The Mao Case

seasonal vegetables. The security guard recognized her this time and smiled.
    The neighborhood food market turned out to be quite different from what she was accustomed to: granite-floored, white-tile-covered
     counters displaying vegetables in plastic wrappers and meat in plastic packaging. She walked around for a while before locating
     several huge glass cages with live fish swimming inside. As with other counters there, there was a sign declaring “No bargaining.”

    “A large Wuchang fish,” she said to a ruddy-complexioned sales-woman in a white uniform and purple rubber shoes.
    Peiqin didn’t have to bargain, not with the sum given by Jiao, but she asked for a receipt. In response to her non-bargaining
     attitude, the saleswoman ladled out the swimming fish and handed it to her with a handful of green onion for free.
    Peiqin bought everything on the list, choosing some other special sauce and seasonings for the night. According to Yu and
     Old Hunter, Jiao seldom if ever invited people home. Yet, for a slender girl like her, it appeared to be a huge dinner with
     a lot of calories and fat. The fat pork braised in red sauce, in particular, once popular in the early sixties for the
     starved, ill-nourished Chinese people, was practically unimaginable for fashionable diet-conscious girls.
    Back in the kitchen, she started preparing. The live fish kept struggling and jumping while she scaled it on the board. As
     she put it into the steamer, the fish twitched one more time, its tail cutting her finger. The cut wasn’t deep, but it tingled.
     She arranged the fish on a willow-patterned platter along with ginger and scallion and set it in a steamer on the kitchen
     table. Jiao needed only to turn on the fire upon her return. Peiqin rinsed the rice and put it into an electric rice pot.
     She finally started working on the pork. It was easy, but took time. She was no restaurant chef but she was a capable cook,
     and wanted to impress on her first day.
    Taking off her apron again, she made a cup of tea for herself, choosing a European tea bag she hadn’t seen before. She sat
     on a folding chair close to the table. Breathing into the hot tea, she found the taste not nearly as good as the Dragon Well
     tea at home. Perhaps the tea bag caused the difference. She like watching leisurely the unfolding of the tea leaves in the
     cup, green, tender, musing.
    She had helped with police work before, because of her husband or Chief Inspector Chen, or because of the people involved.
    But this time, it was different.
    She felt drawn to the case because of something personal, yet far more than personal.

    Peiqin had been a straight-A student in elementary school, wearing the Red Scarf of a proud Young Pioneer, dreaming of a rosy
     future in the golden sunlight of socialist China. Everything changed overnight, however, with the outbreak of the Cultural
     Revolution. Her father’s “historical problem” cast a shadow over the whole family. Youthful dreams shattered, she came to
     terms with the realities — toiling and moiling as an educated youth in Yunnan, plowing barefoot in the rice paddy, plodding
     through the muddy trails, day in and day out … and ten years later, coming back to the city, working at a
tingzijian
restaurant
     office with wok fumes and kitchen noises erupting from downstairs, and squeezing into a single room without a kitchen or bathroom,
     with Yu and Qinqin eking out whatever was available… She had been too busy, sometimes working two jobs, to be maudlin about
     her life. And she had kept telling herself that she was a lucky one — a good husband and a wonderful son, what else could she
     really expect? At a recent class reunion, Yu and she were actually voted the luckiest couple — both had stable jobs, a room
     they called their own, and a son studying hard for college. After all, the Cultural Revolution had been a national disaster,
     not just for her family but for millions and millions of Chinese people.
    Occasionally, she still couldn’t help wondering what life would have been like without the Cultural Revolution.
    The cut on her finger stung again.
    Who was responsible for it?
    Mao.
    The government didn’t want people to talk about it, tried to avoid the topic or to shift the blame to the Gang of Four. As
     for Mao, it was said that he had made a well-meant mistake, which was nothing compared to the great contributions he’d made
     to China.
    Perhaps she was in no position to judge