Yu and Peiqin merely nodded, lest they interrupt the old man’s narrative flow. Old Hunter took a leisurely sip from his half-empty cup, without immediately continuing.
“Why do you say that?” Peiqin asked, refilling the cup.
“I’ve been listening to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms over the last several months. Now that all of the Suzhou opera houses have been torn down, the artists can only perform in restaurants, like in the old days, before there were performance halls. There is a restaurant I go to every Tuesday morning where I can watch Suzhou opera performed over a bowl of plain noodles.”
Peiqin and Yu looked at each other again. Old Hunter was back to his old self, tantalizing them before coming to a crucial point.
“In Romance of the Three Kingdoms, General Liu Bei is with Prime Minister Cao Cao in the capital. Cao Cao, wary of Liu as a potential rival, is thinking of getting rid of him. So Liu makes a public show of being interested in growing vegetables in his garden like an ordinary man, and a timid one at that. At a sudden clap of thunder, he drops his wine cup to the ground in the presence of Cao Cao. As a result, Cao Cao no longer takes Liu seriously, who then manages to flee from the capital.”
“You think Chen is trying to do the same thing,” Peiqin chipped in. “He’s making a public show of weakness by pretending that he cares about nothing but the project with his father’s grave in Suzhou. But do you think it’ll work and his enemies will let him go?”
Neither the father nor the son had an answer to that.
Peiqin walked back over to the stove to prepare the green onion cake while Old Hunter started to ask questions of Yu.
“So, are there any new special cases passed on to your squad?”
“Theoretically, only special cases are referred to our squad, but as far as I can see, none of them are special enough to have Chen removed.”
“Well, tell me about those cases assigned to Chen just before he was removed from the bureau.”
Apparently, Old Hunter was thinking along the same lines as the rest of them, Yu observed, helping himself to a spoonful of refreshingly cold tofu.
“By the way,” Old Hunter went on before Yu said anything, “Chen mentioned that he has electronic copies of the case files for Shang’s son and the dead pigs on the river.”
That meant Chen himself would look into those two cases and Yu needed to focus on the remaining ones. He then briefed Old Hunter on the other cases, particularly on a missing person case concerning an official named Liang, which had been assigned to the squad just the day before Chen was removed. Yu wasn’t sure Chen knew it was a missing person case-he didn’t know if Chen had even opened the file.
“The yellow rice wine tastes quite mellow,” Old Hunter said slowly, at the end of Yu’s briefing. Peiqin came back, her hands still partially covered in flour. “But it’ll be better when warmed just a little. As the old saying goes, after three cups of wine-and the three-cup chicken, too-it’s the time to come to the point.”
“Sorry, I forgot,” Peiqin said, hurrying to put another bottle in a pot of warm water.
“I just got a phone call from Chen. Guess what he wanted me to do this time? He wanted me to check out an ernai here in Shanghai. Ironically, it’s the sort of job we’re quite familiar with at the agency.”
“Why did he want you to do that?”
“I have no clue. I know only that it was a request from a young woman he met in Suzhou. He emphasized that I don’t have to go out of my way. Perhaps it’s unrelated to his current troubles, but I doubt that.”
“If that’s the case, I’m even more worried. It sounds like a shot in the dark, which means he might be desperate,” Yu said. “Did he tell you anything specific about the ernai?”
“She’s a young woman named Jin, who runs a café-a so-called ernai café-in the Gubei area. I wonder if Jin is somehow connected to the nightclub. I don’t think Chen would have asked me to do a job for someone he’d just met at random in Suzhou.”
“Even if it’s for someone pretty…?” Peiqin wondered aloud. “No, not at this particular moment, not even for that impossible romantic.”
“No more interruptions, Peiqin,” Old Hunter said, after clearing his throat. “Now, a tale has to be told from the beginning. It’s about ernai. The new term originated at the time of China’s reform, but it evolved out of the old concubine tradition. Confucius says, ‘If the name is not properly defined, the story won’t come out right.’
“For more than two thousand years, concubines were legal and their social status acknowledged. In the Book of Songs, the first poem is said to be about the queen urging her lord to take a concubine. After 1949, however, monogamy became the new standard under Mao, despite there being no secret about how many women Mao had for himself in the Forbidden City. They served him under different job titles-personal secretary, nurse, dancing partner, special train attendant, and whatnot-but everyone knew what they actually did.
“The title ernai means something like ‘secondary concubine,’ but not exactly. For instance, in The Morning of Shanghai, a ‘second concubine’ simply signifies the number two, the second one taken into the household. Wives and concubines can live in the same house, with their status mutually recognized. But that’s not the case for ernai.
“When China’s economic reform began to unfold, Taiwanese businessmen came swarming over to the mainland. Their factories and offices mushroomed up everywhere, particularly in Shanghai. They had to stay here most of the time, with their wives and families far away across the strait, so some of them found girls in the city. Since these relationships lasted for weeks, months, or even longer, a sort of long-term businesslike relationship evolved. The chosen girls are not concubines-they don’t have a concubine’s social or legal status. Nor are they really mistresses in a romantic sense, since money is always involved. Most of them are kept in luxurious apartments provided by the men, along with additional allowances. It’s convenient for the man, who can end the relationship without any legal entanglements. As for the woman, it’s an easier life that carries with it the hope that one day her status might be ‘normalized,’ should the man divorce his wife.
“The local government was well aware of these arrangements but, because of the need for foreign capital, chose to ignore them. In time, the local Big Bucks and Party officials joined in, and ernai became a commonly accepted term.
“Jin is running a café in Gubei, an area known for the large number of women like her. Gubei is one of the earliest high-end property developments in Shanghai. At the beginning of the housing reform, property was cheap, so Taiwanese men snapped up apartments for these women. The subdivision in question is even referred to as ‘Ernai Village.’
“Chen told me very little of the background to this case, so I did my homework, made some plans, bought a mini recorder-”
“A mini recorder? That’s an excellent idea,” Peiqin exclaimed, jumping up. “Hold on, Old Hunter. Excuse me just for one minute…”
She hurried off to the bedroom. Old Hunter and Yu looked at each other. It was unlike her to interrupt repeatedly like that.
But she was already running back to the table with a small tape recorder in her hand, saying, “You thought that actually hearing some of the café conversation could be helpful to Chen, right, Old Hunter?”
“Yes. He didn’t say why he wanted me there. I knew that, with almost no background knowledge on the case, I could sit there for hours without learning anything from the conversation. It would be different for Chen, or his client.”