When Red is Black

accompany me.”
     
    “Still, I’m the host here, Chief Inspector Chen. I will gladly do whatever I possibly can. If there is anything you need, please let me know.”
     
    “I have been doing some research with respect to an old architectural style. Detective Yu told me that this is a typical Shanghai lane, and a typical shikumen house. That’s why I have chosen to come here today.”
     
    “Well, you cannot find a better guide, Chief Inspector Chen. I have done my homework,” Old Liang said with a fresh air of pride. “A residence cop has to be familiar with everything in the neighborhood, even its architectural history.”
     
    Chen offered the would-be guide a Panda cigarette. He did not care much for Old Liang’s company. Yu had warned him about the old man’s loquacity. Still, he might provide interesting information for the translation, if not for the investigation. “Please tell me about it, Comrade Old Liang.”
     
    “Now, look at this lane. The lane, or longtang, in itself tells you something of the early history of Shanghai.” Old Liang started speaking while they remained in front of the shikumen house. Perhaps the residence cop could talk more eloquently with both the house and the lane in full view.
     
    “After the First Opium War, with the Treaty of Nanking, the city was forced to open itself to the West as a treaty port, and some areas were designated as foreign concessions. The small number of Western residents was not sufficient for the exploitation of Shanghai’s potential. So a number of Chinese, who were worried about the civil wars raging outside the concessions, were permitted to move in. The British authorities took the lead in having collective dwellings built for the Chinese on designated lots. For the convenience of management, those houses were all built in the same architectural style, arranged in lines like barracks, row after row, accessible from sub-lanes leading to the main lane. French authorities soon followed suit—”
     
    “What about the shikumen?” Chen, much impressed by Old Liang’s narrative flow, interrupted him as Liang paused to take a long pull at his cigarette. This general introduction might go on and on, for much longer than Chen was prepared to listen. And he had already learned some of these details elsewhere.
     
    “I am coming around to it, Chief Inspector Chen,” Old Liang said, lighting another cigarette from the butt of the first one. “This is a really good brand; it’s reserved for high Party cadres only, I know.
     
    “In the early days, not too many Chinese could have afforded to move into a concession. A shikumen house—the typical Shanghai two-storied house with a stone door frame and a small courtyard—was originally designed for one family, usually a large, extended, and well-to-do family, with various rooms for different purposes: dwelling wings, hall, front room, dining room, corner room, back room, attic, dark room, and tingzijian too. As a result of the housing shortage, some of the rooms came to be leased, then subleased, with rooms undergoing further partitioning or subdivision.
     
    “This has been an on-going progress to the present day. You may have heard of a Shanghai comedy called Seventy-two Families in a House. It is about such an overcrowded condition.
     
    “Our Treasure Garden is not exactly like that. Generally, there are no more than fifteen families in a shikumen house.”
     
    “Yes, I have seen the comedy. So hilarious, with a mixture of so many diverse types. Life in a shikumen house must be quite interesting.”
     
    “Oh, you bet. Life here is colorful. There is so much interaction between residents. You practically become part of the neighborhood and the neighborhood, of you. Take this hall, for example. It was turned into a common kitchen area long ago and contains the coal stoves of more than a dozen families. It’s a bit of a squeeze, but that’s not necessarily too bad. When you cook here, you can learn how to prepare the dishes of various provincial cuisines from your neighbors.”
     
    “I would like that,” Chen said, smiling in spite of himself.
     
    “Take the courtyard, for another example. You may do practically anything in it, even to sleeping outside in the summer, on a rattan recliner or bamboo mat. It is so cool that you don’t have to worry about an electric fan. Nor will you find it monotonous to scrub your clothes on a washboard here, where Granny Liu or Aunt Chen or Little