Chapter 2908: Mai Ruibao in Guangzhou (1)

Two thousand kilometers from Jeju Island, in the Guangzhou bureau of The Young Companion — an office of barely twenty square meters, thick with cigarette smoke, sweat, and printer's ink — Mai Ruibao held the telegram he had just opened, thunderstruck.

"This assignment's been a complete waste."

He muttered it under his breath. When he had unfolded the telegram and seen the notice that the photographs and interview copy he had only just dispatched to head office were "not to be published," Mai Ruibao felt as though he had been whacked across the skull with a sandbag: fury, humiliation, bewilderment — even the manner of delivering the bad news defied imagination. What could possibly be so wrong with his photographs and his coverage of the Zhaoqing grand exercises that head office had to fire off an urgent telegram just for this? He turned the flimsy sheet over and over, reading it frontward and backward, but from that miserly text — every character hoarded like gold — he could not extract so much as a hint. Beyond the kill order there remained a single line instructing him to "cooperate with the Times on interviews and photography in Guangzhou." And so for days he had done nothing but trail after Miss Sun shooting material for a "New Look of Guangzhou" spread, and now here he stood in the Guangzhou city government offices, witnessing Zhu Hengyin — vice chairman of the Guilin Municipal Consultative Council, director of the Guangzhou Municipal Library (in preparation), and special research fellow of the Truth Office — in conversation with Mayor Liu and the reporter Miss Sun Shangxiang, while he himself scurried back and forth taking their photographs.

Zhu Hengyin was just past forty. Resplendent though he was in embroidered silks, he perched in the mayor's reception room as uneasily as a Qiongzhou farmyard rustic shown into the Longhao Bay Grand Hotel — keeping up his talk with Mayor Liu, submitting to Miss Sun's questions, while his eyeballs never stopped swiveling after the camera in Mai Ruibao's hands. Whenever the flashlamp popped, the former Ming General Who Guards the Realm clamped both eyes shut and nearly sprang clean out of the sofa.

"Country bumpkin. Coward!" Mai Ruibao grumbled inwardly — thanks to whom he was now reduced to shooting this deadly dull assignment with an uncooperative subject into the bargain. But then, who had told this fellow of the old Zhu family — a clansman of the Ming imperial house, no less — to go over to the Kun of his own accord during the Guangxi campaign and press himself so warmly upon the Senate, thereby acquiring genuine united-front value? Sure enough, the moment the Fubo Army liberated Guilin, the Prince of Jingjiang, Zhu Hengjia, and the whole stubborn lot of them were packed off to Kaohsiung for land reclamation, while Zhu Hengyin, in his new capacity as a "progressive personage," turned around and moved into the Prince of Jingjiang's palace — drawing a Senate stipend, too, and coming up to Guangzhou and Lingao every few days to "study," "inspect," and "research." Naturally he also paid his requisite calls on the Ziming Tower and Heyuan Street, immersing himself in the advanced civilization of the Australians.

Though this former Ming General Who Guards the Realm counted for little in the imperial clan's hierarchy, his basic polish was in place, and he picked up new vocabulary remarkably fast. Before an interview he could hold forth at length, his bearing scholarly and correct.

"Big Brother Mai." The interview — one that seemed to contain nothing of actual substance — had just concluded, and that sweet, glutinous voice came drifting over, sending a thrill through Mai Ruibao's chest even as he packed up his plate holders in a sulk. While mumbling vague assent he began weighing his options: should he invite Miss Sun to the Dong Family Shop for pastries, or find a teahouse and treat her to a cup of cooling herbal tea, or perhaps one of the newfangled, fashionable ice parlors for a cold treat? But before he could get any of it out, Sun Shangxiang was already issuing him instructions: "I need to get my copy back as quickly as possible. The people at city government say the Wuzhishan has a sailing today — be a dear and go down to the wharf and buy me a ticket. Second class."

"The paper has a bureau right here," Mai Ruibao said, forcing down the invitation he had never managed to voice. "I'll get one of the clerks on it—"

"They're hopeless at that sort of thing — how could they possibly compare with Big Brother Mai?" Miss Sun flew him a melting glance. "You could always sail back with me, you know."

"Ah. Except — under the travel regulations, I can only claim reimbursement for a third-class berth."

"Really? Then it's settled — thank you, Big Brother Mai. Now, I still have to go interview some local merchants at the Great World, so let's meet at the Great World wharf." Sun Shangxiang slung her kidskin document case — a Shop No. 82 product — over her arm, took two steps, and abruptly remembered something else. "Today's negatives will have to be developed promptly as well. If they can't make it back to Lingao with me, they must at least go out on the next ship."

Mai Ruibao stood rooted before the city government gate, watching Miss Sun — her instructions complete — swing onto Chengxuan Street without a backward glance and hail a Venus rickshaw. Only when the rickshaw's silhouette had vanished around the corner did he come back to himself. He sighed and set off toward the South Gate.

Outside the South Gate, Tianzi Wharf was as bustling and lively as ever, even though large steamers no longer berthed there. On their maiden calls at Guangzhou the Wuzhishan and the Baiyunshan had moored at Tianzi Wharf to work their passengers, in keeping with tradition — but the problems had quickly laid themselves bare: the ancient wharf lacked loading facilities, and its cramped confines could hardly absorb passengers who turned up by the thousand, waiting and boarding all at once. More important, the Pearl River's front channel along the northern rim of Henan Island was narrow and silting for liners of the T1200 class, while the packed ranks of sailboats and small craft in the river threatened the liners' safety every moment they were under way — until one day the Baiyunshan, swerving to avoid another vessel, nearly ran onto Haiyin Rock. In response, Liu Xiang proposed routing the large steamers through the rear channel, and petitioned the Planning Institute to build a deep-water inner harbor at Bai'etan, with a new large combined passenger-and-freight terminal to be sited at Zhoutouzui on Henan Island's western tip. But like everything else in his "New Guangzhou" portfolio — the Xiguan New Town, the Pearl River iron bridge, the Fangcun industrial park, the Shamian Senator residential district, the Huangsha railway station — the scheme was so grand that who could say what year, what month, it would ever be realized. And so the two great liners' berth was shifted, provisionally, out to Whampoa, the outer port where merchantmen gathered, and the Dabo Company laid on a shuttle service: between the Great World's annex wharf and Whampoa, a pair of little steamers cast off every half hour to ferry passengers back and forth. Mai Ruibao walked straight down Chengxuan Street, out the South Gate, and on to Tianzi Wharf, where he boarded one of the cross-river ferries ubiquitous on the Pearl River and paid the boatman one Australian white-metal coin to carry him to the Great World wharf — though for a few more white-metal coins, the boatman would have rowed the ferry all the way out to Whampoa and set him directly aboard the liner, as many an ordinary traveler chose to do.

"Not sailing until ten o'clock at night? Why so late?" At the Dabo Company ticket office that stood at the Great World wharf, Mai Ruibao stared in dismay at the tickets just purchased — one second class, one third. The clerk glanced at the young man before him, hair long and unkempt from a month and more of field assignments, and his face promptly arranged itself into the look of a man thinking: another mountain hick who's never been off the farm. His tone, when it came, was anything but patient. "You know what a great ocean liner is, hm? The ones the Chiefs built? Don't ride the big midnight tide, how's she to get out the river mouth and put to sea? You think she's one of them watermelon-flat boats off your village pond?" (The watermelon-flat being a wooden craft common in Guangdong that carries both passengers and freight.)

Before he became a journalist, Mai Ruibao would most likely have flared up at an insult like that. Now he merely gave a snort and turned away — while, as if in passing, his eye took in the wooden worker's badge sitting behind the ticket window's glass. Well now — there was his next story, gift-wrapped. Although... might it not be better to hand this one to Miss Sun? Social news was her beat; he could tell her to dig a little deeper into it, and then supply a few "judiciously chosen" photographs of his own...

"Little brother Ruibao!" A familiar hail broke into his thoughts — and, indirectly, spared the ticket clerk his fate.

"Brother Pandao! What brings you to Guangzhou? Why — you've joined the army?" The man hailing Reporter Mai was none other than Shi Chang, his old classmate from Fangcaodi. Because his given name was a trial to write and a puzzle to read, teachers and schoolmates alike had always addressed him by his courtesy name, Pandao. Shi Pandao was a Haizhou man by origin, the oldest boy in their class, good-natured, and at the very top of the rankings — widely looked up to by his classmates. Mai Ruibao had been siphoned off to the art intensive course back in higher primary school, while Shi Pandao's marks were so strong that even the Senator teachers declared his admission to the middle school division all but certain, and for a time Mai Ruibao had envied him sorely. Who could have imagined that Pandao would throw over the scholar's ladder of advancement, trade his Fangcaodi school uniform for an army one, and turn up as an artillery lieutenant — visored cap on his head, sleeve braid and collar tabs both the red of the artillery arm? Covering the grand exercises, kill order notwithstanding, had taught Mai Ruibao a good deal about the Fubo Army; he knew that technical arms like the artillery loved a literate soldier — never mind a proper military academy graduate; even a Fangcaodi primary-school graduate won promotion to officer more easily than a soldier of ordinary background.

"What a stroke of luck! Come, come — let me introduce you." Shi Pandao pulled over another officer. The two bore a certain family resemblance about the brows and eyes, though this one stood taller, wore a mustache upon his chin, and looked considerably the more seasoned. On his head sat one of the rarely seen mountain-style field caps, and on his shoulder boards gleamed the silver insignia of a captain of artillery. "This is my clan cousin. Given name Hao, courtesy name Tai'er — fourth class of the military academy's artillery program, posted nowadays to the Northern Detachment. He's come back this time to be decorated for merit. They say there's a medal in it — and what's more, the Chiefs are going to issue him a bride."

After the burst of laughter, Mai Ruibao had clean forgotten every one of his troubles — where to find a darkroom to develop his assignment negatives, how to pursue the question of the Dabo Company's service attitude — and he warmly invited the Shi brothers out for cold drinks: "The weather this year is strange in the extreme. They say it was still snowing in the north in the fourth month, while Guangzhou went into summer ahead of schedule — the sun's been murder every single day, leaves you heat-frayed and fretful."

"What's so strange about it? How does that song go? The skies above the Senate are sunny skies. Well then — under Ming rule, of course it has to keep snowing into the sixth month—"

"Hahaha..."

Even the most ardent trend-chasing gourmets of Guangzhou agreed that the ice parlor was an utter novelty. Coming in for a bottle of Australian soda and a serving of frozen milk custard — or, in the fashionable phrase the Chiefs used: ice cream — beat chasing after the itinerant cold-drink peddlers and fishing a brine-frozen popsicle out from under the grimy quilted lid of their wooden boxes, in both respectability and comfort. There happened to be just such an establishment near the Great World wharf. The shop floor was small, but its gaudy Australian-style signboard drew the eye, three big characters across its face — Zhengguanghe — the calligraphy somewhat askew. It abruptly occurred to Mai Ruibao that he had seen Chief Liu's own hand hanging in the mayor's office. Surely not...? He hastened to expel the disrespectful thought from his head.

(End of Chapter)