Oliver August - Inside the Red Mansion: On the Trail of Chinas Most Wanted Man

Contents

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Copyright 2007 by Oliver August
All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
August, Oliver, date
Inside the red mansion on the trail of Chinas most
wanted man / Oliver August
p cm
ISBN -13 978-0-618-71498-8
ISBN -10 0-618-71498-7
1 ChinaDescription and travel 2 Lai, Changxing, 1958
I Title II Title On the trail of Chinas most wanted man
DS712 A88 2007
951 05092dc22 2006026930

Map by lacques Chazaud

eISBN 978-0-547-52598-3
v2.0719

FOR MILA,
who went everwhere but China If you had wanted to go to China it was too late. You would have to content yourself with reading books about it, and that was as much of the old, unrecognizable China as you would know. At this moment the scene shifters were busy and they might be a long time over their job. When the curtain went up again it would be upon something as unrecognizable to an old China hand as to Marco Polo. And when this day came you had a feeling that curious travelers might find themselves restricted to state-conducted tours, admiring the marvels of reconstructionthe phoenix in concrete.N ORMAN L EWIS, A Dragon Apparent (1951)

Authors Note

This book describes a journey, or rather two journeysmine and that of the people I met along the way. On occasion I found it necessary to protect their identities. Where Ive changed names I indicate my reasons for doing so in the text.

Quotes appearing in the book are taken from contemporaneous notes. In the few situations where I found it impossible to take notes openly I used the text message function on my mobile phone to write down snippets. From them I reconstructed quotes immediately after the event. Where feasible I then checked the notes with everyone present. In a few cases, assistants also took notes on conversations for me. I have generally used their translations of the Chinese to capture the tone of an encounter.

Furthermore, in a few instances I disguised my real purpose for engaging people in conversation. I did so as a last resort and only when in the public interestthese are the guidelines laid down by the UK Press Complaints Commission for justifiable misrepresentation. To me, the public interest seemed to be served by enquiries about dishonest and corrupt practices. For more information, as well as photos and video footage, please visit my website, www.oliveraugust.com.

Prologue

The Shaoshan, Lakeside Drive, Xiamen City, Fujian Province

E LEVEN OCLOCK on a Friday night, and the madam, or mami, at a private nightclub is waiting for the police. She straightens the nametag on her gray suitit says Lili in Chinese and Englishto avoid even the hint of impropriety. Dancers in sequined mermaid outfits are hidden away in a room to which only Lili has a key. She carefully counted in all seventy-six and ordered them dishes of five-spiced smoked fish and crushed cucumber with chili before locking the door from the outside. In a few minutes, blue uniforms with white rimmed caps will surround the klieg-lit stage where she has just turned off the last few bars of Girl Across, Look My Way.

Lili started telling me the story of the raid right where it had happened. We were sitting below the same glittering stage where patrons had watched uniformed men wash in and then out again. They will be back, she said, meaning the police, dont worry, youll get a chance to see for yourself. I hoped shed be right, banishing worries I might get her in trouble.

The nightclub occupied a vast auditorium with blackened walls and distant rafters. It was large enough to accommodate a game of tennis, but guests expected nothing so predictable. They were seated on sofas of loamy upholstery like drivers of German luxury sedans. In front of them, waiters in tuxedos with elastic waistbands cowered on the carpeted floor, refilling glasses perched on low wooden tables. Beyond the tables was the vast spotlit stage that dominated the room. Flocks of sequinned mermaids waltzed past in merry circles, followed by operatic massifs of rouged Red Guards goose-stepping to The Sound of Music. Willowy silk-clad maidens came next, kowtowing demurely then morphing defiantly into head-tossing, stiletto-strutting mannequins. The clubs nightly variety show was an elaborate homage to collective aspirations, equally indebted to Chinas past and sundry models of its future.

More remarkable still were the waiters who could occasionally be seen dashing onto the stage like kamikaze pilots. They would lunge forward, dodging dancers, swerving around formations of arms and legs swirling and flailing, accompanied by an offstage band. Near misses, last-minute course corrections, and blinding spotlights worthy of anti-aircraft batteries could not put them off, though their harried faces and sweat-stained uniforms hinted at the human cost of the endeavor. Eventually they would home in on one of the dancers and unload the cargo carried in their arms: bombastic garlands of plastic flowers, rings of green wire decorated with yellow, purple, and azure bulbs. The waiters, hardly slowing down, would throw the flowers around the dancers neck and exit. Helpless in the face of unceasing floral strangulation, some dancers could barely continue. Anymore and she wont be able to see, said a guest sitting behind me.

The garland ritual did not seem to be part of the regular stage program. The waiters were fiercely determined and lacked any sense of comedy or rhythm. The stage was a hostile high ground, to be stormed anew every few minutes. I wondered, could this be a promotion for a flower company? Chinese commercialism knew no bounds, I thought when Lili came back from her frequent rounds through the club, chatting at tables and settling bills. Sitting down, she tossed her black hair over her strong shoulders. Next to her bone-thin dancers she was sturdy and lump-kneed, yet her eyes moved faster than their limbs ever could.

I confided in Lili my guess that a flower company must be behind the garlands. She laughed and called over a waiter holding an order form. Which of the dancers do you like? she said.

I think theyre all wonderful.

Thats very polite, but which one do you like best?

Oh.

Just choose one.

But how?

By their numbers. She pointed out the small tags on their tasseled waists that were inscribed with three-digit numbers. Tell me your number.

I didby picking the one closest to us.

The waiter noted my choice and sprinted to the bar where he had the order form stamped. Triplicates were filed and registereda bureaucratic ritual that might be the only Communist legacy here. The form was handed to another waiter who picked up a garland on his way to the stage. A well-practiced sports drill unfolded, like a relay run. The whole routine took no more than thirty seconds, from our table to the waiter hunkering down by the edge of the stage waiting for the right moment when the dancers were not gyrating or cartwheeling. Then he was off. He made eye contact with my choice, threw the flowers around her neck, and in the same motion swiveled around to point out our table in the dark auditorium before vanishing, replaced already by another waiter. The dancer nodded a midmotion thank-you in our direction.

This is how the club makes money, Lili said. Youll have to pay for the hua you just ordered for that dancer. Guests were charged $10 per reusable garland. You could send multiples, but Lili had been kind enough to put me down for only one. The dancers shared the fee with the club, she said.

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