Inspector Chen and the Private Kitchen Murder

  The verdant trees stretching long

  along the desolate bank, a tower

  distantly dissolving into the faint mist,

  the petals falling over an angler’s shoulder,

  with the reflections spreading

  on the water of the autumn river …

  Xuanji had dreamed of something like a recluse’s life in a poem of hers, but in vain; with luck, he could probably spend a week like that, writing undisturbed in the mountains covered in the verdant trees.

  Then came another familiar ringing from his silver-colored phone. A WeChat message from Jin, he guessed. Instead of a message, it presented a selfie of Jin, sitting against the bus window, pressing a finger against her lips. He refrained from reading too much into the meaning of her pose.

  Putting down the phone, he wondered whether he could add a note at the end of the story, saying, ‘The juxtaposition of the past and the present. Written in the midst of the investigation into the Min case.’

  Failing that, something like Gulik’s postscript at the end of Poets and Murder, mentioning his reservations about the Xuanji case in a subtle parallel to ‘a present case’ he’d just looked into. Some close-reading readers should be able to pick up the clues.

  So he was ready to start the Judge Dee novella in earnest.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Glen Barclay, whose email inspired me with the original idea for a book about Inspector Chen in contemporary China in comparison with Judge Dee in ancient China.