Don’t Cry, Tai Lake

interpretation that applied to the investigation.
    “You’re no schoolteacher, are you?” Uncle Wang said, breaking into his thoughts.
    “Sorry, I’ve just had a phone call from Shanghai.”
    The old man, perhaps having overheard some of the phone call, studied him closely.
    “Shanshan can be stubborn, but she’s a nice girl,” Uncle Wang went on wistfully as he seated himself on a bench opposite Chen. He picked up a cup from another table. “Let me tell you something about myself.”
    “Go ahead,” Chen said, wondering what the old man wanted to tell him. He poured himself a cup of tea.
    A few doors away, a middle-aged woman with a bamboo basket of wet, green shepherd’s purse blossom looked at the two in curiosity, and then smiled pleasantly.
    “I used to be a school teacher in the Anhui Province. During summer vacation several years ago, I came to Wuxi and fell in love with the city. To be honest, it was mostly because of the lake fish and shrimp. The three whites, you know. So after I retired, I moved here and started this eatery. I didn’t do it for business reasons exactly. I have to cook for myself, and I like cooking anyway. A single retiree with grown children in Xinjiang with their own lives, I simply wanted to enjoy the remaining years of my life with a cup of Southern rice wine and a platter of steamed lake fish. But it was a decision no one seemed to understand.”
    “But I do, Uncle Wang. In ancient times, a poet-official missed a particular fish that was available only in his hometown, so he resigned his position to return home. I think his name was Jiying. No, your decision was no mistake.”
    “So you know the story. That’s great. ‘ With the west wind rising, / Jiying’s still not back .’ The world is meaningful only in what has meaning to you. Anyway, I didn’t think it was a mistake, at least not at the time. Then the lake became less clear, and the fish and shrimp less fresh, and, at the same time, the city an increasingly commercial tourist destination. Alas, it’s too late for me to go back.”
    Chen didn’t comment, wondering what the old man was driving at.
    “That’s why I’m so sympathetic to Shanshan’s efforts to protect the environment,” Uncle Wang resumed, nodding. “I’m just an old man; nothing really matters for me now. But it’s an issue that affects so many people—all people, you might say. She really believes in what she does, no matter what others might say. It takes an extraordinary man to appreciate someone like her in today’s climate.”
    Chen was more than impressed, and not just because of Uncle Wang’s story. One way or another, people pick up a given discourse, that which makes the world meaningful or sensible to them. Then they live in accordance to it, even though what they do may not make any sense to anyone else. Peiqin apparently just said something to the same effect, as reported by Yu in the recent phone call.
    Indeed, things could be connected by an invisible net. Years earlier, Uncle Wang happened to recall a story about a fish-loving scholar while enjoying the lake fish here, so he decided to move and set up a small eatery in Wuxi. That might appear to be the last link in the chain of cause-and-effect for the old man, but no one lives in a vacuum. Years later, because of the environmental crisis at Tai Lake, he formed a bond with Shanshan, and eventually, the chief inspector from Shanghai, on a compulsory vacation, walked into Uncle Wang’s eatery by chance, where he met Shanshan. So many links, mysteriously connected. If only one piece had been missing or misconnected, it could have turned into a different story. In Buddhism, as is sometimes said, one peck, one drink, is all predetermined, and is predetermining too.
    “For whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee—”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Oh, that was just a quote. I’m thinking of the environmental disaster in China.”
    But he was also thinking of the present murder case.
    The people were connected and interconnected. Liu, Mrs. Liu, Mi, Jiang, Shanshan, Uncle Wang, Fu, and perhaps many others, all in a long chain of yin/yang causality. It could be difficult for him to determine whether or not those links existed in reality. For instance, he had tried to look into the remote possibility that there was something in common between Mrs. Liu and Fu due to their frequent trips to Shanghai, but there didn’t prove to be a link there.
    However, one piece was falsely