“There’s no need for that, Yu. It’s an opportunity for me to pay tribute to my uncle and auntie.”
Like the use of “Party Secretary Chen” by Yu, “uncle and auntie” by Chen was for the benefit of others. Chen was becoming increasingly self-conscious, so he walked over to a monk arranging large envelopes on a side table. He tried to engage the monk in a conversation about Buddhism, but the latter simply stared at him blankly, without responding, as if Chen was an alien.
Peiqin moved over and whispered, “The service might lessen my guilt a little.”
So that was one of the reasons she wanted to have the service. Her father had gotten into political trouble in her elementary school years and had died in a far-away labor camp. During the Cultural Revolution, her mother also passed away. Peiqin hardly ever talked to others about her parents. Only once did she tell Chen that as a little kid, she had been secretly resentful of her parents because her family background had shaped and determined her life in those years.
A line of monks started to file into the room. Like the others, Chen began kowtowing again. To his surprise, the head monk pronounced his name and position solemnly at the head of the list of the service participants, as if it would mean a great deal to the dead.
It caused another whispered stir in the room. Some of Peiqin’s relatives began talking to one another, and her second aunt, a fashionable old lady with silver hair and gold-rimmed glasses, wobbled over using a bamboo stick.
She said to Chen, in earnest, “Thank you so much, Chief Inspector Chen. You have made the day for Peiqin, and for all of us as well. I’ve seen your picture in the newspapers. Perhaps we’ll also see a picture of you in the newspapers here at the temple…”
She didn’t have to finish the sentence: she knew the request was preposterous. Any pictures of him in the newspapers were in conjunction with articles about his work. They were never about him, a Party member police officer, being at a Buddhist service in a temple.
But Chen simply nodded, pulled out his cell phone, and punched in a number.
“Are you free this afternoon, Lianping?”
“Yes. Why, Chief Inspector Chen?”
“I’m at Longhua Temple. My partner, Detective Yu, and his wife, Peiqin, are going to have a meal as part of a service here. Some of their relatives were talking about the possibility of there being some pictures of the event in the newspaper…”
“All for the sake of face-in this world or the other. I understand,” she said, but then added in a louder voice, “It’s a free lunch, right? Actually, I want to thank you for thinking of me. I’ll be there in twenty minutes, Party Secretary Chen.”
Both Yu and Peiqin appeared flabbergasted, catching only fragments of the phone conversation during the monks’ chanting.
In less than twenty minutes, Lianping walked in, her arrival heralded by a quick succession of flashes from the camera in her hands.
She came over to give Chen a hug, her cheek touching his. She was wearing a low-cut black dress, black heels, and a white silk scarf around her neck-along with a red-stringed Wenhui name tag.
“If Chief Inspector Chen wants me to come, how could I not?” she said with a sweet smile, shaking hands with Peiqin and Yu before she turned to the others. “I’ve been working on a profile of Chief Inspector Chen for Wenhui Daily, and these pictures will appear with the article. Chen is not just a hard-working policeman but a multifaceted person. The picture might well be captioned, ‘Chen kowtows with his partner at the temple-the genuine human side of a Party official.’”
It sounded almost plausible, but he doubted that she would really run such a picture in the Party newspaper.
With the service gradually reaching the climax, he managed to withdraw into a corner, where Lianping soon joined him. They were left alone for the moment. Others knew better than to bother them, except when some latecomers had to be introduced to the distinguished guest, Chief Inspector Chen.
“Guess how much the service costs?” she whispered.
“A thousand yuan?”
“No. Far more than that. I’ve checked out a brochure at the entrance. The hall rental alone costs more than two thousand-and that doesn’t include the fee for the service or the red envelopes for the monks.”
“Red envelopes for the monks?”
“Have you heard the proverb, An old monk chants the scripture without putting his heart into it? That’s easy for a monk to do, chanting, as they do, 365 days a year. According to folk wisdom, that would make the Buddhist service less effective. To make sure that the monks perform the service wholeheartedly, red envelopes are absolutely necessary.”
In spite of her youth, she was perceptive, as well as cynical and opinionated, about the absurdities of contemporary social reality.
“Because of your high official position, your presence adds to their collective face,” she went on, with a teasing smile. “So you are doing them a great favor. For that matter, Zhou would have been as passionately welcomed here, before his fall, of course. Ours is a society of connections-connections that are established through the exchange of favors.”
He was taken aback.
“Detective Yu is my partner, and a good friend too,” he said. “Don’t read too much into it. We’re not ‘exchanging favors.’”
“I know things are different between you two. You’re his boss, and you don’t have to come. That’s why I’m here taking pictures. But the service is beyond me. Philosophically, Buddhism is about the vanity of human passions, but this service is the very embodiment of vanity in the world of red dust, more relevant to the living than to the dead.”
“That’s true. I tried to talk to a monk about the difference between Mahayana and Hinayana. He simply stared at me as if I were an alien from another planet, gibbering in an indecipherable language.”
Their conversation was interrupted by Peiqin’s summoning all of them to a lunch at a restaurant across the street. According to a red notice on the gate of the restaurant, the meal was being held in a large room with three round tables. Yu and Peiqin were there, busily leading people to their respective tables.
Lianping was seated next to Chen at the main table. It was possibly a well-meant trick arranged by Peiqin, who was as eager for Chen to “settle down” as his own mother was. He had no objection to the seating arrangement, and Lianping smiled, playing along with whatever interpretation the host might have of her.
“The shrimp is fresh,” Lianping said, peeling a large one with her slender fingers and placing it on his saucer-almost like a little girlfriend-before whispering in his ear. “I wonder why it’s not a vegetarian meal.”
Peiqin, leaning over to pour wine into Chen’s cup, overheard her comment and responded with an approving nod.
“We checked out the menu of the vegetarian restaurant attached to the temple. It was two hundred fifty per person for the so-called vegetarian buffet, including Häagen-Dazs, as much as you can eat.”
“What’s the point of featuring Häagen-Dazs with a vegetarian meal?” Chen exclaimed.
“The meal following a service has to be expensive, or else the host-as well as the guests-will all lose face. Not to mention the ghosts of the dead. It’s difficult for a vegetarian meal to be that expensive, hence the Häagen-Dazs.”
“I think you made the right choice here, Peiqin,” he said, helping himself to a chunk of sea cucumber braised with oyster sauce and shrimp roe.
A cell phone chirped. Several people immediately checked theirs, but it was Lianping’s. She took out her phone and glanced at it without trying to answer it.
“Somebody has just forwarded me a microblog,” she said.
“Microblog?” he said, the slippery sea cucumber falling from his chopsticks into the small saucer.
“It’s just like a blog, except it’s limited to no more than 140 characters. The government hoped such a short piece wouldn’t stir up big trouble. But it’s like a small Web forum, and people can read, comment on it, or forward it on their cell phones instantaneously. As a result, it’s turning into another big headache for the ‘stability-maintaining’ officials. They’re talking about requiring that people who access this sort of microblog register with their real names.”