The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics Read online

  ‘The fish you will eat are all swimming in the aquarium, which is in the room to my left, through the blue-lit door. The poultry is clucking away in cages in a room to the left of the kitchen. The crabs, lobsters, prawns and crayfish are swimming in tanks on the east side of the aquarium. The vegetables are growing in conservatory trays in the climate-controlled greenhouse on the floor below us. The giant sea turtle tried to escape twice but has been apprehended and is now in safe custody in the care of the sous chef.’

  Pause. Cue laughter. The speaker bowed slightly to acknowledge the audience reaction. ‘And now, let the magic begin. The food will inspire you to repeat to yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, I hope, the exclamatory phrase which has given this restaurant its name.’ He switched to English: ‘This Is Living.’

  He banged a gong, and the lights dimmed. A Japanese chef appeared from a door on the left, with a massive knife in one hand and a sharpening tool in the other. He rubbed them together, making sparks fly in the darkness. From the other wing, another chef hurried into the room holding a large fish in a net. He dropped the shiny green creature onto the carving table and the two chefs started to dissect it. It wasn’t easy. The beast wriggled and flapped—and was clearly quite strong.

  The diners looked on with a mixture of horror and morbid fascination as the heavy knives chopped through its twitching, frantic green skin. Dark blood spurted.

  De Labauve was back on the microphone, this time providing a commentary. ‘This dish has been nominated by Mr Tun Feiyu. Thank you Mr Tun. My sous chef Benny Tomori and his assistant aim to get the fish filleted and onto your plate while it is still flapping. This is not an easy job and needs great skill on the part of the chef. You may think that removing the fish’s spine will render it unable to move, but the flesh of the fish can continue to contract and expand even after the backbone has been extracted.’

  Right on cue, the two chefs pulled the spine out of the fish and held it up. It looked like something from a children’s cartoon.

  ‘It will be served with the beating hearts of frogs, which the chefs in the kitchen have prepared for you in the past few minutes,’ De Labauve continued.

  While Tomori and his assistant rapidly began slicing the filleted fish into small pieces, two other chefs appeared with a dish of animated objects—the frogs’ hearts—which were swiftly placed on small plates and distributed to diners, who broke into a spontaneous round of applause.

  Then diners stared at the twitching morsels of flesh on their plates with either horror, delight, or delighted horror, before the braver ones among them splattered them with soy sauce and wasabi, and popped them into their mouths. Wong was thrilled and ate his portion with his eyes closed in rapture. The thumping, slimy frog’s heart was particularly flavoursome, although a little hard to get a grip on with one’s teeth.

  ‘Astonishing,’ said Park Hae-jin, a Korean businessman sitting nearby, who chewed slowly with pleasure in his eyes.

  ‘Eat, eat,’ Chen Shaiming, a Beijing factory owner, said to his nervous-looking wife Fangyin.

  ‘Ew! Does it hurt it to be cut up like that?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it likes it. Fish and frogs don’t have feelings. They don’t feel pain.’

  After a slow start, all the portions were consumed (although several of the women surreptitiously passed their portions to their male partners to consume).

  The second dish was Shanghai hairy crabs, nominated by a Shanghai-Indian import-export businessman named Vishwa Mathew Roy. A rack of the creatures—unusually large, female specimens—was wheeled into the room. The crabs’ pincers were tied shut with pink ribbons, and their legs similarly incapacitated. Yet one of them had somehow come loose. It was scuttling sideways across the top of its fellows, towards the edge of the tray and freedom. One of the chefs caught it and turned it upside down to retie its bonds.

  Once the display was tidy again, a junior chef quickly went along with his fingers, flicking the eyestalks of each crab to make sure they flinched, proving that they were all still alive— and thus truly fresh.

  This job done, thick, steaming-hot soup was poured into a massive tureen under the crabs. A glass dome was placed over the entire structure and then the flames were turned up high. The soup quickly started boiling, steaming the crabs to death. After just sixty seconds, the flames were turned off and the transparent lid removed. The crabs were picked up with tongs and placed on the diners’ plates. Waiters laid gloves on the tables.

  De Labauve strode to centre stage again to provide commentary: ‘Most of you probably know how to eat hairy crab. But for those who don’t, this is what to do. Stick your fingers under the edge of the shell like so—and rip the top half off the crab like this,’ he said. ‘Don’t worry. It’s almost definitely dead by now—and if it isn’t, it soon will be.’

  Inside, the crab was a steaming and delicious white. And since they were female crabs, there was succulent yellow roe to eat, too. Wonderful.

  Food, Wong decided, should always be served or cooked alive if at all possible. Certainly if it was going to be presented to men. (The women appeared to be less enchanted with the process.) Males should eat just-slaughtered food several times a year if possible, he decided—preferably this should include some food that was alive when it went into the mouth. The consumption of meat, after all, was not just a way of getting nourishment into the body. It was symbolic of the struggle to live. Just as early man had to battle sabre-toothed tigers to keep his family alive, so modern men needed to be involved in some sort of physical activity to make his meals really satisfying. Buying slices of them dead in plastic wrappings, Western-style, from the supermarket—what kind of True Man would do a thing like that? No, food should be grappled with, and the winner should eat the loser.

  In a situation like this, the food was alive and could, in theory, win the battle. The lobster could snap at the fingers of the human trying to eat it, jump off the table and run to the elevator. The turtles, De Labauve had said, had already tried to make a break for freedom. But of course, no one wanted the animals to escape, so the odds were weighted in the humans’ favour. And the deep, primal satisfaction of killing an animal as or just before one eats it—what a shame that the vast majority of people would never know that feeling. It seemed fitting that business people in China, who were proving to be masters of innovative entrepreneurialism, had successfully arranged a way to let people experience death as part of living. Killing was part of eating, and it was wrong for them to be separated.

  After the crab, a drink was distributed as a palate cleanser. It turned out to be a broth of tiny live fish that wriggled and squirmed as you swallowed them.

  The third dish was baby octopi, nominated by the Korean businessman, Park Hae-jin. These tiny bright red beasts, barely a mouthful each in size, were provided with a spray container of red chilli sauce and herbs. You blasted one of the creatures with the red stuff, which drove them wild—and then popped it straight into your mouth. In several cases the creatures made valiant attempts to escape, and in one case an octopus managed to leap off a diner’s fork onto the plate and then scurry onto the tablecloth. A waiter grabbed it with tongs and then held it still while the diner sliced it in half before eating it in two separate, wriggling mouthfuls.

  Wong, joyfully crunching his live baby octopus, reflected on how fortunate he was that Joyce was not present. His pestilent assistant, he knew, was stupidly fond of animals and would find this whole show objectionable, hard though it might be to believe. (He would never have chosen her as a colleague: she had been foisted on him a year earlier because she was the daughter of one of East Trade Industries’ clients.) How could anyone see any harm in this wholesome display of consumption of fresh, healthy food? Indeed, to object to something like this going ahead was cruelty—cruelty to human beings, who needed fresh food to live. As he chewed, a tentacle fell out of his mouth and lay twitching on the white tablecloth. Wong picked it up with his fingers and slipped it between his thin lips. Delicious
.

  He had hardly finished before De Labauve was back on stage. ‘Now we have a treat for you. A classic dish with a new interpretation. I’m proud to introduce to you Drunken Prawns Flambéed in XO cognac, nominated by our very own feng shui master CF Wong—who, incidentally, assures me that this restaurant has the best feng shui of any eating place in the whole of Shanghai.’

  Wong smiled and bowed his head to acknowledge the reference, although he wished De Labauve had not repeated the praise he had given to the room—praise which he had given to at least six different restaurants in Shanghai in the past year. Remarkable how that phrase alone could guarantee a generous tip on top of his agreed fee.

  Chef Tomori reappeared, trailed by two junior staff. They wheeled in a large, low-walled glass-sided bowl perched over a gas burner and containing giant tiger prawns swimming in consommé, along with chives and spring onions and sliced ginger. The chef then emptied a bottle of XO brandy into the bowl—and at the same time, turned up the heat. The tiger prawns started thrashing around.

  ‘See how the prawns are disco-dancing as they become inebriated,’ De Labauve laughed. ‘They’re really enjoying themselves.’

  It was clear to everyone that this was not the case, but it would have been churlish to spoil the manager-chef ’s fantasy. ‘Look at that big one on the right—it’s breakdancing like Michael Jackson. Formidable,’ he said, his voice cracking with glee as he slipped back into French. ‘What a happy scene.’

  The creatures writhed for another half-minute before Chef Tomori gave his staff the signal that they were ready to take the next step—which had to happen before the prawns died of alcohol poisoning and were boiled alive at the same time.

  ‘But now the dancing party must end,’ De Labauve said. ‘Just like humans get hot after a wild party, it’s time for our drunken prawns to get really hot-hot-hot.’

  The prawns were moving slowly now, as the heat drained their ability to move. Chef Tomori threw a flame into the pot and fwoom—the whole dish was suddenly ablaze. At the same time the lights were dimmed, so that the blue inferno in which the prawns were being immolated became the only light in the room. The creatures thrashed in their death throes while diners watched fascinated (several personal assistants staring through gaps in their fingers). After thirty seconds, movement had more or less come to a halt. A lid was placed on the dish to put the flames out.

  The main lights came back on in the restaurant and the junior chefs used tongs to transfer the steaming prawns out of the soup and onto plates, which were quickly distributed to the tables.

  The room was filled with another spontaneous round of applause before the diners began tucking into the steaming morsels on their plates. Some of the women looked a little queasy, but again, most managed to get the prawns down.

  Wong was proud to have chosen this dish, and bowed his head to acknowledge the thanks of the people sitting near him—Tun, Chen and their partners. The feng shui master was delighted at how the evening was going. Now this was Chinese cooking at its best. It took him back to his younger days in the fishing villages of the Pearl River Delta. He had been much too poor to eat in fancy fish restaurants, but had spent a year working with an uncle who had a fishing boat: and ultra-fresh fish and seafood, in some cases eaten raw, had been his diet throughout.

  However, even the feng shui master felt a little disquiet at the next two dishes. A live civet cat (nominated by Bi Yun) and a live pangolin (nominated by De Labauve himself ) were wheeled through the room in cages. Wong did not feel any compunction about eating such beasts—indeed, he knew that both could be delicious and was anxious to try them out cooked and spiced in De Labauve’s signature East–West fusion style—but he was discomforted by the fact that both now might well be illegal items, and he tried to minimise the number of occasions on which he broke the law, since he’d become the pet feng shui master of the law enforcement agencies in east Asia. But then he scolded himself for being so soft. Any police officer would take a bite if offered such rare delicacies, he told himself. And why shouldn’t he? After all, this was just a bit of fun, nothing serious. Besides, much of the power base in Shanghai was probably in this room, so they had no need to fear the authorities.

  In the event, the pangolin proved a little tough and chewy; and the civet cat, although tender, was rather dark-tasting. The first needed more marinating, he decided, and the latter should have been caramelised with honey in some way and served with garlic, ginger and oyster sauce.

  The soup course—which came late in the meal, as it should—was Live Scorpions in Old Turtle Broth, nominated by Chef Tomori. Each dish had two whole scorpions boiled alive in it. It was warming, spicy and delectable.

  Before the next course, there was an interruption. Chen Shaiming rose to his feet and held up his glass of 1996 Lynch Bages. ‘I would like to propose a toast to our host tonight. When he first sent the word around about starting a dining club called This Is Living, featuring live food, most of us thought that this would be a good idea, but probably not possible today, what with all the rules and regulations and animal rights and SARS and avian flu and what not. But he has done it. And I say: who cares about animal rights? What about human rights? Humans have a right to enjoy what God has put on this planet for us to eat. And by God, we are going to exercise that right. Right, Jean-Baptiste?’

  Wong clapped loudly.

  De Labauve smiled and raised his glass in reply.

  ‘This is living,’ said Chen, raising his glass.

  ‘This is living,’ the other diners echoed, rising to their feet.

  The noise of the scraping chairs hid another sound— although the diners were probably too drunk to have registered it, even had they heard it. It was the sound of bodies—at least two, maybe more—falling over heavily in the corridor outside.

  Lu Linyao was exactly halfway across the junction at the crossroads of Nanjing Dong Lu and Jiangxi Nan Lu on her way to Jia Lin’s tutorial school when her phone’s now-annoying melody burst out of its tiny speaker. She had been holding it in her hand, willing it to ring, and willing it to be the voice of her cousin Milly saying that Jia Lin and their domestic helper Angelita had returned safely.

  ‘She’s back?’

  There was silence on the other end.

  ‘Milly, is that you?’

  ‘Mama! I—’ Jia Lin said before her voice became muffled, as if a hand had been placed over her mouth.

  ‘Jia Lin. Jia Lin!’

  A woman’s voice came on the phone: it was neither deep nor dark, but the words it spoke turned Linyao’s world into a black and hateful space. ‘We have your daughter.’

  ‘Who are you? Where is she? I need to get her back. Please.’

  Linyao froze in the centre of the junction. The lights turned green and cars started surging across. But she remained in place, her palm cupped over the speaker of the phone as she struggled to hear. A truck stopped less than a metre away and blasted its air horn centimetres from her face—but Linyao was not shifting. She moved her mouth from the phone just long enough to scream in Mandarin at the truck driver: ‘Shut up. I’m talking to someone here.’ And then she said into the phone: ‘Where is she? Is she okay? I want to speak to her.’

  The voice remained exceptionally calm. ‘She’s fine. And you can have her back in one piece. As long as you follow my instruct—’ The truck and two cars started honking at her, as did a van from the other direction. Linyao bent her head low and began marching around in a mad square dance in the middle of the junction, trying to hear. As a result, she blocked two more lanes of traffic and more cars started blasting their horns. A traffic officer in a blue and grey uniform raced towards her.

  ‘I can’t hear you. Too much noise here.’

  ‘I said, she’ll be fine, as long as you follow my instructions.’

  The officer arrived and screamed at her in Shanghainese: ‘Idiot tai-tai, move out of the road.’

  ‘What instructions? What do you want me to do?’

&n
bsp; ‘Get out of the road NOW.’

  ‘Tell me what I have to do to get her back.’

  ‘I said move it, crazy woman.’ The traffic officer grabbed the top of her arm and started pulling.

  Linyao turned and spat at him: ‘Get away. This is important.’ She wrenched her arm out of his grip with such ferocity that he was taken aback. He stood and stared, unsure what to do next. The watching drivers were so astonished they started laughing, and two of them applauded.

  She turned back to the phone and screeched down it: ‘Come on, woman, spit it out. What do you want me to do? I’m in a situation here. Some idiot in a uniform is trying to arrest me.’

  ‘Uniform? Do not speak to the police. You speak to the police and you will never see your daughter again.’

  ‘I’m not speaking to the police. Some traffic cop is speaking to me.’

  The kidnapper sounded distinctly worried. ‘I’ll call you later with the instructions.’

  ‘Be quick. This phone is running out of batteries. It might be dead. Give me your number, I’ll call you.’

  ‘Are you kidding? I’m not giving you my number. We’ll call you later.’

  ‘I told you. My phone is nearly out of juice. You won’t be able to call me later.’

  ‘Buy a charger.’ She hung up.

  Linyao marched off, with barely a glance at the astonished traffic officer, who was too shocked (and judging from his expression, too scared) to try to detain this suicidal and clearly demented woman.

  Eight minutes later, shaking with distress, Linyao was standing outside a huge pile of rubble that was supposed to be the address of the offices of CF Wong and Associates (Shanghai). Her mind was numb. Looking at the rubble, she wondered what it meant. Buildings don’t just disappear. Not in real life. Children didn’t get snatched. Maybe none of this was happening. Maybe this was all some sort of awful nightmare. She touched a fence post to see if it was solid. It was.