by Kevin Kwan
Gaoliang exchanged looks with his wife. This Colette Bing was just too much. Glaring at Carlton, Shaoyen quipped, “Now I know why our banker called me up last week. They noticed some highly elevated spending patterns on your accounts. Looks like you two had quite a time in Paris, didn’t you?”
“Ooh, it was pure heaven,” Colette said with a sigh.
“We had a lovely time,” Carlton said a little uncomfortably.
“And that racing competition with Richie Yang, was that lovely too?” Shaoyen asked, her voice dripping with sarcasm.
“What do you mean? I didn’t race him,” Carlton replied carefully.
“But you were going to, weren’t you?”
“It never happened, Mother,” Carlton protested.
Gaoliang sighed heavily. “Son, what really disappoints me is your complete lack of judgment. I can’t believe you would even consider doing something like that after your accident! And to make things worse, this callous bet you made over the race—I never imagined you would have the audacity to make a bet with Richie Yang for ten million dollars.”
Colette spoke up in Carlton’s defense. “Mr. and Mrs. Bao, I don’t mean to intrude, but you should know that Richie was the one who came up with the challenge and the bet. Richie was the one provoking Carlton every chance he could for the past few months. He did all this to try to impress me. If anyone should be blamed for everything that happened in Paris, it should be me. You should be proud of your son—Carlton did the right thing. He was the bigger man and walked away from that race. Can you imagine if Richie had won the race? I mean, I know ten million dollars is not that much money, but still, what a loss of face it would have been for you Baos!”
Gaoliang and Shaoyen looked at Colette, too stupefied to say anything. Just then, Colette’s phone began to buzz. “Haha—speak of the devil, it’s Richie. He still won’t give up and has been calling me a dozen times a day! Should I turn on the speakerphone and bring him into the conversation? I’m sure he would confirm everything.”
The Baos shook their heads, mortified by the suggestion.
“Then I will just hit Ignore,” Colette said lightly, placing her phone on the empty chair next to her.
The dinner dishes began to arrive, and the four of them started to eat in an uncomfortable silence. When the roasted suckling pig was finally brought in on a silver platter with much fanfare, Carlton decided it was time to speak up. “Father, Mother, I take full responsibility for what happened in Paris. It was foolish of me to get dragged into the mud with Richie. Yes, I was prepared to race him, but thankfully Rachel talked some sense into me.”
Shaoyen flinched at the mention of Rachel, but Carlton continued talking. “Rachel knows all about London. She understood what an emotional state I was in, and she still managed to convince me to walk away from the race. And I’m awfully grateful she did, because otherwise I might not even be here telling you this right now.”
“She knows everything about your accident?” Shaoyen asked Carlton, trying to make it sound casual. She even knows about the girl who died?
“Yes, everything,” Carlton said, looking his mother straight in the eye.
Shaoyen said nothing, but her glare spoke volumes. Stupid boy stupid boy stupid boy!
As if reading her mind, Carlton responded, “We can trust her, Mother. Whether you like it or not, Rachel is going to be part of our lives. She’s visiting Hangzhou now with a friend from Singapore, but once she returns to Shanghai, I really think you need to invite her over. This freeze-out has gone on for far too long. Once you meet her, I know you’ll come to like her as well.”
Shaoyen stared down at the uneaten crisp of golden pork skin on her plate, saying nothing, so Carlton tried another tactic. “If you don’t believe me, ask Colette. All your friends were charmed by Rachel in Paris, weren’t they? Stephanie Shi, Adele Deng, Tiffany Yap.”
Colette nodded diplomatically. “Yes, she was a big hit with all my friends. Mrs. Bao, Rachel’s nothing like what you’re expecting—she’s American, but in the best possible way. I think that in time, Shanghai and Beijing society would come to accept her, especially if she carries a different handbag. You should give her one of your Hermès bags, Mrs. Bao. She will be like the daughter you never had.”
Shaoyen sat stone-faced, while Gaoliang addressed his son. “I’m glad Rachel was able to help you, but it still doesn’t excuse your behavior. The profligate spending in Paris, the public fights, the drag racing, it’s all an indication to me that you are not ready to—”
Carlton got up abruptly from his chair. “Look, I apologized. I’m very sorry for disappointing you. For always disappointing you. I’m not going to sit here any longer and continue this inquisition. Especially when the two of you can’t even sort out your own problems! Colette, let’s get out of here.”
“But the bird’s nest? The bird’s nest dessert isn’t even here yet,” Colette protested.
Rolling his eyes, Carlton left the dining room without another word.
Colette pursed her lips awkwardly. “Um, I think I better follow him. But first, allow me to treat tonight.”
“That’s a very nice gesture, Colette, but we’ll take care of dinner,” Gaoliang responded.
“I did all the ordering—I really should pay,” Colette said matter-of-factly, gesturing to Roxanne, who ceremoniously handed the head waiter a credit card.
“No, no, we insist,” Shaoyen said, getting up from her chair and attempting to thrust her credit card in the waiter’s hand.
“Absolutely not, Mrs. Bao!” Colette shrieked, leaping up and snatching Shaoyen’s card away from the hapless waiter.
“Aiyah, it’s no use fighting you,” Gaoliang said.
“You’re right, it’s no use,” Colette said with a triumphant smile.
A few moments later, the waiter returned. Glancing sheepishly at Colette, he whispered something in Roxanne’s ear.
“That’s not possible. Try again,” Roxanne said dismissively.
“We tried several times, ma’am,” he said in a low voice. “Perhaps it has exceeded its limit?”
Roxanne stepped outside of the private dining room with the waiter and barked, “Do you know what this is? It’s a P. J. Whitney Titanium card, and it’s only available to ultra-high-net-worth individuals. There is no limit. I could buy an airplane with this card if I wanted to. Run it one more time.”
“What is the problem?” Colette asked, coming out of the room.
Roxanne shook her head in disgust. “He is saying the card’s been rejected.”
“I don’t understand. How can a credit card ever be rejected? It’s not like it’s a kidney!” Colette laughed.
“No, no, it’s a billing term. Sometimes, other people’s cards can be ‘rejected’ if they exceed a certain spending limit, but that’s not possible with you,” Roxanne explained.
A moment later, the head waiter returned with the manager, who was ornately dressed in a Gianni Versace patterned shirt and black Jeggings. He smiled apologetically and said, “I’m very sorry, Miss Bing, but we tried everything. It just would not work. Perhaps you’d like to use another card?”
Colette looked at Roxanne in utter bafflement. Nothing like this had ever happened to her in her entire life. “Do I even have another card?”
“I’ll just pay for it first,” Roxanne huffed, handing the manager her own black card.
• • •
After Roxanne and Colette had left the room, the Baos sat in silence for a few moments.
“I suppose you’re feeling very satisfied about all this,” Shaoyen finally said.
Gaoliang frowned. “What do you mean?”
“We get to hear about how your virtuous daughter saved the day, and you think everything is fine now.”
“Is that what you think?”
Shaoyen glared at him icily and said in a
soft, deliberate voice, “No, that’s not what I think. I’m thinking that all of China’s top families now know that you sired a bastard child. I’m thinking that our family is going to become the laughingstock of society. I’m thinking that your political life as you know it will be over, and that Carlton won’t stand a chance now either.”
Gaoliang gave a weary sigh. “Right now, I’m more concerned about Carlton as a human being, not his political career. I’m wondering where we went wrong with him. How did we manage to raise a child who would find it acceptable to wager ten million dollars on a race? I don’t recognize this son of mine anymore!”
“So now what? You’re going to throw him out of the house?” Shaoyen said facetiously.
“I could do more than that. I could threaten to disinherit him. Knowing he may no longer have a fortune to gamble away might help knock some sense into him,” Gaoliang mused.
Shaoyen’s eyes widened in alarm. “You can’t be serious.”
“I won’t disinherit him completely, but after all that’s happened, I think that giving him absolute control of everything would be a big mistake. Tell me, what is going to happen to everything we’ve worked so hard for? You especially—you took my father’s medical supplies company and single-handedly transformed it into a billion-dollar empire. Do you really think Carlton’s capable of taking the reins anytime soon? I’m thinking of getting Rachel more involved in the business. She’s a highly respected economist—at least she won’t run the company into the ground!”
Just then the door opened and Roxanne walked in. “Oh—you’re still here? I’m sorry to intrude, but I think Colette left her cell phone in here.”
Gaoliang saw it lying on a nearby chair and handed it to Roxanne. The minute the door closed behind her, Shaoyen began to speak again. “How dare you even think of bringing that girl into the company? How would Carlton feel?”
“I think Carlton couldn’t care less. He has shown no interest at all in doing anything serious with his life, and—”
“He’s still recovering from his accident!”
Gaoliang shook his head in frustration. “Carlton has done nothing but screw up over the past few years, but you keep making excuses for him every time. He races his car in London and almost gets himself killed, and you forbid me to criticize him because you think it will upset his recovery. He comes back to China and does nothing but party every night of the week with Colette Bing, and we say nothing. Now he goes to Paris and has the audacity to try to compete in another reckless race, and you’re still defending him.”
“I’m not defending him! But I can appreciate his inner struggle,” Shaoyen protested. If Gaoliang only knew what really happened in London, he would understand. But he couldn’t know.
“What inner struggle? The only struggle I’ve witnessed is how you’ve smothered him with all your pampering.”
Stung by his remark, Shaoyen let out an angry laugh. “So it’s all my fault then? You are too blind to see it, but your own actions are to be blamed! You let that girl come to China. She is the one who has destroyed the harmony in our family. She is the reason Carlton is acting so recklessly!”
“That is such nonsense! You heard it yourself from him tonight—Rachel was the one who talked sense into him, when he didn’t even value his own life!”
“How could he, when his own father has never valued him? Even when he was a baby, I could sense that you never loved Carlton the same way I did. And now I know why…it’s because you’ve never stopped loving that shabi* Kerry Chu, isn’t it? You’ve never stopped pining after her and your long-lost daughter!”
“You’re being ridiculous. You know very well I had no idea Kerry was even alive until a few months ago. I had no idea I had a daughter!”
“Then you’re even more pathetic than I thought! You are willing to give away your family’s legacy to a girl you barely know! I’ve bled for this goddamn company for over twenty years, and you’ll have to kill me before I see you hand it over to that…that bastard girl!” Shaoyen screamed, grabbing the half-empty teapot from the table and flinging it against the mirrored glass wall.
Gaoliang stared grimly at the smashed pieces of cracked porcelain and the amber lines of tea streaking down the mirrored wall. “I can’t talk to you when you’re like this. You’re clearly out of your mind,” he said, getting up from the table and leaving the room.
Shaoyen shouted after him, “I’m out of my mind because of you!”
* * *
* Mandarin for “stupid cunt.”
7
THE WEST LAKE
HANGZHOU, CHINA
As the last vapors of early-morning mist hovered over the still waters, the only sound to be heard was the discreet splish of the boatman’s single wooden oar as he rowed Rachel and Peik Lin through a secluded inlet of Hangzhou’s West Lake.
“I am so glad you dragged me out of bed to do this. This is beyond exquisite!” Rachel sighed contentedly as she stretched her legs out on the cushioned lounge seat of their traditional Chinese rowboat.
“I told you the lake is at its most beautiful right at dawn,” Peik Lin said, gazing at the poetry of lines created by the converging mountains. Far off, she could make out an ancient hilltop temple silhouetted against the pearl gray sky. There was just something about this landscape that touched her beyond words, and she suddenly understood how over the centuries all the great Chinese poets and artists were inspired by the West Lake.
As the boat drifted slowly under one of the romantic stone bridges, Rachel asked the boatman, “When were these bridges built?”
“There’s no telling, miss. Hangzhou was the favored retreat of the emperors for five thousand years—Marco Polo called it the City of Heaven,” he replied.
“I would have to agree with him,” Rachel said, taking another long, slow sip of the freshly roasted Longjing tea that the boatman had prepared for her. As the boat drifted through a watery grove of wild lotuses, the girls caught sight of a small kingfisher perched on the tip of a lotus stalk, waiting for the right moment to strike.
“I wish Nick could see this,” Rachel said wistfully.
“Me too! But you’ll be back with him before too long. I think you’ve been bitten by the Hangzhou bug, haven’t you?”
“Jesus, I wish I’d come sooner! When you first told me this place was China’s answer to Lake Como, I had my doubts, but after visiting that glorious tea plantation yesterday, followed by the amazing dinner at the mountaintop temple, I’m completely sold.”
“And here I thought I needed to arrange for George Clooney to pop up from under those willows over there,” Peik Lin quipped.
Arriving back at the elegant wooden dock of the Four Seasons Hangzhou, they climbed out of the boat slowly, still lulled by the sybaritic boat ride. “Just in time for our spa appointments. Get ready, this place is going to rock your world,” Peik Lin said excitedly as they walked along the pathway to the palatial gray-walled villa that housed the resort’s spa. “Which treatment did you end up scheduling first?”
“I thought I’d start the day with the Jade and Lotus massage,” Rachel answered.
Peik Lin raised an eyebrow. “Hmm…what parts of your body are they massaging, exactly?”
“Oh, stop! Apparently they buff your body with lotus seeds and crushed jade and then give you an intensive deep-tissue rubdown. What are you getting?”
“My favorite—the Imperial Consorts and Concubines Perfumed Water Ritual. It’s inspired by the bathing ritual that was reserved for whichever woman the emperor chose to spend the night with. You’re immersed in a perfumed bath of orange blossoms and gardenia, followed by a gentle pressure-point massage. Then they do this awesome body scrub with crushed pearls and almonds, before cocooning you in a white-china-clay body wrap. It all ends with a long nap in a private steam room. I tell you, I always come out of it feeling a decade younger.”
&nb
sp; “Oooh. Maybe I’ll do that one tonight. Oh wait, I think I scheduled the luxury caviar facial tonight. Shoot, we don’t have enough days for all the treatments I want to try!”
“Wait a minute, when did Rachel Chu, who wouldn’t even go for a pedicure back in her college days, become a spa whore?”
Rachel grinned. “It’s all the time I’ve been spending with those Shanghai girls—I think it’s catching.”
• • •
After several hours of pampering treatments, Rachel and Peik Lin met for lunch at the resort’s restaurant. Naturally, they were shown to one of the private dining rooms, which were in pagoda-style structures overlooking a serene lagoon. Admiring the massive Murano glass chandelier that hovered over their lacquered walnut table, Rachel mused, “After this trip, New York is going to seem like a dump. Every place I go to in China seems to be more luxurious than the last. Who would have ever guessed? Remember when I was teaching in Chengdu in 2002? The place where I roomed had one communal indoor toilet, and that was considered a luxury.”
“Ha! You wouldn’t recognize Chengdu now. It’s become the Silicon Valley of China—one fifth of the world’s computers are made there,” Peik Lin said.
Rachel shook her head in wonder. “I just can’t get over it—all these megacities springing up overnight, this nonstop economic boom. The economist in me wants to say ‘This can’t last,’ but then I’ll see something that totally blows my mind. The other day in Shanghai, Nick and I were trying to get back to our hotel from Xintiandi. All the taxis had their signs lit up, but we couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t stop for us. Finally, this Australian girl standing on the corner said to us, ‘Don’t you have the taxi app?’ We were like, The what? Turns out there’s an app you use to bid on taxis. Everyone uses it, and the highest bidder ends up getting the taxi.”
Peik Lin laughed. “Free-market enterprise at its best!”
A server entered the room and lifted the lid off the first course with a flourish. It was a heaping plate of tiny shrimp that glistened like pearls. “These are the famous Hangzhou freshwater shrimp flash fried in garlic. You don’t find them anywhere else on the planet. I’ve been craving this dish since we first talked about meeting up here,” Peik Lin said, scooping a generous portion onto Rachel’s plate.
