It was going to be a terrible loss of face too. His friends and relatives had learned about his new apartment, all of them had congratulated him, and some of them had prepared for a house-warming party. Now what?

But what worried him far more was the reaction of his wife, Peiqin. During the fifteen years of their marriage, they had always been, Holding hands together, talking, talking, talking, in the words of a popular song. Since their days as “educated youths” sent to Yunnan during the Cultural Revolution, and then as one of millions of ordinary couples in Shanghai, they had always been close. Of late, however, she had seemed withdrawn.

This was not hard for him to understand. All those years, he had brought little home in comparison to her. It was undeniable, and occasionally unbearable too, that Peiqin earned more as a restaurant accountant than Yu as a policeman. And this gap had increased in the last few years, as Peiqin had received many bonuses. Not to mention the free delicacies that she brought home from the restaurant. The initial announcement about the apartment had momentarily pulled him up a peg or two, so to speak, in both their estimations. She had been ecstatic, telling everybody about the apartment he had been given “because of his excellent work.”

Since they got the bad news, though, she had hardly spoken. He contemplated this, the cigarette burning down between his fingers. Just another sign that as a low-level policeman in today’s society, he was going nowhere.

In his father’s days, Old Hunter, a cop too, had at least enjoyed the dignity of being part of the “proletarian dictatorship” and the knowledge of being equal in material terms with everybody else in an egalitarian society. Now in the nineties, it was a changed world: one’s value was one’s money. Comrade Deng Xiaoping had said, “Some should be allowed to get rich first.” Some did, absolutely. And in this socialist country, becoming rich now meant becoming glorious. As for those who did not become rich no matter how hard they worked, the People’s Daily had no comment.