Madame Ping's was still doing a decent business. Its clientele were 
willing to put up with some inconvenience to get there. It was only a short 
distance from the bridgehead, and the Madame had put a few truculent 
taxi-drivers on retainer as personal escorts. The business was startlingly 
large given the scarcity of real estate in Shanghai; it occupied most of a 
five-story reinforced-concrete Mao Dynasty apartment block, having started out 
with just a couple of flats and expanded room by room as the years went on.