Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

support.
    “Now tell me about your argument with Liu. It was about a week before his death, I heard.”
    “You’ve heard a lot, Chen. We argued several times. For Liu, profit was more important than everything else. That’s what had made him—and not just as a general manager but as a much-propagandized representative of China’s economic reform. It probably would have to be a top priority to keep up production at whatever cost for anyone in his position. But I had to do my job as an environmental engineer.”
    “You did the right thing.”
    “But that day, about a week ago, he snapped and started shouting at me in his office. People must have heard our argument.” She added softly, after a pause, “I don’t want to speak ill of him now that he’s dead.”
    A short silence ensued. Another fish jumped out and fell back in, splashing. The boat was probably in the middle of the lake.
    “That’s the Wuxi Number One Chemical Company,” she said abruptly, pointing to their left. “Over there, I can show you something in the water.”
    “Move over there,” Chen called, rising to give the order to the sampan man.
    “There?” The sampan man looked puzzled. It was far from any scenic sights, and no tourist would be interested going there. But the sampan went there as instructed.
    “Let’s stop here for a while,” Shanshan said to the sampan man. Turning to Chen, she said, “Take a close look at the water here.”
    Already Chen could see a difference in the color of the water close to the chemical company. But it was more than that. An immense expanse of the water was covered in something like a heavy blackish-green shroud. It was substantial, almost solid, and stretched far into the distance. He hadn’t seen anything like that in the Huangpu River in Shanghai or, for that matter, in any other river.
    “Do you see something over there that looks like a dam, Chen?”
    “Yes, what’s that for?”
    “This horrible green mess might be permissible here since no visitors come around, but it wouldn’t be allowable near the park, and definitely not near the center. So the dam is designed to keep tourists like you from seeing this.”
    She spoke less reservedly today than she had before, about the problems and about the people responsible for them. After the detention she had suffered, Chen reflected, that was understandable.
    He knew that her history with the company might make her not such a reliable source for the investigation, though he chose not to believe that.
    “What you see here is not the worst of it,” she went on. “A couple of miles up, it is even worse.”
    “I just read an article in the newspaper which claimed that green algae might be a longstanding problem for the lake.”
    “How can you believe what’s written in those Party newspapers? They would never trace back the ecological disaster to industrial pollution. In the past, you might see a small green patch here or there in the lake, and occasionally the water would be too rich with nutrients because of the weather, but it didn’t affect the quality of the water for the whole lake. Nothing like this.”
    She was speaking fervently, as if to justify her work. There was no need for it, certainly not for him. He knew she was doing the right thing. So he tried to say something to lighten the moment.
    “I’m no expert,” he said, “but the water reminds me of a Tang dynasty poem about the south: the spring water ripples bluer than the skies, reclining / against a painted barge, / I fall asleep, listening to the rain . The lake water turns green, more or less naturally, with the arrival of spring. In a way, you might call that poetic.”
    “You really think so?”
    Then she did something totally unexpected. She shifted to the side of the boat and put her feet into the water.
    He didn’t know why she suddenly chose to dangle her feet here, her white ankles flashing above the darksome, smelly water. He leaned over, her long black hair straying across his cheek. Watching, he wondered whether he should do the same, and he bent over to undo his shoelaces. But she was already pulling her feet out of the water. They were covered with a layer of green grime, as if painted: wet, slimy, and sticky.
    “Would you call that poetic?”
    “You didn’t have to do that, Shanshan.”
    He grabbed one of her feet and tried to find a handkerchief. He ended up wiping the algae off with a small packet of paper napkins, which turned out not to be an