The Mao Case Read online

  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.”

  TEN

  ABOUT AN HOUR LATER, Chen arrived at a small street in the Old City area and saw Long waiting in front of his apartment building. In spite of Chen’s tip on the phone, Long was flabbergasted at the sight of the basket of river crabs.

  “My humble abode is brightened by your visit,” Long said. “Now you are overwhelming me with all the crabs.”

  “I was impressed by your crab story, Long. And I happen to know someone at a restaurant. After I was able to get some at the state price, I decided to come over.”

  “I’m not surprised by your connections, Comrade Chief Inspector Chen, but the ‘state price’ more than surprises me.”

  Chen smiled without giving any explanation, but Long was right about the nonexistence of “state price.”

  Long welcomed Chen into his efficiency apartment — the bedroom, the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen were all in one room. A red-painted table was already set out in the middle of the room. On the side closest to the door, there was a sink and a coal briquette stove. On one of the white walls, Chen saw a couple of scarlet crab claws as decoration.

  “My wife has to babysit at her sister’s place today,” Long said. “We’ll talk to our hearts’ content over a crab feast. Let me prepare them first. It’ll take just a few minutes.”

  Long put the crabs in the sink underneath the window and started washing them with a short bamboo broom. With the water still running and the crabs crawling, he took out a large pot, filled it half full with water, and put it on the propane gas tank.

  “Steaming is the simplest and best way.”

  “Can I help, Long?”

  “Slice the ginger,” Long said, taking out a piece of the root, “for the sauce.”

  Long bent down over the sink to clean the crabs with an old toothbrush. As Chen finished slicing the ginger, Long started binding the crabs, one by one, with white cloth strings.

  “This way, the crabs won’t lose their legs in the steamers,” Long commented, putting them into the pot.

  By now Chen was convinced that Aiguo in the story was none other than Long himself. The way he prepared the crabs was impressive.

  “I’ll tell you what, Chief Inspector Chen. I, too, used to have crabs every month back in the early seventies.”

  That was during the Cultural Revolution, Chen thought, when Long was a “revolutionary worker scholar,” capable of enjoying privileges not easily available to others.

  “That’s what I guessed. Your story must have been more or less drawn from your own experience.”

  The special sauce of vinegar and sugar and ginger was prepared. Long dipped his chopsticks into the sauce, tasted it, and smacked his lips. He opened a bottle of Shaoxing yellow rice wine, poured out a cup for Chen, and poured a cup for himself.

  “Let’s have a cup first.”

  “To a crab evening!”

  “Now let’s wash our hands,” Long said. “The crabs will soon be ready.”

  As Chen seated himself at the table, Long took off the cover of the steamer, picked up the contents, and placed on the table a large platter of steamed crabs, dazzlingly red and white under the light. “Crabs have to be served hot. I will leave some of them unsteamed for the moment.”

  So saying, Long fell to eating a fat crab without further ado, and Chen followed suit. Spooning the sauce into the crab shell, Chen dipped a piece of crab into the amber-colored liquid. It was delicious.

  Only after having finished the digestive glands of the second crab did Long look up with a satisfied sigh and nod. Turning the crab’s entrails inside out, he had something that looked like a tiny monk sitting in meditation on his palm.

  “In the story of the White Snake, a meddlesome monk has to hide somewhere after he has ruined the happiness of a young couple. Finally he pulls himself into a crab shell. It’s useless. Look, there’s no escape.”

  “A marvelous story. You are truly a crab expert, Long.”

  “Don’t laugh at my exuberance. It is the first crab-treat for me this year. I can’t help it,” Long mumbled with an embarrassed grin, a crab leg still between his teeth. “You’re an important man. You may want to talk to me about something, but you don’t have to bring all those crabs.”

  “Well, you are an authority on Mao’s poetry. In ancient times, a student came to his teacher with a ham, so it’s proper and right for me to come here with crabs. They are far from enough to show my respect for you.”

  Poking the meat out of the crab leg with a chopstick, Long said, “I really appreciate it.”

  “I’ve been reading his poems. Whatever people may say about Mao nowadays, his poems are not bad at all.”

  “The most magnificent poems,” Long said, raising his cup. “It’s not easy for a young intellectual like you to say so. You, too, are a poet.”

  “But I write free verse. I don’t know much about regular verse. So you have to enlighten me on that.”

  “In terms of poetic tradition, Mao wrote ci poems, which have elaborate requirements for the number of characters in a line, and for the tone and rhyme patterns too. But you don’t have to worry about the versification to appreciate his poems. Like ‘Snow,’ which is full of original and bold images. What a sublime vision!”

  “A sublime vision indeed,” Chen echoed. It might be well to start with a poem not directly related to the investigation. “What an infinite expanse of imagination!”

  “That’s true,” Long agreed. His tongue loosened with the wine, he quoted the last line with a flourish. “To look for the really heroic, you have to count on today!”

  “But the poem was also controversial, I have read. Mao made that particular statement after listing well-known emperors in history and pronouncing himself a greater one.”

  “You cannot take a poem too literally. ‘The really heroic’ here can be singular or plural. It doesn’t have to refer to Mao alone. Also, we have to take into consideration that Mao and the Communist Party were then regarded as ‘uneducated bandits.’ So the poem showed Mao’s
learning and won applause from the intellectuals.”

  “Yes, your interpretation throws much light on it,” Chen said, though not at all convinced. “That’s why I am coming to an expert like you.”

  “There are interpretations and interpretations. Some people may have a personal grudge against Mao — quite possibly because of their suffering during the Cultural Revolution, but we have to see Mao from a historical perspective.”

  “Exactly, but people cannot help seeing him from their own perspective.”

  “Now, from my perspective, the sauce is a must. Simple yet essential, it brings out the best of the crabs,” Long said, changing the topic as he poured the sauce into another crab shell. “Once I even dipped pebbles into the sauce, and with my eyes closed, I still enjoyed all the memories of the crabs.”

  “That’s something, Long,” Chen said. “I’m learning a lot today — apart from Mao’s poetry.”

  “Few publishing houses are interested in poetry today,” Long said, looking him in the eye. “Are you trying to write something about his poems?”

  “No, I’m no scholar, not like you. I majored in English, so I’m interested in translation.”

  “Translation?”

  “Yes, there was an official translation of Mao poetry in the seventies — by celebrated scholars and translators. One of them was a professor at Beijing Foreign Language University, where I studied. But the ‘politically correct’ interpretation could have been taken too far during those years. For instance, some of his poems could be personal, not just about revolution, but translators at the time had to translate them into revolutionary poems.”

  “That’s true. Everything could be political in those days.”

  “Poetry translation doesn’t simply mean word-to-word rendition. They should read like poems in the target language.” Chen opened his briefcase and took out his translation of classical Chinese love poems. “That’s a collection translated by Professor Yang and me. An American edition of it has just come out. We didn’t make much money, but we got a lot of publicity.”