Review: A Case of Two Cities

I just finished Qiu Xiaolong's A Case of Two Cities, #4 in the inspector Chen series (2006). Although the main character is a poet and student of American and Chinese poetry, and I'm not really into poetry, I still like this series.

This one is about corruption, though, and it is just sickening. In one early scene, the inspector and a reporter friend meet at a bathhouse (the reporter's idea). It was "a six-story sprawling building... The pool area was the size of three or four soccer fields, not including the area for women." There were three large pools plus "special tubs with signs such as Beer, Ginseng, Milk, and Herbs." This, in a city where most families have to live in a single room.

(While I was reading this, Trump said that he opposes net neutrality because Obama went about it the wrong way and that he supports the FCC. The FCC said the number of comments doesn't matter because it's not a public opinion poll and Pai said that throttling channels might be good for consumers. People just say whatever and do whatever. They don't even try to hide their corruption.)

In the story, we see that some people have gotten hugely rich by getting whatever they want by bribing everyone in their path. If the first red envelope comes back, he puts more money in it and sends it back. That's if you're lucky--you could also be taken care of in worse ways. In this book, the life of the inspector's mother is threatened. And so much only happens when you have connections (hello, job hunting in America) that sometimes it's a fine line whether accepting a favor is ethical.

The inspector had to be so careful that he couldn't talk to anyone properly about the case, which made the book less fun than I like. Then at the end, he "made up his mind to be someone different, someone not always politic, cautious, and meticulous," so I fear for him and his mom, partner, partner's family, and friends. The whole book was very unsettling.

I even had a dream affected by it (and by the match-three game that I play, for which I recently won several hours of free play). Bad guys were after me, and I couldn't be near my friends, because if too many of us get together (match three!), we would all be destroyed.

As far as China learning goes, I mostly just learned that despite what Chinese restaurants in the US are like, buffets and fortune cookies are not "characteristic of the Chinese."

I'm So Scary

Today I had jury duty. There were about 25 of us from which they would have chosen six had they needed a jury trial.

When the judge came to talk to us, he said unlike most states, Texas allows for jury trials even for the lowest-level crimes. That's pretty cool. But then he said that although it sounds romantic to request a jury trial, often when the time comes and the people involved actually see us prospective jurists there, they often decide they'd rather make a deal.

Thus, I have no choice but to conclude that I am one scary gal.

I have never yet served on a jury or even been questioned as part of choosing a jury, but I (think I) would like to serve. Maybe someday.

My favorite part was when the clerk (who was awesomely clear and helpful even though her job is probably super repetitive) exclaimed "Your ring tone matches your hat!" One guy had a train-whistle ring tone and a train engineer hat.

Also, on the way there, I helped some Vietnamese tourists choose the best bus stop for getting to UT (and talked them out of transferring to the 10 or 7 like they had planned because our bus took us right onto campus). So that was good, too.