Кевин Кван - China Rich Girlfriend

Pascal suddenly reappeared on the balcony and said hurriedly to Grégoire, “Isabel needs to leave this instant. Are you staying or coming?”

“Is everything okay?” Astrid asked.

Pascal gave Astrid a glacial stare. “So nice of you to rub it in Isabel’s face like that.”

“I’m sorry?” Astrid said, confused.

Pascal inhaled deeply, trying to contain his rage. “I don’t know who you think you are, but I’ve never seen anyone as brazen as you. Did you have to make it so apparent to Isabel that you’ve been fucking her husband up and down the California coast?”

Domiella gasped and gripped Astrid’s shoulder.

Astrid shook her head wildly. “No, no, there’s been a big misunderstanding. Charlie and I are just old friends—”

“Old friends? Ha! Until tonight, Isabel wasn’t even sure you were still alive.”

* A rattan cane popularly used by generations of Singaporean fathers, school principals, and after-school Chinese tutors for corporal punishment. (Mrs. Chan, I still hate you.)

4THE BAOS

THREE ON THE BUND, SHANGHAI

The hotel’s Brewster green Rolls-Royce was waiting in the driveway to ferry Nick and Rachel to dinner, but with their destination just six blocks away, they decided to walk. It was an unseasonably cool evening for early June, and as they strolled along the legendary riverfront boulevard known as the Bund, Nick could still remember a morning in Hong Kong when he was around six years old.

His parents took him on a drive far out into the countryside of Kowloon’s New Territories, up a winding mountain road. At the top of the mountain was a lookout point crowded with tourists, snapping away at the view and lining up to use the swiveling metal binoculars that had been mounted on a rusty metal railing. Nick’s father lifted him up so that he could see through the viewfinder. “Can you see it? That’s the border of China. That’s where your great-great-grandparents came from,” Philip Young told his son. “Take a good look, because we aren’t able to go past that border.”

“Why not?” Nick had asked.

“It’s a Communist country, and our Singapore passports are stamped ‘No Entry into the People’s Republic of China.’ But one day, hopefully, you will be able to go.”

Nick squinted at the almost barren, muddy brown landscape. He could discern some roughly plowed fields and irrigation ditches, but not much else. Where was the border? He was trying to find a great wall, a moat, or any sort of proper demarcation to indicate where the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong ended and the People’s Republic of China began, but there was nothing. The viewfinder lenses were grimy, and his armpits hurt from the grip of his father’s large hands. Nick asked to be put down and made a beeline for the lady selling snacks in the concrete hut nearby. A Cornetto ice-cream cone was far more interesting than the view of China. China was boring.

But the China of Nick’s childhood bore no resemblance to the incredible sights that surrounded him in every direction now. Shanghai was a vast, sprawling megalopolis on the banks of the Huangpu River, the “Paris of the East,” where hyperbole-defying skyscrapers vied for attention with stately early-twentieth-century European façades.

Nick began pointing out some of his favorite buildings to Rachel. “That’s the Broadway Mansions Hotel right across the bridge. I love its hulking, Gothic silhouette — so classic art deco. Did you know Shanghai has the largest concentration of art deco architecture in the world?”

“I had no idea! All the buildings around us are just jaw-dropping — I mean, look at that crazy skyline!” Rachel gestured excitedly to the intimidating expanse of skyscrapers on the other side of the river.

“And that’s just Pudong — it was all pretty much farmland, and none of those buildings even existed ten years ago. Now it’s a financial district that makes Wall Street look like a fishing village. That structure with the two huge round orbs is the Oriental Pearl Radio and TV Tower. Doesn’t it look like something out of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century ?” Nick remarked.

“Buck Rogers?” Rachel gave him a blank look.

“It was a 1980s TV show set in the future, and all the buildings looked like some ten-year-old’s fantasy of another galaxy. You probably didn’t watch any of the bad eighties shows that came to Singapore years after they bombed in the U.S. Like Manimal . Do you remember that one? It was about this guy who could change into different types of animals. Like an eagle, a snake, or a jaguar.”

“And what was the point of that?”

“He was fighting the bad guys, of course. What else would he be doing?”

Rachel smiled, but Nick could tell that underneath their banter, she was getting more and more nervous as they got closer to their destination. Nick stared up at the moon for a moment and made a wish to the universe. He wished for the dinner to go smoothly. Rachel had waited all these years and come all this way to meet her family, and he hoped her dreams would be fulfilled tonight.

They soon reached Three on the Bund, an elegant post-Renaissance-style building crowned by a majestic cupola. Nick and Rachel took the elevator up to the fifth floor and found themselves in a dramatic crimson-walled foyer. A hostess stood in front of a gold inlaid fresco that depicted a beautiful maiden in flowing robes flanked by two gigantic prostrating warriors.

“Welcome to the Whampoa Club,” the woman said in English.

“Thank you. We are here for the Bao party,” Nick said.

“Of course. Please follow me.” The hostess, dressed in an impossibly tight yellow cheongsam, walked them past the main dining room packed with chic Shanghai families enjoying their meals and down a hallway lined with art deco club chairs and green glass lamps. Along one side of the hallway was another gold-and-silver carved fresco, and the hostess pushed open one of the wall panels to reveal a private dining room.

“Please make yourselves comfortable. You are the first ones to arrive,” she said.

“Oh, okay,” Rachel said. Nick wasn’t sure whether she sounded more surprised or relieved. The private room was luxuriously appointed with a grouping of armchairs upholstered in raw silk on one end and a large round table with lacquered rosewood chairs by the window. Rachel noted that the table was set for twelve. She wondered whom she would be meeting tonight. Aside from her father, his wife, Shaoyen, and her half brother, Carlton, what other relatives would be joining them?

“Isn’t it interesting that since we’ve arrived, practically everyone has addressed us in English instead of Mandarin?” Rachel commented.

“Not really. They can tell from the minute we walk in that we’re not native Chinese. You’re an Amazon compared to most of the women here, and everything else about us is different — we don’t dress like the locals, and we carry ourselves in a completely different way.”

“When I was teaching in Chengdu nine years ago, my students all knew I was an American, but they still spoke to me in Mandarin.”

“That was Chengdu. Shanghai has always been a sophisticated, international city, so they are much more used to seeing pseudo-Chinese like us here.”

“Well, we’re certainly not as dressed up as many of the locals I’ve seen today.”

“Yeah, these days we’re the bumpkins,” Nick joked.

As the minutes ticked by, Rachel sat on one of the sofas and began to flip through the tea menu. “It says here they have over fifty premium teas from across China, served in traditional ceremonies in their private tearooms.”

“Maybe we’ll get to sample some tonight,” Nick replied as he paced around the room, pretending to admire the contemporary Chinese art.