Four bags of milled white rice, six jars of rendered lard, and twenty shining coins lay across the rough wooden bench. The mental doorway to the farm had turned into cold, dead slate. "Six minutes," Shen Zongyan said, his overcoat already discarded on a three-legged stool. His sleeves were rolled past lean forearms, exposing metal cuff links that caught the yellow gloom of the tallow lamp. "Aiya, what a terrible little door that farm has!" Yingtao piped in a girlish chirp, her braids bouncing as she threw an empty wicker hamper over two of the lard crocks. "Doesn't it know a lady needs her accessories put away before company drops by?" "Stop acting for two seconds, Yingtao. The floorboards?" "Too rotted. The dirt beneath is frozen like granite." She shoved two sacks of polished grain under the kang bed, tossing greasy rags and a stinking mound of dried turnip peelings over the burlap. "If they dig, they strike bone in thirty seconds. Wang Daniu!" Her spy tumbled through the rear window headfirst, shedding straw and smelling of fermented garlic. He scrambled upright, clutching half an onion. "The inspection squad crossed the irrigation ditch!" Daniu wheezed, his eyes darting to the glistening lard. "Lihua is guiding Team Officer Lu herself. She told him you had enough hoarded grain to feed five squads through the frost! She swore it on her ancestor's gravestones!" "Did she now? How generous of her to worry about our diets!" Yingtao tossed Daniu a fistful of dried pork jerky from a shelf. "Daniu, grab the coin pouch. Take it out the latrine chute and shove it inside Old Madam Wei’s chimney pipe. The soot-catcher at the back." "Old Madam’s pipe? She’ll skin me!" "She’s down at the threshing floor screaming about her missing radishes. Go, or no buns for a month!" Daniu snatched the leather pouch and dove backward out the small sill like an oiled eel. That left the rice and the lard. Boots crunched outside. Heavy, iron-heeled regulation boots, accompanied by high-pitched, solicitous chatter. "Right this way, Officer Lu," Lihua’s voice drifted through the paper-thin windowpane, dripping with feigned sorrow. "It breaks my heart, truly. But the collective cannot suffer parasites. I only want her reformed before the winter quotas lock!" "Don't hide them," Zongyan said. Yingtao froze, both hands buried in the grease of the remaining crocks. "Excuse me, handsome investor? If the red armbands see pure white flour and Shanghai-pressed lard in a peasant shack, they’ll have me digging trenches in Heilongjiang by dawn!" "Leave them on the table." Zongyan adjusted his tie. He reached into his breast pocket and drew out a crimson leather folio embossed with gold lettering, accompanied by several crisp sheets of heavy linen paper stamped with deep purple consular seals. "Step back. Wipe the lard off your nose." "Oh!" Yingtao giggled, tapping her cheek with a grease-stained thumb to make it deliberately worse. "Does it clash with my complexion?" The timber latch shattered inward. The door banged against the earthen wall with the crack of a pistol shot. Cold fog swept inside, carrying five cadres in padded green coats, led by Officer Lu, a man whose mustache resembled two dead caterpillars pasted onto an iron kettle. Flanking him was Lihua, her wool scarf tucked tight, her eyes bright with malice. "Nobody move!" Lu bellowed, unholstering a clipboard. "Report of counter-revolutionary hoarding and black-market—" His voice choked off. Zongyan stood squarely in the center of the shack, tall, broad-shouldered, the wool of his English overcoat draped impeccably over his frame. He looked like an emperor who had taken a wrong turn into a goat pen. "Officer Lu, is it?" Zongyan's voice held the quiet snap of ice shearing off a glacier. Lu pulled his chin back. "Who are you? Wei Yingtao, step forward! This anonymous complaint—" "She doesn't need to step anywhere," Zongyan said, stepping between Yingtao and the cadres. He tossed the crimson folio onto the table beside the open sacks of grain. It landed with an authoritative thud. "You are interrupting an authorized trade inspection conducted by the Ministry of Foreign Economic Liaison." Lihua pushed her way to the front, pointing a shaking, gloved finger at the white grain. "Officer, look! White rice! Fine lard! She has no ration chits for that! She’s hoarding! Arrest her!" "Stupid girl," Zongyan said mildly without looking at her. Lihua flinched as if struck across the mouth. "Those provisions are diplomatic samples," Zongyan continued, tapping the purple seal on the top document. "Brought directly from Guangzhou under special clearance number four-eight-two. I am currently evaluating the local agricultural potential of Xiaoshui to determine if fifty thousand yuan of overseas capital should be placed in this brigade's processing depot—or routed entirely to the neighboring region. Comrade Wei was kind enough to allow my team to store our baseline nutritional samples here while the commune guest house was prepared. Unless, of course, Officer Lu wishes to confiscate state-approved investment inventory?" Lu’s face blanched to the shade of a boiled turnip. "Fifty... fifty thousand?" Lu stammered. His hands began to shake over the clipboard. If an overseas Chinese investor took fifty thousand yuan away because of a botched sweep, the district committee would string Lu up by his thumbs. "Aiya!" Yingtao clapped her grease-streaked hands together, bouncing on her heels with wide, round eyes. "Is that what those bags are? I thought Mr. Shen just really, really liked porridge! He said it was very important city business, so I let him put them right next to my greens! Did I do good, Officer Lu? Do I get a work point for being hospitable?" Lu swallowed hard. "Comrade Wei... showed great vigilance in assisting guests from abroad." "Wait!" Lihua screeched, her face mottled with red patches of pure rage. Her careful scheme was turning to ash right before her eyes. "That’s a lie! She traded for it! Check the floor! Dig up the yard! She has silver! She stole—" "Comrade Wei Lihua!" Lu snapped, sweating through his fur hat. "Silence! You dragged our inspection unit out in the freezing sleet on a completely baseless slander against an official guest of the county! Do you want to be assigned to clearing the manure pits for the rest of the quarter?" Lihua's mouth hung open. She stared at Zongyan with burning, venomous jealousy. How could this magnificent, untouchable man shield this silly, empty-headed widow? Why was he dirtying his hands for an idiot who smiled at greens? "My apologies, Mr. Shen," Lu bowed repeatedly, dragging Lihua backward by her padded coat sleeve. "A misunderstanding. We shall leave at once!" The door closed, leaving the silence broken only by the crackle of the stove. Yingtao stopped bouncing. The wide, naive grin vanished from her lips. Her eyes turned sharp as obsidian. Surviving wasn't enough. Lihua had tried to send her children to an orphanage and her to a labor camp twice in three days. Lihua had black-market connections of her own—the very contacts she used to fence goods and manufacture these raids. If Yingtao stayed on the defensive, the next trap would snap shut before her harvest cooldown expired. "Fifty thousand yuan," Yingtao said, her voice dropping into the cool, calculated cadence of a CEO. "Are you actually investing that much?" Zongyan looked down at her, a slow, predatory smirk curving his mouth. "If the return is high enough. You looked terrifying just now, Wei Yingtao. I almost miss the airhead chatter." "Help me bankrupt her entire network," Yingtao said, meeting his gaze without flinching. "She uses the grain depot behind the distillery to launder black-market lard and stolen cloth. If you use your trade permits to choke off her buyers, I will feed your processing depot with produce this valley hasn't seen in fifty years." "A business partnership?" Zongyan took a step closer, towering over her, his eyes dark with something far warmer than commerce. "A hostile takeover," she said. Before he could answer, the door banged open a second time. This time it was the Commune Chief himself, red-faced, panting, accompanied by half the village elder council and a triumphant, wild-eyed Lihua, who had torn herself free from Lu's grip. "Mr. Shen!" the Chief bellowed, chest heaving. "The district council just delivered an emergency decree regarding your ancestral land claim! Because of new collective property regulations, no non-resident may hold deed to Xiaoshui soil unless they wed a registered local brigade member by tomorrow noon! Otherwise, the land is seized for collective grain silos!" Zongyan went rigid. "And that local will not be this shameless widow!" Lihua shouted, thrusting her arm high into the air, clutching a black-and-white photograph. In the print, taken through the shack window during the panic of the raid, Zongyan’s hand was pressed firmly over Yingtao’s shoulder, their faces barely an inch apart in the dark. "Look at this filth!" Lihua shrieked to the gasping crowd. "She has compromised his honor! But to save this commune's investment, I will sacrifice myself! Chief, marry him to me!"

Bubbly Sabotage