Red Mandarin Dress

please.”
    While waiting, Chen tried to think about his paper again. Perhaps it was not enough to analyze only one or two stories. If he succeeded in proving the thematic contradiction as something common in classical love stories, it might be an original, worthy project. So he had to choose one or two more stories. He wrote that down in his notebook.
    Closing the notebook, he looked up to see Shen shuffle into the restaurant, leaning on a bamboo stick topped with a dragon head. A white-haired and browed man in his early eighties, Shen looked spirited, wearing a cotton-padded traditional Tang costume and black cloth shoes. Chen rose and helped the old man to the table.
    As it turned out, Shen hadn’t had a pleasant experience at the bureau. Detective Yu had hurried out for something urgent; Inspector Liao received Shen instead. Liao, declaring that he had already consulted several old tailors, showed little interest in Shen.
    There might be another reason, Chen suspected, for Liao’s manner. Shen’s coming to the bureau at Chen’s request could have rubbed Liao the wrong way. It wasn’t necessary, however, to explain the bureau politics to the elderly scholar.
    “Don’t worry about Liao. He can occasionally be as stubborn as a mule, and as stupid too,” Chen said, pouring a cup of tea for Shen as the waiter started serving cold dishes. “Please give me an introduction into the history of the mandarin dress. I am all ears.”
    Shen, helping himself to a spoon of white jade tofu flavored with green onion and sesame oil and nodding in approval, started. “Now, why is it called mandarin dress? There are a number of theories about it. For one, the Manchurians, both male and female, wore gowns of bright colors. It is also said that in the early period of the Qing dynasty, the Manchurians divided their people into eight groups, or qi , each sporting a flag of a special color and design. Qi is the same as in Qipao —mandarin dress, you know. It was not until the twenties and thirties, however, that the dress suddenly turned into a nationwide hit, shedding its ethnic suggestion. It then enjoyed great popularity until the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In the mid-eighties, it was reembraced, and now it’s internationally popular. Hollywood stars wear mandarin dresses to the Oscar ceremonies. People believe that it hugs a woman’s body subtly, bringing out her curves like no other dress. . . .”
    It was a long introduction but Chen listened with great interest. The mandarin dress being an unmistakable signature of the murderer, a cop couldn’t be too knowledgeable about it.
    “About the mandarin dress Liao showed me: it was made years earlier, probably more than ten years ago,” Shen said, producing several pictures, “based on the color of the thread—already yellow with time. When you consider the material, the special damask with its exquisite print pattern, it possibly goes back even earlier. The sixties, I would say. The same with the tiny steel press buttons. Tailors only used them during that time period or earlier. Since the early eighties, they’ve used plastic zippers instead, which are more comfortable and tighter fitting. The style of the dress also belongs to that period. Look at the whole-piece sleeves. Fashionable people now prefer separate-piece sleeves, which bring out the curves more eloquently. They are also much easier to make—”
    Shen’s lecture was interrupted by the arrival of their main dishes. Among them, there was a glass bowl containing live shrimp immersed in white liquor. The drunken shrimp were still jumping, though less and less energetically.
    “A fashionable dish,” Shen said, “sort of rediscovered too.”
    For a man his age, Shen showed quite a good appetite. He chopsticked a twitching shrimp into his mouth and Chen followed suit. The shrimp tasted slightly sweet, but he didn’t like the slippery sensation on his tongue.
    “Now I have to say a word about its tailoring,” Shen went on, puckering his lips. “A hundred percent handmade. Only an old, experienced Ningbo tailor could have produced such a dress. It took at least a week to finish. Today you may see a mandarin dress displayed in a high-end store, shiny and splendid with a staggering price tag, but the quality is just a joke. All machine made and not at all comparable to the one Liao showed me.”
    “So it was made at least ten years ago, and the material and the style date back even