Death of a Red Heroine

policeman’s.
    Suddenly he felt hungry. He had had only a cup of black coffee at the Riverside Café. So he headed out to the shabby restaurant across the street. Choosing a rickety wooden table on the sidewalk, he once more ordered a portion of fried buns plus a bowl of beef soup. The soup came first with chopped green onion floating on the surface, but like the last time, he had to wait for the buns. The place had only one big flat wok for frying them.
    There’s no breakthrough every day for a cop, he thought, and lit a cigarette, inhaling the fragrance of Peony mixed with the fresh air. Looking across the street, he became fascinated by the sight of an old woman standing close to the entrance of the lane. Almost statuesque on her bound feet, she was hawking ices from an ancient wheelbarrow, her shrunken face as weatherbeaten as the Great Wall in a postcard. Sweating, she was swathed in black homespun, like an opaque piece of smoke-darkened glass for watching a summer sun eclipse. She wore a red armband with Best Socialist Mobile Service Woman in Chairman Mao’s calligraphy. Perhaps she was not in her right mind, or she would not have worn that antique armband. Fifty or sixty years earlier, however, she could have been one of those pretty girls, standing there, smiling, her bare shoulders shining against the bare wall, soliciting customers under the alluring gas lights, launching a thousand ships into the silent night.
    And in time, Guan might have become as old, shrivelled, ravenlike as the peddler, out of touch with the time and tide, unstrung, unnoticed.
    Then Chen noticed that there were, indeed, several young people hanging around the dorm building. They seemed to be doing nothing in particular—crossing their arms, whistling off key, looking at the passersby along the road. As his glance fell on the wood-and-glass kiosk attached to the dorm, he realized that they must be waiting for phone calls. Looking into the cubicle, Chen could see the white-haired old man picking up a phone, handing it to a middle-aged woman outside, and putting coins into a small box. Before the woman finished speaking, the old man was picking up another phone, but this time he wrote something down on a slip of paper. He moved out of his cubicle toward the staircase, shouting upwards, a loudspeaker in one hand and the slip of paper in the other. Possibly he’d called the name of some resident upstairs. That must have been an incoming call. Due to the severe shortage of private phones in Shanghai, such public telephone service remained the norm. Most people had to make phone calls in this way.
    Guan, too.
    Chen stood up without waiting for the arrival of the fried buns and strode across the street to the dorm.
    The old man was in his late sixties, well-preserved, well-dressed, speaking with an air of serene responsibility. Against a different office background, he might have looked like a high-ranking cadre. Lying on the table amid the phones was a copy of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms with a bamboo bookmark. He looked up at Chen.
    Chief Inspector Chen produced his I.D.
    “Yes, you’re doing the investigation here,” the old man said. “My name is Bao Guozhang. Folks here just call me Uncle Bao.”
    “Uncle Bao, I would like to ask you a few question about Comrade Guan Hongying,” Chen remained standing outside the cubicle, which could hardly seat two people. “Your help will be greatly appreciated.”
    “Comrade Guan was a fine member of the Party. It’s my responsibility to help your work as a member of the Residents’ Committee,” Uncle Bao said seriously. “I’ll do my best.”
    The Residents’ Committee was, in one sense, an extension of the local district police office, working partially, though not officially, under its supervision. The organization was responsible for everything happening outside people’s work units—arranging weekly political studies, checking the number of the people living there, running daycare centers, distributing ration coupons, allocating birth quotas, arbitrating disputes among neighbors or family members, and most important, keeping a close watch over the neighborhood. The committee was authorized to report on every individual, and the report was included as confidential in the police dossier. Thus the institution of the Residents’ Committee enabled the local police to remain in the background while maintaining effective surveillance. In some instances, the Residents’