The First Morning

He stood across the street from the building for two minutes before he walked in.

It was the kind of August morning that turned Qingyuan into a steamer, the heat already pressing through his collar though it wasn't yet half past seven. Cicadas screamed from the plane trees lining People's Avenue. A cleaning woman with a bamboo broom worked the gutter in long, patient strokes, and the smell of yesterday's rain rose from the pavement. The Municipal Government building rose in front of him in two slabs of grey marble joined by a six-pillared portico, the national emblem hanging above the central doors, the red flag limp on its pole in the windless heat.

Lin Zhaoxu adjusted the strap of his canvas satchel. His shirt was a pale blue cotton, ironed by his mother three nights ago in the kitchen of the small house in Qingyuan County, the iron hissing on its rest while she told him for the fourth time that he must remember to eat breakfast. The shirt was clean. The crease in his trousers was sharp. His shoes were inexpensive but polished, the laces double-knotted. He had checked all of this in the mirror at the boarding house twice before leaving.

He was twenty-two years old. He had graduated first in his class from Yanjing University, scored first in the prefecture's civil service examination, and placed first in his oral interview. He had a single suitcase, three changes of clothes, six books, his grandfather's calligraphy brush in its lacquered case, and no one in this city. Not one uncle, not one cousin, not one classmate's father.

What he had instead was a small notebook in his breast pocket, in which he had been writing, since the day he received his assignment, every name he could find connected to the Qingyuan Municipal Government — the mayor, the party secretary, the deputy mayors, the bureau chiefs, the directors of the major offices — and beside each name, in his small, careful hand, what he had been able to learn of them. Native place. Year of entry. Faction, where it could be guessed. The names of their wives. The schools their children attended.

The notebook was not yet very thick. But it was already the most expensive thing he owned.

He walked across the street.

The lobby was cold. He had not expected it to be so cold. Air conditioning roared from concealed vents and the marble floor reflected the morning light in long pale lakes that stretched away to the inner staircases. Two security guards in white short-sleeved uniforms sat behind a counter beneath a portrait of the national leader. One of them was doing a crossword puzzle. The other looked up as Lin approached.

"Reporting for duty," Lin said. "Lin Zhaoxu, assigned to the General Office."

The guard stared at him for a moment, as if the words had arrived in the wrong language. Then he sighed, picked up a phone, and dialed an extension. He spoke briefly, listened, hung up. "Fourth floor," he said. "East wing. Wait outside the director's office. Don't sit in the chairs unless somebody tells you to."

"Thank you."

"Identity card."

Lin produced it. The guard glanced at the photograph, glanced at his face, and slid the card across a small reader. A green light blinked. He pushed the card back across the counter without looking at Lin again.

The elevator was slow. There were already three people inside it when Lin got in — a woman in her forties carrying a stack of folders, a man in a grey jacket with a thermos hooked to his belt, and a much younger woman in a cream blouse who was reading something on her phone and chewing her lower lip in a way that suggested bad news. None of them looked at Lin. None of them spoke. The numbers above the door blinked upward and the elevator made a soft warning chime at each floor. The smell inside was of cologne and damp paper.

The fourth floor was carpeted in a flat industrial green. The walls had been painted, perhaps fifteen years ago, a creamy white that had since softened toward pale yellow. Doors lined both sides of the corridor, each with a black plaque bearing white characters: GENERAL OFFICE — DIRECTOR. GENERAL OFFICE — DEPUTY DIRECTOR. POLICY RESEARCH SECTION. SECRETARIAT SECTION. Lin walked slowly, noting which doors were open, which were closed, which had cups of tea on the side tables outside them and which did not.

He stopped at the last door on the right. *Director, General Office.* He stood beside it with his hands at his sides and waited.

He had been told, in a phone call from Director Pang's secretary three days ago, to report at eight o'clock. His watch said seven forty-six.

A clerk passed him in the corridor, carrying a stack of files. He glanced at Lin without slowing. A second man — older, fifty perhaps, in a short-sleeved white shirt and dark trousers, a cigarette tucked behind his ear though there were *No Smoking* signs every six meters — emerged from a door across the hall, looked at Lin briefly, and disappeared into another door without acknowledging him. Lin waited.

At seven fifty-eight, the secretary's door opened. A young woman in a navy skirt and white blouse, pretty in an unremarkable way, looked at him with an expression that seemed to say she had been expecting somebody slightly more impressive.

"You're Lin Zhaoxu?"

"Yes."

"The director is in a meeting. Wait."

She closed the door.

He waited.

He waited forty-seven minutes.

It was not, he understood, a deliberate insult. It was the way the building breathed. A new clerk reporting for his first day was a creature of so little importance that to make him wait was not an act of disrespect — it was simply that nobody had thought of him at all. He was furniture not yet placed. The only insult would have been to expect otherwise.

So he stood and he waited and he watched. He counted the people who came and went from Pang's office in those forty-seven minutes. Four. He noted what each one was carrying, how long each one was inside, and how each one looked when they came out. The bureau chief from Land Resources — no folders, came out smiling, in the office for nine minutes. A clerk from another department — three folders, came out expressionless, in the office for two minutes. A heavy man in his fifties whom Lin recognized from his notebook as Deputy Mayor Zhou's secretary — a single sealed envelope, came out frowning, in the office for fourteen minutes. The secretary's bald patch had been damp with sweat.

At eight forty-four the door opened again and the navy-skirted secretary said, "Come in."

Director Pang's office was larger than Lin had expected. A desk of dark wood occupied the center of the far wall, beneath a calligraphic scroll that read *勤政为民* — *Diligent governance for the people*. Two leather sofas faced each other across a low tea table near the window, and the wall opposite the desk held a low cabinet whose glass front displayed a tea set, three bottles of *baijiu* in presentation boxes, and a porcelain horse rearing on its hind legs. Director Pang was seated behind the desk, signing a document. He did not look up when Lin entered.

Lin walked to a position three paces from the desk, stopped, and lowered his head slightly. "Reporting for duty. Lin Zhaoxu."

Pang continued to sign. He turned a page. He signed again. The scratching of the pen was the only sound in the room. After perhaps thirty seconds, he set the pen down, capped it, and looked up.

He was a man in his middle forties, broad-faced, with the slight thickening through the jaw that came from too many banquets. His hair was a careful black; his eyes were small and intelligent. He wore a white short-sleeved shirt with a leather pen-pocket protector, and his cuffs were folded back exactly twice on each arm.

"Lin Zhaoxu," he said, as if confirming the name to himself. "Yanjing University. First in the prefecture exam."

"Yes, Director."

"Sit down."

Lin sat at the edge of the nearest sofa.

"You are now," Pang said, without inflection, "a section member of the General Office. The General Office serves the mayor, the deputy mayors, and the city government as a whole. We draft documents. We organize meetings. We coordinate with other bureaus. Everything that comes through this office is confidential — *everything*. If you tell your mother what you ate for lunch, that is your business. If you tell anyone what passes across these desks, that is the end of your career, and possibly other things. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Director."

"Good. You will report to Section Chief Wei Jianguo. He will give you your specific responsibilities. Today you will spend with him, learning the office. Tomorrow morning, at nine-thirty, there is a coordination meeting in the small conference room. There will be approximately thirty participants. Your task is to prepare the tea."

He paused, watching Lin.

"All thirty cups," he said. "Each one according to its drinker."

"Yes, Director."

"You will need to know who drinks what. Wei will help you. Don't ask anyone else. And Xiao Lin —"

He picked up his pen again, uncapped it, looked down at the document.

"— don't pour boiling water on anyone tomorrow. We have had clerks who did. They are no longer with us."

It was meant, Lin understood, to be a small joke. He inclined his head a fraction. "I will be careful, Director."

"Mm."

The audience was over.

He stood, stepped back the proper number of paces, turned, and went out.

In the corridor outside, the man with the cigarette behind his ear had reappeared. He was leaning against the wall with the kind of stillness that came from long practice in offices. As Lin came out, he straightened, and Lin saw, in a small movement at the corner of the man's mouth, the faintest acknowledgment.

"Lin Zhaoxu?"

"Yes, Section Chief."

"Wei Jianguo. You can call me Lao Wei. Come."

He led Lin down the corridor and around two corners to a much smaller office, its door already open, its single window looking out onto a courtyard where two camphor trees grew. The room held four desks pushed together in a square, three filing cabinets, a hot water dispenser, and a very large, very old air conditioner that wheezed quietly from a wall mount. Two of the desks were occupied. At the third sat a young man, perhaps Lin's age, who looked up as they entered.

"This is Xiao Lin," Lao Wei said to the room. "He's the new one. From Yanjing University. First in the exam."

The young man at the third desk smiled. He was good-looking in a polished, indolent way, with the soft hands and the slightly-too-long fringe of someone who had not, at any point in his life, been told no. His shirt was Italian. His watch was Swiss. His pen, Lin saw with a small interior shock, was a Montblanc.

"Oh," he said, leaning back in his chair. "The test-taker. I heard about you."

The other two — a woman in her thirties and a man in his late forties — glanced up, glanced down, said nothing. The young man held out his hand.

"Zhao Yifan. Welcome to the office."

Lin took the hand. The grip was loose, almost lazy, fingers cool. "Thank you."

"Sit, sit. Lao Wei, I'll let you settle our new colleague. I have to go up to the third floor — my father wants me to drop something at Bureau Chief Liang's office."

He said *my father* the way another man might have said *the weather*. He picked up a sealed envelope from his desk, gave Lin a smile that did not reach his eyes, and went out.

Lao Wei watched him go. The cigarette behind his ear had not moved since the corridor. He turned to Lin.

"Sit there." He pointed to an empty desk against the wall, slightly smaller than the others, its chair a wheeled office chair with one wheel missing. "That's yours. You'll want to clean it. The man before you spilled tea on it three years ago and nobody ever wiped it up."

Lin sat. The desk was, indeed, sticky in places. A small jar of brown lacquered seal-paste sat in the corner, dried to a dark crust. He set his satchel on the floor and looked up.

Lao Wei was watching him. Not unfriendly. Not friendly. Watching.

After a moment, Lao Wei walked to the hot water dispenser, took down a porcelain cup from a small shelf, dropped a pinch of dried leaves into it from a foil packet, and filled it with hot water. He carried the cup back across the room and set it on Lin's desk.

"Drink," he said.

Lin looked down. The leaves were curling open in the water. The colour was a deep, warm amber. The aroma — even before he raised the cup — was unmistakable.

It was Tieguanyin. Premium grade. The kind that, in Qingyuan, cost perhaps three hundred yuan for a small box. Far more, certainly, than was kept in this office for casual offering to new clerks.

He glanced at Lao Wei's own desk. On it sat a tall, battered thermos with a chipped enameled rim, the kind state-owned-enterprise workers had carried in the eighties. A crumpled foil packet of cheap green tea — the kind that came twelve packets to a yuan at any street kiosk — lay beside it.

Lin understood, in that quiet moment, several things at once.

He understood that the tea on his desk had not come from the office's general stores.

He understood that Lao Wei drank cheap tea by choice — the choice of a man who had decided, long ago, that he would not waste good things on himself.

He understood that the cup placed before him was a gift, and that it was also a question.

He stood, lifted the cup with both hands, and bowed his head a fraction.

"Thank you, Lao Wei," he said. "I am unworthy of such tea on my first day."

Lao Wei made a small sound that might have been a laugh, or might have been the cigarette behind his ear shifting against his collar. He turned away and went back to his own desk.

"Drink it before it goes cold," he said. "Then come over here. I'll show you the meeting list for tomorrow. Thirty cups, the director said?"

"Thirty."

"Good. Bring a notebook. Don't trust your memory. The day you trust your memory in this office is the day you spill boiling water on Vice-Mayor Zhou."

Lin sat down again. He held the cup between his palms for a moment, feeling the heat bleed into his hands. He took a single sip. The tea was very good. It was also, he now saw, the first fact in this building that he had been allowed to know without having to fight for it.

He took out a notebook and a cheap ballpoint pen. He uncapped the pen.

"I'm ready, Lao Wei," he said.

Across the room, Lao Wei was already pulling a folder out of a drawer.

"Thirty cups," he said again, and he said it almost gently. "We'll start with the mayor."

Outside the window, in the courtyard, the cicadas were still screaming in the camphor trees. The morning's heat rose. Somewhere on the floor below, a phone began to ring and was not answered.

Lin Zhaoxu picked up his pen and wrote, at the top of a clean white page, the first name.

*Mayor Cao Yongzheng. Pu'er. Aged at least eight years.*

He underlined it once.

Then he kept writing.

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