In 1935, the year of the Wood Pig, spring came late to Shanghai. The plane trees in the French Concession still clung to last year’s dead leaves, shivering in the biting easterly wind. Deep along Avenue Joffre, an unassuming storefront bore the old sign of the Paper Moon Bookshop, its peeling paint mottled like a skin disease of time. On an ordinary day, it was merely a secret haunt passed among men of letters, specializing in banned books, from bound volumes of New Youth to pirated editions of Soviet novels. But on the afternoon of the seventh day of the third lunar month that year, a seemingly refined tea gathering was underway on the second floor.
At a pearwood table by the window, Su Zhenshu, chief editor of the Shen Bao, set down his celadon teacup, its glaze the color of sky after rain. The porcelain was so thin that the tea inside showed through in a warm amber glow. He was nearing thirty, dressed in a dark blue wool long gown, and behind his gold-rimmed glasses his gaze was usually stern, shaped by years tempered in the smoke of the newspaper world. At that moment, however, his eyes drifted to the window despite himself.
