“No, I was thinking of a poem by Du Mu from the Tang dynasty. ‘At the bottom of the river still lies / the broken anchor, which I wash and wipe / for traces of the bygone dynasties. / If the eastern wind had not turned, miraculously, / in favor of General Zhou Yu / the two beauties would have been locked up / in the Bronze Sparrow Tower, deep in the spring.’”
“I think I read that poem in school,” she said with a slight frown, “but what does it mean?”
“There’s a real historical event behind the poem. In the Three Kingdoms period at the beginning of the third century, a war broke out between the Wu State and the Wei State. Cao Cao, the prime minister of the Wei State, was allegedly motivated by his wanton lust after two celebrated beauties in the Wu State, so he led a powerful fleet down the river. Cao Cao even composed a fu poem about it, bragging about the construction of the Bronze Sparrow Tower to house the two beauties there. Now, one of the two in question happened to be young General Zhou’s wife, so the enraged general was determined to fight him against incredible odds. Luckily, in a crucial battle near the Scarlet Cliff, the wind changed in Zhou’s favor, and with it he burned out Cao Cao’s fleet.”
“But why these lines this morning?”
“It’s a poem about the contingency of history. I was reading about the LaiKai case just now. You know what it’s about, don’t you? The editorial acclaims it as another triumph in the government’s unwavering battle against corruption, no matter how high-ranking the officials involved. Hence all the credit goes to the great, glorious Party,” he said, pointing at the newspaper article. “But what about the contingencies…”
“Like the eastern wind, right? Lai was such a powerful figure only yesterday, with a mighty fleet of the red song-singing leftists following him all the way. You’re truly a man of learning, sir,” she said with admiration. “So, you’re a university professor?”
“I would love to teach that poem to a class,” he said, “if there were enough students interested.”
He wondered whether that poem was included in Qian’s CD, as a new wave of sadness washed over him.
He took the CD out. An insect started chirping somewhere in the garden. It was as if he were taking it from her slender hand in Cai’s Noodles only this morning.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
DURING THE WRITING OF the book, a lot of people have helped, in one way or another, and I want to mention here Quynh-Thu Le, Harlan A. Pinto, and Anna Fu in a list too long for me to go through. I am so grateful to all of them for their help, which makes the writing possible. I also want to thank my editing team, Keith Kahla, Margit Longbrake, and Hannah Braaten, for their extraordinary work.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
QIU XIAOLONG was born in Shanghai. A poet and a translator, he is the author of several previous novels featuring Inspector Chen, as well as Years of Red Dust. He lives with his family in St. Louis, Missouri. You can sign up for email updates here.
