Death of a Red Heroine

moon sinking, the dawn rising on a breeze.
Year after year, I will be far,
Far away from you.
All the beautiful scenes are unfolding,
But to no avail:
Oh, to whom can I speak
Of this ever enchanting landscape?
    A reversal of positions. In Liu’s poem, Liu was the one leaving his love behind, but now Wang was leaving him.
    As a poet, Liu was a respected name in classical Chinese literature. As a man, Liu had been down and out, drinking, dreaming, and dissipating his best years in brothels. It was even said that his romantic poems were his undoing, for he was despised by his contemporaries, who denounced him with outrage born of orthodox Confucian dignity. Liu died in dire poverty, attended only by a poor prostitute who took a fancy to his poetry, though such a deathbed companion might also have been fabricated. A sugar cube of consolation in a cup full of bitterness.
    In future years, would Wang come back, a happy, prosperous woman? What would have befallen him by that time? No longer a chief inspector. As down and out as Liu. In an increasingly materialistic society, who would take notice of a bookworm capable of nothing except penning a few sentimental lines?
    He shuddered when the big clock atop the Custom Mansions started chiming a new melody. He did not know it, but he liked it.
    It had played a different tune in his high-school days, a melody dedicated to Chairman Mao—”The East Is Red.”
    Times changed.
    Thousands of years earlier, Confucius said, Time flows away like the water in the river.
    He took a deep breath of the summer night air, as if struggling out of the surging current. Then he left the Bund and walked toward the Shanghai Central Post Office.
    Located at the corner of Sichuan Road and Chapu Road, the post office was open twenty-four hours a day. A doorman sat dutifully at the entrance—even at that late hour. Chen nodded at him. In the spacious hall were several oak desks where people could write, but only a couple of people were sitting there, waiting before a row of booths for long distance calls.
    He chose to sit at one of these long desks, and he started writing on a piece of paper with the bureau letterhead. That was what he needed. He did not want it to appear personal. This was serious business, he thought. In the interests of the Party.
    As soon as he started writing, to his surprise, the words seemed to flow from his pen. He stopped only once, to look up at a poster on the wall. The poster reminded him of one he had seen years earlier—a black bird hovering above the horizon, carrying an orange sun on its back. There were two short lines under the picture. “What will come / Will come.”
    Time is a bird, / It perches, and it flies.
    When he had finished, he took a registered-mail envelope, and asked a yawning clerk behind the counter, “How much is a registered letter to Beijing?”
    “Eight Yuan.”
    “Fine,” Chen said. It was worth it. The letter in his hand might be his last card. He was no gambler, but he had to play it. Although, after all these years, its value might only be in his imagination. More likely, a straw, grasped at by a drowning man, he thought.
    The clock was striking two as he left the post office. He nodded again to the doorman still sitting motionless at the gate. The man did not even look up.
    Around the corner, a peddler with a huge pot of tea-leaf-eggs steaming over a coal stove greeted Chen loudly. The smell did not appeal to him; he continued to walk.
    At the intersection of Tianton Road and Sichuan Road, he noticed a glass-and-chrome tower rising silhouetted against a dark backdrop of alleys and siheyuan houses. Floodlights illuminated the construction site as the procession of trucks, heavy equipment, and handcarts carried in material for the building. Like so many other roads, Tianton had been blocked by Shanghai’s effort to regain its status as the nation’s commercial and industrial center. He tried to take a shortcut by turning into Ninhai Market. The market was deserted, except for a long line of baskets—plastic, bamboo, rattan—of different shapes and sizes. The line led up to a concrete counter under a wooden sign on which was chalked the words YELLOW CROAKER. The most delicious fish in Shanghai’s housewives’ eyes. The baskets stood for the virtuous wives who would come in an hour or two to pick them up and take their places in line, rubbing their sleepy eyes.
    There was only one night-shift worker standing at the end of the