One morning in November, from his usual window seat, Zirui witnessed an arrest. Two police officers were quarrelling with a sweet potato seller, an old man in a black cap. Neither of the police officers looked older than seventeen. Zirui could not hear their conversation but he was close enough to see the grey nosehairs in the old man’s nostrils, and the angry, pleading movements of his mouth, and his hands, which gripped the sides of his cart. It was unclear how long the interaction had been taking place. Zirui watched as one of the officers wrenched the sweet potato seller away, pinning his arms behind his back. The second officer rushed to the van and hauled open its rear doors. They shoved the old man inside; he stumbled. The light changed and the bus lurched and moved on, turning a corner before Zirui could see what happened next.
Although the new subway line that opened in the spring would have enabled Zirui to cut his commute time in half, he had not altered his habit of taking the bus to work. He did not enjoy the experience of travel in the contextless, air-conditioned underground, where public safety jingles singsonged through overhead speakers and, on the trains, little screens showed newsreaders complimenting the economy or played instructional videos on how best to slice a cucumber. He preferred to luxuriate in the Beijing traffic, to stare at the backs of strangers’ heads, to press his cheek against the window, bone on juddering glass, and watch the sparks erupt from the overhead wires as they met the electric current poles of the bus.
The office where Zirui worked was one of several hundred branches of a real estate company that sold property in new developments all over China. Some of the developments were so new that the apartments he sold did not yet exist when his clients signed for them, and would not exist for months or even years after their mortgage payments commenced. The company had outposts in every province, and its offices were always at street level, with floor-to-ceiling windows through which pedestrians could glimpse, in between the slivers of pane not obscured by bright cluttered property ads, the Zirui and his colleagues working inside.
His desk abutted those windows, through which, that morning, he watched two skinny cooks from the Hunanese restaurant across the street puffing on cigarettes and shivering in their kitchen whites. Color-coded couriers zipped by on silent mopeds, their arms nestled in the elbow-length gloves they attached to the handlebars to protect their forearms from the burn of cold winter air in motion. The neighbourhood snack vendor, a middle-aged woman with a blue-rinse perm, carefully arranged the sweet potatoes in her coal-smeared wok.
Zirui turned to his screen. He was assessing an email from one Mrs. Huang. She and her husband, she rather testily explained, had purchased a one-bedroom in one of the as-yet nonexistent developments that Zirui touted for his employer. This one was a gated compound near the Sixth Ring Road that would consist of eight apartment blocks with eighty-eight floors apiece. The Huangs, whose thirtieth-floor apartment would overlook one of the compound’s three playgrounds, had paid the signing deposit four years ago and made their mortgage repayments every month since, despite the fact that the developer in charge of the project had halted construction two years prior with no explanation or indication of when it might recommence.
Zirui crafted a quick, canned response, ensuring Mrs. Huang that she and her fellow tenants would hear more from the company soon. In fact, she had reached out to Zirui twice already, and each time had received from him a similarly anodyne and equivocating reply. He had grown used to his clients’ pestering, which reliably dropped off after enough polite rebuttals; he did not remember her particular case; to him she was an indistinguishable of the irritating aggregate.
He also viewed the people to whom he sold properties with a measure of contempt, categorising them in his head as cash-rich speculators who were driving up prices in an already tight housing market in order to shore up their investments. He presumed Mrs. Huang was one of these people, greedy for a second or third flat with no intent to live in it or even rent it out. Zirui owned his home too, but he had spent years saving, and he knew that he would never be able to afford to move himself and his wife to a larger home, let alone purchase a second one. He reread his email, checking for mistakes, and then pressed send.
At lunchtime, he crossed the street to the snack vendor and asked for some roasted chestnuts and quail’s eggs. As the woman shook the chestnuts into a plastic bag, he eyed the sweet potatoes basting in their skins.
“Are you always here?”
“It’s a good spot,” she said, and handed him his bag of food.
It was a grey and frigid day. Because of the cold, the blue-and-yellow exercise machines were bereft of the retirees who frequented them, and he sat alone in the park. The warmth of the snacks in his hands reassured him. As he ate, he revisited the morning’s events. Why had the police taken that old man and his cart away in their van? Had they approached him intending to arrest him, or had the interaction escalated in such a way that they decided they needed to bring him in? Had someone called the police and reported the seller for doing something illegal? Had they left the cart there, or taken it with them? If they had taken it, would they return it when they released him? If they had abandoned it, was it still there now?
He wondered if it might be an issue of permits, if the man had set up his stall in an area forbidden to snack vendors. But it had been a public sidewalk, no different to the one where the woman outside Zirui’s office hawked the same foods. He wasn’t sure if he’d seen the old man before, so he couldn’t guess whether this was the first morning the man had occupied that spot, or whether he had always been there; whether clashes with the police were part of the texture of the man’s daily life, and he would reappear tomorrow, or whether this was an aberration, a point after which the man’s life would never be the same.
On his way back to the office, he paused at the cart where he had purchased his lunch. The woman was squatting to reach the stove, prodding at the coals with a metal stick.
“Do you need a permit for this?”
“Hah?”
“A permit?”
She stared at him, and prodded the coals.
“Have the police ever told you to leave?”
She clanged shut the door of the stove.
“I’m not doing anything illegal.”
“I didn’t say you were.”
“You’re not a cop. You work there. I see you go in every day.”
“What are you so suspicious for?”
“Why are you asking me this stuff? Are you going to report me?”
“Why would I report you?” said Zirui. “You said you’re not doing anything illegal.”
“I’m not.”
“Then why would I report you?”
The woman was scowling now. She kneeled to the stove again and stabbed at the coals. Zirui shrugged and walked away.
Several new emails were waiting for him when he sat back down at his desk, including a long, irate message from Mrs. Huang. This time he sent a second, more contrite response — nothing that could be construed as an actual apology, of course, because that would imply guilt, but a tone that suggested remorse. He finished the email with a pledge, which he did not intend to keep, that he would reach out to the developers on Mrs. Huang’s behalf to find out more and would revert to her as soon as he could with an update.
On the way home that evening, Zirui made sure to take a window seat on the opposite side of the bus to view the site of the arrest, but the sweet potato seller was not there, and the cart was not there. He disembarked at the next stop, shovelling his hands into his coat pockets and tensing his neck against the wind, and walked to where the two officers — he kept thinking of them as boys — had arrested the old man. He didn’t think he would speak to the man if he found him, but, he supposed, it would be a comfort to himself if he could see him reunited with his cart, shielded from the cold by the smoke of the cooking fire, handing soft steaming packets of potatoes to hungry customers. That was plausible. But Zirui was unconvinced by his own reasoning. Maybe he didn’t care about the old man; maybe he just hoped to witness another dramatic scene to enliven his day.
Instead of returning to the bus stop, he decided to walk home, or walk in the direction of home until he got too cold or tired or bored. By the time he reached the canal, it was dark. He ascended a skybridge, stopping halfway across to lean over the railing and watch the cars trundle up and down the Second Ring Road. It was still rush hour, and they moved at a quick crawl, stopping and starting in accordance with the traffic lights. Nearby, sitting cross-legged with his back to the railing, was a man playing the erhu. A clear, coarse melody emerged, one that Zirui recognized from his childhood, a song that everyone in China his age would recognize too. The erhu player had a small round bald spot on the top of his head, and he sat cross-legged on an island of cardboard. Beside him was a plastic container, empty but for a couple of coins Zirui suspected the man had placed there himself, to signify the container’s purpose to passersby. He was trying not to look at the man’s feet, which were bare, and parts of which were greenish and blackened, the color of preserved egg. People rarely gave money to beggars at this time of year: it was awkward to fumble in one’s pocket or purse with stiff numb fingers just to extract a few kuai. Zirui, moved by the music, began to sing along. The erhu player’s tanned and lined face was transfigured by a sudden smile, and he looked up. Zirui was startled, and stopped singing: the man had no eyes. He began to walk on. He supposed he could have taken a note from his wallet for the man, but it would have taken so long.
He descended the skybridge, thinking about erhu lessons in primary school: sheet music in rainbow-bound books, and the scrape of metal chairs on the classroom floor, and quiet Teacher Wen, who wore her hair in braids. He thought again of the potato seller, this time wondering if the man had a wife. Would the wife have heard, by now, of the husband’s arrest? Surely the police would have been in touch. And pretty Teacher Wen — had she ever married?
Lijia was waiting for him at home. She had covered the dinner dishes in plastic film, and the rice was warming in the cooker. They sat down to eat. Lijia had made spare ribs in fermented black bean sauce, one of his favorites. He rolled a rib around in his mouth, feeling the meat separate easily from the bone. When he was done he spat it gently onto the table. He knew Lijia didn’t like it when did that, but it gave him such pleasure.
“How was lunch today?” Lijia asked. She meant the meal she had packed for him. She had a habit, usually endearing but in this case irritating, of bringing up other meals, past or future, the moment she sat down to the one she was having.
“Oh. I didn’t eat it.”
“Why not?”
Zirui shrugged and popped another rib into his mouth. While he masticated, Lijia told him how she had spent her day — he half-listened, knowing it would be identical to her other days — and then told him that her brother Liming was coming to visit the following weekend. Zirui chewed and nodded and spat.
“I might give him a call,” he said.
“Really?” Lijia said. She and her brother were close — they were twins, after all — but Liming and Zirui had never quite seen eye to eye.
“I saw the police arrest someone today. I’d be interested to hear his perspective.”
“Why? Did they talk to you?”
Zirui shook his head. “I just saw it from the bus.”
“What happened?”
“I don’t know,” said Zirui. “Maybe nothing.”
Lijia stood up and came around to his side of the table. With one hand she held her own empty plate, and with the other she swept his pork bones onto it. She shook them into the bin and returned to the table.
“It was a sweet potato vendor,” Zirui said. “He looked about seventy. Eighty, even.”
“Maybe he owed a fine.”
“It didn’t seem like that. It seemed—”
He stopped himself. He was recalling the things that disturbed him: doughy young expressionless faces, wrinkled knuckles red and pink in the cold, car tires bobbing from the impact of a slammed door.
Lijia said, “I’m sure it happens all the time.”
At work the next day, Zirui deleted three emails from Mrs. Huang without reading them and sent a newly married couple some blueprints for a spacious two-bedroom in a lakeside high-rise on the other side of town from where Mrs. Huang’s apartment was going to be. The high-rise didn’t exist yet; neither did the lake.
Just before lunch, Mrs. Huang called his office phone. He had preemptively saved her number, predicting that she would call, and when he saw her name he let it ring until it stopped. Two minutes later a voicemail appeared, and he heard her speak for the first time. She sounded younger than he had supposed, and angrier, and possibly attractive, though voices were often misleading. He deleted the voicemail. Later in the afternoon, he and his colleagues traveled to a larger branch office where a regional executive briefed them on a financial platform the company had just launched to augment its real estate listings app. The platform offered a peer-to-peer micro-lending service and a money market fund, and it was available on the company’s standalone app and as a mini-program on WeChat. Once your bank account was linked, anytime you wanted to throw a little bit of money into the fund — the minimum was one jiao, a tenth of a yuan — you tapped on a multicoloured orb that released gold coins into the air: one jiao per tap. It reminded Zirui of the colourful candy puzzle games he played sometimes on the bus; he supposed that was the point.
All company employees, the executive said, needed to work harder to promote the platform to their clients, so that the company would be able to reach its target number of monthly active users. “Every drop of water helps to fill the well,” the executive said. At the end of the talk, Zirui and his colleagues stood up and clapped in the manner they knew they were expected to do.
That weekend, Zirui and Lijia made a trip to the IKEA in northeast Beijing. They ate Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes and walked around the megastore, seeing what was new. Zirui took a nap in a Trönken bed while Lijia selected a new shower curtain and purchased light bulbs for their home. In the afternoon they visited Zirui’s parents, and on Sunday they met some of their university friends for hotpot and beer.
At lunch on Monday, Zirui asked the vendor outside his office for a sweet potato. The woman, who today was wearing a black vinyl visor to shade her face from the winter sun, removed the big iron lid. Steam erupted. With deft movements she selected a potato and double-bagged it. Zirui took the packet, holding it by its edges, and handed her some cash.
“Someone was looking for you,” she said as she counted his change.
“What?”
“A woman,” she smirked. “She was here, looking for you.”
“You know my name?”
“No.”
“Then how do you know this woman was looking for me?”
“She had a picture of you on her phone.”
“When was this?”
“Friday.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I said yes, he works there. But your office was closed.”
“We had a company event. What did she want?”
“How should I know?”
“She didn’t say?”
“Nope.”
“What did she look like?”
“Annoyed.”
“Annoyed?”
“Maybe she’s a cop.” The woman grinned. “Coming to arrest you.”
“Watch it.” Zirui snapped. He took his change and walked to the park. Sitting on the bench, he burned his fingers trying to push the dry skin off the pulpy potato flesh.
On his way back to the office, he passed the vendor, who was hunched over her phone. As he got closer, he could see her jabbing at the screen, causing gold coins to spin and rise up into a line of fluffy clouds, at which point a pleasant piano melody tinkled forth.
“So this is what my money’s going to?” Zirui said, in a tone he intended to be jocular. The woman whirled around. She tucked her phone into the breast pocket of her padded jacket.
“What do you want?”
“I didn’t realize you were a financial speculator.”
“Isn’t this your game? What are you telling me off for?”
“It’s not a game. And it’s not mine.”
“It’s your company.”
“Mind your business.”
“Mind yours!”
Back at the computer, six unread emails and five voicemails from Mrs. Huang. The person who had come looking for him had to have been her. He felt uneasy, and affronted, and unsure of company protocol. Was there security he could call? Someone he needed to inform? Would she try to contact his bosses? Had she already? Would this all be blamed on him? He deleted all the messages. Before the end of the work day, he sold two more apartments in the lakeside development. He smiled on the bus home, thinking of his commission.
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday passed and she did not email or call. On Friday, Lijia spent the day roasting a duck in honour of Liming’s arrival. He was coming up from Shanghai, where he worked for a security firm that provided bodyguards for the wealthy — mostly tech founders and online influencers. Before that, he had worked in the Suzhou public security bureau for fifteen years.
Mrs. Huang receded from Zirui’s mind and his brother-in-law took her place. He decided that he would tell the story of the sweet potato seller, and ask Liming what he thought might have happened to the man. He and Lijia had not discussed the incident after that first night; Zirui would not have been able to say with confidence that Lijia even remembered the conversation. The closer the dinner came, the more Zirui rehearsed the exchange he would have with Liming. Although he had first thought to tell the story as an amusing anecdote, and use it a way to demonstrate to Liming that Zirui valued his professional opinion, he spent the bus ride home that Friday in a state of growing agitation, running through the imagined dialogue again and again, not realising until he stepped off the bus and flinched in the cold that he was angry. Somehow he had convinced himself that Liming was involved in the incident, in fantastical and implausible ways: Liming was the driver of the van they’d hauled the old man into; Liming was the superintendent, a cold voice piped by Bluetooth into the officers’ ears; Liming was the police commissioner who he had ordered the old man’s arrest. Zirui tried to summon the faces of the baby-faced cops to clear the picture in his mind, and his mind offered him the face of a young Liming. He struggled to compose himself. But when he walked into his house, and saw his brother-in-law’s lurid green Nike trainers on the floor, he was calm. He understood that he was being ridiculous.
Lijia was in the kitchen and Liming was on the couch, drinking a Sprite and looking at the plasma screen TV.
“Hey, you’re in the news.” Liming said.
“What?”
“Your company. Bit of a scandal.”
Zirui stared at the television. His stomach turned to ice. There was a passport-style picture of a woman on one side of the screen, and Zirui’s company’s logo on the other side. He shut his eyes. He could hear the presenter explaining that a woman had committed suicide by jumping off the roof of an unfinished high-rise that his company represented. No one knew how the woman had managed to gain access to the construction site or ascend to the top of the building. Her husband wanted to sue Zirui’s company; they had been paying their mortgage for years. The presenter said that a company spokesperson, in a statement posted on WeChat and distributed to media, had expressed regret over the woman’s death and extended condolences to her family.
“Any insider details for us?” said Liming. Zirui did not respond. He felt as if he were detached from his body, and his mind was a well, and Liming’s voice was coming to him from a long way away, in a different language to his own. From inside the well he heard the presenter say that the woman had been identified: Huang Derong. Wang Derong. Huang Derong?
“Is he saying Wang or Huang?”
“Why are you shouting?”
“Wang or Huang?”
“Wang! It’s right there, look!”
Zirui opened his eyes. The surname flashed on the screen. He began to laugh.
“You alright, brother?”
“Yes, yes, yes, brother,” Zirui said through his tears. “Everything is alright.”
Dinner was jolly, especially after Zirui insisted they uncork a second bottle of wine and bring out the good baijiu to celebrate the small family reunion. His wife and her brother had always been close; Zirui, for his part, had forgotten how much he enjoyed Liming’s relaxed manner and easy humour. The duck was very good, and the wine went well with it, and Liming entertained them with tales of his most fastidious clients, dropping enough hints that they could sometimes guess the celebrity involved in the story. Zirui and Liming downed baijiu in tiny glasses, and even Lijia had a sip. Underneath Zirui’s enjoyment of the evening pulsed his own story of the sweet potato seller, and the episode of what he was already thinking of as a brief attack of illness when he got off the bus, and his earlier, now diminishing conviction to raise the incident with Liming. After the news report about the death of the woman named Wang, everything else seemed trivial. Inwardly, he chided himself for having gotten so worked up about something so irrelevant to his own life, for making himself sick imagining all the horrible things that might have befallen the sweet potato seller, in the van or in detention, in a court or in a prison cell. Probably the man was fine. If he had done nothing wrong, the misunderstanding would be worked out by now. If he had done something wrong, then in all likelihood that meant he was a criminal. And why waste one’s thoughts on a criminal? Zirui drained his glass and set it down. He watched the brother and sister laugh together at a joke he’d missed, their noses in profile a mirrored image. With his chopsticks he reached for another piece of duck.
This is a short story I wrote. I hope you enjoyed reading it!