Shanghai Redemption Read online

  Of course, the man in front might be napping instead, his head merely bobbing along with the bumpy ride. Still, several others in the bus seemed to be humming along, one of them even tapping his foot on the floor. At least they didn’t appear to be bothered by the song.

  Another argument was just beginning to rise up as the bus jerked to an unexpected stop.

  “What a lousy ride!” An old man cursed. “The bag of my old bones is being shaken loose.”

  “If you want to enjoy a comfortable, luxurious ride,” the driver shouted back, “take the high-speed train.”

  “It’s easy for you to talk. How can a retiree possibly afford the train?” the old man wailed. “Alas, why do poor people like us have to suffer like this? If he were alive today, Chairman Mao would never let it happen.”

  “Your brain must be totally addled, old fool. Mao had a special train just for himself, with pretty waitresses dancing attendance on him, and, from what I hear, dancing under him, too. Use your imagination! I saw a documentary that said that one of the train girls became his personal secretary, and later became a powerful politburo member.”

  “Let Mao lie in peace,” another passenger said, from across the aisle.

  “Under Chairman Mao, you wouldn’t have been allowed to sweep graves during Qingming. It was forbidden as a superstitious practice.”

  Chen nodded along to the arguments flying back and forth, but he didn’t get in the middle of it. It was then that his phone rang again. It was Detective Yu Guangming, his longtime partner at the bureau. At the same time Chen’s departure had been announced, Yu had been named the head of the Special Case Squad. Chen trusted Yu, so it was a relief that Yu had succeeded him, but he tried not to put too much stock in the choice. Yu’s promotion might just be another part of the reassuring show.

  “Chief—”

  “I’m sitting on a cemetery bus. You can hear the background noise—and the red song—can’t you? It’s no place to talk.” He added, “And I’m not ‘Chief.’ Not anymore.”

  “But I need to discuss the cases we took over just before yesterday’s announcement.”

  “No, you’re the squad leader now, Yu. You don’t need to discuss anything with me.”

  “Some of the cases are ones you’d already started reviewing, and your opinion may be invaluable to the squad.”

  He thought he knew why Yu had called him. A demonstration of solidarity. But that was the very reason he didn’t want Yu to go on. The phone call might be tapped.

  “I’ll be back from Suzhou soon, Yu,” he said. “I’ll call you.”

  Detective Yu had a point, though. His sudden change in job duties could have something to do with one of the cases recently assigned to the Special Case Squad. The squad’s cases were deemed “special” mostly because there were politically sensitive. What Chen was supposed to do with those cases was provide damage control for the Party. The problem was that he took the cases, and his role as chief inspector, too seriously. Now, he was in trouble.

  But he failed to see how his current trouble was in any way related to the squad’s current caseload, particularly the case he’d been handed the day before. It was about a dead tiger—a publicly disgraced official or businessman who wouldn’t be able to fight back—and it was assigned to Chen’s squad as a formality, because of its high-profile nature. Chen hadn’t done anything with it and wasn’t planning to. He left the case file unread on the bureau’s computer.

  He did have some other files stored on his laptop. Without going back into the bureau, he could review them again. For the time being, however, he wasn’t going to contact Detective Yu.

  The bus ground to another abrupt stop. The driver caught sight of several people walking along the road with their cemetery offerings. He pulled over, let them on, and charged them ten yuan each. It was his own bus, and it made sense for him to make money any way possible.

  The bus started up again and then swerved onto a newly built highway. Chen didn’t remember having ever seen that highway before, but the high-rises along both sides looked strangely similar. They were all almost identical, like gray concrete matchboxes precariously piled up.

  The bus took another turn, rolling down narrow roads with old, ramshackle farmhouses lining both sides. Occasionally, though, there were newly constructed villas, just like those in the suburbs of Shanghai.

  “Gaofeng Cemetery!” came an announcement on the bus’s loudspeaker.

  The cemetery bus pulled slowly into the parking lot.

  TWO

  “THE BUS BACK TO Shanghai will arrive around 12:30,” the driver announced. “After that, there may be another one, but it’s difficult to say when it will arrive. So please don’t miss the one at 12:30.”

  Chen looked at his watch. It was about nine thirty. Three hours. No need for him to hurry.

  Following the crowd, he headed toward the cemetery entrance. Even though it was after Qingming, the number of visitors was considerable.

  Chen hadn’t been to the cemetery in several years, and it, like everywhere else in Suzhou, had changed. The sign at the entrance appeared to have been recently repainted, and a new arch stood over the entrance, redolent with the grandeur of a gate to an ancient palace. It added a majestic touch to the scene, standing against the verdant hills stretching to the horizon. To the left, he saw a pair of imitation bronze burners inside a red pavilion, with a sign in large characters instructing people to burn their netherworld money in the designated burners. That was surely another “improvement with time”—a political catchphrase in the People’s Daily. In the past, visitors would burn “money” in front of the graves, which had the potential risk of setting off wildfires.

  Chen carried no offering with him. At the sight of others headed toward the burners, clasping enormous red envelopes or brown paper bags, he felt another twinge of guilt.

  Several guards stood by the gate, serious and motionless as ancient statues. It was possible they were there to prevent people from sneaking netherworld money into the grave sites. But Chen doubted it. More likely they were there merely to add to the pompous appearance of the cemetery in this materialistic age.

  To the right of the entrance, there was a booth with tiny cans of red and black paints and worn-out brush pens for rent. He picked up a cardboard box containing two cans and an almost brush-bare pen.

  Next to the booth, a silver-haired woman sat hunched over a small table, which displayed bundles and bundles of netherworld money—in denominations of millions and billions. There was more wealth there than was held by most of the world’s bankers, and all in “cash” too. She sat there counting, and recounting, in dead earnest, wearing a pair of polka-dotted oversleeves for the job. A crow flapped overhead, cawing. She looked up, gazing ahead at things unseeable to others, her elbows ceaselessly rubbing against the table edge, still counting. Behind her, shadows and memories appeared to be lurking.

  He decided not to buy a bunch from her. For one thing, he didn’t think his late father, a neo-Confucianist scholar, would have liked it, despite the filial piety it symbolized.

  Checking the cemetery map in his hand, he wound his way uphill, making several turns. Before him were tombs heaped upon tombs, looking almost like overgrown shrubs and stretching all the way to the peak. It was a different sort of population explosion.

  It took him more than ten minutes to locate his father’s grave. With the tombstone dust-covered and half buried in wild weeds, the paint peeling off, the grave looked lonely. Apparently, not very much maintenance had been done. He squatted down and, out of his backpack, he pulled a tiny broom and a mop. He started grave-sweeping, dusting the stone and pulling at the weeds that had grown around the stone. He felt as if he was engaged in a belated effort to redeem something, and he soon became sweaty, his knees inexplicably weak.

  He pulled some incense out from his backpack, lit a bunch, and stuck it into a weed-filled crevice. He bowed three times. With the incense spiraling up, he dipped the brush pen into the ca
n of red paint and traced the characters of his father’s name on the tombstone. He did the same with his mother’s name, but in black paint, which indicated that she was still alive. The logic of the colors and what they represented in the netherworld confounded him.

  When he stood up and looked around him, he noticed a striking difference between the older tombs and some of the newer ones. The newer tombs were impressive—larger stones carved from better material and placed on bigger plots. They also seem to have been better maintained, with the weeds recently cut and the shrubs freshly trimmed.

  Were China’s materialistic, money-oriented values now taking hold even among the dead?

  His father’s tomb had been constructed shortly after the Cultural Revolution. At the time, it might have looked as good as anyone else’s. But not now.

  The incense burned down, leaving a tiny pool of ash. Chen wondered whether he should light another bunch in the hope that the father might protect the son in trouble.

  He took out his camera, having promised his mother pictures. Looking around, he hesitated. Then he decided that he didn’t have to include those luxurious graves in the background. Instead he took a few close-up shots of the old tombstone with the newly repainted characters.

  He lit a cigarette and stood there for a long while, the pine trees rustling in a fitful breeze. He remembered something he’d thought about during his last visit here—about the politics of being red or black in Chinese political discourse. Those terms, red and black, were like balls in a magician’s hand. Now the red songs, popular during the Cultural Revolution, were becoming popular again. Lost in his reverie, Chen started to mentally assemble the pieces he knew of his father’s life.…

  His father, the neo-Confucianist scholar, had suffered horribly toward the end of his life. During the Cultural Revolution, his beliefs made him a target. Now, all these years later, the Party had started talking about Confucius again. So they were portraying him as a great sage of Chinese civilization, a sort of cultural basis for the present-day “harmonious society.” There was even a new movie about Confucius, which included a lurid scene of a beauty seducing the sage. Ironically, in a TV lecture, a young political scholar managed to portray Confucian ideals as aligning with the “socialist realities with Chinese characteristics,” quoting long paragraphs from Chen’s father’s work out of context. And not long ago, a statue of Confucius made an unexpected appearance in Tiananmen Square—close to the Mao portrait that hangs high on the Tiananmen Gate.

  An entire cultural value system, however, was not something that could be quickly raised up or quickly removed like a statue. The return of Confucius into the public sphere got on the nerves of the Maoists. After only one week, the statue disappeared from the square, as quickly and unexpectedly as it had appeared. Chen shuddered at the thought of the power struggle at the very top that was evident in these signs.

  All politics aside, Chen had let his father down terribly. That realization struck home as he stood there at his father’s grave, surrounded by the eerie quietness of the cemetery. Chen had tried to justify his career choice to the spirit of his father, who had envisioned for him an academic path. In Chen’s defense, it was a time-honored tradition, thus arguably proper and right, for an intellectual to secure an official position. It was through those positions that the intellectual served his country. However, those positions required an unquestioned loyalty to the emperor, himself empowered with a mandate from heaven. According to the Confucian doctrine, the ruler can ask anything of the subject, even his life, and the subject cannot say no. For years, Chen avoided thinking about these things, justifying his compromises with the belief that he was doing something good for his country. It had not been easy.

  Chen no longer knew what the right thing to do was—certainly not that morning.

  To be able to accomplish anything in today’s society, he’d had to maintain his position as chief inspector. Chen had spent his career maneuvering carefully, constantly aware that in China’s one-party system, the Party’s interests were paramount. Anything good he could accomplish had to be in line with the interests of the country’s authorities. Ultimately, that was how he’d survived so far.

  With his position at the bureau lost, his survival in the system was in question. The water of China’s politics was too deep for him. This trip to Suzhou was partly the result of his sudden sense of impotence, and partly a temporary vacation from his troubles.

  Out of nowhere, a black bird flew by, seemingly about to alight on the tombstone. Instead, it circled in the air, then flew away. Chen shuddered again, reminded of Cao Cao’s poem:

  The moon bright, the stars sparse, / the black bird flies to the south, / circling the tree three times / without finding a branch to perch itself …

  It was his father who had first recited this poem to him and told him about Cao Cao, the ambitious prime minister during the Three Kingdoms period. Ironically, Cao Cao, who had intended to be a scholar, ended up being a politician. At least he had been a successful politician.

  So what could his father say to him now?

  In his confusion, a number of Confucianist quotes mixed with fatherly advice floated to the top of his mind. “Living in a poor lane, Yan Hui is still happy, though others may feel miserable.… At forty, one may no longer be that easily confused.… Heaven revolves vigorously, a man should unremittingly improve himself and things around him.…” And then, in his father’s voice, “At the very least, you have to take care of yourself.…”

  There was no point in this sort of speculation. He might as well focus on doing something concrete.

  For instance, something about his father’s grave.

  He should try to see that the grave was better taken care of. It looked too shabby. Perhaps, like some other families had done, he could arrange to have a picture of his father embedded in the tombstone.

  Finally, he was ready to leave. He picked up the paint cans and the brush pen, then glanced at his watch. There was still some time before the bus was due to arrive, so he decided to visit the cemetery office. He was fairly sure he’d already paid the maintenance fee for the next several years, but he might as well double-check. So he made his way to the office at the foot of the hill.

  He walked down the hill to the office and pushed open the door. Inside he saw several small windows where people were paying their fees, and along the opposite wall, a row of chairs where other customers sat waiting. Next to the row of chairs were two or three sofas marked with a sign reading VIP AREA. That section was probably for the people responsible for the luxurious new graves on the hillside. At the end of the room, there was an area partially cordoned off with screens in which an elderly man in a spick-and-span Mao suit sat at the desk, ramrod straight, smiling and leafing through a register book.

  Chen walked over to the man at the desk, thinking that there were two items he needed to discuss.

  One was that he needed to double-check on the yearly maintenance fee. Inflation had affected everything, even cemetery fees. He might as well make sure that he was up to date on the current fees. Secondly, he needed to talk about the maintenance of the grave.

  The old man rose, gestured Chen to a chair, and introduced himself as Manager Hong. He lost no time showing Chen a list of fees.

  “Wow. It costs more than a thousand yuan a year now,” Chen said, studying the chart of fees in disbelief.

  “Have you heard the popular saying, ‘You can’t afford to live, nor to die?’” Hong said. “The price keeps going up, like a kite with its string broken. In the current property market, it costs about fifty thousand yuan per square meter for only seventy years. Now, how much do you make a year? Less than fifty thousand, right? So your annual income would only cover a square meter or less. That’s for a living space—a real-life estate—above the ground. The same logic applies to this kind of real estate—an afterlife estate—under the ground. One possible solution would be to pay the eternal fee—the forever rate.”

  “I’
m confused, Manager Hong. What do you mean by the eternal fee or the forever rate?”

  “Well, it means paying one lump sum now, and that’s it. There are no more annual fees, and you don’t have to worry about inflation.”

  Hong turned to the page marked “eternal service” before he went on. “Let me tell you something. Do you know why real estate is only sold—leased, really—for a period of seventy years? It’s because the Party officials may have made enough from selling that land for themselves, and for their children, but they’re concerned about their grandchildren. This way, their grandchild can sell the land again, once seventy years has passed.”

  “But how can they guarantee that their grandchildren will also be Party officials?”

  “Well, look at the princelings, the children of the Party officials today.” Hong added, “You’re from Shanghai. For instance, Shanghai Party Secretary Lai. His father was one of the eight most powerful leaders in the Forbidden City, and now Secretary Lai’s own son, Xixi, who has been studying abroad, has come back to China to attend some important meetings—like an official.”

  “Who can possibly guess how things will be in China in seventy years?”

  “Exactly. If you had paid the eternal fee twenty years ago,” Hong said, “it would have cost you only about two thousand yuan.”

  “The current fee is a lot more than two thousand yuan. It’s quite a sizable sum,” Chen said, pointing at the page, though it wasn’t unaffordable for him. “But there’s something else I want to discuss with you. My father’s grave has not been well taken care of, Manager Hong.”

  “Well, that’s another long story.” Manager Hong unfolded a white paper fan, waving it about dramatically like a Suzhou opera singer. “That grave was constructed many years ago, and the service fee set at the time is unbelievably low compared to today’s standard rates. The tombs constructed in recent years—do you know how much they pay?”