Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

coffee, he realized that he had spent practically half a day doing nothing in the villa. He was like one of those high-ranking cadres supposedly recuperating there in lassitude, still wearing pajamas around eleven o’clock.
    He felt stupidly useless sitting there.
    So he got up to get ready for the rescheduled lunch with Qiao, which he could no longer put off.
    The restaurant was in the main building of the center, where the waitresses all wore colorful silk mandarin dresses with high slits, like Qing palace ladies. In the midst of their bowing and greeting, he walked up a flight of steps covered by a red carpet held in place by shining brass clips.
    It turned out to be an expensive banquet of “all lake delicacies,” just as Qiao had promised, in an elegant private room. Several high-level executives of the center joined in, greeting and toasting the distinguished guest.
    “All the lake delicacies are carefully selected. They are not the so-called ‘lake special’ that you might find in the market,” Qiao said reassuringly.
    It was quite possible that the meals here were specially prepared for Party officials. Chen had heard about the unique treatment reserved for high cadres—not just for those staying by the lake here.
    But what about the ordinary people who lived by the lake?
    A huge platter of hilsa herring covered in sliced ginger and scallion was served. The fish was steamed with Jinhua ham and chicken broth, along with some white herb Chen didn’t recognize.
    “It’s not from the lake here,” an executive named Ouyang said, the oldest of the group, who was probably going to retire soon. “We simply call it shi fish. The chef has to clean and peel off its scales first, but after putting the fish in the bamboo steamer, he will gingerly place the large scales back on the body to prevent the loss of juice and to keep the texture tender.”
    Shi fish was extremely expensive, costing at least five or six hundred yuan a pound at the market. The way it was prepared was also exceedingly time-consuming.
    “Yesterday I walked out along a small road in the opposite direction of the park,” Chen said, for once not talking like a gourmand at a banquet. “I happened to pass by a chemical company. People were saying that somebody was murdered there. Have you heard anything, Director Qiao?”
    “Yes, I heard about it too. Liu Deming, the general manager of the chemical company, was murdered in his home office,” Qiao said. “It is a very successful company, and he was killed right on the eve of a huge IPO too. What a pity! He could have become a billionaire.”
    “A billionaire, but so what?” Ouyang cut in, shaking his silver-haired head like a dream lost in the light streaming through the windows. “As in the old proverb, rich or poor, people inevitably end up alike in a mound of yellow earth. There’s no escaping kalpa .”
    “Or you may say karma, Ouyang,” Chen said. “I’ve heard people are talking about the ecological pollution caused by those lakeside factories.”
    “No, not karma. I’m not a man of letters, Mr. Chen. I’m too dumb to understand those high-sounding theories about environment. Before the economic reform, however, people here had hardly enough to feed themselves. Many died of starvation during the so-called three years of natural disasters. As Comrade Deng Xiaoping put it well, development comes before everything else. Can you imagine the present-day prosperity of Wuxi without these factories?”
    But at what a cost? Chen thought, but didn’t say out loud.
    “The company donates a large annual sum to our center,” Qiao said pensively. “I don’t know if the new boss will continue to do that.”
    Indeed, perspective determined everything, Chen thought. It was little wonder that local officials defended the pattern of the economic development.
    Chen had lost his appetite, but he managed to get through the meal, absentmindedly eating, drinking, and saying things as if playing and replaying a CD from a hidden groove of his mind. Afterward, he took leave of his host with some sort of excuse and walked out.
    The center was like a miniature park. The pavilions built in the traditional architectural style, alongside Western-style buildings, made for a pleasant mixture of Oriental and Occidental landscape. He followed a cobble-covered path without purpose or direction, walking past a man-made waterfall against grottos of exquisite rocks before he reached the foot of the