A Loyal Character Dancer

followed—even in a special case?”
     
    “That’s what I learned. Besides, Wen only initiated her application in mid-February, not in January.”
     
    “But Feng told us she applied in January—mid-January.”
     
    “That’s my information. Even so, it has taken a long time, I have to admit. There may have been another factor. Wen does not have any guanxi in Fujian. This word may be translated as ‘connections,’ only guanxi means far more than that. It’s not merely about the people you know, but about the people who can help you with what you want.”
     
    “The grease that keep the wheels turning, so to speak.”
     
    “If you like. Perhaps, like anywhere else in the world, the wheels of bureaucracy move slowly, unless there is some lubrication for the bureaucrats. That’s where guanxi comes in. Wen has remained an outsider all these years, so she had no guanxi whatsoever.”
     
    She was astonished by Chen’s frankness. He made no attempt to gloss over the way the system worked. This did not seem to be characteristic of an “emerging Party cadre.”
     
    “Oh, there is something else. According to one of Wen’s neighbors, there was a stranger looking for Wen on the afternoon of April sixth.”
     
    “Who do you think that might have been?”
     
    “His identity is still to be determined, but he was not local. Now, any news from your side, Inspector Rohn?”
     
    “Feng did make a phone call to Wen on April fifth. We’re having it translated and analyzed. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear more.”
     
    “That may contain the answer to Wen’s disappearance,” Chen said, taking a look at his watch. “Tell me, what’s your plan for the morning.”
     
    “I have no plan.”
     
    “Have you had your breakfast?”
     
    “No, not yet.”
     
    “Excellent. My plan is to have a good breakfast,” Chen said. “After my long discussion with Detective Yu this morning. I hurried over without having had a bite.”
     
    “We can have something downstairs,” she proposed.
     
    “Forget the hotel dining room. Let me take you to another place—genuine Chinese flavor, typical Shanghai atmosphere. Only a few minutes’ walk away.”
     
    She looked for reasons for not going out with him, but came up with none. And it would be easier for her to ask to have a part in his investigation over a congenial breakfast. “You keep amazing me, Chief Inspector Chen, a cop, a poet, a translator, and now a gourmet,” she said. “I’ll change.”
     
    It took her a few minutes to shower, to don a white summer dress, and to comb her hair into obedience.
     
    Before they left the room, Chen held out a cellular phone to her. “This is for your convenience.”
     
    “A Motorola!”
     
    “You know what it is called here?” Chen said. “Big Brother. Big Sister if the owner is a woman. The symbols of upstarts in contemporary China.”
     
    “Interesting terms.”
     
    “In Kung Fu literature, this is what the head of a gang would sometimes be called. Rich people are called Mr. Big Bucks nowadays, and Big Brother and Sister carry the same connotation. I have a cell phone myself. It will make it easier for us to contact each other.”
     
    “So we’re a Big Sister and a Big Brother, going out for a walk in Shanghai,” she said with a smile.
     
    Strolling along Nanjing Road, she saw the traffic was completely snarled. People and bikes kept cutting in and out of the smallest spaces imaginable between cars. The drivers had to keep braking all the time.
     
    “Nanjing Road is like an extended shopping center. The city government has imposed restrictions on traffic here.” Chen spoke like a tourist guide again. “It may become a pedestrian mall in the near future.”
     
    It took them no more than five minutes to reach the intersection of Nanjing Road and Sichuan Road. She saw a white Western-style restaurant on the corner. A number of young, people were sipping coffee behind the tall, amber-colored windows.
     
    “Deda Cafe,” Chen said. “The coffee here is excellent, but we are going to a street market behind it.”
     
    She looked up to see a sign at the street entrance, the central market. It marked a narrow street. Shabby, too. In addition to a variety of tiny stores with makeshift counters or tables displaying goods on the sidewalk, there was a cluster of snackbars and booths tucked into the corner.
     
    “Formerly, it was a marketplace for cheap and secondhand goods, like a flea market in