A Cup of Light by Nicole Mones

to paint with that Chenghua subtlety—this was done by a master! I have to admit.” She swallowed. “It had me going for a while. I had to look at it a long time.”
    â€œA chicken cup!” Dr. Zheng was still taken with the boldness of it. “Doesn’t he realize how much it would take to convince us there is a nineteenth cup in the world?”
    â€œWho? Gao? Maybe he doesn’t know it’s a fake,” she said. “We don’t know who put the cup in there. Or when. But I’ll tell you, it’s good. Amazingly good.”
    â€œA chicken cup!”
    â€œI know. And who knows what else? This could be just the start.”
    â€œOh,” he said. “Expect more. You’ll find more.” He said it matter-of-factly, with the half-charmed rue of someone who knows. “Marvelous, isn’t it?” She heard the popping skitter of his laugh. “That the first one should be a Chenghua chicken cup. It’s so impertinent! When was it made?”
    â€œRecently, I think.”
    â€œHow I’d love to know the artist.”
    â€œAnd I,” she said. Because whoever had created this cup understood what
hoi moon
meant. Yes, she wanted to meet the maker of this cup, very much. “I’ll try to find out,” she promised him.
    â€œLuo Na,” Dr. Zheng said. “If anyone can do it, it will be you.”
    In Shanghai, in Sophia’s Teahouse on Huashan Lu, Gao Yideng waited for the ah chan. He was an executive and a master at delegation, but this was his extremely personal matter and he would handle it himself. If he succeeded in selling this collection, he could take payment anywhere in the world, and almost no one would know. It was a private lifeline into which he had put a great deal of thought.
    He watched the door. While he waited he drank the delicate tea called
bai xue yu,
snowy buds of jasmine. From speakers behind the creamy walls a saxophone rippled quietly. The square, border-inlaid table in front of him was set with clean, contemporary tea ware and, for the ever present and soothing reminder of the past, an ancient wooden caddy filled with antique tea implements: wood tongs, a paddle with a twirled handle. This place was both safe and quiet. No one knew him.
    The bell jingled above the door, and a string-bodied southerner came in. They knew each other at once. Gao took in his puffed-up hairstyle, his weak chin and insufferable sunglasses.
    â€œBai Xing,” the ah chan said, touching his hand briefly to his chest in introduction as he slipped into the sage-green leather chair opposite. “Bai Xing” was as close to a real name as he ever gave out. It was not his original name given by his family either, but his long-standing, most-favored sobriquet.
    â€œThanks for coming,” Gao said.
    â€œYou too.”
    Then the waitress was there in khakis and a black T-shirt, silver drops in her ears, pretty. Bai quickly scanned the menu.
“Gong ju hua cha,”
he said, Paying tribute to the emperor chrysanthemum. This tea choice was a luck charm for the ah chan, since Emperor was the name he wanted to earn when this was over. Emperor Bai.
    Gao Yideng was watching the waitress. She was one of the young cognoscenti, with her hair cut straight across at chin length and her eyes well-honed and world-weary. Quite a contrast to this ah chan, who was still too fresh and unschooled to realize he was risking everything, his life, which was of inconceivable value, for half a million
ren min bi,
which was nothing, only money. Yet the man from the provinces wanted this risk. He was keening for it. That showed in the attentive angle of his face and the glitter in his eyes.
    Gao looked briefly away from the ah chan and out the window. Facing them was an apartment building called White Pearl, the characters still carved in its lintel stone. It happened to be the first building Gao Yideng had ever bought. It was five stories, fifteen