Fat Years - Chan Koonchung [79]
“Have you read the American writer Paul Auster’s novels of coincidence?” Lao Chen asked out of curiosity.
“No,” said Fang, “but I’ve read the mystery stories of Seichō Matsumoto. Without coincidence there’d be no fiction.”
“Fiction is one thing,” said Lao Chen, “and real life is something else. Most coincidences are probably predestined. On the surface they look like coincidence, but in the background, ‘Heaven’s net is wide-meshed, but nothing can escape it,’ as old Laozi said. Cause and effect are always there, and there are always clues, but most of the time we can’t see the clues.”
“A really perceptive analysis, Lao Chen,” said Fang, “really perceptive.”
“Wow!” exclaimed Lao Chen, looking at his cell phone. “Zhang Dou has found new posts by maizibusi on three Web sites. One says that she’s finally swept away the ghost of 1983. Another says that she’s in W County in J City in H Province helping some peasants defend their legal rights. Hu Yan’s text said that that church is in Jiaozuo in Henan. That’s J and H. All we have to do is find W County.”
“Wen County,” said Fang, “it must be Wen County. Because I’ve been there—it’s another coincidence.”
“Then let’s just head for Wen County,” said Lao Chen, reluctant to dispute Fang’s logic, and setting the GPS.
Gao Shengchan’s college classmate Liu Xing was the vice minister of the Jiaozuo Municipal Committee Propaganda Department. He was in charge of media propaganda. When Gao Shengchan called him in the morning, Liu Xing immediately and with no hesitation invited him to the Yiwan Hotel for dinner. “We can have a good talk then,” Liu said.
If it had been two or three years earlier, Liu Xing would not have wanted to be seen in public talking to Gao Shengchan, but after the last change in the local administration, when he hadn’t been promoted, he knew now that his career had reached its high point. He was already fifty years old. He hadn’t made it into this new leadership group, so he didn’t have any future prospects for promotion. So now what difference would it make to be seen having dinner with his old college friend?
Fang Caodi and Lao Chen had lost a few hours visiting Happy Village, and so it was already nine o’clock in the evening when they reached Jiaozuo City, too late to go on to the Warm Springs township. They had to stay overnight in the Jiaozuo area. By the time Fang Caodi, at Lao Chen’s insistence, had registered at the four-star Yiwan, in a private room in the hotel’s restaurant Liu Xing and Gao Shengchan had already had a few rounds of drinks and were about to begin a serious discussion.
Gao Shengchan told Liu about the trouble his church was facing—that some of the brothers and sisters in the fellowship had become involved in the Zhang Family Village land-rights dispute, and that things were likely to get more heated. Religious affairs came under the Bureau of Religion and not under Liu Xing’s department, so Gao Shengchan could discuss the situation with him just as an old friend. Gao Shengchan knew that he could not start off by asking Liu Xing to show him how to solve his problem. If he did, Liu Xing certainly would not want to tell him the truth about anything. Gao Shengchan simply told his friend about his problems and then they went on drinking and chatting, waiting for Liu to say something important.
Although Liu Xing had downed quite a few drinks, he had been a seasoned bureaucrat for so many years that getting him to talk was like getting blood from a stone, and nobody could get the goods on him. He said that all levels of government were now studying a document from Party Central and they were going to be tested on it. He could recite it by heart:
“ ‘Our Party’s governing philosophy in the present stage of development is to practice virtuous government for the people and to manage the relationship between the Party cadres and the masses. The Party cadres are the servants of the people and the people are the parents of the