Death of a Red Heroine

than a dozen, with all the rooms subdivided to accommodate more and more people. Only the black-painted front door remained the same, opening into a small courtyard littered with odds and ends, a sort of common junk yard, which led to a high-ceilinged hall flanked by the eastern and western wings. This once spacious hall had long since been converted to a public kitchen and storage area. The two rows of coal stoves with piles of coal briquettes indicated that seven families lived on the first floor.
    Yu’s room was on the southern end of the eastern wing on the first floor. Old Hunter had been assigned to that wing in the early fifties with the luxury of having one extra room as a guest room. Now in the nineties, the four rooms accommodated no fewer than four families: Old Hunter with his wife; his two daughters, one married, living with her husband and daughter; the other thirty-five, still single; and his son, Detective Yu living with Peiqin and Qinqin. As a result, each room functioned as bedroom, dining room, living room, and bathroom.
    Yu’s room had originally been the dining room, about eleven square meters in size. It had not been ideal since the northern wall had only a window no bigger than a paper lantern, but it was worse as an all-purpose room, and especially inconvenient for visitors, for the room next to it was Old Hunter’s, which had originally served as a living room, with the door opening into the hall. Thus a visitor had to walk through Old Hunter’s room first. That was why the Yus had seldom had a guest.
    Chen arrived at six thirty, carrying in one hand a small urn of Shaoxing sticky rice wine—Maiden Red. The perfect wine for crabs. Chen had his black leather briefcase, as usual, in his other hand.
    “Welcome, Chief Inspector,” Peiqin said, a perfect Shanghai hostess, wiping her wet hands on her apron. “As an old Chinese saying goes, ‘Your company lights up our shabby room.’”
    “We have to squeeze a bit,” Yu added. “Please take your seat at the table.”
    “Any crab banquet room is a great room,” Chen said. “I really appreciate your kindness.”
    The room was hardly large enough to hold four chairs around the table. So they were seated on three sides, and on the fourth side, their son Qinqin sat quietly on the bed.
    Qinqin had long legs, large eyes, and a plump face, which he hid behind a picture book on Chen’s arrival. But he was not shy when the crabs appeared on the table.
    “Where is your father, Old Hunter?” Chen asked, setting his chopsticks on the table. “I haven’t greeted him yet.”
    “Oh, he’s out patrolling the market.”
    “Still there?”
    “Yes, it’s a long story,” Yu said, shaking his head.
    Since his retirement, Old Hunter had served as a neighborhood patroller. In the early eighties, when private market peddlers were still considered illegal, or at least “capitalistic” in political terminology, the old man made himself responsible for safeguarding the holiness of the state-run market. Soon, however, the private market became legal, and was even declared a necessary supplement to the socialist market. The government no longer interfered with private businessmen as long as they were willing to pay their taxes, but the retired old cop still went there, patrolling without any specific purpose, just to enjoy a sense of being useful to the socialist system.
    “Let’s talk over our meal,” Peiqin cut in. “The crabs cannot wait.”
    It was an excellent meal, a crab banquet. On the cloth-covered table the crabs appeared rounded, red and white, in small bamboo steamers. The small brass hammer shone among the blue and white saucers. The rice wine was nicely warmed, displaying an amber color under the light. On the windowsill, a bouquet of chrysanthemums stood in a glass vase, perhaps two or three days old, thinner, but still exquisite.
    “I should have brought my Canon to photograph the table, the crabs, and the chrysanthemums,” Chen said, rubbing his hands. “It could be an illustration torn from The Dream of the Red Chamber .”
    “You’re talking about Chapter Twenty-eight, aren’t you? Baoyu and his ‘sisters’ composing poems over a crab banquet,” Peiqin said, squeezing out the leg meat for Qinqin. “Alas, this is not a room in the Grand View Garden.”
    Yu was pleased that they had just visited the garden. So he knew the reference. “But our Chief Inspector Chen is a poet in his own right. He will read us his