An Wenjiang

An Wenjiang, the estranged partner of Xiao Fengzhen, enters the investigation as a possible source of information about her disappearance and the fate of a woman investigators believe was a singer. He is a worker on a sightseeing cruiser on the Huangpu River, and he recounts the couple’s separation in terms sharply at odds with Xiao Fengzhen’s mother’s account. His abrasive manner and admission that he had beaten Xiao Fengzhen make him an unsettling figure, but the tears he struggles to conceal when told she was murdered complicate any simple portrait of him as indifferent. The investigation does not establish his role in her disappearance.

Work and First Encounter

When Xiao Fengzhen’s mother tells Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling that An Wenjiang worked on tourist cruises, she says he had never visited his daughter and expresses the wish that he might have fallen overboard. The investigators find him aboard a cruiser. The boat is underway, and its wheelhouse is controlled by a joystick that operates both the rudder and the engine speed. His work places him amid the daily movement of tourists and river traffic, a setting that contrasts with the private loss the investigators bring to him.

An Wenjiang reacts to Li Yan and Nien Mei-Ling’s arrival with suspicion and hostility. He objects to their entering the wheelhouse, and Li Yan shows his identification and warns him to watch his language because a woman is present. An Wenjiang then questions whether Nien Mei-Ling is also a police officer, addressing her in a way that makes clear he does not share Li Yan’s courtesy. His manner is immediately abrasive, but the investigators’ purpose is not to judge his manners: they need to know what became of Xiao Fengzhen.

Xiao Fengzhen’s Disappearance and Their Conflicting Accounts

Xiao Fengzhen’s mother says her daughter had gone to try to repair the relationship. She describes An Wenjiang as someone who had beaten Xiao Fengzhen and says she had urged her daughter to leave him, even though he was the father of her child. In her account, Xiao Fengzhen’s attachment to him had been difficult for her to understand. The mother also recalls that An Wenjiang told the police Xiao Fengzhen had never come to his apartment and that he thought she had simply changed her mind. She believes he knew her well enough to understand that this was not an ordinary change of plans.

An Wenjiang tells the investigators that Xiao Fengzhen left him and that they were apart because of her mother. He says they had intended to reconcile, with Xiao Fengzhen and the child moving back in with him, but maintains that Xiao Fengzhen never arrived for the weekend when they were supposed to talk things through. He suspects her mother encouraged her to leave. These statements give the investigators competing accounts, not a resolution: the mother says Xiao Fengzhen went to make peace, while An Wenjiang says she did not show up. The interview does not independently confirm either account of the final meeting.

When Nien Mei-Ling confronts him about having beaten Xiao Fengzhen, An Wenjiang acknowledges one incident but blames Xiao Fengzhen for it. He says she had stopped taking precautions because she wanted another child, specifically a boy, and he feared the fines the family-planning authorities could impose. His explanation links their domestic conflict to the pressures surrounding family planning and to his view of their financial circumstances, while also revealing how readily he shifts responsibility for violence onto Xiao Fengzhen. The justification is his; it does not settle what happened between them or explain her disappearance.

He also resents the distance between his life and Xiao Fengzhen’s social world. He complains that she never took him to her opera gatherings, where he feared her acquaintances would judge her for being involved with someone of his status. The complaint suggests that he experienced the relationship as marked by class embarrassment and exclusion. It sits uneasily beside his insistence that he wanted Xiao Fengzhen and the child to return, and beside the mother’s description of the couple’s troubled history.

The Investigation and a Change in His Demeanour

Asked whether he knew about the bodies, An Wenjiang says he had read about them in the papers and thought medical students might have cut them up. Li Yan asks whether he had medical training or had worked in a hospital. An Wenjiang laughs at the suggestion that he might have such a background, then recognizes the more personal possibility behind the questioning: that the investigators may want him to identify Xiao Fengzhen. He says he will do so. His response does not establish that he recognizes any victim, but it shows that he is willing to participate in the identification process.

When Li Yan confirms that Xiao Fengzhen was murdered, An Wenjiang’s manner changes. He looks away as tears gather and asks to be told if the investigators discover who killed her. Li Yan is surprised by the strength of the reaction and concludes that An Wenjiang’s feelings for Xiao Fengzhen went deeper than the sexual boasting that had colored his earlier account. The moment complicates, rather than cancels, the record of abuse and blame: grief is visible, but it does not establish innocence, undo the harm he admitted, or explain the missing interval in Xiao Fengzhen’s story.

Characterization and Narrative Role

An Wenjiang’s interview is built around the gap between what people say about him and what he says about himself. Xiao Fengzhen’s mother sees him as a violent partner who failed even to visit his daughter; he depicts himself as a man whose hoped-for reconciliation was thwarted by the mother’s interference and Xiao Fengzhen’s failure to appear. He admits to beating Xiao Fengzhen, but minimizes the incident and presents his own fears about another child and family-planning fines as an explanation. None of these perspectives is sufficient to resolve her disappearance.

His tears provide a final counterpoint to his contemptuous speech and defensiveness. They show that Xiao Fengzhen mattered to him, while leaving open how affection coexisted with blame and violence. The river cruiser carries the investigation into his working day, where a question about a missing woman interrupts an ordinary job; the exchange then ends without a confession or a decisive answer. An Wenjiang remains a significant but unresolved witness, his account adding conflict and emotional complexity to the search rather than closing it.