Chapter 504: The Shen Qian Room

The clerk slid two items across the counter: a certificate original, a duplicate copy, and underneath them, half a receipt slip.

March 14, 10 a.m. Municipal Civil Affairs Bureau service hall, second window on the right. The white porcelain cup at the corner of the desk was still there, its clip turned a different way. Sunlight came through the hall's glass and struck the countertop's glass pad, throwing a white glare right along the edge of the certificate.

He spread the certificate flat and read down, section by section: name, business supervisory unit, scope of business, start-up capital, registered address, person in charge. At the name, he paused, then read it out in full: "Jiangzhou City Gongdao Public Interest Legal Service Center."

"This name is taken as of today," he said.

She took the pen and signed the registration log, dated it. As the pen moved across the page, the ring on her hand knocked softly against the edge of the paper. She set the pen down flat and took the certificate with both hands.

The clerk laid out the requirements up front: an annual work report every year, submitted first to the business supervisory unit, then to the registration authority; the nameplate goes outside the door, the certificate hangs inside, the articles of association stay within reach—three things inspectors check first; any change to name, person in charge, or address must be reported within thirty days. He pushed the duplicate toward her. "Carry this one for official business. The original hangs on the wall."

"Four copies of the articles. I'll keep one in the office."

"Keep it. When someone asks, flip to the scope-of-business page—faster than explaining with your mouth."

"When does the sign go up?" he asked.

"In a couple of days."

"Once it's up, people on this street will recognize that door. When someone comes in to ask, are you ready to answer?"

"Yes."

He pulled a form from the drawer and slid it across, under the certificate. "Then you won't need to come back to my window to ask."

She placed both copies into her bag and pulled the zipper halfway, then pulled it back open and took out the original for one more look before closing it.

They stepped down the hall stairs outside. Half the frost had melted; water sat in the brick joints. At the curb, Lu Jibai pulled the twice-folded empty file envelope from his pocket, glanced at it, and tucked it back.

"Submitted February 24," she said.

"Less than sixty days," he said.

"I was counting."

March 15, morning. The seal-engraving shop at the Zhongshan Road intersection. The shop owner moved the certificate under his desk lamp and typed the name into the computer, character by character, checking three times before looking up. "Long name. I'll have to compress the characters or they won't fit the circle." Three seals: one round official seal with a five-pointed star in the center and the name arranged along the rim; one finance seal; and one small personal seal for the legal representative. He stamped all three in a row on a sheet of white paper, blew it dry, and held the corner up against the certificate to compare.

"Matches?"

"Matches."

"Seals are kept by the person in charge. A social organization's seals and a law firm's seals shouldn't be stored together." The shop owner dropped the three into a small cloth pouch and tied two knots. "Since you have both, keep them separate."

"Separate."

The filing went through online at the shop. She filled out a form, dated it, and the owner tore off a collection slip and handed it to her. "Come back this afternoon."

March 16, afternoon. The Zhongshan Road branch opened the basic bank account. The young woman behind the counter read the name slowly, then looked up. "This name—'Gongdao' and 'public interest' sit close together. The system can't abbreviate it; only the full name works." Shen Zhixia pressed the official seal onto the specimen card and the personal seal in the next box. The personal seal came out slightly crooked, so she switched to a fresh card and pressed again. When it was done, she had a seal specimen card, a small key, and declined the blank checkbook on the counter.

"A center's basic account is needed for the annual report," the young woman said. "The account name has to match the certificate exactly. If someone remits money with even one wrong character, it gets sent back."

"I'll remember."

That evening she bought a glass-fronted wooden frame at the stationery store downstairs, mounted the certificate original inside at home, and bent the two metal tabs tight behind it. Zhi'an poked his head out of the kitchen.

"What's that?"

"The center's certificate."

"Going up tomorrow?"

"Going up inside the office."

March 17, 10 a.m. Zhongshan Road, in front of Zhengping Noodle House.

Shi Lei's secondhand minibus was parked under the plane tree by the door, rear door open, him leaning in to untie the ropes. One new signboard, corners wrapped in bubble wrap, sandwiched between cardboard sheets, tied behind the seat. When he lifted it out, the cardboard touched down first.

"Lawyer Shen, give me a hand."

He Xiufen stayed at the stove. The exhaust fan was going; you could hear the scallions hitting the wok. Li Huilan came down from upstairs with a tape measure in hand and stood by the door, checking the spot.

"Mount it next to that one," she said. "Two fingers apart, top edges aligned."

The Zhengping Law Firm sign hung to the left of the door, its wood darkened with age, black lettering. Before mounting, Shi Lei wiped the wall with his sleeve and came away with half a handful of dust. Peng Weidong arrived a step behind, in dark blue work clothes, cuffs washed pale, night-shift fatigue still in his eyes. He wiped his hands on his trouser seams before holding the ladder.

"Stay back. I'll go up."

"Go on up."

The drill made its first hole in the wall, and the whole street could hear it. Dust fell from the bore and onto Peng Weidong's shoulder. He tilted his chin up, didn't dodge.

Tang Guo arrived as the second hole was going in. She carried no machine, only a fresh rag. She looked in, folded the rag in half, and waited at the foot of the ladder.

The sign went up; the bubble wrap came off; the cardboard was folded and leaned by the door. Shi Lei stepped into the middle of the street, backed up two paces, raised a hand to gauge it. Li Huilan checked the top edge for level.

"It's crooked." He Xiufen's voice came from inside.

All three turned. She was already standing in the doorway, a big wet patch on her apron, a chopstick in her hand. "Two fingers in. Right side's high."

Shi Lei said "oh," moved the ladder, loosened the screws, shifted two fingers in, retightened. "Like this?"

He Xiufen walked two steps into the street, tilted her head back to look, then came back and casually wiped a smudge of white dust off the bottom edge of the sign.

"Once it's up, it's up," she said, and turned back to the stove.

Tang Guo wiped the new sign from left to right, held it up to check for fingerprints, wiped it again, then flipped the rag over and went to wipe the Zhengping sign. Shi Lei laughed. "You need to wipe that one too?" She didn't look up. "This one—I've wiped it before."

Peng Weidong tipped his face back and slowly read the sign, pausing at the word "Gongdao."

"That's good."

He moved the ladder against the wall, one hand still resting on it. "Back then, if she'd had a place like this—"

His words stopped there. He looked up at the sign again.

"Hold it steady," Shi Lei said from the ladder.

Peng Weidong pressed his hand firmly onto the ladder.

Eleven o'clock. Upstairs.

An old writing desk was moved from the inner room toward the door, its legs scraping dully across the floor. He tried the desk's edge against the doorframe twice, couldn't turn it, and had to tip the desk sideways, top toward the ceiling, one end in his hands and one in Shi Lei's, Peng Weidong supporting the middle before they could carry it out.

The desk went opposite hers, half a foot between. The two desks sat uneven, one higher than the other. Li Huilan found an old newspaper in a drawer, folded it twice, and wedged it under the lower desk leg.

"It's cramped," Li Huilan said.

"Cramped is good." He Xiufen came up from the stairs. "You don't have to stand up and shout to ask a question."

The inner room was empty now. Where the desk had stood, the wall showed a lighter square—the section the desk had always blocked from the sun.

Shi Lei brought up the old square table from the storeroom downstairs, then two chairs and an empty tin document box. When he was done, he stood in the doorway catching his breath and noticed the desk by the door downstairs still empty. "The one downstairs—not bringing it up?"

"That one stays." He Xiufen's voice.

Shi Lei nodded, packed the drill into its cloth bag, and got halfway down the stairs before coming back. "Lawyer Shen, anything higher and I can't reach. Next time I'll borrow a tall stool." She said fine. He backed the minibus out of the plane tree's shade and honked once.

On the square table lay the white cloth bundle.

She untied it. Song Qiming had brought it up to the second floor on December 20 last year, and she'd signed the register. The cloth was an old pillowcase she'd found in a drawer that day, washed. Since wrapping, it had sat on the top shelf of the metal cabinet.

The bronze plaque was a little bigger than a palm, two holes on its edges. Its surface was dull in places, but in the upper right one patch blazed bright—so bright it didn't look the same color as the rest.

He Xiufen reached out and wiped that bright patch with her thumb. A layer of gray came off on her skin.

"This spot's shiny."

"At Hengzheng, there was an old comrade in the lobby who polished this spot every morning," she said. "After he retired, this patch stayed bright."

He Xiufen wiped her thumb on her apron.

He measured the height. The tape ran up from the floor to the height of the door handle. He looked up and asked her, "How high?"

"High enough to read standing straight."

"It hung high over there."

"Over there, people looked up at it. This room doesn't need that."

He marked two dots on the wall, found the screws and plastic anchors Shi Lei had left, and the drill gave two short bursts. The plaque went against the wall; he drove the two screws halfway, nudged the plaque left and right until it sat flush, then tightened.

She stood to the side holding the wooden frame, waiting for him to finish the wall, then marked the spot and hung the certificate on the wall by the window. The wire hung a little long, and the frame tilted to one side. She looked up and nudged the bottom of the frame twice until it straightened.

Three things remained in the inner room: a square table, two chairs, a tin document box. She tested the drawer; the lock was sound. The three seals came out of the cloth pouch—round, square, small—each into its own compartment; a new key joined the ring, brighter than the others.

He Xiufen stood in the doorway.

She stood for a while, looking at the bronze plaque on the wall, then at the square table, her eyes moving from one end to the other. The exhaust fan started downstairs, and the air in the room stirred.

"That name up there—I can't say it smoothly," she said.

She didn't follow up. He Xiufen glanced once more at the bronze plaque, her hand resting on the doorframe.

"From now on, this room is called the Shen Qian Room." She turned and went downstairs, her feet sounding three times on the steps.

Li Huilan looked up from the desk. "Who handles the annual report?"

"I do."

"If it's filed wrong, you have to amend it, and each amendment costs." Lu Jibai took the pen holder from the drawer and placed it on the right side of the new desk. "For the first one, I'll check the format."

"I'll write the body myself."

"You write the body."

She stood in the doorway and pushed aside the plastic curtain at the frame. The bronze plaque faced the door head-on. It was the first thing you saw coming in, bright patch facing out.

May 13 last year, that wall on Hengzheng's first floor. Wooden-framed plaques, cell after cell, eight to a row, small year numbers along the bottom. She'd counted them row by row at the foot of that wall. Later, in the reception room, Han Chongli had spoken of his father, standing under that wall, chin tipped up, looking for his own name, asking until what day the plaque would hang. His answer: "Until the day it should come down."

What went up today was this.

She drew her hand back, dusted the bottom edge of the plaque with her sleeve, and stepped back into the outer room and sat down. The inner room's door stood open. From where she sat, looking up, she could see exactly that bright patch.