration instead of Chinese literature. Thank you for choosing him, Chief Inspector Chen. It’s a boost to his ego to have a celebrity student.”
    “No, it’s an honor for me.”
    “You’re doing great on the police force, Chief Inspector Chen. Why do you want to study in the program?” she wanted to know.
    “Literature makes nothing happen,” the old man joined in with a self-depreciating smile. “She, in contrast, bought the apartment, which was way beyond my means. So we live here—one country with two systems.”
    One country with two systems —a political catch phrase invented by Comrade Deng Xiaoping to describe socialist mainland China’s coexistence with the capitalist Hong Kong after 1997. Here, it described a family whose members earned money from two different systems. Chen understood that people questioned his decision, but he tried not to care too much.
    “It’s like a road not taken, always so tempting to think about on a snowy night,” he said, “and also a boost to one’s ego to imagine an alternative career.”
    “I have to ask a favor of you,” she said. “Father has diabetes and high blood pressure. He does not go to school every day. Can you come here to study instead?”
    “Sure, if it’s convenient for him.”
    “Don’t you remember the line by Gao Shi?” Bian said. “‘Alas, the most useless is a scholar.’ Here I am, an old man capable of only ‘carving insects’ at home.”
    “Literature is of significance for a thousand autumns,” Chen said, quoting a line in response.
    “Well, your passion for literature is something. As in a Chinese saying, people with the same sickness pity one another. Of course, you may have to worry about your own kind of ‘thirsty illness.’ You are a romantic poet, I’ve heard.”
    Xiaoke zhi ji —thirsty illness. Chen had heard the term before, in reference to diabetes, which made one thirsty and tired. Bian had a way of talking, making a subtle reference both to his diabetes and to his thirst for literature, but what did that have to do with Chen’s being a romantic poet?
    When Chen got back into the car waiting for him outside, he caught Little Zhou examining a naked model in a copy of Playboy from Hong Kong. The term “thirsty illness” in ancient China, Chen suddenly recalled, might have been a metaphor for a young man’s helpless romantic passion.
    Then he was not so sure. He could have read the term somewhere but mixed it up with irrelevant associations. Sitting in the car, he found himself thinking like a cop again, searching for an explanation for Professor Bian’s usage. He shook his head at his confused reflection in the rearview mirror.
    Still, he felt good. The prospect of starting the literature program made the difference.

TWO
    DETECTIVE YU GUANGMING , OF the Shanghai Police Bureau, sat brooding in the office—not exactly his, not yet. As the acting head of the special case squad, Yu had the office during Chen’s leave.
    Few seemed to take Yu