LOMO is part of life.
LOMO Rule
Lin Fei’s cramped little apartment was not far from Jiuyan Bridge, tucked behind the notorious unfinished high-rise east of it. It was only a one-bedroom place, yet he had swaddled the living room in heavy black curtains and turned it into a darkroom.
The moment he got home, Lin Fei plunged into the darkroom and developed the roll he had just shot. Feilin means photographic film, an old Chinese rendering of the English word “film.” Nowadays it generally refers to camera film, though it can also mean negatives used in printing plate-making. Back in the day, it was seeing that word feilin that had made Lin Fei fall in love with photography. It seemed the perfect expression of his own name. Lin Fei possessed a pair of eyes the ancient Shu called “subduing-nightmare pupils.” People with such eyes could see what happened in spans of time invisible to others. By combining that ability with LOMO cameras, Lin Fei was able to produce all manner of uncanny photographs.
What he had shot at Three Ears was what had happened the night before. Because the Smena 8M could expose the same frame again and again without limit, it could present on a single negative the events that had unfolded across a whole stretch of time. Sure enough, among the thirty-six developed photos, two contained strange, mysterious black shadows.
Those two images showed the scene at one in the morning, just when Three Ears had closed for the night. Though the hall was dark, the ISO 1600 film still clearly recorded the figure of a fat back lingering in every corner of the room. The shadow wandered here and there, knocking over a row of jars of infused liquor behind the bar, then opening the refrigerators and rummaging about for something. In the last few ghosted exposures of the second photo, one could see the figure descending from upstairs carrying away some enormous round object.
That was probably the treasure of Three Ears.
Lin Fei propped his chin in one hand and stared at the fat silhouette for a while, as a very familiar feeling rose in him. I have definitely seen this fellow before, he thought. But who was it? Or rather, what was it? After thinking for a while, he imported the close-ups he had taken with the GRD II into the computer and began examining them one by one. The GRD II was a professional’s ideal second camera, with an excellent fixed lens. Lin Fei had attached to the front an infrared filter imprinted with a ritual seal, so that it could photograph certain “special” images.
He concentrated on the photos of the bar and the refrigerators. At 1000x magnification he could just make out wave-like scratch marks on them. “Wave-like? Could it be…” Lin Fei immediately went online. He first entered the database of Dingdingmao, the internal forum of the ancient Shu, and pulled up the photo of the stolen three-handled bronze cauldron from Sanxingdui. Then he Googled photos of the stolen treasure-pot from Three Ears. Compared side by side, the answer sprang out at once. The shape of the Three Ears heirloom pot was astonishingly similar to the Sanxingdui cauldron, and even the taotie patterns were identical. Clearly, someone long ago had made it as an imitation of that bronze tripod. But why would the thief want to steal these two nearly identical cooking vessels?
A chat window flashed in the lower right corner of the screen. Lin Fei moved the mouse over it and Gtalk popped open. Mendenger’s avatar was blinking.
Mendenger: /I just got word that the treasure of Three Ears has also been stolen.
Dingcat: /I just came back from eating there.
Mendenger: /Ah, then did you...
Dingcat: /Cut the crap. Of course I know. I also found that the Three Ears treasure looks almost exactly like the stolen bronze three-handled cauldron. Don't tell me you've been hiding something.
Mendenger: /Not at all! But what I need to tell you is this: the Sanxingdui bronze cauldron originally had a pair. The other one was accidentally smashed during transport after the new museum building was completed. The patterns on the pair matched one another. They formed a kind of ancient pictographic script. Supposedly a complete Sichuan-cuisine recipe was hidden in them.
Dingcat: /That sounds way too sci-fi. A recipe? The old man told me that ancient Shu people only knew how to boil fish. And besides, chili peppers have only been in China for a few hundred years. What Sichuan cuisine could there have been back then?
Mendenger: /Believe it or not. If someone could reconstruct the most authentic ancient Shu Sichuan cuisine from thousands of years ago, they'd make a fortune. Listen, here's the crucial point. Over the last hundred-plus years, several legendary Chengdu master chefs, all of them of ancient Shu blood, have studied that Sanxingdui bronze cauldron. Afterward, they used the pair as models to cast a number of cooking vessels, each slightly different but bearing the same patterns. Pots, vats, kettles, the lot. Those vessels are now scattered throughout Chengdu, and many became the heirlooms of famous shops. Like the bronze pot at Three Ears.
Dingcat: /I get it now!
Mendenger: /Get what?
Dingcat: /The thief is trying to gather every vessel modeled on the bronze cauldron, reconstruct the pattern from the smashed one, there must be some copies made from that broken original, and piece together the legendary recipe. If, that is, what you say is true.
Mendenger: /Makes sense. Clear logic. Solid deduction.
Dingcat: /Do you know how many copies there were in total?
Mendenger: /Do you know what another ancient name for Chengdu was?
Dingcat: /What? Stop playing suspense games.
Mendenger: /Turtle City. One for each of Chengdu's eight corners.
Dingcat: /Damn. I'm logging off.
Closing Gtalk, Lin Fei looked once more at the blurred fat silhouette in the photo. Since the clues were wrapping themselves ever more tightly around the matter of food, the thief had to be some ravenous glutton.
“A ravenous glutton?” Wait. Lin Fei looked again at the wave-like scratch marks in the photo. “Isn’t this a taotie pattern?”
Taotie, in Chinese legend, is an ancient divine beast. Taotie motifs are most commonly found on bronzes. After the Western Zhou they suddenly vanished from the decorative world, and no one knows why. In fact, because the Zhou army had turned on the ancient Shu forces who had helped them, and because later rulers did all they could to evade that fact, emblematic patterns of Shu culture disappeared from Chinese history. Taotie became one of the most obscure mythical beasts of all, burdened with every kind of bad name. Its greatest characteristic was its appetite. The Classic of Divine Marvels says: “In the southwest there is one with a hairy body and a pig-like head… it is called taotie.” The Gazette of Gods and Monsters, chapter on strange beasts, says: “In the far south of the divine realm there is a vicious beast, four-eyed, black-skinned, long-necked, four-legged, savage in nature, immeasurably greedy of food.” In truth, just like the ancient Shu, taotie have continued to exist quietly in the land of Bashu. Lin Fei had seen the creature more than once. It was nothing like the terrible monster of popular imagination. On the contrary, it was much gentler and cuter. The trouble was that this species was deeply secretive and disliked going online. It would not be easy to locate them in a hurry.
So where would the taotie who stole the cauldron go next? Lin Fei’s eyes turned, and an idea came to him. If there were as many as eight imitations, then he would search by direction. Though the ancient city gates of old Chengdu had long ago burned away in history, Chengdu people still liked to refer to parts of the city as East Gate, South Gate, West Gate, and North Gate. Since Yulin lay in the South Gate area, then East Gate would be next.
Shoot from the hip.
LOMO Rule
Sichuan people love spicy food, but they do not call chili peppers “chili peppers.” They call them haijiao, sea peppers, and the reason is simple enough: peppers came to China by sea from Central and South America. In Chengdu there is a street actually called Haijiao Market Street. In the past it was the largest inland market for peppers in southwest China, the whole street filled with a sky-piercing pungency. Between Haijiao Market and the Lianhua district there runs a hidden little lane that suddenly comes alive at sunset, its two sides packed with stalls selling every kind of snack. Chengdu people who know it all call it Food Street. Lin Fei preferred to call it Back Street, for an even simpler reason: it lay behind his own neighborhood.
It was close to midnight when Lin Fei got off the bus at Lianhua First Compound, doubled through the alleys, and entered Back Street. From a distance he could already hear the uproar of voices. In Chengdu, any place with good food is forever bursting with people. The entire street was packed with tables. Men well into their cups sat bare-chested and yelling. Women leaned close together, sipping VE soybean milk in tiny mouthfuls. It was one of Chengdu’s little myths: in a consumer city so highly developed, at meals women seemed to drink only one kind of beverage, and all of it the same brand. This too was one of the small tricks used by the ancient Shu who guarded the city. Decades ago, they had quietly added a certain fragrance to this peanut-based drink, so that women developed an innate dependence on it. It had since become one of the steadiest sources of revenue for the Ancient Shu Relief Foundation.
Lin Fei had originally planned to walk from one end of Back Street to the other, shooting whatever he pleased in hopes of finding a clue. But no sooner had he entered than he ran into the owner of the very best taro dry-pot chicken place on the street, an old acquaintance who grabbed hold of him and would not let him go. The fragrance rising from the dry pots before the diners also made it impossible for him to move on. Fine, then. Better indulge himself here first. Do not question Lin Fei’s capacity for food. Though this was already the third meal he had eaten that evening, in Chengdu even a slim-waisted girl whose first concern in life is dieting can still easily make the rounds of several food venues in a single night.
Taro dry-pot chicken is one variety of gan guo, dry pot. Dry pot is so called in contrast to hotpot. Hotpot is for dipping and cooking a wide variety of ingredients. Dry pot, by contrast, is stir-fried in the kitchen and served directly to the table as a dish. When you have eaten most of it, broth is added, along with extra ingredients, and only then does it turn into something like a hotpot. The Back Street taro dry-pot chicken contained only three things, potato, bamboo shoots, and chicken, and yet it was astonishingly fragrant.
Lin Fei’s mouth never stopped chewing, but his eyes kept scanning the crowd. The back kitchens of the various food shops were indoors, and by the rules there was no way he could simply walk in and inspect them. He could only search for clues outside. By instinct he felt certain that the thief was here too. The lighting on Back Street was complicated, the crowds dense. Lin Fei took off his T-shirt and draped it over the back of the chair, then drew out an authentic LOMO camera: an LC-A hidden beneath the shirt, with a cable release attached to the hot shoe and quietly gripped in his hand. The shutter had been set to 1/500. Combined with very high-speed film, it could catch certain things invisible to the naked eye.
“Iced jelly! White fungus soup! Lotus-seed sweet soup! Guiling jelly!”
“Green plums! Green plums!”
“Shoeshine! Shoeshine…”
In Chengdu, wherever people are eating, there are always hawkers weaving through the crowd. Certain goods and services with strong local color, things impossible to support as standalone shops, such as bingfen or ear-cleaning, rely on these people to keep the trade alive. They usually have some arrangement with the restaurants and are free to enter and do business inside.
Lin Fei had already eaten too much that evening and had no intention of buying more snacks. Yet just as he was lowering his head to drink his tea, the strap of the backpack hanging on his chair suddenly slid down of its own accord, as if someone had brushed against it. He looked up. No one had just walked past. Lin Fei thought for a moment, then immediately pulled an Agat-18K from his bag and began snapping photos in the direction before him.
The 18K was a classic half-frame camera. Though it used ordinary 135 film, each exposure occupied only half a normal frame, which meant that a roll of thirty-six exposures produced seventy-two images. The 18K had once been used as a spy camera, and its images were sharp enough to be ideal for surveillance. There was no time now for Lin Fei to find a place to develop the film, so he had to pull the T-shirt over his head, dismantle the camera, and use his “subduing-nightmare pupils” to view the negatives directly. Lin Fei’s brain was quick enough to reverse the negative images into positives in his mind. But staring at undeveloped film directly was hard on the eyes. After only a few frames, he was already beginning to feel dizzy and light-headed.
Still, effort was rewarded. Just as he had suspected, one strip of half-frame negatives showed clearly that several meters away a hunched back was pushing a cart that sold bingfen. The edges of the figure were blurred, which meant it was moving at some speed invisible to normal sight.
Lin Fei sprang from his chair, rushed forward several steps, and slapped hard at a relatively empty patch in the middle of the lane. His palm smacked squarely against a cotton-padded gown, and a gaunt old man with a shabby four-wheeled pushcart slowly came into view before him.
The old man turned and stared at Lin Fei in surprise. Half the bowl of guiling jelly in his hand sloshed out. Grinning, Lin Fei said, “Qu Shan’er, what are you doing acting all weird selling bingfen here? Why were you hiding from me when you saw me?”
The old man’s surname was Qu. Back in the day he had been the famous Pushcart Qu. In Chengdu dialect, earthworms are called qushan’er, and Old Qu had acquired the nickname because of his stoop. Qu Shan’er gave a sheepish smile and said, “So it’s Lin boy. I didn’t notice you just now. Sorry about that.”
“Save it.” Lin Fei ladled himself a full bowl of liangxia from the cart. Ignoring the pained twitch on Qu Shan’er’s face, he piled a thick layer of raisins over the top and went on talking while he ate. “Your eyes are sharp enough. How could you not have seen me? What, were you begrudging me your snacks again?”
Qu Shan’er gave a bitter laugh. “If I run into you I feel bad charging you, but you can eat half my cart clean by yourself. Then my whole night is wasted.” Pushcart Qu had long since sold cheaply only to women, children, and beggars. His cart was protected by an illusion spell, and on his legs he wore magical courier charms, allowing him to make several circuits of Chengdu every night. Ordinary people could not see him at all. Catching him here on Back Street tonight was sheer luck.
“As if I eat for free every time.” Lin Fei pointed into the air. “Let me ask you something. Do you know of any place on Back Street whose pot is a three-handled bronze pot? About this big.” He gestured with both hands. “About the size of that big dragon-spout tea kettle you use. With that kind of pattern on it.” But the moment his hands matched the outline of Qu Shan’er’s enormous tea kettle, he froze.
Nearly every pushcart in Chengdu that sold bingfen came with a huge dragon-spout bronze tea kettle. But Qu Shan’er’s was unlike the others. Besides the handle, it had an ear on each side, making three in all, and the patterns on it… weren’t those taotie motifs?
“Huh?” Lin Fei’s mouth fell open. “Qu Shan’er, how have I never noticed this before? Your big tea kettle looks like that? Isn’t it exactly like the three-handled bronze cauldron from Sanxingdui?”
“Heh heh. So you know it too. It’s an heirloom. Been in use nearly a hundred years.”
Lin Fei gently stroked the smooth body of the kettle and thought with satisfaction, Good. No need to run all over the city anymore. The thief is bound to come for this. I’ll just stick close to Qu Shan’er and wait for the hare at the stump.
At that very moment, a child spotted Pushcart Qu, tottered crookedly up in front of him, and held out a coin. “Uncle, I want bingfen.”
“Coming right up!” Qu Shan’er shoved Lin Fei aside and deftly began mixing a plastic bowl. Seeing the adorable fringe on the child’s forehead, Lin Fei crouched down and patted his head. “Hey there, kiddo. What’s your name?”
To his surprise, the child suddenly adopted a cold expression and said, “My name’s Taotao. My dad said you’d definitely pat my forehead. Once you did, you’d be in trouble, and then my dad could take the big tea kettle away.”
Lin Fei was thunderstruck. He whirled around. Qu Shan’er now stood there empty-handed. The dragon-spout bronze kettle had vanished without a trace. In its place on the pushcart sat a gleaming new golden kettle. Far away, a black shape flickered over the heads of the diners. He turned back again and reached to grab the child, but caught only air. Looking again, the child had also disappeared.
“Well now. So that’s your game.” Gritting his teeth, Lin Fei said, “Qu Shan’er, I’ll go get it back for you.” With that he snatched an electric scooter from the roadside and tore off in pursuit of the vanishing shadow, leaving behind a stunned Pushcart Qu and his cart.