What cannot be cut,

nor raveled,

is the sadness of separation …

It was an unbelievable coincidence that his first meeting with Shanshan had also originated, more clearly in retrospect, from an environmental disaster.

That long-ago afternoon, Chen happened to be sitting at a roadside eatery, an impossible and impatient gourmet, eager to enjoy the local delicious specials – ‘three whites of the lake’ – when Shanshan, a young, vivacious environmental engineer at a local chemical factory, came to stop him from putting the white shrimp into his mouth. She delivered an unpleasant lecture about the lake food being seriously contaminated by the toxic water.

So it had started as an annoying wet blanket to the Epicurean inspector incognito on vacation, but an idyllic episode soon unfolded between the two of them. He found himself more than drawn toward her, an attractive, intelligent young woman with an idealistic passion for the environmental cause. The subsequent conspiracy of the circumstances pushed the two, paradoxically, further into an intimate relationship, despite the polluted lake and the diabolic murders in the background.

Like a Chinese proverb, however, eight or nine times out of ten, things in this world do not work out the way we expect. An unexpected turn in a series of deadly events toward the end of his Wuxi vacation had left him stranded in a scene from Casablanca, watching the woman he loved throwing herself into the arms of another man.

Confucius says: time flows away non-stop, day and night, like water in the river.

But it was not a moment to indulge himself in sentimental reminiscences of the romantic moments by Tai Lake, Chen hastened to tell himself.

He turned to cast a look at the desk. Among the books and files, he was surprised to see a copy of Shanghai Literature in a pile on the desk, and a red-headed document about ‘The Ecological Disaster of the Petroleum Industry’.

It was then he heard the bedroom door handle turning.

As Zhao emerged from the bedroom holding the phone in his hand, Inspector Chen was just picking up the literature magazine from the desk.

‘Yes, you’re rereading the poem, our poet inspector.’

‘What?’

‘ “Don’t Cry, Tai Lake,” right? It’s really a good poem about the polluted lake in Wuxi. I like it a lot.’

‘Oh … you are carrying that issue with you, Comrade Secretary Zhao, but that’s a couple of years old.’

‘Yes, I’m carrying the magazine with me. The pollution has been going from bad to worse. That’s why your poem really matters,’ Zhao said, taking over the magazine and opening to the page with the beginning of the poem on it. ‘Tell you what, several people I know in Beijing have also read the poem. An excellent piece with a high level of ecological awareness, they all agreed with me about it.’

‘Thank you so much, Comrade Secretary Zhao,’ he said, not knowing what else to say.

‘In face of the insurmountable problem, the characters in the poem do not just give up. That’s the spirit, Chief Inspector Chen. It was written during that vacation of yours at Wuxi Cadre Recreation Center, wasn’t it?’