Red Mandarin Dress (7 page)

Peiqin read the tragic story, hoping to gain insight from a historical perspective into the popularity of the mandarin dress. By the end of two hours’ reading, however, she had learned little. If anything, her research only confirmed her earlier impression that it was a dress for well-to-do or well-educated women. For someone like Ailing, but not for a working woman like Peiqin. Tapping on the book, she absentmindedly noticed a tiny hole in her black wool sock.

She was intrigued by the biographer’s analysis on the “selfdeconstructive” tendency of Ailing. Chen, too, was engaged in a so-called deconstructive project, she had heard. She wondered what the term meant.

There was a knock on the door. She looked up to see Chef Pan standing in the doorway, carrying an earthen pot in his hands.

“A special pot for you,” he said.

“Thank you.” She did not have the time to clear away the books displaying an array of mandarin dress pictures.

“What are you reading, Peiqin?”

“I’m trying to make a dress for myself. So I’m comparing designs.”

“You are really a capable woman, Peiqin,” he said, putting the pot on the desk. “And I’ve been meaning to mention something to you. We’ve been losing money for almost half a year. The socialist system has gone to the dogs and people are talking about the new management system.”

Peiqin took the lid off the pot and smiled. “Wow, wonderful,” she said. “The food, I mean.” It was the chef’s special: the carp head covered in red pepper on a bed of white garlic at the bottom.

“The pot keeps things warm for a long time. It’s still very hot,” Pan went on, rubbing his hands. “A middle class is rising fast in China. They come to a restaurant for something special, not for homely dishes they can cook themselves. So we need to change too. How about you taking over the management? I’ll back you up. Socialist or capitalist, this restaurant is ours.”

“Thank you, Pan. I’ll think about it,” she said, “but I may not be qualified for the job.”

“Do think about it, Peiqin,” he said, backing toward the door. “We never know what we can do until we try.”

Helping herself to a spoonful of the soup, she thought to herself that she might indeed be able to do a better job for the restaurant—or at least a more conscientious job than the current management was doing. But what about her family? Qinqin was studying hard for the college entrance examination. For his future, a first-class college was a must. Yu, too, had reached a critical stage in his career. She had to take care of things at home.

After lunch, she found it hard to concentrate on the books again. Downstairs, a squabble seemed to be breaking out in the kitchen. Hua called in, saying that he wouldn’t be coming in that day. Peiqin had another idea about the red mandarin dress, so she decided to take the afternoon off.

She might be able to learn something about it from the movies. The dress could have some specific meaning that she was not aware of in her lusterless daily life. She walked out, heading toward a DVD store on Sichuan Road. The afternoon had turned cold. She wrapped herself more tightly in the cotton-padded army jacket, one of the few remainders from her army farm days in Yunnan. Ironically, the imitation army jacket, too, seemed to be getting popular again.

The store was huge, with thousands of VCDs and DVDs displayed in various sections. To her amazement, she saw quite a few new movies that had not been officially released.

“So how can there be DVDs so quickly?” she asked the storeowner, who was also a customer at her restaurant.

“Easy. Someone sneaks into a preview with a camcorder,” he said with a broad grin. “We guarantee the quality. You can return the DVD for a full refund.”

She thanked him and looked around. In the section of Western classics, she came upon a movie entitled
Random Harvest
, adapted from the novel by James Hilton. It was the first English novel Chen had read in Bund Park, Yu had told her. The Chinese version had a fascinating title:
A Pair of Mandarin Ducks’ Dream Re-dreamed.
In classical Chinese poetry, a pair of Mandarin ducks stood for inseparable lovers. So this must be a love story. She put the movie into her shopping basket.

In the domestic section, she picked up
A Nurse’s Diary
, a movie made in the fifties. She remembered having seen a poster of the young nurse wearing a mandarin dress. Another love story, judging from the glamorous DVD cover. She also chose
Golden Lock
, a Hong Kong movie based on a novel by Ailing.

But she failed to find a documentary movie about the dress, nor any movie with a title directly connected to it.

The moment she got back home, she turned on the DVD player. There were still a couple of hours before she had to worry about dinner. She took off her shoes and socks, stretched herself out on the sofa, and covered her feet with a cushion.

She watched
Random Harvest
for only ten minutes. Too old-fashioned Hollywood for her. What would Chen think about the movie, she wondered.

A Nurse’s Diary
was a different story: it was about a group of young people dedicated to building a new socialist China. By today’s standards, it didn’t come close to being a romantic story. The young nurse was too busy making the revolution to have many romantic thoughts. In fact, romantic affairs were far from encouraged at the time. The movie appealed to Peiqin, however, particularly for the idealistic theme song: “‘Little swallow, little swallow, / you come back here every year. / Can you tell me why?’ / The little swallow replies, / ‘The Spring is most beautiful here,’ . . .”

The most beautiful “here” in the song, she contemplated, must refer to somewhere along the northwest borders, still impoverished, undeveloped, forsaken. No one would ever think of going there today.

“The Spring is most beautiful here.” On the screen, the slender nurse, played by the actress Linfeng, was humming the song, her face lit up with the passion of the socialist revolution. Years later, Linfeng emigrated to Tokyo, where she was said to be running a Chinese vegetarian restaurant. There she sang the song occasionally for overseas Chinese customers, her figure out of shape and too much makeup on her face. Of course, it would be naïve to expect an actress to keep playing such a role—or showing such a figure—all her life.

As it turned out, in the movie the dress was worn by the nurse’s mother, a middle-aged lady of the upper class in the old society, still resistant to the socialist revolution. But Peiqin was not exactly disappointed. As in her initial impression, mandarin dresses—in movies and in life—were mostly for those women moving about in fashionable upper-class.

As she was about to watch
Golden Lock
, her glance fell on a book she had brought home. The white-haired author looked strangely like her late father. She read the short biographical information beneath the picture on the cover. “Shen Wenchang, a well-known poet before 1949, and after 1949, an internationally known expert on the history of Chinese clothing.”

She opened the book, but it touched on the mandarin dress in only two short paragraphs. In the notes at the back of the book, she did not find a single scholar dealing exclusively with the mandarin dress. So perhaps the best she could get would be a paragraph here and there.

The old man must be in his eighties. She put down the book, gazing at the picture. If only she could consult an expert like him, she thought wistfully.

Around dinnertime, the phone rang. It was Chen, who expressed regret upon learning that Yu was still at work.

“Yu’s been so busy the last few days that he often comes back late. Don’t worry about him,” she said. “How is your paper going?”

“Slowly but steadily. I am so sorry about the timing, but it may be the last chance to try my hand at something different,” Chen said. “How are things with you?”

“Not that busy. I’m just reading some books. Everybody is talking about the red mandarin dress, so I thought I might learn something about it.”

“You are trying to help again, Peiqin. Have you found anything interesting?”

“Nothing yet. I’ve just started reading a book on the history of Chinese clothing. The author used to be a poet too.”

“Shen Wenchang?”

“Do you know him?”

“Yes. A great scholar. There’s a new documentary movie about him.”

“I haven’t seen that movie. Oh, I bought a DVD,
Random Harvest
, from the novel you like. Yu told me about your days in the park.”

“Thank you, Peiqin. It’s so thoughtful of you. I can’t wait to watch it.” Chen added, “When Yu gets home, tell him to call me—oh, and to bring the movie over to me at his convenience.”

SEVEN

CHEN WOKE UP DISORIENTED
, as if still floundering in a sea of thoughts.

With the second body found in the center of the city, with the media clamoring like cicadas in the early summer, he had to do something to help. He owed that to Yu. And to Hong too, who had kept him updated with the latest developments, smiling a radiant smile in spite of Liao’s grouchiness.

Having reviewed all the measures taken by his colleagues, however, Chen concluded he could hardly do any more than they, at least not as an “outside consultant.” He was still too much engaged with his paper. Running an investigation could be like writing a paper; ideas come with undivided concentration.

A bitter taste returned to his mouth. Brushing his teeth vigorously, he was struck with an idea—Peiqin’s idea. He happened to know Shen, the authority on the history of Chinese clothing.

Shen had been a poet in the forties, writing in a then-fashionable Imagist style. After 1949, he was assigned a job at the Shanghai Museum, where he denounced his earlier poetry as decadent and threw himself into the study of ancient Chinese clothing. Probably a neck-saving choice in the deteriorating political climate of the mid-fifties. As in
Tao De Jing
, misfortune leads to fortune. Because of his abrupt disappearance from the literary scene, the young Red Guards in the mid-sixties failed to recognize him as a “bourgeois poet,” and he was spared the humiliations and persecutions. In the eighties, he reemerged with a multivolume work on the history of ancient Chinese clothing, which was translated into several foreign languages, and he became an “internationally known authority.” The literary scene was busy with new voices and faces and few remembered him as a poet anymore.

Chen would not have remembered him either but for a meeting with a British sinologist who raved about Shen’s earlier literary work. Chen was impressed by a short poem about Shen’s early days:

As an executive member of the Writers’ Association, Chen took it upon himself to arrange for a reprint of Shen’s collection. It was not an easy job. The old man was nervous about poetry, like a man once bitten by a snake, and the publisher, hesitant about possible financial loss, was like a man in fear of a snake. Still, the collection came out and was caught up in the city’s collective nostalgia. People were pleased to rediscover a poetic witness of those golden years before the revolution. A young critic pointed out that the American Imagist poets were indebted to classical Chinese poetry and that Shen, labeled an Imagist, was actually restoring the ancient tradition. The article appealed to a group of “new nationalists,” and the collection sold fairly well.

Chen took out his address book and dialed Shen’s number.

“A gentleman’s request I cannot refuse,” Shen agreed, quoting from Confucius. “But I have to take a look at the mandarin dress.”

“No problem. I’m not in the bureau today, but you can talk to Detective Yu, or to Inspector Liao. Either of them will show you the dress.”

He then informed Yu of Shen’s visit. As Chen expected, Yu was pleased with the unexpected help, promising to show the dress to the historian. At the end of their call, Chen added, “Oh, it’s so thoughtful of Peiqin—she had the copy of
Random Harvest
specially delivered to me. I’ve been looking for that movie for a long time.”

“Yes, she’s been watching a lot of DVDs, trying to find clues there.”

“Anything new?”

“No, nothing so far, but the DVDs might give her a break from her job.”

“You’re right about that,” Chen said, though he didn’t really think so. It was like his reading for the last two weeks. Once he took it seriously—as something he had to do, something with a purpose—it gave him no break.

Before he could leave for the library to continue his work, there was another special delivery to his home. It was a package of new information about Jia Ming from Director Zhong.

Mostly it was speculation about Jia’s motive for making trouble for the government. Jia and his entire family had suffered during the Cultural Revolution; Jia ultimately lost his parents. He had become a lawyer in the early eighties, when such a career choice was uncommon. During the sixties and seventies, attorneys were hardly existent or relevant in China. Lawyers, like stocks, were considered part and parcel of capitalist society: hypocritical and for the rich. Major cases were determined or predetermined by the Party authorities, all in the name of the proletarian dictatorships. Liu Shaoqi, chairman of the People’s Republic of China, had been thrown in jail without a trial, and there he died alone, without a notice sent to his family for years. Jia had deliberately chosen to become an attorney at a time when it was far from a popular profession: he had planned to make trouble for the government from the beginning.

Because of his early entry into the field, he was quickly successful. As a legal system was advocated and recognized as part of China’s reform, he became well known for his defense of a dissident writer. He made such a brilliant defense that the judge appeared tongue-tied several times, which people caught on TV and applauded. The “new” legal practice gathered steam, and law offices sprung up like bamboo shoots after a sudden spring rain.