A Loyal Character Dancer

cooking Gongbao chicken, too.”
     
    “I would like to taste that.”
     
    He changed the topic. “So what do you think of Shanghai? It’s your first time, right?”
     
    “Yes, I’ve heard so much about this city. It’s like a dream come true. The streets, the buildings, the people, and even the traffic, all seem strangely familiar. Look,” she exclaimed as the car passed Xizhuang Road. “The Big World. I had a postcard of it.”
     
    “Yes, it’s a well-known entertainment center. You can spend a day there, watching different local operas, not to mention karaoke, dance, acrobatics, and electronic games. And there’s a variety of Chinese food available in Yunnan Gourmet Street beside it. The street is lined with snack bars and restaurants.”
     
    “Oh, I love Chinese food.”
     
    The taxi turned into the Bund. In the play of the neon lights, the color of her eyes seemed not to be exactly blue. He saw a greenish tinge. Azure, he thought. It was not just the color. He was reminded of an ancient line: The change from the azure sea into the blue mulberry field, a reference to the vicissitudes of the world, which came to have a melancholy connotation—about the experience of the irrecoverable.
     
    To their left, concrete, granite, and marble buildings stretched along the Bund. Then the legendary Hong Kong-Shanghai Bank came into view, still guarded by the bronze lions which had witnessed numerous changes in its ownership. Next to it, the big clock on the top of the neoclassical Custom House chimed the hour.
     
    “The building with the marble facade and pyramid-shaped tower at the corner of Nanjing Road is the Peace Hotel, originally the Cathay Hotel, whose owner made millions from the opium trade. After 1949, the city government changed its name. Despite its age, it maintains its rank as one of the finest hotels in Shanghai...”
     
    The taxi pulled up in front of the hotel before he finished his speech. That might be as well. He had a feeling that she had been listening to him with tolerant amusement. A uniformed porter strode over, holding the door for the American. The red-capped-and-red-clad employee must have taken Chen for her interpreter and showered all his attention upon her. Chen observed this with wry humor as he helped to put the luggage on a hotel cart.
     
    In the lobby, he heard fragments of jazz. A band composed of old men was playing in a bar at the end of the hall, pumping out old standards for a nostalgic audience. The band was so popular that it was mentioned in the newspapers as one of the Bund’s attractions.
     
    She asked about the dining room. The porter pointed to a glass door farther down the corridor, saying the dining room would remain open until three in the morning, and that there were bars nearby that stayed in business even later.
     
    “We could have a meal now,” he said.
     
    “No, thanks. I ate on the plane. I’ll probably stay awake until two or three o’clock tonight. Jet lag.”
     
    They took the elevator to the seventh floor. Her room was 708. As she slid in the plastic card, light flooded over a large room furnished with dark wood furniture inlaid with ivory. The room was decorated in Art Deco style; posters of actors and actresses of the twenties contributed to the period feeling. The only modern items were a color TV, a small refrigerator beside the dresser, and a coffee maker on the corner table.
     
    “It’s nine o’clock,” Chen said, glancing at his watch. “After the long journey, you must be tired, Inspector Rohn.”
     
    “No, I’m not, but I would like to wash up a little.”
     
    “I’ll smoke a cigarette in the lobby and return in twenty minutes.”
     
    “No, you don’t have to leave. Just sit down for a minute,” she said, gesturing toward the couch. As she headed to the bathroom with a bag, she handed a magazine to him. “I read it on the plane.”
     
    It was a copy of Entertainment Weekly with several American movie stars on the cover, but he did not open it. First, he checked the room for bugs. Then he moved to the window. Once he had wandered along the Bund with his schoolmates, wondering, looking up at the Peace Hotel. To look down from its windows had been beyond his wildest dreams.
     
    But the view of Bund Park pulled him back to the present. He had not done anything about the homicide case yet. Farther to the north, buses and trolley buses rumbled across the bridge at frequent intervals. Nearby bars and restaurants