Final thoughts on A Loyal Character Dancer

Just finished this book. I has a sad that Inspector Chen and Catherine Rohn couldn't be together but it really would be impossible politically. It would ruin his party career to marry an American and as Yu said, given his background he could never go far in a law enforcement career in the US. As if he could leave anyways.

Even worse, they find poor Wen and she has to leave Liu (the guy who has loved her for 20 odd years in secret and united at last) to go to the States to be with her shitstain abusive older husband. It really sucks to be a woman in most of the world. If she stayed in China, the gangs were after her. The big mystery was the gangs had coerced her into poisoning her husband.

I really like the poem Liu wrote about her which is too long to copy here. He was a reporter with the Wenhui Daily (a real paper, btw, founded in Shanghai in 1938) and went to Fujian to write a story about the factories there. There in Changle (or ChangLe, also a real place in east Fujian) he unexpectedly sees Wen and writes a poem where the factory manager describes her as "as a grinder, but a revolutionary one, polishing up the spirit of our society." Which sounds beautiful for a split second. Then you think about how tragic and wasteful the Cultural Revolution was and you want to vomit.

I love Detective Yu. For one example, where in the scene where he interrogates a prostitute and she mentions two triad members forced her into a threesome he tells her she had better cooperate now as group sex is illegal. Uhm, what? WTF was going on with China. Defiantly Atheist and yet as prudish as an old Church organist. I wonder if any of this has changed (I mean, not that I'm like give me group sex or give me death but how or why would you make that illegal?) He and Pequin finally get their own place at the end of this book instead of sharing a converted Shikuman house dining room with their son.

If I ever get the urge to learn more about Chinese poetry, look up Su Dongpu.