Tash Aw: Five Star Billionaire

Some time ago — I forget exactly when — I decided that I would one day be very rich. By this I mean not just comfortably well off but superabundantly, incalculably wealthy, the way only children imagine wealth to be. Indeed, nowadays, whenever I am pressed to pinpoint the time in my life when these notions of great fortune formed in my head, I always answer that it must have been sometime in my adolescence, when I was conscious of the price of life’s treasures but not yet fully aware of their many limitations, for there has always been something inherently childlike in my pursuit of money — that much I admit.

When I was growing up in rural Malaysia, one of my favorite TV programs was a drama series set in a legal practice somewhere in America. All the details — the actors, the plot, even the setting — are lost to me now, blurred not just by the passage of time but by a haze of bad subtitles and interrupted transmissions (the power generator and the aerial took it in turns to malfunction with crushing predictability, though in those days it seemed perfectly normal). I am not certain I could tell you what happened in a single episode of that soap opera, and, besides, I did not care for the artificial little conflicts that took place all the time, the emotional ups and downs, men and women crying because they were falling in love or out of love; the arguing, making up, making love, et cetera. I had a sensation that they were wasting time, that their days and nights could have been spent more profitably; I think I probably felt some degree of frustration at this. But even these are fleeting impressions, and the only thing I really remember is the opening sequence, a sweeping panorama of metal-and-glass skyscrapers glinting in the sun, people in sharp suits carrying briefcases as they vanished into revolving doors, the endless sweep of traffic on sunlit freeways. And every time I sat down in front of the TV I would think: One day, I will own a building like that, a whole tower block filled with industrious, clever people working to make their fantasies come true.

All I cared for were these introductory images; the show that followed was meaningless to me.

So much wasted time.

Now, when I look back at those childhood fantasies, I chuckle with embarrassment, for I realize that I was foolish: I should never have been so modest in my ambitions, nor waited so long to pursue them.

It is said that the legendary tycoon Cecil Lim Kee Huat — still compos mentis today at 101—made his first profit at the age of eight, selling watermelons off a cart on the old coast road to Port Dickson. At thirteen he was running a coffee stand in Seremban, and at fifteen salvaging and redistributing automobile spare parts on a semi-industrial scale, a recycling genius long before the concept was even invented. Small-town Malaya in the 1920s was not a place for dreams. He was eighteen and working as an occasional porter in the Colony Club when he had the good fortune to meet a young assistant district officer from Fife called MacKinnon, only recently arrived in the Malay States. History does not record the precise nature of their relationship (those ugly rumors of blackmail were never proved), and in any event, as we will see later, imagining the whys and wherefores of past events, the what-might-have-beens — all that is pointless. The only thing worth considering is what actually happens, and what happened in Lim’s case was that he was left with enough money upon MacKinnon’s untimely death (in a drowning accident) to start the first local insurance business in Singapore, a small enterprise that would eventually become the Overseas Chinese Assurance Company, for so long a bedrock of the Malaysian and Singaporean commercial landscape until its recent collapse. We can learn much from people like Lim, but his case study would involve a separate book altogether. For now, it is sufficient to ask: What were you doing when you were eight, thirteen, fifteen, and eighteen? The answer is, I suspect: not very much.

In the business of life, every tiny episode is a test, every human encounter a lesson. Look and learn. One day you might achieve all that I have. But time is sprinting past you, faster than you think. You’re already playing catch-up, even as you read this.

Fortunately, you do get a second chance. My advice to you is: Take it. A third rarely comes your way.

THERE WAS A BOY AT THE COUNTER WAITING FOR HIS COFFEE, NODDING to the music. Phoebe had noticed him as soon as he walked through the door, his walk so confident, soft yet bouncy. He must have grown up walking on carpet. He ordered two lattes and a green-tea muffin and paid with a silver ICBC card that he slipped out of a wallet covered in gray-and-black chessboard squares. He was only a couple of years younger than Phoebe, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three, but already he had a nice car, a silver-blue hatchback she had seen earlier when she was crossing the street and he nearly ran her over. It was strange how Phoebe noticed such things nowadays, as swift and easy as breathing. She wondered when she had picked up this habit. She had not always been like this.

Outside, the branches of the plane trees strained the bright mid-autumn sunlight, their shadows casting a pretty pattern on the pavement. There was a light wind too, which made the leaves dance.

“You like this music, huh?” Phoebe said as she reached across him for some packets of sugar.

His coffees arrived. “It’s bossa nova,” he said, as if it were an explanation, only she didn’t understand it.

“ Ei , I also like Spanish music!”

“Huh?” he muttered as he balanced his tray. “It’s Brazilian.” He didn’t even look at her, though she was glad he didn’t, because if he had it would have been a you-are-nothing look, the kind of quick glance she had become used to since arriving in Shanghai, people from high up looking down on her.

Brazil and Spain were nearly the same, anyway.

They were in a Western-style coffee bar just off Huaihai Lu. The streets were busy; it was a Saturday. But the week no longer divided neatly into weekend and weekday for Phoebe; it had ceased to do so ever since she arrived in Shanghai a few weeks prior to this. Every day tumbled into the next without meaning, as they had done for too long now. She didn’t even know what she was doing in this part of town — she couldn’t afford anything in the shops, and her Italian coffee cost more than the shirt she was wearing. It was a big mistake to have come here. Her plan was so stupid; what did she think she would accomplish? Maybe she would have to reconsider everything.

Phoebe Chen Aiping, why are you so afraid all the time? Do not be afraid! Failure is not acceptable! You must raise yourself up and raise up your entire family .

She had started to keep a diary. Every day she would write down her darkest fears and craziest ambitions. It was a technique she’d learned from a self-help master one day in Guangzhou as she waited in a noodle shop, killing time after she had been to the Human Resources Market. A small TV had been set on top of the glass counter next to jars of White Rabbit sweets, but at first she did not pay attention; she thought it was only the news.