There was a queue to get in, and they stood for nearly twenty minutes, smoking and watching life drift by on the streets, talking about nothing very much. Groups of sullen youths stared lasciviously at groups of giggling girls in miniskirts and Wonderbras who flaunted their sexuality with a carelessness that, in the West, would quickly have led to trouble. They made Li feel old, disconnected somehow from their world, as if it were so much different to his. And, of course, it was. In thirteen years the world had turned and was no longer the same place he had inhabited as a twenty-year-old. He didn’t recognise the kids of today as being like he had been. They belonged to a new age. Everything—values, expectations, earnings—was different. He was still linked to a troubled past that owed more to the excesses of the Red Guards and the Smashing of the Four Olds.

Eventually Yongli caught the eye of a bouncer he knew, and they were waved in. There was a ten-yuan entrance fee and the first drink was free. A circular red symbol, impossible to read, was stamped on the back of their right hands, and they passed on through a cloakroom area to the bar, which stretched the length of one wall. A large floor area was crowded with tables and chairs, all filled by animated youths drinking and smoking. At the far end was a raised platform with microphone and speakers and a karaoke screen. A spotty boy with a shock of thick, coarse hair that fell across his eyes was singing some unrecognisable Taiwanese pop song. No one was listening to him. Wooden stairs led up to a gallery that ran around three walls, overlooking the floor below. It, too, was crowded. The noise was deafening.

They made their way to the bar and Yongli waved their tickets at the barman, and they got two half-litre glasses of Tsing Tao beer. Li looked around as he sipped his. Where did all these kids get the money? This was not a cheap night out. “You want to try and find a table?” Yongli bellowed in his ear.

Li nodded, and followed as Yongli climbed the stairs to the gallery two at a time. At the top Yongli spoke to a waitress. Whatever he said, she laughed loudly, and from the way her eyes were fixed on him it was clear that she found him attractive. He grinned back at her and squeezed her around the waist and winked, and she flushed red. He had such an easy way with him. Li wondered, as he had often done in the past, what it was that women found attractive about him. He was far from conventionally good-looking. But there was something about his eyes, and his smile. Something roguish. He could have had almost any woman he wanted. And yet he had fallen for Lotus.