Shanghai Fools: A Novel

by Vann Chow

  "Her mother and I spent eighteen years to bring her up. We raised her healthy and well-mannered. Do you know how much work it took? I am not letting her marry into your family without a proper dowry."

  "You are going to get a dowry. Eight hundred eighty-eight is a good auspicious number. You should take it."

  I sort of heard the 'or leave it' in his tone of voice.

  "Eighty-eight thousand. That's a very big discount," Mr. Zhu said. "I still haven't even started with the list of other things we want. Apart from the usual betrothal gifts for good luck that cannot be missed, like the bridal cake and new home decorations, their wedding banquet needs to have at least thirty tables and we want half of it. All of our relatives from Sichuan will need to be invited."

  "And for sure you're expecting their travel expenses to be covered by us as well, don't you?"

  "Well, yes, of course," he said proudly. "The Zhu family is going to marry its daughter away to Shanghai. Of course it has to be done wth as much fanfare as possible! I want to let everyone knows about this great news."

  My dad looked hesitantly at my mother, who rolled her eyes.

  Mr. Zhu continued. "I went to look around in the city center. They could have a banquet at the Hilton Hotel downtown. That would be the only place fit for the occasion."

  "Mr. Zhu, forgive me for being honest, you have not been to Shanghai for a very long time. Things don't work like this around here."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I don't know what you've gotten in your mind, but we are not going to pay eighty-eight thousand nor the other fancy things that you dreamt about. This is a wedding for the two of them, not as an ostentatious display for you to show off at our expenses!"

  "Your son is a celebrity. How can you let other people know your son married my daughter and you do not even want to spend this little amount of money? The whole world will know how stingy your family is from here all the way to Lizhou!"

  That comment apparently went too far, because it made my mother opened her mouth.

  "Then take her back to Sichuan with you!" She suggested. "I thought I would keep quiet and go through this with you because my son already lives (she actually meant 'sleeps', but she wouldn't say that, of course, as a well-manner woman) with your daughter and as a responsible adult, he should take care of her for the rest of her life. But if you're going to make this difficult for us, then I am afraid we don't have a deal and they can deregister their marriage if it pleases you. You are free to take your daughter with you and find someone else who is willing to pay a hundred and eighty thousand for her." My mother could really get to the point when she wanted to. "I have never thought my son would marry a single mother from outside of the province, anyway."

  There was a lot of scuffles between locals and out-of-province immigrants theses days because of widespread discrimination and hatred. To call your daughter-in-law out as an immigrant coming from outside of the province was really the absolute worst thing you could say in a betrothal discussion because it implied that she was only marrying for the social benefits. While that was true, our marriage was the result of our mutual consents, for the benefit of Jessie, whom I truly loved as my own. Despite the fact, Paula did not like what my mother said about her. She stood up from her seat in anger and stormed outside of the apartment.

  "Go after your wife!" Mr. Zhu said. "She's your wife, isn't she?!"

  Chapter 17

  I caught Paula smoking in the open hallway two floors below ours.

  "What should we do?" Paula asked, not really waiting for an answer from me but more of an expression of her desperation. She took a long drag of her cigarette. "My dad would not step down, and neither would your dad, it seems. He was a lot more amiable the last time I met him. I thought they loved Jessie."

  "They do." Jessie was a likable guy. His mother, not so much. For one, just like me, they would never allow a chain-smoker to be my wife. "Well, it doesn't really matter. We're married already. Who cares if they like it or not. If the negotiation fails, the worst thing that could happen is the two families will not sit around the same table during Chinese New Year for Spring Dinner."

  Paula turned around, threw her cigarette on the ground and stomped it out. "Look at this." She handed me a letter she pulled out from inside her purse.

  I unfolded the letter and gave it a read. It was from the Civic Service Bureau. Due to the unusual nature of our marriage, they are going to be sending officers to interview us and our relatives to verify the facts. It would be a series of unscheduled visits and interviews, the letter stated.

  "You're kidding me," I gasped. "People get married all the time. They can't be serious."

  There were tears in Paula's reddening eyes. I must say that was the first time I had ever witnessed her getting emotional. She had always conducted herself around like a raging lunatic bursting with hatred towards everything and everyone on earth as if the entire Universe was working against her, that I did not realize she was capable of having a soft, fragile side. "They are going to interview our relatives. You know what that means, that means they are simply waiting for us to bury ourselves with our relatives' testimonials. They granted us our applications to register our Hukous that day just to catch us some other time!"

  Then she continued, "Have you heard what happened to people who get 'interviewed'? I have read it on the news. These unlucky people were harassed every other day by some officers thought they got free passes in bullying and extorting them for money." She started to sob. "We should never have done that. We should never have gotten ourselves into this for some stupid social benefits. Jessie is fine with studying at home with our neighbor. If we are careful, we wouldn't even need to use the hospital at all..." She started to rattle the list of things that the two of them could do without. It hurt me to hear her talk like that. Without thinking too much, I grabbed her shoulders and pulled her towards me, and hugged her until she stopped crying.

  "We're going to face this together, okay?" I said, with confidence that came out of nowhere. "I will fix the issue with the dowry. Tell your dad I will pay the eighty-eight thousand, BUT, but that includes all the other expenses related to the wedding, mind you, so we can move on with this quickly."

  "You have eighty-eight thousand in your bank account?!" Instead of being relieved, Paula was taken aback. "Don't make empty promises you cannot keep!"

  "Just go back inside and tell your dad."

  "Jong!" She protested. I had to drag her back inside the house.

  Chapter 18

  There were moments in your life when you felt like such a hero, like when you told your wife that she could trust you and everything was going to be fine, or when you told your father-in-law that you would get him the eighty-eight thousand out of thin air like David Copperfield and felt momentarily like you have just won the World Cup for China for the first time in history. And then reality hit, and it felt particularly hard on you, like a bad hangover after a night of binge drinking that you regretted very much the next morning.

  You outta pay back what you've taken. This was always the law of nature.

  Eighty-eight thousand, eight hundred and eighty-eight Yuan. Where the hell could I get that kind of money?

  If I had a job, I could have at least tried to get a loan from the bank or negotiate terms with HR to get my salary paid out in advance, but no, I didn't have a job. A fatal fault in my confidence.

  What was I thinking?!

  The next couple of days, in order not to get Paula and my father-in-law suspicious, I pretended to go to work while I simply sat in the canteen of my old office building in formal attire searching for jobs and bidding on freelance programming jobs online on my laptop. I still went there because the food in the office canteen was sponsored, which meant it was reasonably cheap and no one would think twice about seeing me there the whole day, except people who actually knew I had been fired.

  I had been quite smart in getting out of the way just slightly before lunch time, and come back
only half an hour after it so I could enjoy the free electricity, wifi and air-conditioning for the rest of the afternoon every day without running into my ex-colleagues.

  It was a surprise when one day, being too engrossed in the Clash of Clans — yes, occasionally I was distracted, like any normal human being — that I forgot the time and got caught red-handed by my ex-boss for hanging around without a valid employee badge.

  "Jong, I cannot believe you! You are still playing games after all that had happened?" He raised his voice so that everyone could hear him. "You have been fired almost a week ago! What are you doing here?!"

  I wanted to say that I had been coding non-stop the whole morning to finish an app I got commissioned to do online and was just taking a breather during lunch time, but it was really none of his business anymore. Just when I was formulating a better response, people around me started to talk about me and laughed. One even started filming us.

  I felt my eyes getting blurry and the faces of the people started to melt in front of me. Their laughters compounded and grew louder and louder by the minute.

  I wanted to talk, to explain myself out of this embarrassment, but no words came out. My heart started to pound loudly. I thought I heard it echoing on the walls of the canteen. Some people were pointing at me, saying things about me and calling me names.

  "Get out of here at once or I will call security on you!" My ex-boss said. "Do you understand? Are you deaf?!" He said again, when I did not move. "Get up you tawt! Is it your dream to work in fancy offices in the center of Shanghai? Well, dream on. People like you don't deserve to be up here with us. I hired you only because Mr. Zhang (Kelvin's dad) asked me to do him a favor. Did you really think you get to come here out of your own merit? You're nothing but a parasite to the society."

  In the background, I heard people say, "Such a loser!" "He was shameless!" "Is he retarded or something?"

  "Stop it!" A female voice said to my ex-boss. "He's working with me, on the 72nd floor, Bilious Norwegian Bank. He has every right to be here in the common area. If you don't shut up at once, I am going to have to send an official complaint to your manager for harassing our employee!"

  I looked up and saw a brown blob of a female. Despite my blurry vision, I did not need to see to know who that was. It was Marvey's voice. The one voice that I would remember till the end of time. Of course, her distinctive accent when she spoke Chinese made her very hard to miss.

  "Come with me." She unplugged my laptop and started packing up for me. Marvey might be more than ten years my junior, but she definitely acted a lot more mature than her age. I slowly got up and followed her out of the canteen with my muddled self-esteemed.

  "I need a programmer to work with me on a project." She turned around to ask me as soon as we were out of earshot of my ex-manager. "Do you want to help me?"

  I thought for a moment and asked her, "What kind of programmer are you looking for?"

  "It doesn't matter," she replied. "Would you like to help me?"

  "Yes, of course," I answered this time without any hesitation. "I'd love to help you."

  "Then that settles it!" She shook my hand, as if we had just completed a business deal. "Come up with me and I will introduce you to my coworkers."

  "I..."

  I had a million questions in my head I wanted to ask her about her project. After all, she was working with other people's money in the bank. Shouldn't we be more careful about this?

  "Don't worry," she said. "I've read your CV on Wealink (Chinese LinkedIn). You're the best person I know for this job." And she gave me a smile of confidence.

  Sometimes I thought Marvey might be sent by the Gods to earth to rescue me. In fact she did it more than once.

  She must be an angel, with a smile on her face. I heard James Blunt sang in the elevator music as we ascended to the 72nd floor.

  Chapter 19

  Technically, the 72nd floor shouldn't be too different from the 58th floor where I used to work. Shanghai, however, was really a place that the saying "An inch of gold for a foot of earth" was meant for. For a company to rent an office so much higher above the rest, it must have considerably bigger financial prowess, because the higher the floor, the more expensive the per-square-inch rental cost would be.

  As soon as I got out of the elevator, I was led to the room where I was now sitting in uncomfortably waiting for Marvey's boss. From the looks of the interior I set my eyes on since I came in, I could tell that the high per-square-inch rental cost was not the slightest issue for them.

  I looked outside of the windows as Marvey went off to fetch her boss and gave him a briefing of how I got picked up as a candidate for a position in the most unusual circumstance.

  Being a student of Chinese culture, I could award Marvey a gold star for thinking of me for the job. Why? Because she had mastered the ancient Chinese art of "Yong ren wei qin" (hiring only close relations) perfectly! If she ever needed a recommendation letter from me for anything in China, I would be glad to write her one with all the subtleties on people skills that Chinese companies want to read without thinking twice.

  After about another twenty minutes of playing Clash of Clans on my cellphone until my neck hurt — since I got interrupted earlier — a middle-aged Chinese man in a crisp black suit and expensive leather shoes walked in, followed by Marvey. The bald man with a dark complexion which showed that he either led a very hard laborious life working outdoors, or a leisurely life vacationing on the beach or by the pool somewhere most of the time to get such a deep tan, introduced himself as Mr. Qi, the Head of FinTech Innovation within the Bank. When he reached out his hand to shake mine, I spotted the silver Breitling watch on his wrist — no, the watch was called Chronograph by the rich — I had been window-shopping for about three years, and deduced that he did not get the tan from working in a farm picking strawberries.

  Mr. Qi spotted me ogling his watch and let out a kind laugh. "The watch is excellent, but it can't beat the Navttimer. I'm going to switch when the summer sale starts. Are you a fan of the Breitling as well?"

  I was impressed, firstly about his relaxed attitude with me, as if we were just friends chitchatting, and secondly, about his frugality. Did a banker need to wait for sales to buy anything at all? Not really, I surmised. It did, however, showed me that he was a practical man. I was immediately enamored with the man.

  "Yes, I am...ugh...working hard towards acquiring my first still." I didn't know why I just told him my secret. Almost everyone in Shanghai was saving money to buy luxury goods, but nobody would like to admit it in front of other people because it was so embarrassing to have to save money in order to look like a high-roller.

  "If you do not mind a second-hand watch, I might just sell this one to you on discount," he offered and smiled. "It’s only a year old."

  Marvey coughed in the background. We were immediately transported back to the business meeting we were supposed to be having.

  "Oh, yes, we can talk about that later." Mr. Qi was once again reminded of what he was supposed to tell me. "So Marvey has explained to me that you'll be our software engineer for the 'Dragon One' project. Our previous engineer dropped out of the project suddenly and we have to find a replacement rather quickly. I am glad that Marvey handled it so well and found us a guy with your qualification."

  I was rather taken aback. It was one thing to be promised a job by your good friend who wanted to try to help you very much or impress on you his or her ability to make big decisions, which happened a lot in Shanghai because everyone wanted to look like a big-shot. But it was another to be promised a job so soon by a complete stranger who meant it, who had a title as grand as Mr. Qi. "Do I need to go through some kind of tests first?"

  "No, you're the guy," he said without a hint of hesitation in his voice. "I understood that you're...quite free at the moment to take up another employment."

  I nodded embarrassingly, hoping that my speechlessness would make him gloss over the topic of me being fired from my last j
ob quickly. Hopefully Marvey had not told him about what happened at the Canteen just now.

  "In that case, all you have to do is sign the contract that my secretary will send over to you very soon if you agree to all the terms and conditions from us. I can assure you that you will find our compensation very, how should I put it, satisfying. Bilious is a small Norwegian investment bank but we believe in investing in our people and fair compensations. I think it would beat most of the offers you get from elsewhere."

  Marvey winked at me, as if she knew what I needed most was money at the moment, to settle the upcoming eighty-eight thousand wedding.

  "You will be working directly with Marvey most of the time on Project Dragon One. So I guess I will only see you on the demo days at the end of every month."

  "Sorry, but I have no idea what Project Dragon One is. And how long it will take."

  "Oh, Dragon One is an innovation project on financial technologies, and typically innovation projects have a projected timeline of three to five years until launch. There maybe other post-launch works as well where we will need you, who by the time should be an expert on the products already. Anyway, Marvey will be able to explain everything to you."

  Three...to...five...years, or more?! Did I just strike gold? That meant I do not have to search for a new job in the next three to five years, as long as the project was active. Given that most software engineering projects I got so far were all short-term, this was really a huge career break for me, to have some promises of stability.

  "We really need experts in programming such as yourself who can do both front-end and back-end work for us. You know, when Marvey showed me your online profile with all the apps you created, I was taken aback. The geotracking delivery app was really impressive and the financial news filter app I have already been using for a week now with no hiccups. I am honored that you would like to join our team."