As Yu turned in the direction of the neighborhood committee office, he saw a short, white-haired man stepping through the doorway, waving his hand energetically.

“Comrade Detective Yu?”

“Comrade Liang?”

“Yes, that’s me. People here just call me Old Liang,” he said in a booming voice. “I am just a residential policeman. We really have to depend on you to investigate, Comrade Detective Yu.”

“Don’t say that, Old Liang,” Yu said. “You have worked here for so many years, it is I who must rely on your help.”

Old Liang was in charge of residential registrations and records for the area. At times, his job was to provide liaison between the neighborhood committee and the district police station. So he had been assigned to work with Detective Yu.

“Things are not like in the past, you know, when the registration rules were really effective.” As he spoke, Old Liang led Yu into a small office, which looked like it must have been partitioned off from the original hallway, and offered him a cup of tea.

Old Liang had seen better days, in the sixties and seventies, when residential registration was a matter of survival in a city with a strict food-ration-coupon policy. Coupons were needed for staples, such as rice, coal, meat, fish, cooking oil, and even cigarettes. What’s more, Chairman Mao’s class-struggle theory was applied to all walks of life. According to Mao, throughout the long period of socialism, class enemies would never stop attempting to sabotage the proletarian dictatorship. So a residential cop had to stay alert at all times. Everyone in the neighborhood had to be viewed as a hidden potential class enemy. Neighborhood security was extremely effective. If someone moved into the lane in the morning without reporting to local authorities, a residential cop would knock at his door the same night.