Read Online When Red is Black by Qiu Xiaolong - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Qiu Xiaolong
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dead. I should not say anything against her, but if you think my opinion matters to your investigation, I will not mince my words.”
“Please go ahead, Comrade Wan. It will be very helpful to our investigation.”
“She was part of the evil black force that has tried to turn back history, back to the twenties, the thirties, to the miserable years when China was downtrodden by imperialists and capitalists, while those bourgeois intellectuals enjoyed the pathetic bones thrown to them by their masters. In her book—you must have read it—working-class people are all described as clowns or thugs, without acknowledging the vital fact that it is we who overthrew the Three Big Mountains—imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism—and built a new socialist China.”
Yu could see why Wan was even more embittered than most other retirees. Wan must have given many political lectures at the college, and made himself at home with the political terms popular in the seventies. Now, in the nineties, his views had become obsolete.
“She, too, suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution,” Yu observed.
“Anybody else may complain about the Cultural Revolution. Not Yin Lige. What was she? A notorious Red Guard! Why were the propaganda worker teams sent into the schools? To deal with the disastrous mess they left.”
“Well, the past is past,” Yu said. “Let me ask you another question, Comrade Wan. Did you notice anything unusual about her of late?”
“No, I didn’t pay any attention to her.”
“Anything unusual about the building?”
“No, not that I can remember. I’m a retired old man. It’s up to the neighborhood committee to notice things.”
“Now, you were not at home the morning Yin was murdered, were you?”
“No, I was practicing tai chi on the Bund,” Wan said. “The state-run company I worked for can no longer pay our medical bills. We have no choice but to take care of ourselves.”
“I see. Do you practice tai chi with others?”
“Oh, yes, with a large number of people. Some practice tai chi with swords, and some practice tai chi with knives, too.”
“Do you have their names and addresses?” Yu added, “It’s just a formality. I may have to ask one of them to corroborate your presence.”
“Come on, Comrade Detective Yu,” Wan said. “People practice tai chi on the Bund for twenty or thirty minutes in the morning, and then go home. There’s no point asking each other’s names or addresses. Some people nod to me, but they don’t know my name, and I don’t know theirs. That’s it.”
What Wan said seemed to make sense, but Yu thought he caught a slight hesitancy in the old man’s words. “Well, if you can locate a few tomorrow—one or two names will be enough— please let me know.”
“I will, if I go to the Bund tomorrow. Now, I have something else to do this morning, if you have no more questions, Comrade Detective Yu.”
“I’ll talk to you later, then.”
Yu lit a cigarette, tapped his finger on the desk, checked Wan’s name off, and moved on to the next name. Glancing through the information about Mr. Ren, the third on Old Liang’s list, Yu was about to cross his name off when he thought better of it. Mr. Ren was a “capitalist” in his class status. Before 1949, the shikumen building had been owned by Ren’s father, who was executed as a counterrevolutionary in the early fifties, when the house was confiscated. The Rens then had to squeeze into a small room partitioned off at the end of the south wing. For the Ren family, the following years became a tale of continuous misfortune and mistrust by one political movement after another. During the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Ren was marched through the lane by a group of Red Guards, his head weighed low by a blackboard declaring “Down with the Black Capitalist Ren!” But as in the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching, when one’s fortune hits
“Please go ahead, Comrade Wan. It will be very helpful to our investigation.”
“She was part of the evil black force that has tried to turn back history, back to the twenties, the thirties, to the miserable years when China was downtrodden by imperialists and capitalists, while those bourgeois intellectuals enjoyed the pathetic bones thrown to them by their masters. In her book—you must have read it—working-class people are all described as clowns or thugs, without acknowledging the vital fact that it is we who overthrew the Three Big Mountains—imperialism, feudalism, and capitalism—and built a new socialist China.”
Yu could see why Wan was even more embittered than most other retirees. Wan must have given many political lectures at the college, and made himself at home with the political terms popular in the seventies. Now, in the nineties, his views had become obsolete.
“She, too, suffered a lot during the Cultural Revolution,” Yu observed.
“Anybody else may complain about the Cultural Revolution. Not Yin Lige. What was she? A notorious Red Guard! Why were the propaganda worker teams sent into the schools? To deal with the disastrous mess they left.”
“Well, the past is past,” Yu said. “Let me ask you another question, Comrade Wan. Did you notice anything unusual about her of late?”
“No, I didn’t pay any attention to her.”
“Anything unusual about the building?”
“No, not that I can remember. I’m a retired old man. It’s up to the neighborhood committee to notice things.”
“Now, you were not at home the morning Yin was murdered, were you?”
“No, I was practicing tai chi on the Bund,” Wan said. “The state-run company I worked for can no longer pay our medical bills. We have no choice but to take care of ourselves.”
“I see. Do you practice tai chi with others?”
“Oh, yes, with a large number of people. Some practice tai chi with swords, and some practice tai chi with knives, too.”
“Do you have their names and addresses?” Yu added, “It’s just a formality. I may have to ask one of them to corroborate your presence.”
“Come on, Comrade Detective Yu,” Wan said. “People practice tai chi on the Bund for twenty or thirty minutes in the morning, and then go home. There’s no point asking each other’s names or addresses. Some people nod to me, but they don’t know my name, and I don’t know theirs. That’s it.”
What Wan said seemed to make sense, but Yu thought he caught a slight hesitancy in the old man’s words. “Well, if you can locate a few tomorrow—one or two names will be enough— please let me know.”
“I will, if I go to the Bund tomorrow. Now, I have something else to do this morning, if you have no more questions, Comrade Detective Yu.”
“I’ll talk to you later, then.”
Yu lit a cigarette, tapped his finger on the desk, checked Wan’s name off, and moved on to the next name. Glancing through the information about Mr. Ren, the third on Old Liang’s list, Yu was about to cross his name off when he thought better of it. Mr. Ren was a “capitalist” in his class status. Before 1949, the shikumen building had been owned by Ren’s father, who was executed as a counterrevolutionary in the early fifties, when the house was confiscated. The Rens then had to squeeze into a small room partitioned off at the end of the south wing. For the Ren family, the following years became a tale of continuous misfortune and mistrust by one political movement after another. During the Cultural Revolution, Mr. Ren was marched through the lane by a group of Red Guards, his head weighed low by a blackboard declaring “Down with the Black Capitalist Ren!” But as in the Taoist classic Tao Te Ching, when one’s fortune hits
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