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Murder at Black Dragon River

by Bosley Wilder

264 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); catalogue #03-1558; ISBN 1-4120-1180-9; US$23.00, C$26.00, EUR19.00, £13.50

An American teacher in China becomes a corpse. Local Police Chief Ling Feng combs through Professor Treadway's colleagues and students to solve this gruesome murder.

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about the book      about the author      sample excerpt      catalogue info

About the Book When young teacher Shelby Johnson leaves Louisiana and crosses the Pacific to teach English at a university in northern China, she does not expect to find a corpse in her office. Who would murder Judith Treadway, respected and admired senior foreign expert? A disgruntled student? Japanese? Russians? a jealous lover? Linguistics Professor Stanley Poussaint, Shelby's colleague and friend, works with the local police Chief Ling Feng, to find the answer to this gruesome murder.

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About the Author Bosley Wilder is a journalist, teacher and poet, who has written on a wide variety of topics on women, travel and other features, appearing in newspapers and magazines, including Hemispheres, Southwest Review, The Pittsburgh Press, The Block Island Times, The Holyoke Sun, The Women's Times, Massachusetts Guide, San Francisco Chronicle, and others. Professor Wilder has lived and taught in China and Russia. She and her cat, Xiao Hong, make their home in Granby, Massachusetts, and on Block Island, Rhode Island, where she currently teaches poetry to groups of young gifted and talented students.

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Sample Excerpt

Chapter 2 A Party for Newcomers

September.

Shelby Johnson and Elaine Tryst, newly appointed teachers at Shi Tong University in northern China, sat watching the student dancers like two junior high school teachers who had pulled duty as chaperons. Young Americans in their thirty's, the two women had some months ago each decided on her own to extend a teaching career with a year's contract in China. Now here they were in Shen Shang, in an awesomely strange part of the planet with a pleasant green university campus surrounded by a bustling, traffic-snarled market town. Elaine noted with some ingenuousness, given her reason for being hired to teach in China, that "nobody outside the University spoke English."

"Will you take a look at that!" At their table, at the side of the dance floor, Elaine nudged Shelby in the side as two of the Russian teacher experts, who appeared much more at home here than did the newly arrived Americans, did a sweating and bright, cheerful polka, in perfect double time to the metallic clatter coming out of the loudspeakers.

"Just what you came here to learn, isn't it, darlin'?" Shelby laughed.

Although the fall term had barely begun, the two women were well on the way to becoming good friends despite the huge differences in their personalities. Shelby was effervescent, open and easy-going, with her soft Louisiana accent. Elaine, who had been born biologically in Oregon but "born again" in her own religious terms, was frequently overtaken by the high seriousness of life. Her face had the dour expression of a disappointed latter-day don. At this, the term's "getting together party", mostly for the many new students from Europe, Australia, and the U.S., the two women observed the newcomers with unfeigned interest. The entire mass of students present presumably would be doing academic work in the Chinese department, so was not really of academic interest to the English teachers. Nevertheless, everyone here in the hall tonight had been invited as part of the foreign languages department of the University community.

The University's student dining room, converted for the night into a ballroom, glistened under the swirling light from the revolving kaleidoscope ball at the ceiling. These dozens of young foreign students who had come from their home to far off Shen Shang, China, to attend Shi Tong University, gyrated with abandon in the motley splashes of prismatic reds, yellows, and greens of strobe light so spectral they seemed radioactive.

Exercising their rights to an early loss of hearing, the kids twisted and jerked to the loud pulsating beat coming from the rap CD--Snoop Dog, Shelby recognized--blaring over the loudspeakers. Elbows askew, some moshed in the center of the dance floor, jingy; others hopped with legs jerking; trucker rockers did a sort of polka to the rap beat. A good many of them wore fashionable shoes with those thick, clumpy souls and heels that looked like combat boots, but the heavy look belied the light, quick steps many of them managed. Comical how fashions change, Shelby was thinking. When she was in college, not so long ago, actually, anyone wearing thick soles and heels like those was thought surely to have club feet or some other podiatric disability.

From Russia, Germany, the U.S. or Canada, the kids mixed and matched, getting acquainted in their own terms as they initiated themselves into pursuing a new kind of foreign language as well as an environment that involved certain new customs. The party in the ballroom of the Foreign Guest House, they were told, was to celebrate the new batch of foreign students as well as Autumn Festival. It was in full swing.

Yang Youli, the Director of the University's Foreign Affairs Unit, an office known by foreigners simply as the "Waiban," sat staid at another table to the side of the dance floor. He sipped at a bottled orange drink through a straw as he kept his eyes on the dancers. Not for nothing was Director Yang known privately as "Mr. Power." He wore well the invisible but recognizable crown of an administrator in China's established tradition of authoritarian government in the public sector. The man could also be counted upon to make the appropriate political gesture, in this case a party, lavish for China, aimed at inspiring reassurance in the foreign students that their arrival in his great country under the University's special student exchange program was a unique life opportunity, heralded tonight by the festive occasion sponsored for their pleasure by his University's Foreign Affairs Unit. As befitted a modern emperor, he was flanked by a deputy and a gofer, as well as by several of the University's official interpreters. The job of the latter was to facilitate the civil if stiff pleasantries carried on between the various guests and their host, Yang Youli, whose sole language was Mandarin Chinese, despite his politically important position as Foreign Affairs Director. In less surreal light, this stern-looking table of chaperones might have had a dampening effect upon the merrymaking. As it was, there existed a notable empty space on the dance floor in the area adjacent to the executive table.

In another area of the crowed ballroom, Dr. Judith Treadway, American and senior foreign expert in the English Department, and Professor Stanley Poussaint, linguistics specialist from Canada, did a relaxed two step along the sidelines, Poussaint doing his best to steer his dance partner clear of the more irrepressible elements in the bobbing crowd.

"I hope you're impressed!" he shouted to Judith over Christina Aguilera's pulsing song, "with my skill in keeping you from being trampled!" Just in time, he guided her out of the path of a twosome who appeared to incorporate elements of the tango in their otherwise state-of-the-art discotheque performance.

Although the Foreign Guest House was for social purposes generally off-limits to Chinese national students, a few during this busy evening had talked their way in or crept unnoticed past the fu tai, the receptionists and guardians of the gate. Most of those who had gotten in past security kept themselves as far out of sight of Director Yang Youli and the Waiban as possible. At a table in the far corner of the room, they sat eyeing foreigners, and giggling among themselves, female students decorously holding their hands in front of their mouths.

But not all of today's young Chinese were socially as docile as the students of a dozen years ago, Stanley observed to himself with some amusement as he looked out over the room. A few native youngsters moved openly onto the floor, inhibitions flung to the winds as they imitated the free street dancing and jamming of the Westerners and Overseas Chinese students from Hong Kong and Singapore, or other countries outside of the Motherland. At one table, a half dozen students ignored the beat of a Britney Spears lyric now coming from the loudspeakers, as they clapped and sang in rhythm their own folksong in Chinese. Marching to their own drum, Stanley Poussaint thought, taking wry pleasure in this ingenious expression of individuality.

A few of the female foreign students had put on dresses for the party. But the majority of the dancers, male and female, wore jeans and colored T-shirts with the usual emblems from Red Sox to home university icons to more iconoclastic statements like "Metalhead." In the great student revolts for individualism and freedom of choice, that choice, as far as fashion was concerned, appeared to be a uniform of jeans, some ragged, and T-shirts, or sweatshirts, that overall displayed the vast assortment of stenciled advertisements, jokes or geographical designations so popular in the world's consumer cultures. Few persons under the age of twenty-five had the temerity to be seen without some items of the requisite Levi-type blue denim textile as part of their clothing, be it pants or jacket. Stanley had to smile as he reflected how these items of clothing largely had made the journey from a clothing factory in China to a far part of the world to journey back with their student owners to the country of origin.

A young Asian woman wearing a single long black pigtail down her back had circled the ballroom at least four times during the current Mariah Carey vocal, dancing a solo variety of dance figures as she kicked high like a cancan dancer, swiveled her upper torso and her head like a South Indian Kathakali, then whirled like a Mongolian folk dancer. Completely absorbed in herself, she appeared from the movements of her mouth to be singing, although it was of course impossible to hear anything over the electronic blast. Her short, box-like figure was in curious contradiction to her elongated dance figures. She extended her arms and legs as though she were trying to get out of a body whose shape did not quite accommodate her need for unique expression.

Back at their table, Elaine shifted her gaze to the doorway. "Here comes Dr. Zhang," she said to Shelby. "Do you suppose he's going to ask us to dance?" she mouthed with the smallest undertone of mirth.

"Why, I'll ask him!" Shelby exclaimed in a high voice, then did her best to appear solemn as Zhang Jingchun, the chairman of the Foreign Language Department, headed toward them. Dr. Zhang's own specialty was English, one of the half dozen foreign languages offered by the University, which also specialized in Russian, Japanese, and to a lesser extent French and German.

"Are you finding the evening interesting?" Dr. Zhang motioned to a chair next to Elaine, and, at a polite nod from her, sat down at the table with the two women.

"I don't know if you'd care to dance with me, Dr. Zhang." Shelby's eyes twinkled with mischief. It was well known that Dr. Zhang did not dance.

"You young ladies are young enough to trip the light fantastic without me," he replied in his clear studied English as he gestured towards the dancers.

A kind man, Dr. Zhang chaired the department with the discipline the system demanded as well as with the private sensitivities of a fine human being. He carried within him the emotional scars of the Great Cultural Revolution of the mid-twentieth century. It was common knowledge around the University how as a very young man, he had been twice imprisoned, for no greater offense than the ability to write lyric poetry. During those horrific years, his young wife had died in the freezing outer farmland where teachers and other intellectuals had been sent for "re-education," the penalty imposed on those who occasionally did their own thinking. That re-education appeared to consist largely of cleaning latrines on the rural communes.

Dr. Judith Treadway and Professor Stanley Poussaint glided over to where the two young instructors were sitting. As they approached the table, Dr. Zhang stood up to greet them.

"Please, please," said Judith Treadway, motioning for him to sit back down. Noticing that the local TV crew had arrived, she pointed over to them and sighed. In a few minutes, she knew, one of the officials from the Waiban would come over and ask her to dance. A slow waltz or foxtrot would enable the cameraman to record the diplomacy of a local government official courteously "dancing with a foreign expert", a standard for this kind of TV news feature. Stanley Poussaint would probably be asked for a comment on the arrival of the great number of new foreign student from many nations, the kind of media request that usually drove him to threaten to hide in a telephone booth. It was difficult for him to remain genial, he remarked to Judith, with "those camcorders in my face," but he'd try to keep being a good diplomat.

"Hello, everyone," Stanley greeted Shelby and Elaine, and reached to shake hands with Dr. Zhang. They all sat at the table to watch the dancers under the kaleidoscopic lighting, bright banners, and the rows of international flags that hung overhead. "How's it going?"

"My God! Look at that!" Elaine nudged Shelby with her elbow, at the printing on an Asian looking student's T-shirt, Bust me, Baby. "You'd think they'd know better than to wear something like that in China."

Shelby smiled. "Ah don't think a Chinese would have one clue what it meant."

"Well, it's indecent."

The blaring Nelly CD came to an end. After a few minutes, a surprising new, temperate lyric sound emerged as the voice of Frank Sinatra took over the speakers in "I Left my Heart in San Francisco."

"Why, that's a real oldie!" Judith exclaimed. "Stanley, don't you know this?" She nodded in the direction of a nearby loudspeaker.

"Sure," Stanley grinned. "My mother loved it. Care to try again, Judith? If my knees to don't creak too loud."

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Across the ballroom floor, Wang Xiao Mei, in her second year as a student at Shi Tong University, accompanied by a graduate student from the Economics Department, diffidently but determinedly initiated the steps of the dancers in her vicinity, throwing her arms into the air as she shuffled, as though she knew exactly what she was doing. She noticed the English Department Chairman Zhang talking with the foreign teachers. She quickly nudged her partner so that her own face was turned away from that direction. She was not supposed to be here, she knew. But the futai on duty was a friend of the graduate student, who himself was her own father's cousin's son, so of course he had let them through the door.

Xiao Mei had learned a great deal about the workings of the world since she had been selected from all the students in her own village secondary school to enter the examinations for university admission. She alone had been selected to attend Shi Tong University for training as a future English teacher. Now she was here, dancing in this huge dance room. She, Xiao Mei, no longer a girl, but a mature woman, who had come to know life and love hardly dreamed of before these past few wonderful weeks at university. She looked up at the strobe light, feeling as though she was doing arabesques on an imaginative level.

Xiao Mei was very happy. In this room, she could share yet another small part of her life with her yellow-haired loved one, whom she could see through the crowd across the room as he politely danced with another of the foreign students. HE and SHE did not dare to acknowledge each other publicly; they had to keep their love secret. But perhaps it would not be for long. Her tall, handsome beloved had given her his sweet smile once earlier this evening. The smile, held and memorized in the flashes of the white strobe light, would feed her thoughts and envelop him, until she could be with him again.

She brought her hand up to touch her face, as her lover had the other night while a fingernail of a moon had shown above them. It had been so warm when they lay in the grass together. Enfolded in her lover's arms, she had felt as though she were home in her own dreams in her own countryside. hypnotized by the moonlight, she had found joy in his strength and wonderful love. That tiny bit of moon had been a symbol in the darkness of their love, which would grow and grow, she knew. She lay in his arms, his masculinity overcoming her, so painful, so sweet!

What would her beloved grandmother, who had brought her up in strict tradition in their village, say when she found out how her granddaughter had felt such joy as her lover Taylor had come to know her. Ever since she had begun to stay alone after class when she knew she loved her blue-eyed teacher and he loved her. Their love had grown with each passing day. The other evening, as they had arranged again to meet secretly outside, he had caressed her hair, and touched her, touched parts of her body that no one, not even herself, knew.

"Wo ai ni!" She breathed into his ear.

"I love you too, Xiao Mei. I love you."

That he was a foreigner was not important. He was HE and she was SHE. Nothing could stand in the way of their love, nothing else mattered. She surprised herself by recognizing that she would kill, if necessary, to maintain this beautiful, lucky love that had been given to them. She wanted to tell grandmother about it. Of all the people in the world, she felt that Grandma would understand.

She, Xiao Mei, had worked so hard to get into University, to have a future. She smiled. Who would have known this great love was to be her future? Her smile erupted into a whispered happy murmur.

"What did you say, my darling?" "Wo ai ni- my darling." The English "my darling" felt strange on her tongue. But she would get used to calling him that. Xiao Mei smiled to herself as she reflected she was learning many new phrases of the English language that were not in her textbooks.

"You are my perfect one, my gentle princess. You are the most perfect princess in the world. All mine." He tightened his arms about her.

"You are my prince. My master."

They had lain for a long time in the grass, hands entwined. The earth beneath them was sweet, the fingernail moon obscured for a moment by a passing cloud. The lights from the window of an undergraduate dormitory at the end of the campus road several yards away from where they lay were almost all extinguished. It was close to eleven o'clock curfew time at his dorm.

After some minutes, they had stood, shaking the leaves from their clothes. Holding each other tenderly, they had kissed once more, then parted, each heading in then direction of their separate housing.

Tonight, after another look over the crowded dance floor to spot her beautiful lover just one more time, she turned to her cousin and politely requested that they leave. It was getting late. Her dormitory would be closing soon. It was important that she observe the curfew rules, and not get into trouble.

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Catalogue Information

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