The Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics Read Online Free PDF Page A

did not involve the handling of corpses, and was largely a numerology-based technique.)
    A group of the mystics planned to meet for dinner somewhere nice on Thursday—perhaps Emperor Xiangfeng’s Kitchen in Yunnan Lu. Wong wanted to introduce his Singaporean friends to the delights of xianji (cold salty chicken) and hupi jianjiao (tiger skin chillies). Then of course there was the squirrel fish—Sinha would enjoy that. Most of them were at the age when food was the main carnal interest they had. It would surely be a wonderful reunion and an excellent meal. For although he would hotly deny it, Wong was not an entirely one-dimensional character. On the rare occasions he was not obsessing about money, he was thinking about his stomach.
    Gastronomic interests were going very well for him at the moment. In addition to the dinner meeting of the union planned for later in the week, he also had an invitation for a meal that night at a new ultra-high-class dining club called This Is Living, based at a fancy new restaurant in a Shanghai skyscraper. He had done the feng shui for the new eatery over a series of flying visits, and was delighted when the manager invited him to be a guest at the founding meal of a club of gourmets which would ‘sample the most exciting menu in China’. Further, Wong had presented him with a truly outrageous bill and the manager had promised to pay him in cash at the meal that night.
    Life was good, and it was wonderful to be here in Shanghai at this time. Wong loved Shanghai architecture, which looked from a distance like a jumbled mess but was often built with well-hidden feng shui traits. The heart of town was an open area called the People’s Square and the People’s Park, but if you took a helicopter and rose above it, you would see that the road surrounding the square formed a neat half-circle. Neighbouring Zhejiang Lu and Nanjing Dong Lu formed the other half of the circle. And running from north to south exactly in between the two semi-circles was Xizang Lu. The whole construction thus formed a squareish circle with a line running through it: yes, the character z hong , meaning ‘centre’ or ‘heart’, and the first character in the word China: Zhong Guo . This was usually translated into English as Middle Kingdom, but that missed the point entirely. The true meaning of Zhong Guo was Land at the Centre of the World.
    The main buildings in the People’s Square were the Shanghai Grand Theatre, the Shanghai Museum and the Shanghai Government Building, and all three had south-facing doors, following the best feng shui tradition. The Grand Theatre looked like a bowl held up to heaven, and the Museum like a ding : a ceremonial bronze container with three legs. In a different part of town, the Shanghai Centre was clearly built in the shape of the character shan , meaning ‘mountain’.
    Yes, the feng shui master’s schedule was packed with good things at the moment: two good, long, stretched-out dinners in three nights. A reunion with his friends. And the official founding of the Shanghai Union of Industrial Mystics. So that was why Wong was sitting in his about-to-be-demolished office and smiling broadly.
    Another deafening crash reverberated through the building. The bare light bulb started to swing. The sound of shattering glass followed as window frames fell out of neighbouring walls. The demolition men were back at work. The Central Military Affairs Commission could not be kept waiting.
    Marker Cai picked up the last box and handed it to a colleague, a fat, sweaty youth, to take downstairs.
    ‘Finished,’ Cai said.
    ‘Ah—thanks, well done,’ Joyce stammered. ‘That’s great. Er.’
    ‘Okay.’
    ‘Great. Thanks. You’ve done a great job. Can I ask. Er. D’you want to…’ ‘Yes?’
    ‘Um. I just thought. You know, maybe…’ ‘Ah.’
    ‘Wanna go for a coffee or something, sometime, or something?’
    ‘Okay. Go for a coffee or something sometime or something.’
    ‘Er.