Free Years of Red Dust by Qiu Xiaolong Page B

other bookstores in Shanghai.” The owner did not answer his question directly. “A very special channel.”
    Jiang grasped the books. “Look, young man. I wrote this book. And I have just come out—”
    â€œReally?” The owner studied him for a long moment. “Oh, you must be Professor—all right, thirty, that’s the price we paid. Welcome back to Red Dust Lane. The poster is free for you.”
    Jiang took the books without accepting the additional offer. There was a small scar on the bikini girl’s bare shoulder, which reminded him of his wife. She had died during his “rightist” years.
    He started to leaf through the book as he continued on his way to Red Dust Lane, reading while walking being a habit he had formed in his pre-rightist years.
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    Emperor Yan is bored by the screens of naked bodies. In 266 he founded the Jing Dynasty, which resembles the previous Wei Dynasty in that His Majesty wields absolute power. All the emperor’s men. And women too. There are so many imperial concubines that choosing is little better than a nightmare. He has a favorite goat. So he lets the goat amble before him through a sea of bedrooms. Wherever the goat stops, he takes it as Heaven’s will that he spend the night in that room. More often than not, he finds the goat halting in front of the 311th concubine’s pearl-curtained door. She is wrapped in a white cloud, naked beneath, in anticipation of the coming rain. She is not exactly beautiful, but when the candle is blown out, one body is not much different from another. She bears him a son who becomes Emperor Xing. Emperor Xing loses the country to barbarian aggressors through his thirst for a sea harbor. It is a long, complicated story, but the 311th concubine’s secret is simple. According to an imprisoned historian, it consists of her sprinkling saltwater on the doorsteps. The goat, pampered as it is in the palace, stoops to lick the salt there. The moral is clear: a goat is a goat.

Uniform
(1980)
    This is the last issue of
Red Dust Lane Blackboard Newsletter
for the year 1980. Our Party and our people have made great progress, recovering from the national disaster of ten years—the Cultural Revolution. China was admitted to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The Fifth Session of the Eleventh CPC Central Committee elected Hu Yaobang general secretary of the Party, and then Zhao Ziyang replaced Hua Guofeng as premier. Deng Xiaoping and other revolutionaries of the older generation resigned due to age. The Gang of Four and several others were tried and convicted for their crimes during the Cultural Revolution. China joined the World Intellectual Property Organization as it ninetieth member.
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    Sometimes, the beginning of a story is so wonderful that you may simply wish, “Oh that’s the story,” like Othello’sexclamation upon Desdemona’s arrival, but then the story goes on, in an unexpected direction. In retrospect, there is only one thing you can do: focus as much as possible on what you think of as the most memorable. And that’s the beginning, in the year of 1980.
    In 1980, like a Yellow River carp jumping through the Dragon Gate, I left Red Dust Lane in Shanghai and became a graduate student at Beijing Foreign Language University.
    I was disappointed, however, at the living conditions in the dorm room. Four students had to squeeze in a single room only fifteen square meters in size. With three bunk beds, two desks, and a bookshelf made of boards and bricks, there was hardly any space left to move around. But that was shortly after the end of the Cultural Revolution, and people were full of hopes and passions for a new beginning. We studied hard for the “realization of four modernizations,” the four of us sweating in the small dorm room.
    That year, Qi, one of the four, started dating Mimi, a young army doctor stationed in Tong County. A delicious