Shanghai Centre Theatre is both a performance venue and a place where spectacle gives way to investigation. Its acrobatic show supplies a vivid scene of apparent impossibility, while a later visit backstage brings Li Yan and Margaret Campbell into contact with Sun Jie as they pursue a question about Wu Liyao’s family.

The Acrobatic Performance

In one performance, nine chairs balance at a steep angle in an ascending arc, supported by six teenage girls in yellow and green costumes. A pale blue spotlight throws their shadows onto a screen, making the arrangement appear to defy gravity. When one girl loses her balance, the chairs tumble and the performers spin through the air; only then does Li see that wires had been supporting them. The illusion gives way to the practical labor behind the act: several boys retrieve the chairs, and the girls descend, visibly exerted and embarrassed. A woman in the front stalls rises to berate them for the mishap, while the youngest performer apologizes and takes responsibility.

Backstage Inquiry

The theatre returns to the investigation later that evening. Near nine-thirty, Li estimates that the performance will be ending and suggests that he and Margaret might catch Wu Liyao’s husband afterward. They hurry from the Long Bar above the Shanghai Centre car park into the building’s atrium, where most spectators have dispersed and the backstage area is busy with acrobats gathering props and costumes. The contrast with the carefully staged act is striking: behind the show, performers move about, talk, and prepare to leave.

A manageress, walking on sticks, recognizes Li and directs him and Margaret down a corridor. They find Sun Jie putting on his coat. He reacts warily to Li and says that Wu Liyao is dead and that he needs to put the matter behind him. Li promises not to trouble him again, but asks whether he and Wu Liyao had children. Sun Jie responds with suspicion, asking why Li wants to know. The theatre’s backstage rooms thus become a threshold between public spectacle and private grief, and the visit ends with Li’s question still awaiting an answer.