The Mao Case

Chen — he was stubborn, scrupulous, and smart, yet shrewd and occasionally sly in his
     way. His promotion to chief inspector when only in his thirties spoke for itself. A hard-working cop himself all his life,
     Old Hunter was only a sergeant when he retired.
    Old Hunter still had connections in the bureau, so he also knew Chen had received a phone call during the political studies
     meeting, a message from Beijing regarding his HCC girlfriend. Chen had supposedly looked devastated. The next day, he took
     a sudden leave of absence. The gossip about that spread through the bureau fast.
    As Old Hunter was about to sip at his second cup of tea, the waitress returned, leading Chen into the room.
    “Sorry, I must have kept you waiting,” Chen said, taking a cup of tea from Old Hunter. “Thank you.”
    “No, that’s my job,” the waitress said, taking over the teapot in haste. She added hot water to the purple sand teapot before
     pouring the tea in a graceful arc into the tiny teacups. Instead of serving them the tea, however, she poured it out into
     the pottery basin beside her. “That was to warm up your teacups,” she explained, her fingers dazzlingly white against the
     cup. “It’s the beginning of our tea ceremony. Tea has to be enjoyed in a leisurely way.”
    Old Hunter had heard of the so-called Japanese tea ceremony, but he made a point of having nothing to do with anything coming
     from Japan. His uncle had been killed in the Anti-Japanese War, and the memory still rankled. When the tea was finally served
     in a tiny cup, he drained it in one gulp — in his way. She hastened to serve the second cup.

    He noticed Chen was drumming his fingertips on the table, absent-mindedly. Possibly a sign of acknowledgement, but also one
     of impatience. The way the tea was served, with the waitress standing and waiting, they wouldn’t be able to talk.
    “In Japan, tea drinking is advocated as a sort of cultivated art. That’s bull. You enjoy the tea, not all the fuss about it,”
     Old Hunter said. “It’s like in an old proverb: an idiot returns the invaluable pearl but keeps the gaudy box.”
    “You’re quite right, especially with a collection of old sayings to back you up.” Chen nodded, turning to the waitress with
     a smile. “We will enjoy the tea for ourselves. You don’t have to stay with us and serve.”
    “That’s the way it is done in our tea house,” she said, blushing in embarrassment. “It is very fashionable nowadays.”
    “We’re old-fashioned. You cannot carve anything fashionable out of a piece of rotten wood,” he concluded. “Thank you.”
    “Sorry,” Chen said after the waitress left. “This is the only tea house I could think of — with a private room where we could
     talk, I mean.”
    “I see,” Old Hunter said. “What’s new under the sun, Chief?”
    “Oh, we haven’t talked for a long time.”
    That was an excuse, Old Hunter knew, so he asked casually, “So you’re enjoying your vacation?”
    “Well, not exactly.”
    “In this world of ours, eight or nine times out of ten, things will not work out in accordance to your life’s plan, but as
     the ancient proverb tells us, who knows if it’s fortune or misfortune when the old man of Sai loses his horse? A vacation
     will do you good, Chief. You’ve worked too hard.”
    “I wish I could tell you more about fortune or misfortune,” Chen responded elusively, “but I’m not taking vacation for personal
     reasons.”
    “I understand. You know what? For the last few months, I’ve been enjoying the Suzhou opera version of the
Romance of Three Kingdoms
. The lines at the end are simply fantastic. ‘So many things, past and present, are told by others like stories over a cup
     of tea.’ ”

    “You do have a passion for Suzhou opera,” Chen said. “Time really flies. When I first read
Romance of Three Kingdoms
, I was still an elementary school student. There was a lot I didn’t understand in the novel. For example, the episode about
     Cao Cao building his tombs in secrecy.”
    “Yes, I remember — he built several tombs and killed all the workers afterward. So no one knew the location of the real tomb.
     And Cao Cao was not the only one. There was also the First Emperor of Qing, who had human beings as well as terracotta soldiers
     buried with him in different tombs.”
    “Indeed, knowledge of the emperor’s secret could be deadly.”
    Old Hunter put down the teacup, detecting a strange note in