Welcome to Fluentide True Crime. A real case from Chinese history, in English. Learn Chinese without trying.
I handle the Chinese. You follow the story.
The TianjinJushilin, looked at from the lane in October 1935, was a 大 building, the kind of place a 人 could 住 inside without ever leaving.
住. To live, or to stay. 住 inside means lived inside. 住 + place tells you where someone lives.
It was not the largest religious site in Tianjin. The Catholic cathedral on the western boundary of the French concession was larger. The Confucian temple complex near the city wall was older.
But the Jushilin was, by 1935, the largest lay-Buddhist association in northern China, with three thousand registered members and a 大 building that filled most of a city block.
The block ran north to south. The lane along the west side was narrow enough that two rickshaws had to slow down to pass each other.The lane along the east side was wider, with a row of tea houses and a small printing shop.
Shi Jianqiao的 second-floor room was two blocks east of the eastern lane.
The Jushilin had two gates.
The 前面 gate, on the south face of the block, was the public entrance. It opened onto the main lane, with the stone arch and the wooden plaque cut with four black 字.
前面. Front, or in front. The 前面 gate is the front gate. 前面 is in front of, the front side of something.
The 后面 gate, on the north face, was the staff and delivery entrance.
It opened onto a service alley used by the kitchen, the cleaning staff, and the small group of older members who lived in the dormitory rooms attached to the rear of the chanting hall.
后面. Back, or behind. The 后面 gate is the back gate. 前面 is the front, 后面 is the back.
Sun Chuanfang arrived every morning through the 前面 gate. He left every morning through the 前面 gate. Shi Jianqiao had confirmed this for five months.
Inside the 前面 gate was a stone-paved courtyard with a small pond and two pomegranate trees that had been planted by Jin Yunpeng on the day the Jushilin was founded in 1933.
The pomegranates flowered in May and bore fruit in October.
By the time Shi Jianqiao was walking through the courtyard for her morning chanting in October 1935, the fruit was beginning to split on the branches.
Beyond the pomegranate courtyard was the chanting hall.
The chanting hall was a single rectangular room, oriented east to west, with the altar at the eastern end and the threshold at the western.
The altar held three Buddha statues, a brass incense burner, candle holders, and a small framed photograph of Sun Chuanfang的 two daughters that he had donated when the hall was founded.
The photograph was the only personal object on the altar that did not belong to the founders' formal donations list.
Shi Jianqiao had noticed the photograph in May.She had not registered, until October, that the two 女儿 in it were about the age her own 儿子 had been when she was first imagining the assassination as a project and not yet a plan.
The elder 女儿 in the photograph 看 directly at the camera. The younger 女儿 looked off to the side.
In front of the altar, four rows of cushions ran the length of the room. The first row was reserved for the founding board. Sun Chuanfang的 cushion was in the second row, center-left.Jin Yunpeng的 cushion was in the first row, center.
The third and fourth rows were for senior members. Behind the four rows was a wider standing area where visitors removed their shoes and waited until the registrar pointed them to the back.
Behind the standing area was the visitor cushion area, two rows deep, where Shi Jianqiao had sat every morning since March.From her cushion in the visitor area, the line of sight to Sun Chuanfang的 back was unobstructed.
The distance was, by her measurement, eleven paces.
At a Browning model 1900's effective range, eleven paces was close.
To the north of the chanting hall, through a narrow corridor, were the side rooms. The afternoon study sessions met in the largest of these, called the student room.
Shi Jianqiao had attended the student room twenty-eight times since her registration in May.
The 老师 who led the sessions was a quiet former magistrate from Shandong, Jin Yunpeng的 friend.
South of the chanting hall, through a different corridor, were a small library, an office, and the registrar's desk.
Beyond all of this, on the rear side of the block, were the dormitory rooms. Shi Jianqiao had never seen the dormitory rooms. She had no business there.She had built her cover so that she would never have any business there.
What she had built her cover so that she would have business with was a single rectangular room with eleven paces of clear floor between the cushion she 坐着 on and the cushion Sun Chuanfang坐着 on.
On the morning of October 14, 1935, Shi Jianqiao walked through the 前面 gate of the TianjinJushilin for the one hundred and ninety-seventh time since her arrival in March. She removed her shoes.
She walked to her cushion in the back. She sat.
She chanted. She left at seven thirty through the 前面 gate.
On the way back to the room above the bean-curd shop, she stopped at the printing shop on the eastern lane and ordered fifty copies of a single-page document she had drafted the night before.
The printer asked no questions and quoted a price for delivery in three weeks.
In Episode Fifteen, we follow her through the month of watching that began the next morning.
That is where we start Episode Fifteen.
