Late that afternoon, Chen decided to pay a visit to his mother. He hadn’t seen her since his interview with Dong.

There was not much, however, he could do for her. He had tried to talk her into staying with him, but she had invariably declined. His was a one-bedroom apartment. It would be too inconvenient, she declared, when he had visitors, especially young female visitors. As an alternative, he tried to find her a maid-a “provincial sister” in a live-in arrangement-but she would not listen to this, either.

The traffic snarls were terrible, especially at rush hour. When the car finally came in sight of Jiujiang Road, the lane, enveloped in the graying dusk, appeared shabbier than he had remembered.

In the bureau, he had heard people talking about the possibility of a three-bedroom apartment for him, so that his mother could move in with him. The housing system was still on a dual track. While some people had started buying their own apartments, the majority remained dependent on the government quota. A Party cadre, once promoted to a given rank or position, would be granted corresponding benefits, including better housing in the overcrowded city. The prospect for him was complicated, however, with so many lower-level cops on the waiting list, bickering and complaining. A special housing quota directly from the city government, as Dong had suggested, would have helped.

Around the street corner, he saw several kids playing in the shadow cast by a Coca-Cola umbrella. The red and white umbrellas had mushroomed everywhere. According to Shanghai Morning, they were a part of the colorful Shanghai landscape, along with the billboards presenting life-size Chinese stars drinking to their hearts’ content. But he was still surprised at the sight of the umbrella there, close to the lane, where most of the inhabitants would find the drink too expensive, if not too exotic.

Aunt Qiang, a short, gray-haired woman who lived next door, stared at him as he got out of the taxi. She had a bamboo basket dripping with shepherd’s purse blossom, a rural delicacy he had first read about in a poem by Qiji. She took a step forward and said, “Oh, you. Little-”

It appeared as if nothing had changed from his childhood memories, surely not the fresh, luscious shepherd’s purse blossom, but the old neighbors might no longer consider it appropriate to address him by his small name.

He passed by a Chinese chess game in front of a dingy hot-water shop. Usually, the players and the audience would smoke, drink, and sometimes eat inside the water shop. The outside location was perhaps due to one of the players, Wong Ronghua, an ex-member of Shanghai Chess Team, attracting a large audience. Wong, a gaunt, grizzled man, grinned at Chen, revealing his teeth stained through years of bitter tea and poor cigarettes. He straddled one end of a wooden bench, and his opponent perched on the other end, keeping it precariously balanced. The chessboard was placed between them. Stripped to the waist in his black shorts, Wong appeared sallow, malnourished, with his ribs visible, looking like a washboard.

There were three or four hot-water bottles lined along the bench, squatting on the ground like the audience on the other side, who would probably remain in that position to the end. The neighborhood was not exactly a slum, but these were the people left out of the materialistic transition of the society.

His mother was upstairs watching TV in the attic room. The same fifteen-inch TV set he had bought years ago-still at the “state price” then. She had made a scarlet velvet cover for the TV, which must have kept her company a lot. Alone, she did not go out much, much less so after her recent stay in the hospital.

“With the cable, I can watch many stations,” she said with a smile, turning off the TV with her remote. She made him a cup of green tea. “The tea’s from one of your friends,” she said. “I can hardly remember his name. The big buck who came to the hospital, I remember. Specially delivered from Hangzhou. The fresh tea of this year: Before the Rain. Quite an expensive kind, for all I know.”

He thought he detected a subtle sarcastic note in her comment, but he said nothing. Instead, he kept breathing into the cup. People described him as a good son, but he was not so sure about that.

In time-honored Confucian doctrine, the worst thing possible for a man was to be without offspring to carry on the family name. That happened to be one of his mother’s favorite topics, even though she did not elaborate so directly. To his relief, she did not appear eager to bring up the topic that afternoon.

“You have something on your mind, son.”

“Well, no, not exactly.”

“I don’t know anything about your work, but I know my son.”

“I’m doing fine. But there are so many things for me at the bureau. I may not be able to come here as often as I would like. How about moving in with me for a couple of weeks? I can take better care of you.”

“Everything is so convenient here. Peddlers deliver fresh vegetables and meat to the room for a yuan. The old neighbors help a lot too,” she said. “You are busy with your work. If I stayed with you, then when you come back late, I would be worried.”

That was true. Even when he came back early, all the evening phone calls would not be pleasant for her. Not to mention some of his discussions.

“But I’m concerned about you.”

“And I am concerned about you,” she said, taking an appreciative sip. “All these gifts, and the tea too. Your friends keep sending me presents here.”

“Really!”

“Because of your position, I am afraid.”

“I understand, Mother. I have known some people through my work, but I draw a line for myself. In fact, the Party Discipline Committee has just assigned me to an important case.”

“The Party Discipline Committee? Oh, what kind of case has the committee given you?”

In recent years, the committee had become the institution responsible for fighting corruption. Hence its popularity among the people. She looked both pleased and perplexed.

“An anticorruption case.”

“Yes, the committee is like the police of the Party. Corruption is getting out of control with all the officials helping one another. It’s time that the Beijing government does something about it.”

“Yes, the Party authorities are determined.” He went on, taking a sip at the tea. “It may be a tough job, and I am afraid I cannot take good care of you.”

“Don’t worry for me. You have taken a path different from your father’s, but I think he would be pleased with your conscientious work if he could know of it in the underworld,” she said slowly. “Of late, I have often dreamed of seeing him. Perhaps the day is not too far away.”

“Dreams are dreams, Mother. You have missed him very much.”

“I don’t know what advice to give you, son, but I remember what your father used to say. There are things a man will do, and things a man will not do.”

“Yes, I always remember that.”

Another Confucian quote, but he did not know how to apply it in the present case. Such a truism could be applied to anything, depending on the perspective a person took.

“Not all people are in a position to do something,” she said.

There had been a subtle change in her attitude, he noticed. She had never really approved of his profession, but of late, she seemed to be more resigned to it, perhaps because she thought her late husband would have approved of her son serving the country as a police officer. She got up, moved to the chest, and produced a silk scroll of calligraphy.

“This is something your father left behind. Better in your apartment. I don’t even have the room to hang it properly.”

The scroll presented a poem, “River Snow,” copied in his father’s calligraphy. The verse had been written by Liu Zhongyuan, an eighth-century Tang dynasty poet: