Tash Aw - Five Star Billionaire

Finally she chose the most important item, a handbag. This is how people would judge her. From afar they would notice what kind of bag she was carrying and would decide if she were a person of class or not. She knew which kind of bag she wanted — it was the most desirable brand but also the most illegal of all the counterfeit products. Some of the shopkeepers thought she was a spy for the trading office and asked her many questions before admitting that they kept stocks of it. The difficulty in purchasing this bag excited her; she felt as if she was buying something very rare and exclusive, even though it was a fake. Eventually one shopkeeper pushed aside a wall lined with shelves to reveal a smaller room hidden behind the shelves, and behind this smaller room, which was filled with ordinary bags, there was another, even smaller room, and it was here that the bag she wanted was kept. There were two other women in that tiny room, examining the high-quality stylish bags with care. They were both executive-looking women wearing business clothes and carefully applied makeup, and being in that private space with them made Phoebe feel equally important. There was only one brand of bag in that room — the coveted LV brand — but in many styles and variations, the famous pattern and colored monogram repeating all over the walls and surrounding her like the very air she breathed, making her feel slightly giddy.

Phoebe took a long time before selecting the one she wanted, for even the fakes were expensive, and in the end she had to settle on the most inferior model and style. But it was still beautiful, she thought, as she walked out of the shop with the bag already on her shoulder. She had transferred some of the contents of her old bag into the new one and discarded all the unwanted items in a bin outside the shop. When she looked at some of the things she’d thrown away — the cheap dried-up lipstick, a cracked mirror, a worker’s pass from one of her old jobs in Guangzhou — she wondered why she had carried those dead objects with her for so long.

She went to an Internet bar and made herself new profiles on QQ and MSN so that she could chat with people online — so that she could chat with men. Searching her email attachments, she found a nice photo of herself. It had been taken in Yuexiu Park in Guangzhou, but in the background there were only trees and lakes, so no one would look at the picture and make the link: Guangzhou, factory worker, immigrant. She remembered that day well: She had just left one job and was about to start another, but she had two days off in between and also some money saved up. She had dressed in nice jeans and a colorful T-shirt and taken the subway to the park as if she were having a day out with friends, only she did not have any friends. She bought red-bean shaved ice and ate it while strolling around the artificial lakes, watching the artists painting water-colors of goldfish and hilly landscapes and oil portraits of Hollywood actors. There were couples and families everywhere, and although she was on her own, she felt that she was one of them, that she was someone who had a past and a future — and life was only going to get better, just as it would for everyone around her. Near the boating lake, she found a spot to sit under some bamboo trees. She was on her own, but it was okay, she was happy. She took out her phone and held it at arm’s length, lifting it up slightly so that she could look at it with a raised chin — it was better this way, as it made her neck look thinner. She took a photo, but it wasn’t so good; she was squinting a bit because of the sun. She tried it again, but this one didn’t work either. One of the old men who sold tickets for the row-boats called out to her, asking if she wanted him to help her take a photo. “Don’t worry,” he said, “I won’t ask you to marry me in return!”

He peered into the narrow screen, and Phoebe was worried that he didn’t know how to work the camera. But as he held it out he said, “This phone is so old. My grandson had a phone like this three years ago when he was still in middle school.” It made her laugh, and in the photo she appears sunny-faced and natural, full of the promise of the bounteous years ahead of her.

As she looked at the photo on the computer screen, she knew it was just the right kind of photo to have on her profile — taken by someone else, a friend on an outing, maybe even a boyfriend. It made her appear desirable, unlike the kind of blurry self-shot images where the person was always looking up at the camera, the kind that instantly told the viewer: I have no friends. She wrote a few lines about herself, a professional career-oriented young woman with experience of foreign work and travel . She gave her true age and stated that she wanted to meet respectable, successful men. Within minutes of posting her profile, she began to get requests from men she didn’t know, who all wanted to get to know her better. She was overwhelmed; she never imagined she could be so popular. Suddenly the whole of Shanghai seemed full of friends and potential partners, thousands of them. She typed replies to the people she deemed the most suitable, her fingers moving across the keyboard, trying to keep up with several conversations at once, but it was difficult; she was not used to typing so much, and she knew she was making mistakes. Sorry for the delays in my replies, she said, as some of the men became impatient. It was thrilling to chat to people she barely knew, and she began to imagine what some of them might be like — rich, handsome, successful.

But very soon she saw that many of them were just high school and college kids who were having some online fun — they said so themselves. They had no intention of ever meeting up. She became angry that they were wasting her time, so she learned how to block them from contacting her. Young people were no use to her; she needed to meet successful adults. She was not interested in pimply adolescents. Some men seemed okay when they first started chatting, but gradually Phoebe would discover something wrong with them.

To tell you the truth, I am married, so I am just looking for casual fun .

Actually, my age is 61, not 29, but I am still very energetic and strong .

Honestly, I really do drive a Ferrari and I live in a luxurious penthouse apartment, but you cannot visit me, because my grandmother lives with me and she is disapproving of the girls I meet — you should not suspect me of being a factory worker!

My Internet business is going so well at the moment, but I have cashflow problems. Could you lend me 2,000 yuan and I will pay you back on our first date?

I am not so interested in knowing what your favorite ice cream flavor is. Right now I am imagining lifting your skirt and touching your thighs higher and higher until …

Some men became angry when she took a bit longer to reply. They were pushy and some said impolite things to her. But she couldn’t type very fast, and it was hard to keep so many chats going at once. She soon learned to tell which men were educated, because they were the ones who typed their answers very quickly, but she also discovered that educated men often used the most obscene words. And then there were men who seemed nice at first, but soon it was clear that they were just out to trick her. Even though she did not know what they could possibly cheat her out of, she sensed that they were bad people who were up to no good. She heard stories all the time, tales of swindlers and liars— bamboozlers . She did not want to be one of those poor victims who got bamboozled.

One by one, Phoebe began to delete her newly made friends, blocking each one until her contact list showed only a couple of guys — guys who had said hello, how are you, but had not yet had the chance to show how deceitful and black-spirited they were. She began to get random messages from men that didn’t even start with a greeting, just shameless suggestions for physical relations, most probably high school students, but who knew, maybe they were frustrated middle-aged husbands and fathers. She knew it was because she had a nice profile picture, which she should replace with something fake or a neutral image, something like a cartoon character. A superhuman character with great strength, maybe. That would deter everyone with unsavory intentions. She would become like so many other people in cyberspace, hiding behind an image of something other than themselves. But as she looked at the photo of herself, she hesitated. Her eyes were glowing with laughter and promise, and the vegetation behind her was so lush it reminded her of her home. She could not bring herself to delete this image from her profile. When the rest of Shanghai looked at her, she did not want them to see just a gray shadow of a nobody; she wanted them to see her, Phoebe Chen Aiping.