Not a bad poem, written through a female persona. Rereading it, Chen thought he could understand Qiao’s popularity among those girls in the eighties.
Chen decided not to approach Qiao in a conventional way. It was not easy for an ex-poet-or an ex-convict-to survive, and an investigation in the name of the Party Discipline Committee would not make things any easier for his business. So instead of a bureau car, Chen took a taxi to go and visit him.
The bookstore was located on Fuyou Road, one of the few remaining pebble-covered streets in the Old City area. Chen told the driver to stop one block away. Fuyou was a street lined with booths, kiosks, stands, barrows, and shabby stores on both sides. Several stores appeared to be makeshift extensions, or conversions, out of the former residential rooms. A few peddlers did business on wooden tables or white cloths set out on the sidewalk.
It was an age when everything could be put up on sale, and everywhere, too.
He stepped into the bookstore, which consisted of two sections. One selling so-called antiques, and the other selling books.
The antique section exhibited a hodgepodge of objects. A time-yellowed picture of an old woman shuffling in her bound feet along the Qing trail, a long brass opium pipe immortalized with the moss of ages, a cigarette box card of a Shanghai courtesan flashing her thighs through the high slits of her floral cheongsam. To his surprise, things as recent as the Cultural Revolution were also marked as antiques, cramming a whole glass counter. A stamp of Marshal Lin Biao standing with Chairman Mao on the Tiananmen Gate. Lin was killed shortly afterward in an unsuccessful coup. The stamp was now marked as worth ten thousand Yuan. There was an impressive collection of Chairman Mao badges-plastic or metal-copies of the Little Red Book of Mao’s Quotations, the four-volume Collected Works of Chairman in the first edition…
Next to the collection of the Cultural Revolution, Chen saw a poster of Dietrich in Shanghai Express. This city seemed to be suddenly lost in a collective nostalgia for the twenties and thirties, an allegedly golden period of exotic and exuberant fantasies. Things from those days were being discovered and rediscovered with a passion. The poster stood as a plastic-covered valuable, fetching a much higher price than a larger portrait of Chairman Mao standing on Tiananmen Square.
Chen took a bamboo shopping basket. He picked a stainless steel lighter in the shape of a Little Red Book, marked for only five yuan. He also chose something like a large plastic Mao badge with a long red silk string attached. Possibly a pendant, but the red string was too short.
Looking up, he saw a middle-aged man in a traditional Tang jacket in a corner partially sheltered by a bookshelf. He recognized him to be none other than Qiao. Qiao, who had changed a great deal, deeply wrinkled like a shrunken gourd, did not come over. Perhaps what Chen had chosen were merely cheap imitation antiques.
Chen then walked toward several special-price bookshelves with some of the books marked as eighty to ninety percent off. Qiao moved over, drawing his attention to a section marked “beauty authors.”
“A lot of people buy these books,” Qiao said.
Not because of those glamorous authors on the covers, Chen knew, but because of the pornographic contents-allegedly autobiographical. Like Lei Lei, the author of Darling, Darling, whose cover bore a blurb praising the book as “a lush, lustful account of her sexual experience with three Americans.” Or like Jun Tin, the author of Peacocks, notorious through her fight with Lei Lei for the number one Chinese-female-Henry-Miller title. With the first lessening of the government censorship, books featuring sexual descriptions turned into the hottest product. Surprisingly, there was a bronze ancient monster crouching on top of that particular shelf, as if moving out of a Chinese myth.
“American Lover by Rain Cloud,” Qiao said, picking up a book. “Graphic description of the sexual ecstasy between a Chinese woman and her American lover. The book has caused a sensation because the alleged protagonist’s daughter sued the author. Rain settled the case for a large sum, but guess what-the book was then reprinted to roaring success, bringing in far more than what she paid.”
“How?” Chen said.
“She claimed that the trial was orchestrated by the government. Once a writer was ‘persecuted,’ her book sold like hotcakes. It was translated into five foreign languages. People are contrarily curious. Not to mention all the lurid details, much reported during the trial.”
“What a shameless profiteer!”
“Is there any ashamed profiteer? Look at that paragraph. ‘They write not with their pens, but with their pussies,’“ Qiao read aloud from a newspaper clipping taped above the book.
“Well, what else can you say?” Chen picked a couple of different books at random and put them into the bamboo basket.
“Look at this red silk string, so cute,” Qiao said, noticing the other chosen objects in the basket. “You can hang it in your car.”
“Are Shanghai people so nostalgic for the old days?”
“Are you a professor or a PhD?” Qiao’s wrinkles seemed to be expanding in surprise.
“Ah-” That was an allusion to a popular saying: As poor as a professor, as silly as a PhD. “I wish I could be either one.”
“Traffic is so terrible. Numerous accidents. Taxi drivers are superstitious. To them, the evil spirits must have been let loose on the roads.”
“So people believe in Mao’s posthumous power as a protector?”
“Oh, you must be cracking another international joke!” Qiao shook his head violently in mock disbelief. “Little evil spirits are afraid only of big evil spirits. Who do you think is the number one evil spirit?”
“Mao?”
“Now, you are not that dumb. I was just joking, of course. The books you have picked are not bad at all.”
“I have another stupid question,” Chen said. “These books sell well. Then why at such a discount?”
“Because they sell so well, pirated copies come in incredibly large quantities.”
“I see,” Chen said. Some private-run bookstores had no scruples about ordering through dubious distribution channels, with tons of pirated copies coming in, ending up in the special-price section. “So these books are sold illegally here.”
“What do you mean?” Qiao demanded sharply. “All the private bookstores are the same. How else can they make money in today’s market?”
“I’m not concerned with other bookstores, Qiao,” Chen said, producing his business card. “I think we need to talk.”
“Now I recognize you,” Qiao said, staring hard at the card. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Chief Inspector Chen. You didn’t come to my store to buy discount books, did you?”
“You are not that dumb.”
“There are many booksellers like me. You don’t have to be so hard on me, Chen,” Qiao said in a pleading voice. “I’m down and out, like a dog already drowning in dirty water. Do you have the heart to beat it to death?”
“You have not lost your poetic metaphors, Qiao. Let’s open the door to the mountains. Your books are not my business-pirated or not-but I need to ask you some questions about Xing.”
“About Xing? You mean that bastard in the headlines?”
“Yes. You met him last year, right?”