The Mao Case

little boy was rolling a rusted iron hoop on a side street, a familiar scene yet one he hadn’t seen for a long time. It
     was as if the hoop was rolling back the memories from childhood in the gathering dusk. He was struck with a sense of déjà
     vu.
    He had second thoughts about visiting his mother. He missed her, feeling bad for having not been able to take care of her
     as much as he would have liked. But an evening there could also mean another of her lectures about his continuing bachelorhood,
     where she quoted the Confucian statement, “
There are things that make a man
unfilial, and to have no offspring is the most serious.”
It wasn’t the evening for that.
    Casting a quick look at the front of the eatery, which appeared scruffy, sordid, and little changed from years ago, he walked
     into a shabby scene inside. There was a bare bulb dangling down from the water-and smoke-stained ceiling, shedding dim light
     on three or four smeared, dilapidated tables. Most of the customers looked as grungy as the place, having only cheap liquor
     and dishes of boiled peanuts.
    A waitress, a plump and short woman in her mid-fifties, handed him a dirty menu in peevish silence. Ordering a Qingdao beer,
     two cold dishes — dried tofu in red sauce and a thousand-year egg in soy sauce — he asked her, “Any specials here?”
    “The pork intestine, lung, heart, and whatnot, all steamed with distilled rice grain. Our chef still makes his own rice wine.
     It’s a specialty of the old Shanghai cuisine. I don’t think you’ll have it anywhere else.”
    “Great. I’ll have that,” he said, closing the menu. “Oh, the smoked carp head too. A small one.”
    She eyed him up and down in surprise — apparently, he was a big customer for this small place. He was no less surprised at himself,
     for still having such a good appetite this evening.
    At a table near the back, one of the customers looked over his shoulder. Chen recognized him as Gang, from the old neighborhood.
     Gang had been a powerful leader of a Shanghai Red Guard organization in the early days of the Cultural Revolution, but he
     had since gone downhill, ending up as a jobless drunken loafer, muddling around the neighborhood. About the vicissitude of
     the legendary ex — Red Guard, Chen had heard from his mother.
    Gang turned further around, clearing his throat and banging on the table dramatically. “Sages and scholars are solitary for
     thousands of years. Only a drunkard leaves his name behind.”
    That sounded like a quote from Li Bai, a Tang-dynasty poet well-known for his passion for the cup.
    “Do you know who I am?” Gang went on. “The commander in chief
of the Third Red Guard Headquarters in Shanghai. A loyal soldier for Mao, leading millions of Red Guards to fight for him.
     In the end, he threw us to a pack of wolves.”
    The waitress put the cold dishes and Qingdao beer on Chen’s table. “The noodles and the chef’s special will come shortly.”
    The moment she walked away, Gang rose and shambled over, grinning from ear to ear and carrying a tiny bottle of liquor called
     a “small firecracker” among the drunkards.
    “So you are a newcomer here, young man. I would like to give you a word or two of advice. Life is short, sixty or seventy
     years, no point worrying away your days till your hair turns white. Heartbroken for a woman? Come on. A woman is just like
     that smoked fish head. Not much meat but too many bones, staring at you with ghastly eyes on a white platter. If you’re not
     careful, you get a bone stuck in your throat. Think about Mao. Such a man, and yet he, too, was ruined by his woman — or women.
     He fucked his brains out in the end!”
    Gang talked like a drunkard, hardly coherent with so many conversational leaps, but it was intriguing, even stunning, to Chen.
    “So you had your day during the Cultural Revolution,” Chen said, gesturing for Gang to share the table with him.
    “Revolution’s like a bitch. She seduces you, and she dumps you like a mop smeared with the shit and dirt from her ass.” Gang
     took his seat opposite Chen, picking up a piece of dried tofu with his fingers, sucking at his empty liquor bottle. “And a
     bitch is like revolution too, muddling your head and heart.”
    “That’s how you ended up here — because of both women and revolution?”
    “There’s nothing left — well, nothing but the cup for me. It never gives you up. When you are smashed, you dance with your own