Enigma of China Read online

  “By the way, I ran into Wei this morning. He was just assigned a case, and he was saying that it should have been assigned to you.”

  “What case was he talking about?”

  “A Party official who committed suicide during shuanggui.”

  “Oh, that one. We’re actually both assigned to it, but I’m serving merely as a special consultant to the team.”

  “Is foul play suspected?”

  “Not really; it seems to be only a matter of formality,” Chen said. “Since we’re on the topic, do you know anything about 95 Supreme Majesty cigarettes?”

  “Have you never smoked them?”

  “I have heard of the brand.”

  “But you’ve smoked Panda, haven’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the eighties, Panda was the brand exclusively manufactured for Deng Xiaoping. It was the best in the world.”

  “And earlier, China was name of the brand manufactured for Mao,” Chen said, nodding. “In ancient China, items like that were called imperial product—gongping—and were for the emperor alone.”

  “Nowadays, both China and Panda are available on the open market as long as you can afford them. Each of the provinces also manufactures a special brand of cigarettes designed exclusively for the top Party leaders in the Forbidden City, such as 95 Supreme Majesty. It’s even more expensive than China and Panda.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. Think about the very name ‘95 Supreme Majesty.’ The emperor complex inherent in the name works marvelously for an age of conspicuous consumption.”

  “But how is 95 Supreme Majesty connected to the case?”

  “Zhou was exposed because of a human-flesh search—which is basically a crowd-sourced investigation—that was triggered by a picture of a pack of 95 Supreme Majesty sitting in front of him.”

  “Interesting. I think Peiqin was talking about this. A Party cadre who was shuangguied and saw the writing on the wall. It isn’t too surprising that he chose to end his life.”

  “That’s true,” Chen said, without trying to elaborate.

  “Let me know when you will be available,” Yu said as he took his leave.

  * * *

  In the afternoon, Detective Wei came to Chen’s office.

  Sitting in a chair opposite Chen, Wei started his briefing with a slight hint of hesitation, which was uncharacteristic of the experienced cop. According to Wei, both Jiang and Liu were still staying at the hotel, supposedly continuing their investigation of Zhou’s problems. It was a parallel investigation to the police inquiry into Zhou’s death. That was making things difficult for Wei. Jiang and Liu were both further up in the Party hierarchy, so Wei was expected to comply with their investigation, rather than to collaborate with them or work on his own.

  “Liu went back to the Party Discipline Committee this morning, but Jiang shows no sign of decamping. He won’t give me any specifics about why they shuangguied Zhou. Yes, his corruption was exposed on the Internet, but what specifically triggered shuanggui? Jiang said that he’d been focusing on how the pictures came to be posted online in the first place, but he hasn’t revealed anything to me.”

  Chen knew what Wei was driving at. In the case of murder, the perpetrator usually has a motive. Revenge, for example. The person who landed Zhou in the trouble on the Internet might be someone holding a grudge and could have been the one who murdered him at the hotel.

  But with Zhou already shuangguied, why was the second step necessary?

  “I don’t know what Jiang really wants. Zhou’s death could easily have been declared a suicide. Jiang didn’t have to drag us into this.”

  Seeing that there was no point in trying to interject any observations for the moment, Chen sat back and listened.

  “And the hotel itself is a very strange one,” Wei went on. “From time to time, it will close to the public—either in part or entirely—in order to serve special needs of the Party. For instance, the need to temporarily house shuangguied officials. For them to isolate that particular floor where Zhou was staying, other guests had to be moved out. The hotel employees have been specially trained, and visitors have to register before being admitted into the building, as you saw.

  “I managed to talk to some of the hotel staff without the other two present. Zhou was last seen around ten twenty in the evening by a room service attendant who delivered a bowl of cross-bridge noodles to his room. His statement was supported by the videotape from a security camera on the third-floor stair landing. The video showed that no one came up after the attendant left.”

  “This level of extraordinary security isn’t entirely incomprehensible for a shuanggui investigation. The Party always worries about the details of cadre corruption leaking out,” Chen said. “Now, what about the autopsy?”

  “A fairly large concentration of sedatives was found in Zhou’s body. According to his family, he slept badly and he often took sleeping pills. He could have swallowed a handful of them before going to bed—”

  “Yes?”

  “But something doesn’t add up here, Chief Inspector Chen. Zhou had noodles around ten, so let’s assume he took the pills shortly after that. Call it ten thirty. Now, the time of death was estimated at around midnight, about an hour and a half later. With that amount of sedatives in his bloodstream, he should have been fast asleep at the time.”

  “Perhaps he took the pills before the noodles?”

  “Who would take sleeping pills before ordering room service? What if he had fallen asleep before the noodles were delivered? A more likely theory is that he took them after eating the noodles.”

  “He still could have been unable to sleep, despite the pills—presuming he took them after eating the noodles.”

  “But could he, after having taken the pills to try and sleep, suddenly have jumped up, discovered a rope somewhere in the room, made a noose, tied it tightly to the beam, and hanged himself?”

  “No, one isn’t likely to find rope in a hotel room. On that point, you’re right,” Chen said. “But what other possible scenario do you suggest?”

  “According to the hotel staff, Zhou didn’t appear depressed or in any way different that evening. The hotel menu is of a very high quality, and he didn’t seem to have lost any of his appetite. He had finished a large portion of Yangzhou fried rice with beef soup for dinner that night, and about three hours later, ordered a large bowl of noodles to be delivered to the room.”

  Now something began to dawn on Chen. From the very beginning, he assumed that the Party authorities wanted Zhou’s death declared a suicide, which would be a plausible conclusion under the circumstances. For that, Chen hardly needed to do anything. The suggestion that a shuangguied official had been murdered would result in more headaches for the city government, yet that seemed to be the direction that Detective Wei was leaning. Publicly acknowledging that such a thing was possible could be seen as against the interests of the Party, which was probably why Jiang wouldn’t collaborate.

  But Wei was a cop, so it was his duty to look into the possibility. And Chen was a cop too.

  When Detective Wei left the office, Chen went over his notes for a long time before he decided to call Detective Yu.

  FOUR

  PEIQIN WAS HOME ALONE, hunched in front of the computer, reading a blog entry about toxic pork being sold in the markets. She tried not to worry about politics too much, but she was concerned about practical matters, minor yet relevant to her family.

  The blog entry was entitled “The Pig Farmer Eats No Pork.” It revealed the shocking fact that most pigs were fed a so-called compound feed—in reality, it was an additive-laced feed, which included hormones to make the pigs grow faster, sleeping pills so they would sleep all day and gain weight faster, and arsenic to make them look pink and healthy. Among the various additives, one commonly used chemical compound was called lean meat essence: it consisted of ractopamine or clenbuterol, with which the farmers could both produce more lean meat and reduce the amount of feed. The p
ig farmers didn’t care about the consequences for the consumers. For their own use, however, they would keep one or two pigs raised on natural feed.

  Knocking on the table in frustration, Peiqin wondered how reliable the information was. What she knew for a fact was that pork nowadays tasted different.

  She had heard, however, that for high-ranking Party officials, there was a secret supply of pork and other meat raised on special organic farms. Such meat could be expensive, but it was all paid for by the government. It was beyond the reach of ordinary people like Peiqin and Yu.

  It wasn’t only the toxic pork, Peiqin reflected, as she stood up to pour herself a cup of tea. The vegetables were sprayed with DDT, the fish raised in contaminated water, and even the tea leaves—at least some of them—were said to be painted green. She couldn’t help gazing suspiciously into the cup.

  “What’s wrong with China?”

  An article like that wasn’t going to appear in newspapers like Wenhui. In the official media, there was only the good and great news about China. The authorities wanted to present a picture of a harmonious society and didn’t permit any negative news or commentary. Like an increasing number of people, Peiqin felt she had no choice but to get more and more of her news online. In contrast to the official media, the Internet provided less-filtered information, though even it wasn’t free from government control.

  Peiqin used the computer Qinqin left at home for her Web surfing. The campus computers ran much faster, and Qinqin studied there most of the time. He only checked e-mail or played games at home on the weekend, so Peiqin could use the computer as much as she liked during the week.

  She heard voices and footsteps approaching the door. She rose and opened the door and saw, to her surprise, not just Yu but also Chen standing there.

  “What wind has brought you over today, Chief Inspector Chen?”

  “He was talking to me about a case,” Yu said, “involving Internet searches. I told him you’re a pro—”

  “So here I am,” Chen said, holding high a bottle of Shaoxing rice wine. “A student’s gift to his teacher, a must in the Confucian tradition.”

  “Don’t listen to him,” she said. “It’s dinnertime. You should have told me earlier.”

  “I’m no stranger, Peiqin. That’s why I’ve come without giving you advance notice. We’ll just have whatever you’ve already prepared.”

  “But there’s only one bowl of eight treasures hot sauce,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at the table. “With Qinqin off at college, we sometimes have nothing but noodles with a spoonful of sauce on top.”

  “The sauce isn’t bad,” Yu cut in, “fried with diced pork, dry tofu, peanuts, cucumber, shrimp, and whatnot—”

  “So it’s called eight treasures,” Chen said with a grin. “I know. It’s a Shanghai specialty. Really delicious!”

  “No, it won’t do for a distinguished guest like you. We can’t afford to lose face like that,” Peiqin said in mock dismay. “But have a cup of Dragon Well tea first and I’ll see what I can put together.”

  In less than five minutes, Peiqin was able to put two cold dishes on the table: tofu mixed with chopped green onion and sesame oil, and sliced thousand-year egg in soy sauce with minced ginger.

  “Something for your beer,” she said, putting a bottle of Qingdao and two cups on the table.

  “Don’t go out of your way for me, Peiqin.”

  “Let her have her way,” Yu said, opening the beer bottle with a pop.

  She put the sauce of eight treasures into the microwave and a bunch of noodles into a pot of boiling water. While those cooked, she stir-fried several eggs into an omeletlike dish called super crabmeat and roe.

  Chen helped himself to a spoonful of the omelet the moment it was placed on the table. “It tastes absolutely exquisite,” he declared. “You have to tell me the recipe.”

  “It’s easy. You just need to separate the yolk from the white. Fry the white first, and then the yolk. Add a lot of minced ginger, Zhenjiang vinegar, and a generous pinch of sugar too.”

  She ladled out the noodles, placed them into bowls, and poured the sauce on top of them.

  “Laomian style,” she said before serving a soup of dried green cabbage.

  “Wow, that’s the soup I’ve been missing.”

  “The fresh cabbage was so cheap back in the early spring, I bought several baskets and dried it at home,” she said. She shook out several drops of sesame oil onto the greenish surface of the soup.

  “When I was a child, my mother used to dry cabbage at home, too. She would boil the cabbage, then air dry it on a rope stretched across our small room.”

  “Oh, we have not visited your mother for a while.”

  “Don’t worry about her. She’s doing fine for a woman her age.”

  Chen changed the subject: “I hear you’ve become quite Web savvy, Peiqin. Yu told me about it.”

  “She’s absolutely hooked,” Yu chipped in, adding another spoonful of the spicy sauce to the noodles. “She hurries to the computer the moment she gets home—before she even thinks of cooking or washing.”

  “You’re always so busy with your work. What else can I do alone at home?” She turned to Chen. “I’m simply fed up with the newspapers. Just yesterday, I read about the exposure of another corrupt Party official. It served him right, but in the newspaper, it’s always due to the great leadership of the Central Party authorities that a rotten cadre is exposed and punished. As to why and how it happened, we are never told anything. The former premier made his famous statement about preparing ninety-nine coffins for corrupt officials and one for himself. It was an unmistakable and heroic gesture promising to fight corruption, no matter the cost. He got a five-minute ovation for his speech. But did he succeed in rooting out the corruption? No. The situation has been getting worse and worse.

  “That’s why people rely on the Internet for detailed information on how these officials fatten themselves like red rats. The Web is also censored, but quite a number of sites aren’t run by the government. Consequently, one or two fish may still, from time to time, escape the net. These are commercial Web sites, run for profit, so the contents have to be eye-catching and feature information that’s unavailable in the Party newspapers.”

  “Thank you so much, Peiqin. That was a very helpful overview,” Chen said. “But I have a specific question for you. What is a human-flesh search?”

  “Oh, that. I hope you aren’t the target of one, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen,” she said, with a teasing smile. “I’m just kidding. When and where the practice of crowd-sourced investigation started, I don’t know. Possibly in one of the popular, controversial Web forums, where users—or netizens—can post their own comments. They are called ‘netizens’ because the public space of Internet is a kind of nation, of which they are citizens. For many, it is the only space wherein they can act like citizens, with a limited freedom of speech. As for the term human-flesh search, it was originally used to describe an information search that is human-powered rather than computer-driven. The netizens—the most dedicated Web users—sift through clues, help each other, and share information, intent on tracking down the target information one way or another. But the popular meaning nowadays is that it is not just a search by humans but also a search for humans, one which plays out online but is intended to have real-world consequences. The targets of this kind of search vary, from corrupt government officials, to new Big Bucks who appear suddenly with surprisingly large fortunes, to intellectuals too obsequious to the authorities, or any other relatively high-profile figure you might imagine. However, almost always there is an explicit or implicit emphasis on sensitive political and social issues somewhere in the target’s background.”

  “Can you give me an example, Peiqin?”

  “Recently, there was one in Yunnan Province. An amateur hacker broke into a local Party official’s laptop, downloaded his diary, and put it online. That official, named Miao, was the head of the county tobacco bureau.
He wasn’t a particularly high-ranking cadre, but he had a lucrative position. The contents of the diary proved to be very spicy. It included detailed descriptions of his extramarital affairs, his under-the-table deals done in the name of Party interests, his pocketing government funds, and his bribing others while others bribed him, all in a complex cobweb of connections. The diary reads like a novel, with the persons involved labeled only by initials—such as B, M, S, and so on—but with dates and locations too. You might think this would be no big deal, since no one could tell if the diary was true or not. But you know what? A crowd-sourced search started immediately. Netizens threw themselves into it wholeheartedly, like kids at a carnival. All the women mentioned as having been in a sexual relationship with the official were located. They even found photos of most of them. The same with the other Party officials connected to him. By relentlessly digging into the dates and locations, the forum members were able to establish the authenticity of the diary beyond question.

  “Consequently, Miao was fired and jailed for being an official corrupted by the evil Western bourgeois influence.”

  “So these netizens did a good job of sorting out a rotten egg,” Chen said. “On the other hand, who gave them the right to invade others’ privacy?”

  “No one did. But who gave the Party officials the right to do all those horrible things in the first place? China has a one-party system, with absolute power, absolute media control, and an absolute highway to corruption. People have to do something, right? No problem is really solved by conducting a crowd-sourced search like that. But exposing one Party official is better than none. These searches have now developed a pattern. When an official is first named on the Internet, he or she denies any wrongdoing, fights back, and threatens to take legal action against anyone posting about them online. The government, meanwhile, supports the targeted official while, it goes without saying, remaining in the background. But the ongoing search inevitably brings up new hard evidence, irrefutable, of corruption and abuse of power, much to the embarrassment of the government. The government then has no choice but to shuanggui the official thus exposed.”