A Loyal Character Dancer

futile—interviewing people who had no relevant information, just as Chief Inspector Chen was doing in Shanghai.
     
    On the interview list for that particular day, there was an appointment with the commune factory manager Pan in the late afternoon, but Yu got a call from Pan around nine in the morning.
     
    “I have a business meeting this afternoon. Can we move our appointment up?”
     
    “When would you like it?”
     
    “What about between eleven thirty and twelve?” Pan said. “I’ll come to your hotel as soon as I have finished things here.”
     
    “That will be fine.”
     
    Yu contemplated informing Sergeant Zhao of the change, but he thought better of it. For the past few days, Zhao had been of little help. Sometimes Yu even had a feeling that interviewees chose not to talk because of Zhao. So he phoned Zhao, saying that Pan could not come in the afternoon, and that he himself would stay in the hotel for the day, writing a letter home, doing some laundry, and drafting a report to the bureau. Zhao readily agreed. Yu had heard a rumor that Zhao had a profitable business sideline; perhaps he was glad of some time free of police-work to devote to it.
     
    Yu considered it too wasteful to have his laundry done by the hotel when he could save two Yuan a day by doing it himself. Kneading the dirty clothes on a wooden washboard in a concrete sink, he thought of his years like the foaming water dripping away through his fingers.
     
    In his childhood, he had nurtured dreams about a career in the police force, listening to his father’s stories about solving cases. A few years after he himself became a cop, however, he had few illusions left about his career.
     
    His father, Old Hunter, though an experienced officer and loyal Party member for so many years, had ended up a sergeant at retirement, with too meager a pension to indulge in a pot of Dragon Well Tea. Detective Yu had to be realistic. With his lack of education and social connections, he was in no position to dream of a great career in the force. Just one of the insignificant cops at the bottom, making the minimum wage, having little say in the bureau, forever at the end of the waiting list of the housing committee—
     
    And that was another reason he had not been keen on this assignment. There would be a housing committee meeting late this month in the bureau. Yu was on the waiting list. If he stayed in Shanghai, he might be able to push the committee members a little, perhaps in imitation of a recent movie, by sleeping on his bureau desk as a gesture of protest. He believed he had every reason to complain. He’d had to stay under his father’s roof for over ten years after his marriage. It was a crying shame for a man approaching forty not to have a home of his own. Even Peiqin occasionally complained about it.
     
    The housing shortage had a long history in Shanghai, which he understood. It became a burning issue for people’s work units— factories, companies, schools, or governmental bureaus—which got an annual housing quota from the city authorities and made assignments based on an employee’s years in service as well as other factors. It was especially difficult at the Shanghai Police Bureau, where so many cops had worked all their lives.
     
    Nevertheless, Detective Yu took his job seriously, believing he could make a difference in other people’s lives. He had developed a theory about being a good cop in China now. It depended on one’s ability to tell what could and what could not be done effectively. It was because there were many cases not worthy of hard work as the conclusion was predetermined by the Party authorities. For instance, the outcome of those anti-government-corruption cases, in spite of all the propaganda fanfare, would be only to swat a mosquito but not to slap a tiger. They were symbolic, only for show. So, too, this investigation, though not part of a political campaign, seemed to be merely a matter of form. And that was perhaps true of the Bund Park case, too. The only effective action would be to uproot the triads, but the authorities were not ready to do so.
     
    But Wen’s case had started to interest him. He had never imagined that an ex-educated youth could have led such a wretched life. And what had happened to Wen, he shuddered to think, could have happened to Peiqin. As an ex-educated youth himself, he felt obliged to do something for the poor woman, though he did not know what or how.
     
    Shortly