Director Hu

Director Hu, the Mayor’s policy adviser, turns the investigation into the bodies found at the construction site into a test of political responsibility: he appoints Li Yan to lead it, demands a prompt public solution, and makes Li personally answerable for failure. His concern for the victims is never foregrounded; the scenes with him instead reveal an official measuring the case by its public visibility, the city’s investment prospects, and the need to control its consequences.

Identity and Authority

Li Yan first encounters Director Hu in the lobby of a government building, where Hu arrives at the head of a group of about a dozen suited men in heavy dark coats. A taller, slightly older Procurator General walks beside him, bent to speak quietly in his ear. Hu is short and broad-headed, with close-cropped steel-grey hair; his confident stride and the entourage around him mark his authority before he speaks. He recognizes Li and reprimands Section Chief Huang for being late, then refuses to wait for an explanation: he has another engagement, so Li and Huang must accompany the group.

The apparent ease of Hu’s authority is reinforced by the way others accommodate him. Section Chief Huang offers an apology and an excuse about traffic; Li notices that Huang delivers the lie without hesitation. Hu’s schedule, meanwhile, determines what happens next. The entourage moves out together, and Li and Huang fall in with it. Hu is not simply a distant official who issues instructions through intermediaries; he appears in person, directs the meeting, and expects those around him to keep pace.

Appointment and Political Stakes

In their conversation about the investigation, Hu presents the case as a crisis of public confidence. The bodies have been uncovered under the glare of international television coverage, he explains, making the crime a severe embarrassment to the country. He also warns that the publicity could damage Shanghai’s inward investment, which he describes as vital to the city. The victims’ health and the harm done to them do not enter his stated calculation, a contrast Li registers but does not challenge aloud.

Hu wants a high-profile solution, achieved quickly and in the full glare of the same publicity that exposed the crime. He tells Li that the Mayor wants him to take charge. When Li cautiously says he must first seek permission from his superiors in Beijing, Hu replies that the arrangements have already been made: the Beijing police commissioner is willing to lend Li to Shanghai for the investigation. Hu stresses that Li is not merely being asked to assist. He is to lead the inquiry, and the Mayor will hold him personally responsible if it does not reach a satisfactory conclusion.

The assignment makes Li a conspicuous outsider within the local chain of command. Li understands at once why Section Chief Huang resents his arrival and why Procurator General Yue is cool toward him. Hu has resolved the question of jurisdiction from above, but his decision does not erase the tensions it creates among the officials who must work with Li. Li accepts the responsibility while recognizing the loneliness of being the person singled out to bear it.

The Banquet and Its Guests

At a later dinner at the Xiaoshaoxing Hotel, Hu receives Li, Margaret Campbell, and a group of official and personal associates in a large private room. Guests gather around a circular table while classical Chinese music plays. Hu’s appearance is carefully composed: he wears a designer suit, has a broad smile and unusually even white teeth, and greets Margaret with a handshake she finds limp and slightly damp. Li introduces her as Dr Campbell. Hu says he has heard about her and calls it an honour to meet her before introducing the other guests, including the police commissioner, Section Chief Huang, Yue, another of the Mayor’s advisers, and Hu’s personal friend Cui Feng and Cui’s wife.

Cui Feng’s presence gives the dinner a later investigative significance. When Li considers approaching Cui for access to clinic records, he recalls that they met at Hu’s banquet. The gathering has therefore joined people who will occupy different positions in the inquiry: Hu as the official demanding results, Li as the investigator, and Cui as a prominent clinic operator whose cooperation may help identify victims. The banquet itself does not establish that Hu directs Cui’s later response, but it makes Cui’s access to the city’s influential circles part of the context in which Li must act.

Warnings and Institutional Pressure

After the meal, Hu takes Li aside while the guests make their farewells. He warns Li that the American, Margaret, must not embarrass them, making clear that he regards her participation as a risk to the official handling of the case. Li answers that Hu asked for the truth and that he believes Margaret will provide it. Hu glares at him and advises him to choose his friends carefully. The exchange puts the conflict in plain terms: Li is prepared to rely on an investigator he considers useful, while Hu worries about the political consequences of her conduct.

That warning acquires further weight when Li later pursues information from Cui Feng’s clinics. After investigators learn that four of the five identified victims had received abortions at Cui’s clinics, Li argues that access to the records could help identify the remaining women. Section Chief Huang objects that Cui’s organization performs most abortions in Shanghai and is a personal friend of the Mayor’s policy adviser. Hu is not present in that exchange, and the evidence does not show him personally ordering the refusal. Even so, the reference to his friendship places Li’s practical investigative request within the same network of influence made visible at the banquet.

Li is subsequently challenged by the Commissioner of Police over his approach to Cui. The Commissioner says that Section Chief Huang had advised against harassing Cui, while Li explains that he sought cooperation to obtain medical files that might identify the victims. The confrontation reflects the institutional resistance surrounding the inquiry; it should not be mistaken for a direct order from Hu. Hu’s role is to set the political demand for a quick resolution, while other officials contest how Li pursues it.

Character and Narrative Significance

Hu’s stated priorities illuminate the gap between a case’s public and human stakes. At one point Li thinks of Hu’s concern about the murders’ effect on inward investment, then recalls the victims’ relatives: a tailor identifying his wife, an opera singer’s boyfriend in tears, and Sun Jie grieving over a past decision about an abortion. Against Hu’s emphasis on publicity and the economy, these remembered responses restore the individual lives that institutional language risks reducing to an embarrassment or a threat to confidence.

The novel presents Hu chiefly through consequential appearances rather than a private life or an account of his inner thoughts. His command of meetings, control over Li’s appointment, warning about Margaret, and association with Cui establish a figure of concentrated civic power. Yet the evidence also distinguishes his pressures from the investigation’s human purpose: Li must answer to Hu’s demand for results while attempting to discover who the victims were and who killed them. Hu’s influence sharpens that tension without resolving it; nearly a week into the inquiry, Li still has no clear clue to the killer or motive, and the quick conclusion Hu required remains out of reach.