The Mao Case

background.
     Despairing of their future in China, they made a desperate attempt to sneak into Hong Kong. They were caught and marched back
     to Shanghai, where Tan committed suicide. Qian survived because she was pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter, but soon after
     fell for a boy named Peng, about ten years younger than she, who was said to look like Tan. Peng was thrown into jail for
     sexual perversity. Not long afterward, toward the end of the Cultural Revolution, she died in an accident.
    Chen set down the file and finished the bitter ginseng tea. It was a Cultural Revolution tragedy that involved two generations.
     What had happened during those years now appeared absurd, cruel, and was almost unbelievable. Understandably, the Beijing
     government wanted people to look ahead and not back.
    Finally, Chen spread out the investigation report on Jiao, focusing on what was suspicious about her. Jiao was born after
     Tan’s death. Qian’s fatal accident had happened while Jiao was still an infant. The girl grew up in an orphanage. Like “a
     tramped and trodden weed” from a sentimental popular song, Jiao failed to get into a high school. Nor could she find a decent
     job. Unlike other girls her age, she had no friends or fun but instead was prey to the tragic memories of her family, even
     though others had mostly forgotten that part of the history. After two or three years struggling along, with one odd job after
     another, she
began working as a receptionist at a private company. Then, with the publication of
Cloud and Rain in Shanghai
, Jiao suddenly quit her job, bought a luxurious apartment, and started a totally different life.
    She was suspected of getting a lot of money from the book, but the publisher denied having paid any to her. Then people supposed
     there was a man behind her metamorphosis. Usually, a Big Buck “keeper” would show off his kept girl like a piece of valuable
     property, and his identity would come out in time. However, with Jiao, Internal Security had drawn a blank. In spite of their
     vigilant surveillance, they didn’t see a single man entering her apartment or walking in her company. In yet another scenario,
     she had inherited a lot of money. But Shang left nothing to the family — all her valuable property had been swept away by the
     Red Guards in the early days of the Cultural Revolution. Internal Security checked out Jiao’s bank account and found she had
     very little. She had bought the apartment outright — “a briefcase full of cash” — without having to apply for a mortgage.
    For a young girl, she seemed to be wrapped in mysteries, but according to Internal Security, she wasn’t the only suspicious
     one.
    Xie, to whose mansion Jiao had become a regular visitor of late, was another one. Xie’s grandfather had owned a large company
     in the thirties and had built a huge house for the family — Xie Mansion, which was then considered one of the most magnificent
     buildings in Shanghai. Xie’s father took over the business in the forties, only to become a “black capitalist” in the fifties.
     Xie grew up listening to stories about the old glories, holding parties and salons while keeping the doors and windows firmly
     shut. Sheltered by the resplendent mansion and the family’s remaining fortune, he dallied in painting instead of working a
     regular job. It was nothing short of a miracle that he managed to keep the house intact through the Cultural Revolution. In
     the mid-eighties, he began to throw parties at his home again. But most of the partygoers were more or less like him — no longer
     young, and impoverished in every way except in their memories of their once illustrious family. For them, the parties were
     their dreams coming true, albeit for only one night. Soon, a collective fashionable nostalgia took hold of the city itself,
and the parties became well known. Some took great pride in going to Xie Mansion, as if it was symbolic of their social status.
     Taiwanese and foreigners began to join in. One Western newspaper wrote that the parties were “the last landscape of the disappearing
     old city.”
    The last landscape or not, the situation for the person hosting the parties was not idyllic after all. Without a regular job,
     Xie had a hard time maintaining the house and paying for the parties. His wife had divorced him and emigrated to the United
     States several years ago, leaving Xie alone in the empty house. He consoled himself by