Free Death of a Red Heroine by Qiu Xiaolong Page B

the millions of ex-educated youths who’d returned to Shanghai. Any job opening was a blessing. But she had to make a fifty-five-minute bike ride from home to the restaurant. A tortuous journey, riding three or four bikes abreast in the rush-hour traffic. Last November she had fallen after a night’s snow. She had needed seven or eight stitches, though the bike was hardly damaged, apart from a dent in the mudguard. And she was still riding the same old bike, rain or shine. She could have asked for a transfer to a closer restaurant. She didn’t. Four Seas had been doing quite well, providing many perks and benefits. Some other state-run restaurants were so poorly managed that the profits were hardly enough even to maintain the employees’ clinic.
    “You ought to eat more,” she said.
    “I can’t eat much in the morning, you know.”
    “Your job is tough. No time for lunch today again, I am afraid. Not like mine in the restaurant.”
    That was one disadvantage of being a cop, and an advantage of working at her restaurant job. She did not have to worry about her meals. Sometimes she even managed to bring home restaurant food—free, delicious, specially cooked by the chef.
    He had not finished the noodles when the telephone started ringing. She looked at him, and he let it ring for a while before picking it up.
    “Hi, this is Chen. Sorry about calling so early.”
    “That’s all right,” he said. “Anything new—any change?”
    “No,” Chen said. “Nothing new. No change in our schedule either, except that Commissar Zhang wants to meet you sometime this afternoon. Say before four o’clock. Give him a call first.”
    “Why?”
    “Commissar Zhang insists on doing something himself, he wants to conduct an interview. And then he would like to compare notes with you.”
    “It’s no problem for me. I can set out earlier. But do we have to do this every day?”
    “Perhaps I’ll have to. Since it’s the first day, you just do whatever the commissar wants you to.”
    Putting down the phone, Yu turned to Peiqin with a sigh.
    “You’ve got to take Qinqin to school today, I’m afraid.”
    “No problem,” she said, “but you are doing too much for too little.”
    “You think I don’t know? A police officer makes four hundred and twenty Yuan a month, and a tea-leaf-egg vendor makes twice as much on the street.”
    “And that chief inspector of yours, what’s his name—still single, but he’s got an apartment.”
    “Perhaps I was born a mistake,” Yu was trying to sound humorous. “A snake can never become a dragon. Not like the chief inspector.”
    “No, don’t say that, Guangming,” Peiqin said, starting to clear the table. “You’re my dragon. Don’t ever forget that.”
    But Yu felt increasingly disturbed as he stuffed the newspaper into his pants pocket, walking toward the bus stop on Jungkong Road. He had been born in the last month of the dragon year, according to the Chinese lunar calendar, supposedly a lucky year in the twelve animal cycle zodiac. According to the Gregorian calendar, however, the date was early in January of 1953, therefore the beginning of the snake year. A mistake. A snake’s not a dragon, and it could never be as lucky. Not as lucky as Chief Inspector Chen. When the bus came, however, he was just lucky enough to get a seat by the window.
    Detective Yu, who had entered the police force several years earlier than Chen and solved several cases, did not even dream of becoming a chief inspector. A position within his reasonable reach would be that of a squad leader. But that, too, had been taken away from him. In the special case squad, he was only the assistant to Chief Inspector Chen.
    It was nothing but politics that Chen had been promoted because of his educational background. In the sixties, the more education one had, the more political unreliability one represented— in Chairman Mao’s logic—as a result of being more exposed to Western ideas and ideologies. In