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.
On the morning of October 15, 1935, the weather in Tianjin turned cold for the first time since spring. Shi Jianqiao had been a 学生 of the Jushilin的 lay-instruction program for six months by then.
学生. Student. A 学生 of the program means a student of the program. 老师 is teacher, 学生 is student.
Shi Jianqiao took the heavier of her two coats from the clothes chest and walked to the Jushilin in a different cut of 衣服 than she had been wearing all summer.
衣服. Clothes. A different cut of 衣服 means a different cut of clothes.
Sun Chuanfang, that morning, also wore heavier 衣服. The simple gray robe of summer had been replaced by a darker padded robe with a wider collar.
The padded robe meant his shoulders were wider in the second row, his back broader, the line from her cushion to his more clearly defined.
She made an entry in the second 书 that evening. Padded robe. Wider target.
The month of watching began that morning.
On the second day, she counted the 多 worshippers in the back two rows. Seventy-three.
By the end of the month she would know how 多 of them attended every morning, how 多 only on weekends, how 多 only on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month.
多. Many, or a lot. How 多 of them means how many of them. 多 is one of the most common adjectives in Chinese.
On the third day, she counted the staff. Two registrars at the desk. One groundskeeper at the gate. Three women cleaning the cushions before chanting. Old Fang in the side room.The 老师 from Shandong led the afternoon session.
Jin Yunpeng arrived at five forty-five, sat in the first row, and left at eight to go to his afternoon engagements.
On the fourth day, she counted the children. There were always two or three children in the back rows on weekdays, accompanying their grandmothers. On weekends there were 多 more.
By the end of the month she had a count of every regular child by approximate age and the grandmother each one came with.
The children were the part of the count she did not write down.
On the seventh day, the printer delivered the pamphlets. Fifty single-page documents, folded once down the middle, stacked in a wooden box.
Shi Jianqiao paid the printer in cash and carried the box back to the room above the bean-curd shop and put it under the bed.
On the eighth day, in the early morning before the chanting, she took the Browning model 1900 out of the wooden box at the bottom of the clothes chest, broke it down on the table by the window, cleaned it,
oiled it, reassembled it,
loaded the magazine with seven rounds, set the safety, and put it back in the wooden box.
She had not fired it since the orchard in Anhui in the spring of 1934. She would not fire it again until the morning of November 13.
On the eleventh day, she wrote a letter to her elder 儿子.
She did not 说 in the letter what she was going to do. She told him she was in Tianjin on a 学习 retreat. She told him to listen to his 妈妈的 instructions while she was away.She told him she had been thinking about him every day.
She told him that whatever he heard about her in the coming weeks, he was to remember that she had been a 好妈妈 to him for as long as she had been able to be.
She wrote a similar letter to her younger 儿子.
She mailed both letters from the Tianjin central post office on the twelfth day, to her husband's 家 in Anhui, with a request that he hold them until she sent word.
On the fifteenth day, the weather turned colder. She bought a third coat, a heavier one, from a market stall on the eastern lane. The market stall sold winter 衣服 at low prices to the residents of the lane.
The widow downstairs commented on the new coat and approved.
On the twentieth day, Sun Chuanfang的 cushion was empty.
She made an entry in the 书 in a faster hand than usual. Sun absent. Day twenty. Reason unknown.
On the twenty-first day, the cushion was still empty. The registrar at the desk, when Shi Jianqiao asked, said the chairman was unwell. Nothing serious. He would be back in a few days.
On the twenty-third day, the chairman was back.
Shi Jianqiao made an entry in the 书. Sun returned. Day twenty-three. Schedule resumed. Padded robe.
On the twenty-fifth day, she walked the route from the front gate of the Jushilin to the bean-curd-shop room four times in a row, at a steady pace, and timed it at six minutes and forty seconds each way.
The route ran east one block, south two blocks, west one block, then south one final block to the door of the building she 住 in.
On the twenty-eighth day, she practiced removing the Browning from her coat in front of the mirror. Inside pocket of the third coat, right side. Reach across with the right hand.Two seconds to the line of sight. Three seconds to the trigger.
On the twenty-ninth day, she folded the third coat with the Browning's outline visible only to a 人 who knew where to look. She hung the coat on the back of the door.
On the morning of the thirtieth day, November 12, 1935, she walked to the Jushilin, sat in her usual cushion in the back row, chanted with the rest of them,
and watched Sun Chuanfang的 padded shoulders rise and fall through the entire ninety minutes.
She walked back to the room. She did not eat lunch.
In the afternoon she was quiet. The widow downstairs noticed nothing. Shi Jianqiao sat by the window and watched the weather outside change from clear to overcast.
The lane below filled with the late-afternoon foot traffic of the bean-curd shop's regulars.
By dusk the lane was empty.
At ten o'clock she went to bed. She set no alarm. She had been waking at four thirty every morning for eight months. She trusted her body.
In Episode Sixteen, she wakes.
That is where we start Episode Sixteen.
