Translation, excerpt, Sun Ganlu's A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains
My commentary on the five books that won the Mao Dun Literature Award, I realize now, probably wasn’t useful to anybody. I have deleted it. If you have read the books, my descriptions are too limited; if you haven’t read the books, my descriptions are too limited.
I know I should have put in some effort to try to sum up the state of contemporary literature over the past several years, taking these works as representative. But I don’t have it in me.
If nothing else, I should have devoted more time to talking about Sun Ganlu's 孙甘露 winning novel, A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains 千里江山图, which I think is the most interesting of the books awarded.
I regard Sun Ganlu’s experimental fiction from the 1980s as the most tolerable of that genre. I included “I am a Young Drunkard” 我是少年酒坛子 in a list of the best short fiction from the country. It’s translated by Kristina M. Torgeson in China's Avant-Garde Fiction, if you care to look it up. I flipped through a later novel—Breathe 呼吸—a few years ago for an unrelated and incomplete project on Qiu Huadong 邱华栋 and urban bohemian fiction.
Set mostly in 1930s Shanghai, A Panorama of Rivers and Mountains stands out from his other work for its setting. Perhaps necessarily for any work set in Shanghai in the 1930s—a time of complicated politics—it’s about patriotic espionage.
Everybody knows how the story ends, so, even if the plot is easy enough to predict, it has to be competent as a thriller. In other words, it has to satisfy as a formal exercise. Sun Ganlu pushes beyond that, though. He has an ability to write particularly compelling characters, and also to digest the mood and the smells and architecture and culture and food of the period in a novel way.
I would like to translate the opening of the novel for you to read.
As always, I note that this translation is not intended to be a definitive interpretation. It is my own first attempt.
▣ ▣ ▣ ▣
Fifteenth day, last month of the year. A week or so until the New Year.
Around nine thirty-five, Wei Dafu went past the gate of the Zhejiang Grand Theater, across the street from the Sima Market.
The Ministry of Works permitted people to park along that stretch of Zhejiang Road. It was always crowded. Apart from automobiles, there were rickshaws, hawkers' carts, and the wheelbarrows and flatbed wagons used by the vegetable sellers. To get into the market meant maneuvering in and out of the cracks that opened up between the vehicles.
Wei Dafu had the sudden realization that something was not quite right. The rows of carts lined up along both sides of the market entrance were there, as they always were, and so were the lines of automobiles along the road, but the wheelbarrows and wagons of the vegetable sellers were gone. It was as if someone had set up barricades further up the block.
He observed the scene for a while and noticed that the rickshaw pullers hurried away as soon as they dropped off their lady passengers. It was as if they had perceived some kind of warning floating in the air. The rickshaw men raced away as quickly as they could from the market, panting, sweat beading on their foreheads, as if they were not willing to spend more time than was necessary in that forbidden zone. Wei Dafu considered that he was probably just being neurotic. A moment later, he saw a gang of patrolmen race into the street to drive off some stragglers, but that was not unexpected in the concession. He decided his nerves were getting the better of him.
He noted the poster hung beside the doorway into the theater. A Music Teacher, starring Raymond King and Violet Wong. Not worth seeing, he told himself. How can you have a movie with three leads that all end up dying? The timing wasn't any good, either. The first screening wasn't until three o'clock.
▧ ▧
Nine forty. Grand Cosmopolitan Hotel rooftop garden.
The amusement park was empty. The winter sun shining on the carousel failed to warm the crestfallen wooden horses and only made their peeling paint seem even more desolate. The skating rink and the billiards hall were both empty. Nobody took the lectern in the storytelling pavilion. The teahouse only had two guests sitting in it.
Yi Junnian walked to a corner and looked down from the wall. Across the street was the vegetable market. It occupied the bottom two floors of the building. Housewives and servants crowded into the main entrance. It was the busiest hour for the market. All of the windows on the two upper floors of the building were closed. They were top-hung windows that had to be pushed from the bottom to open.
"Who did you meet this morning?" Ling Wen asked, walking up behind him. They had agreed that Yi Junnian would go to Ling Wen's home in the morning and then travel to the market together. But he had not arrived. Instead, he sent over one of the employees of his stall with a note, telling Ling Wen to meet him at the rooftop garden. Ling Wen had been there with Yi Junnian before. It was easy to slip in the front door and into the elevator to the roof.
"A driver for the Nanshi District Police," he said. “He’s on our side.”
"It seems like it was urgent. Is there any problem?"
Yi Junnian shook his head without turning. He went back to studying the street below. "A squadron of detectives from Baiyun Guan met last night. They're planning to deal with something in the concession."
Since Yi Junnian was Ling Wen's superior, he did not need to let her in on what was happening, but she had been with the group long enough that he trusted her. He had no reason to conceal anything from her.
"Should we get in touch with Lao Fang?" Ling Wen asked anxiously.
"It might not even have anything to do with our activities," Yi Junnian said. "Anyways, it's too late to notify anyone."
▧ ▧
Qin Chuan'an avoided the main entrance of the market. He took a side door on the north side of the building, then got into an elevator and went up to the third floor. As the elevator door slid open, he heard music playing. He recognized the piece: Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.
He went down a darkened corridor. He studied the dark green floor tiles. Across them at intervals ran tiles of a lighter shade. He could not decide what to call their color. He peered into open doors along the hallway. Inside of the rooms were piles of folding chairs covered in dust.
Qian Chuan'an continued to the end of the hall and a set of double doors. He went through them into a large hall. An orchestra was playing. Rows of folding chairs were arrayed in front of them. He took a seat in one of the chairs closest to a pillar. He often came to see the orchestra. He liked music. He had even bought a phonograph for his clinic. When the orchestra planned to play at City Hall or the Lyceum, he would stop by to watch their rehearsals. He enjoyed hearing them repeatedly work through isolated movements or even phrases.
He glanced down at his wristwatch every now and then. When he saw that it was nine fifty, he stood and left the rehearsal hall. Instead of crossing back down the corridor and taking the elevator, he went down the stairs. The meeting place was on the mezzanine between the third and fourth floors.
▧ ▧
At the end of Tongchun Lane, there was a tall wall. On the other side of it was Gezhi Public School, a British-style boys academy, administered by the Ministry of Works. To get into the school by the front gate meant going around to the other side of the block, but Tian Fei always took a shortcut over the wall on the way to work. Before taking a job in the library, he had studied there himself.
It was the last day before winter vacation and young people intermittently rushed out of the front gate. They wore cotton-padded gowns with indigo robes on top and peaked felt caps embroidered with the emblem of the school.
Tian Fei paced along the wall, moving between the main gate and the side gate. He watched people going by with their hands clasped behind their backs. They flocked across the intersection and then were swallowed up by the flow of pedestrians.
A little ago, he had discovered a secret room in the archives. He found it was the perfect place to conceal things. Very few people knew about the space tucked between the library and one of the school buildings. It had originally been intended for storage. Most of the rooms were used to store books that had been pulled from the stacks. Even the librarians had little reason to visit. Fei Tian discovered the secret room while moving books around. Behind a shelf, he found a door with a rusty lock on it. He picked the lock and went inside. It was a dusty, musty, wonderful place.
In fact, Fei Tian should have arrived earlier. He was supposed to open the door. He felt in his pocket to be sure the key was there. He had never found the original key to the lock on the door. He had hammered it out and installed a new one. He felt in his right pocket. The domino was still there, too.
▧ ▧
Yi Junnian watched Ling Wen step into the elevator. Her intuition was good. He told himself to be more cautious. Lao Fang had warned him that the meeting needed to be conducted with absolute secrecy. Everyone in attendance would be strictly vetted.
Yi Junnian watched the entrance to the market for a while longer. Nothing seemed to be happening, so he turned his observation elsewhere.
He saw Wei Dafu in the street below. He held a pack of cigarettes, frozen in the motion of opening it. He stared down the road as if he had seen something surprising.
Yi Junnian traced his line of sight and saw Ling Wen crossing the street. It seemed that Wei Dafu recognized her. Yi Junnian was surprised by his memory. They had only met once, when Yi Junnian sent Ling Wen to the teahouse to inform him that the meeting place had changed.
▧ ▧
Wei Dafu stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes from the tobacconist beside the theater. As he stepped back across the street, he began opening them, but he was distracted by a woman up the road. She was pretty, he thought. But no, there was something else! He studied her more carefully. He realized he had seen her somewhere before. He could not remember where, though, nor the circumstances that had brought them together.
▧ ▧
Cui Wentai had planned on getting a bowl of soybean milk and some flatbread from one of the shops on the second floor of the market, but he changed his mind when he remembered that the Sima Market was famous for having the freshest pork offal soup in the city. The pork was brought down the Suzhou River every morning and was still steaming when it was unloaded at the market.
He was a taxi driver. That morning, he had taken a fare headed to the Jinliyuan Wharf. He made sure that the time would work out, so that he could make it to the market in time. After the trip to Jinliyuan, he stopped by the office. He didn't want to leave any loose ends. The underground group he worked for had gotten him the job as a driver. They sometimes needed a car. No matter what happened, he had to hold onto his position at the company.
He sprinkled black pepper on the tomatoes that floated at the top of the soup, then began to eat, occasionally dipping his flatbread. The red-hot, spicy soup calmed his nerves. Still chewing the flatbread, he glanced at his watch. Almost nine fifty. He waited a while, then stood and glanced at the elevator. Nine fifty-five.
On the east side of the market was a narrow alley. The right wall of the alley was the back wall of the market. On the left side was a bamboo fence through which strange smells intermittently wafted.
Behind the wall were a number of shadowy figures with peculiar faces. They were dressed in white gowns and wore white hats. Lin Shi looked up at the roof of the building. She tried to memorize the position of the windows and fire escapes. He glanced at his watch, then went out into the street.
He went up to the fourth floor and positioned himself beside one of the racks in the library that was close to the front door. Out that door, to the right, was a flight of stairs. Down the stairs and around a corner was a door that led to a corridor that led to the meeting place.
▧ ▧
At almost ten o'clock, a car pulled up diagonally across from the market. Someone approached and whispered a few words through the window. The car pulled away immediately.
Their driver turned to the two men in the back: "What about the Cosmopolitan? The rooftop garden is interesting. Plenty of fun once the sun goes down. Our station owns the place, Captain You! Even the waiters in the teahouse report to us."
Detective Yao in the backseat scowled. He was not fond of subordinates that talked too freely. But he concealed his expression and answered in a light voice: "The rooms are decent. What do you say, Captain You? You can get a suite and spend the New Year in style."
You Tianxiao shook his head. He glanced at the building. "If someone is watching from the rooftop garden, they could see everything happening at the entrance to the market."
"You're far too cautious," Detective Yao said with a smirk. "Patrolmen keep a close eye on the concession. Even if they've got a hundred people up there, what are they going to do?"
Despite being an officer in the Longhua Garrison Military Police, You Tianxiao had little contact with the patrolmen of the concessions. From the top of the ranks to the lowliest superintendents, the foreigners in the concession police despised him and his men. In the past, when they had to go into the concessions to conduct their work, they had to be careful to avoid being arrested by the patrolmen and locked up for a few days. Once relations improved at the top, and the Kuomintang stopped yelling about overthrowing the imperialists, agreed to work together on attacking the Communist Party, and signed deals for intelligence exchange and prisoner swaps, relations between the two forces at street-level improved. You Xiaotian was on good terms with some of the Chinese detectives attached to the International Settlement Police Department, and he had built an unusually warm relationship with Detective Yao.
You Tianxiao decided to change the topic: "Do you think there was any interference from Boss Du in that fraud case with the China Merchants Bureau?" There was no need to be more specific. The case had made waves in early winter the year before, and everyone was familiar with the players involved.
"Li Guojie set it all up," Detective Yao said. "From what I've heard, his great-uncle has a connection to the Empress Dowager. When the old guy heard what his good-for-nothing nephew was doing, he took care of it. It's clear to me that once Chen Fumu had the money in hand, he approved it all, then made a run for it. He was ready to go. I'm still not sure where Boss Du got involved in the whole thing." When it came to Boss Du, even the characteristically garrulous Detective Yao held back. "Given how the concession papers reported it, it's possible. I heard it had something to do with the fact that Li Guojie contacted the Anhui Axe Gang about taking out some of the Bureau heads. So, he went—"
The driver hit the brakes as someone darted toward the car. You Xiaotian opened the door and stepped out. He spoke with the man then got back in the car. "Your man failed to make the collar," he said when he was back in the car. "This is going to have very bad consequences."
"What do you mean?" Detective Yao asked.
You Tianxiao wanted to curse, but he knew that there was nobody to blame but himself. He knew the concessions were a place where fish and dragons mixed, as the saying went. As soon as he passed word to his colleagues there, orders would be passed down and then they could be picked up by traitors. That is exactly what had happened. Apparently, the traitor had even come to the market. It made no sense. He should have been trying to get away. Was he trying to get a message to the underground agents? It was as if he placed no value on his own life.
▧ ▧
The meeting began around ten o'clock. One-by-one, the participants entered and took seats at a long table. The tablecloth thrown across it had grease stains and cigarette burns. Everyone took their dominoes from their pockets and placed them on the table.
Yi Junnian, standing at the head of the table, stacked up on the dominoes. "Some people are not here yet," he said, glancing around. He noted Ling Wen, Wei Dafu, Tian Fei, and seven strangers. Lao Fang was not there. It was him that had urgently called for them to meet, so why would he fail to show up? Yi Junnian felt suddenly uneasy. He suspected something bad was going to happen that day.
He glanced at his watch again. It was already quarter past. Wei Dafu grew impatient: "If you have something to say, let's start the meeting. I want to get out of here as soon as possible."
▧ ▧
You Tianxiao received another report. Things were underway in the market. The traitor was inside. It was true, then: the man did not value his life at all. He had used his connections to the concession police to slip through the cordon they had set up at a side door. He got up to the third floor with a freight elevator. When he was blocked, he ended up going into the rehearsal hall and mixing it up with a plain clothes detective. After that, he got up to the fourth floor on the freight elevator.
You Tianxiao lit a cigarette and passed another to Detective Yao. He took a few puffs, then tossed the butt on the ground. "We can't wait," he said. "Sweep them up."
▧ ▧
Everyone in the meeting froze as they heard muffled bangs from somewhere in the building. Yi Junnian went to the door to listen. He opened it slightly to inspect the hallway. Nothing was out of the ordinary. He turned back to the table, shook his head, and held an index finger to his lips to signal silence.
Yi Junnian shot a glance at Wei Dafu and then returned to the table.
But just as he was about to speak, the silence was disturbed again. It seemed to be coming from above them. This time there was no mistaking that the sounds were gunshots. They were followed by screams and pounding footsteps. They turned to the window, which someone had opened upon coming into the mezzanine room.
Outside, they heard a clattering sound as a window frame fell from the floor above, followed by a person. There was a dull thud as they hit the ground outside.
Tian Fei rushed to the window and looked down. He saw the person below and the wrecked frame. Whoever it was, they would have had to bust out the window before jumping.
But why did this person jump? Tian Fei wondered if it had been an attempt to alert them to trouble. Before he had time to ponder the identity of the falling man, Yi Junnian interrupted: "Let's go! Head for the back door."
Out the rear entrance to the meeting room was a corridor leading to a set of stairs.
"Remember," Yi Junnian warned them, "I don't want anyone running around. Act natural. Get lost in the crowd."
Wei Dafu went first. He raced into the corridor, knocked open the fire door, and went down the stairs. Before anybody else had made it to the stairs, a gang of patrolmen crowded in from the opposite end of the corridor. They took aim and fired. Lin Shi, whose hand had just reached the fire door, took a bullet in the leg.
Yi Junnian jumped into action and yelled for everyone to go out the other door. They got down the hallway a
short distance but their way was quickly blocked by another group of patrolmen.
Yi Junnian returned to the meeting room. He sat down in front of the dominoes. He noticed a pair of dice beside them. He picked up the dice and put them in his pocket. He was about to say something when the door was pushed open.
"Ho! You're all in here, are you? What are you doing, hiding from me?"
You Tianxiao stepped into the room. He stood at the head of the table and clapped his hands. The patrolmen came in after him, each carrying a rifle. They surrounded the table. A few plain clothes detectives followed them, arraying themselves around the room. They were You Tianxiao's own men from Longhua. He shot them a glance that made clear he was not pleased with their performance.
Yi Junnian looked down at the dominoes and grinned. "Are all these guns really necessary?" he asked. "We're only betting a few hands."
"Is that right?" You Tianxiao asked. He went to stand in front of Yi Junnian. He took out a pair of dice out of his own pocket and set them on the table. They both showed sixes. "Why don't you come with us? We'll find you another place to play."
When Yi Junnian saw You Tianxiao produce the dice, his knees almost buckled. That was the signal: the agent sent by their superiors to give them the latest job was supposed to lay a pair of dice on the table. But how could he know?
"Take them away!" You Tianxiao commanded.
▧ ▧
Cui Wentai, who had been running behind Wei Dafu, made it to the stairs. When he looked around, he saw that he was alone. He exited the stairwell into a corridor. He wasn't sure what direction to go, but commanded himself to keep going, no matter what happened. When he saw an elevator, he rushed into it. When the doors slid open, he found himself in the basement of the market. It had been a freight elevator, running between cold storage and the upper floors. He picked a gunny sack up off a shelf, draped it over a shoulder, and hefted a side of pork.
Carting his pork, Cui Wentai headed for the exit. A group of patrolmen were watching. He turned and buried his face in the pork, pushed by them, and lost himself in the crowd.
A short distance away, he came upon the figure of the jumper. The patrolmen had set up a cordon around the body. A photographer was at work snapping pictures. Someone knelt down and felt to make sure there were no signs of life. A crowd of onlookers quickly formed. The patrolmen tried to chase them off, but they stubbornly refused to leave the scene. Shanghai is a city where everyone is curious, and everyone loves to stick their nose in other people's business. Cui Wentai had no interest in looking for himself. He turned and crossed the street.
Seeing a police car coming his way, Cui Wentai ducked into an alley. He was stunned to feel strong hands grab him. His heart dropped. He felt himself being pulled deeper, into a darker and more deserted stretch of the alley.
"Lao Fang!" Cui Wentai shouted when he turned to see who was prodding him.
"Where are the others?"
"They ran for it!"
Lao Fang glanced back out toward the street. Patrolmen were already working to seal off the area. "You can follow this alley all the way through to the next road," Lao Fang said. "Let's split up and make a run for it!" He slipped on the hat that he had held in his hand up until that point, then wordlessly slipped out of the alley and back into the crowd.
Cui Wentai raced deeper into the alley. When he came out the other side, he backtracked to where he had parked his car. Suddenly the thought occurred to him: Did Lao Fang think that he had taken time out of his escape to steal a side of pork?