“Loyal character dance?” she asked once again. “Please excuse my interruption.”

“During those years, dancing was not allowed in China,” Chen said, “except in one particular form-dancing with a paper cut-out of the Chinese character for Loyalty or with a red paper heart bearing the character, while making every imaginable gesture of loyalty to Chairman Mao.”

“Then came the movement of the educated youths going to the countryside,” Lihua went on. “Like others, she responded to Mao’s call whole-heartedly. She was only sixteen. Father was concerned. At his insistence, instead of leaving with her schoolmates, she went to a village in Fujian Province, Changle Village, where we had a relative who would look after her, we hoped. Things seemed not to be too bad at first. She wrote back regularly, talking about the necessity of reforming herself through hard labor, planting seeds in the rice paddy, cutting firewood on the hill, plowing with an ox in the rain… In those years, a lot of young people believed in Mao as if he were a god.”

“Then what happened?”

“She suddenly stopped writing. It was impossible for us to call her. We wrote to the relative, and he said vaguely that she was fine. After a lapse of several months, we got a short letter from her, saying that she was married to Feng Dexiang, and expecting a baby. Father went there. It was a long, difficult trip. When he came back, he was a changed man, totally broken, white-haired, devastated. He did not tell me much. He had cherished high hopes for her.

“We hardly heard from her at all then.” Lihua rubbed his forehead forcefully with one hand, as if in an effort to ignite his memory. “Father blamed himself. Had she remained together with her schoolmates, she, too, might have eventually returned home. This notion sent him to an early grave. And that’s the only time she came back to Shanghai. To attend Father’s funeral.”

“Did she talk to you when she came back?”

“Only a few meaningless words. She was totally changed. I wondered whether Father could have recognized her in her black homespun and white towel hood. How could Heaven have been so unfair to her? She cried her heart out, but talked little to anybody. Not to me. Nor even to somebody like Zhu Xiaoying, her best friend in high school. Zhu came to the funeral and gave us a quilt.”

Chen saw Catherine taking notes.

“Afterwards, she wrote back even less,” Lihua continued in a flat tone. “We learned that she got a job in a commune factory, but that was no iron rice bowl. Then her son died in an accident. Another devastating blow. We got the last letter from her about two years ago.”

“Are there others in Shanghai still in contact with her?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Well, her classmates had a reunion last year. A grand party in the Jin River Hotel, organized and paid for by an upstart who had an invitation card mailed to each classmate, saying that anyone unable to attend could send a family member instead. Wen did not come back for the reunion. So Zhu insisted on my going. I had never been to a five-star hotel before, so I agreed. During the meal, several of her former classmates approached me for information about her. I was not surprised. You should have seen her in high school. So many boys were infatuated with her.”

“Did she have a boyfriend in school?” she asked.

“No, that was unthinkable in those years. As a Red Guard cadre, she was too busy with her revolutionary activities.” Lihua added, “Secret admirers, perhaps, but not boyfriends.”

“Let’s say secret admirers,” Chen said. “Can you name any of them?”

“There were quite a few of them. Some were present at the reunion, too. Some of her schoolmates are down and out. Like Su Shengyi, totally broke. But he was a Red Guard cadre then, and came to our home a lot. He went to the reunion for a free meal, just like me. After a few drinks, he told me how he had admired Wen, his eyes brimming with tears. And Qiao Xiaodong was there too-he’s already in a waiting-for-retirement program, gray-haired, broken-spirited. Qiao had played Li Yuhe in The Story of the Red Lantern. They were in the same district song-and-dance ensemble. How things change.”

“What about the upstart who paid for the reunion?”

“Liu Qing. He entered a university in 1978, became a Wenhui Daily reporter, a published poet, and then started his own business. Now he’s a millionaire with companies in Shanghai and Suzhou.”

“Was Liu also a secret admirer of hers?”

“No, I don’t think so. He did not talk to me, too busy making toasts to other classmates. Zhu told me that Liu was a nobody in high school. A bookish boy with a black family background. He wouldn’t have presumed to be Wen’s admirer. It would have been like an ugly toad’s mouth watering at the sight of a white swan. Indeed, the wheel of fortune turns quickly. It does not have to take sixty years.”

“Another Chinese proverb,” Chen explained. “ ‘The wheel of fortune turns every sixty years.’ “

Catherine nodded.

“My poor sister was practically finished when she was only sixteen. She was too proud to come to the reunion.”

“She has suffered too much. Some people close up after a traumatic experience, but where there’s life, there is always hope.” Catherine said, “Is there no one your sister might contact in Shanghai?”

“No one except Zhu Xiaoying.”

“Do you have Zhu’s address?” Chen said. “And the addresses of some of her schoolmates too, like Su Shengyi and Qiao Xiaodong?”

Lihua took out an address book and scribbled a few words on a scrap of paper. “Five of them are in here. Among them, I’m not sure about Bai Bing’s. It’s a temporary one. He moves a lot, selling fake stuff in Shanghai and elsewhere. I don’t have Liu Qing’s, but you can find his easily enough.”

“One more question. Why didn’t she try to come back to Shanghai after the Cultural Revolution?”

“She never wrote to me about it.” There was a slight catch in Lihua’s voice. This time he rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Zhu may be able to tell you more. She also came back in the early eighties.”

As they stood up, Lihua said hesitantly, “I’m still confused, Chief Inspector Chen.”

“Yes. What do you want to know?”

“Nowadays so many people go abroad-legally or illegally. Particularly the Fujianese. I’ve heard quite a lot about them. What is so important about my sister?”

“The situation is complicated,” Chen said, adding his cell phone number to his card. “Let me say this. Her safe arrival there is in the interests of the United States and China. A Fujian triad also may be looking for her. If they get hold of her, you can imagine what they will do. So if she contacts you, let us know immediately.”

“I will, Chief Inspector Chen.”

Chapter 9

It was Detective Yu’s third day in Fujian.

There had been hardly any progress, but he had had second thoughts. The discovery of Feng’s phone call seemed to lead in a new direction. Interviews with Wen’s neighbors, however, had diminished the probability that she was hiding in the area. Wen had no local friends or relatives, and Feng’s had long since cut themselves off. Some villagers showed undisguised hostility by refusing to talk about the Fengs. It was hard to conceive that Wen Liping could have lain low there for days.

As for the possibility of her having left the area, that also appeared unlikely. She had not boarded the only bus passing through the village on that particular night, nor any of the buses passing within a radius of fifty miles. Yu had conducted careful research at the Transportation Bureau. There was no possibility of a taxi coming anywhere near the village unless it was requested several hours beforehand. And there was no record of such an order.