It was long-winded in a way, but it was fun, and it certainly gave Milana the feeling that she belonged to something important, being here among the city’s elite teenagers, dining on the world’s most extravagant foods and wines, and partaking in musical accompaniments the likes many of her parents’ friends back home would be hard-pressed to have ever even heard of, let alone experienced in full sound and color so close-up like that.
Milana realized during all this how much more like adults Asian kids were expected to act from such a young age: unlike in the upper-middle class suburbs of Maine that she had come from, it was presumed without question that the teenage girls on this ultra-sophisticated Chinese high society stage would simply know how to handle their alcohol intake without puking, passing out or getting pissed, that they would obligingly applaud the entertainment, whatever might be their personal opinion of it, and that they would commendably laud gushing praise on the host for putting on such an occasion in their honor.
The other girls lavished heaps of compliments on Milana over her pret-a-porter chic, sophisticated attire. Milana had slightly curled her long auburn hair so that it fell in soft ribbons about her shoulders and partly curled over her breasts when it swayed with her slinky walk, accentuating her sapphire-blue eyes. She had left just the nape of her cleavage semi-exposed underneath a cute black Marc Jacobs Anya Crepe dress that she had picked out for the occasion with her personal shopper; the sexy sleeveless one piece with barely noticeable pockets and a cool zipper that ran down the front could not have possibly struck the balance between teenage and twenty-something more perfectly. Unpretentiously, not wishing to upstage the host (as if that was possible), she had chosen two simple one carat diamond Tiffany’s earrings and a pair of simple black and gold velvety Jimmy Choo stilettos, which accentuated her ass and added about three inches to her height, meaning that she towered over some of the younger Asian girls there, which was no bad thing, since it gave her just then a distinct air of superiority. Superficial though it might seem, it apparently made a significant enough difference for Dame Ming-hua to remark in a brief whisper to her daughter that they may have underestimated the “American girl’s” ability to be handled; for, perhaps like her father Ross, Dame Ming-hua conceded briefly, “she may become with time a force to be reckoned with if put in a compromising set of circumstances.”
Tonight was Chanel Zheng’s party however, and her daughter wasn’t in the frame of mind or mood for hearing such hard truths, so she just let her mother’s comment fly and chalked it up to the paranoia after-affects of what had happened with Sofia, which was now becoming to her if not exactly something of a distant memory then at least something that belonged in the distant past, never to be revisited.
Ω
When Easton arrived Taylor got right down to business.
“Easton; Jace – you both know you’re my number one boys, right?”
“Of course I do Tape, what’s it with you today? Is it Coco?”
Jace often used his own personally invented pronouns when talking of the local Shanghainese crowd. Everyone had a different call sign, as he called them out: Taylor was Tape, Chanel was Coco, Easton was Goldbug, Mason was MC, and Jasmine was Overbite.
“The nightclubs – the accounts on them make out like they’re looking great, and they are. Sort of. But you guys have to know that I’m topping up from somewhere else? That I’m taking money and putting it in the clubs, so that they appear more successful than they actually are?”
“What’s new?” said Jace. “Everyone in the city’s doing that, Toumanian! You don’t think that anyone actually has a real business here, do you?”
Toumian renwu, thought Taylor. Big shot. If only …
“Well, I know that you do,” he said. “Jace’s alcohols are hot stuff right now. It’s good times for you. Easton – the last I looked your record label was doing just swell. You’ve had – what – nine number ones in the past year?”
“What are you trying to say?” asked Easton guardedly. The music promoter wasn’t coming across as harmonious as Taylor had hoped for today. It must be something to do with Sofia’s recent disappearance – that had to come down hard on him, Taylor figured. Better go easy on Goldbug and hit Jace for the cash, then …
“I need more time to pay you guys. Easton; I need an extension on the artists that perform at the clubs. Maybe I’ll need some bigger names from you. But I can’t pay – just not right now. It-it’s a bad time. Jace, I’m gonna need a six-month supply of liquor; after that I can pay you.”
Jace put his feet up on Taylor’s desk, super-casual. “I’m glad you spat that out for once, since we been back-and-forth like this with me pretending to not notice you pretending and shit, but both of us really knowing’ that the clubs are costing’ ya a rich little bitch’s sweet sixteen every weekend. They have to be. I know how much it costs to run this shit, and I know how much these boys make. So you’re topping up from somewhere. Big deal, that’s the game, until it evens out at least.”
“Can you still make the commission payments on the sales we make at the clubs?” asked Taylor. He knew it was a long shot. Typically, Taylor’s clubs – Milk and Prima Dona – got paid a small commission on the alcohol sales it generated, designed as an incentive to pay bartenders and as a kind of back-end discount to offset the cost of making a large upfront payment. But Taylor was effectively asking for free delivery for six months and a commission for sales generated – in other words, to be paid for doing nothing.
Jace whistled. “Now you’re asking something tall, bro. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Where are you topping up from?” asked Easton, cautiously.
“What d’you mean?”
“I mean, where’s the money coming from to keep supplying you the fake sales.”
“I can’t tell you that, I’m sorry bro –”
“Okay, okay – sure, don’t tell me then,” said Easton, moodily.
Jace shot him a look. “Makes no difference to me. Like I say, there’s not a nightclub business here in Shanghai’s not doing’ that shit. Literally, everyone dips in and out. It’s the way it is. You think anyone here’s really going to ever try and take you out though Tape? You’re the fucking US Ambassador’s son, bro! You have fuckin’ immunity …”
Easton frowned. He loved Jace, but sometimes his bro said the stupidest things. As if immunity from prosecution was a safeguard against running a lousy business.
It was good to have his friends’ support, of course – even though Easton seemed a little pissed, he nodded after a while and said “okay.” At least he wasn’t yanking’ his star performers. For now. But still, Taylor couldn’t help but remind himself that once Dame Ming-hua found out, this life of partying for a living was going to be all over.
Ω
After dinner and entertainment, Dame Ming-hua had bode the party goodnight, whereupon the girls had all thanked her profusely in unison for her grand display of largess, and then they had found their overnight bags and trotted upstairs to Chanel’s bedroom. In truth, to call it a room was highly misleading: with its own kitchen, decked-out six-piece sitting room, double bedroom replete with Ralph Lauren King-size bed and separate TV room, the Zheng girl’s inner sanctum was more a Presidential Suite.
“Make yourselves comfy, girls,” said Chanel, who then beckoned Jasmine and Milana to stand up with her.
“First of all, I’d like to welcome Jasmine – my First Lady, and Milana, my Second Lady. For very different reasons, these girls fit my idea of what the sorority will look like going into the future. Jasmine has been my friend ever since I can remember,” she said, to which Leticia, her sister, had beamed. “It’s important when you’re in a position of power to have your closest allies around you. But equally, it’s just as important not to become dependent on the ones you know – but instead to constantly add fresh blood, to change things around, shake them up. This, after all, is what creates everything from great art to great enterprise.”
Mil
ana was quite impressed with the opening words of Chanel’s speech – say what you like about her, but she was a politician through and through. Silently, she wondered whether Sofia had been as gifted.
“You are all young girls. There’s a world of experiences ahead of you, and it’s my hope that at the end of my time as Dame of the sorority, you will have learned from me; from both the achievements, but also the errors, of my ways – both of which are bound to come. Milana, Jasmine, you can sit down now, thank you,” said Chanel, taking up pole position at the head of the group as she folded down on herself and sank into a casual, semi-cross legged recline on the large couch facing the group of girls.
“Those were my opening remarks,” she said grandly, if a little pointlessly. All of the younger girls, save Leticia, produced notebooks and began noting down what she had said.
“Since there are only three of us – out of eight – in the room tonight who have previously been a member of the sorority, I’ll give you a little history of how we came to be first. Then after that, I’m going to tell you about a slight change to the rules –”
“Has this change been approved by Beijing first?” asked Jasmine. Traditionally, when a sorority Dame wished to add a new rule, she was required to obtain permission from the anonymous committee that had appointed her.
Chanel gave her friend a withering look. “No, it has not. Technically, I am not adding any entry to the existing rulebook, so it needn’t run by them either, from my point of view. Also, for reasons you’ll see in a minute, there’s a very good reason that I have not run the new rule past the committee in Beijing. But if any girl here refuses to accept and observe the new rule as nothing short of the official binding rules of the sorority, I will expel her right away. It should be obvious, from recent events, that I have no qualms in doing that.”
A silent shudder went through the group. No one wanted to be thrown dejectedly from the inner circle of the height of society just when they’d safely climbed aboard.
“China is, for want of a better term, a massive social experiment in motion. We are the only country to have in place a policy that enforces the number of children a couple is allowed to have by financially penalizing every child born to a household that is over the prescribed regional limit. Of course, in most areas of China, this number is just one, but some of you may know that in the west and other, poorer, rural areas, the limit to the number of children that a couple may have goes as high as five.
“China is the only country in the world to embrace free-market capitalism with the concept of a centrally planned economy at its core. Russia doesn’t count – unless you consider The Godfather a tale of economic central planning.” Chanel laughed to herself at this, and Milana joined in, but no one else seemed to quite get it.
“China is the only country in the world so far to have developed its own homegrown technologies – which, in most cases, rival international ones comparably well – even, in some cases, superseding their functionalities.
“China is the only country in the world to make religion illegal. In many western societies, this may be considered an atrocity, but how much of an atrocity is it really when you count the number of human lives in history that have been lost to nothing other than mythology?
“China is the only country in the world to readily invite foreigners – such as Milana’s father – with enormous knowledge and experience, not to run things for us, but rather to teach us how to run things for ourselves.
“We like to learn from the very best,” said Chanel, who threw a wink in Milana’s direction.
“Now, with all of this in mind, around thirty years ago, in 1971, my mother Dame Ming-hua, along with her half-sister Yu Jiang and a coterie of six other girls began the Shanghai sorority. To start a society back then, you had to of course have government permissions, very much as you do today, although admittedly things have eased up a little bit since. So, my mother and her friends obtained the approval of Beijing to start a society for educated, ambitious girls who might one day become the face of China.
“Over the years, the one child policy meant that China did indeed become like nowhere else on earth. Since Chinese parents are notorious for maintaining family-owned businesses which they pass down through the generations, and given that during the past three decades, give or take, most parents were only allowed to have one infant, it was that infant – regardless of its sex – that became the sole heir to the business empire.
“Thus, it is that in China today you will find far more women in positions of seniority at the executive management level than you do elsewhere in the world.”
Milana put her hand up, to which Chanel replied, “yes.”
“Do you know how many women – I mean, what percentage of women in China are in these top management positions versus say, the rest of the world? Or the States?”
“That’s an excellent question, thank you little sis. Yes – in the world today, on average, a country’s executive management workforce is comprised of around twenty-four percent women. In the United States, that figure is fourteen percent.
“Here in China, due to the sociological aspects I have just been describing, that number is fifty-one percent.”
An audible gasp permeated the room and Chanel allowed herself a moment of quiet, disciplined satisfaction.
“Like I say, we are a social experiment in motion. One might even say that we are a feminist social experiment, given that a greater percentage of our top jobs are in female hands.
“You can see the obvious link, here: the Shanghai sorority, a sisterhood begun in earnest at the dawn of this great country’s unprecedented surge ahead into the future that is our today, became over time a mass-production agent of the future who’s who among Chinese executive managers and super-star politicians. This is just simple calculus, after all. For if over half your senior executive management workforce is comprised of women, and you have an organization that is directed at producing the very best women in the country, then it’s a simple fact that a great number of the leaders of tomorrow will come from that organization.”
“Where are women most prominently organized – as in, what industries?” asked Milana.
“Another great question. If any of you younger girls here become as sharp as Milana here in two years’ time, you’ll go far. Actually, it’s in banking and finance – the same field as my family,” said Chanel. “Here in China, men tend to stick to the transport and mining industries – the heavy, dirty stuff.”
“That doesn’t sound like it’s where the future’s at,” said Milana, as much to herself as for the benefit of the other girls.
“Exactly! That’s exactly the case.
“So, when you begin to wonder, what does it mean to be a sister of the Shanghai sorority? You may answer yourself with any of the following – it means to be one of tomorrow’s keys to change and development in Asia; it means to be a crucial part of history in the making, the likes of which has yet to be felt in most other countries in the world; or perhaps, just by the very virtue of being well-educated, well-bred, and well-liked, and a woman in a country that is not just increasingly, but is definitively, becoming a woman’s world, then it might well mean that you stand a better chance than ninety-nine percent of the world’s population today in achieving your dreams.”
In unison, the girls rose to their feet and began applauding their newly appointed Dame.
Milana had assumed the sorority was nothing more than a way for a bunch of girls to show off to a bunch of boys. But upon hearing Chanel’s incredible, inspiring, moving, important speech she admonished herself for her blatant superficiality, for as much as she found this place to be at times a foreign, ugly, boastful harbor of blatant self-seeking greed and self-promotion, listening to her older sister just then, she realized the possibility that at heart, she had it wrong.
Ω
Easton finally left around one the following morning, after snorting about one of the two grams all the three boys had finish
ed together through the evening. Jace seized the moment to pop the question that had been itching his collar like an eczematous rash all morning. He hadn’t wanted to mention anything to do with the sisters in front of Goldbug – not just yet, with Sofia still remaining a topic of non-discussion and everything.
“Who’s this new girl I’m reading about that your bitch has made her second Lady? She’s smokin’ hot, man! I saw a pic of her on HaiSoc yesterday. I hear that Lixue Lai is havin’-a’-fuckin’ fit!” Jace laughed uninhibitedly. “Can’t figure out why she’s been dumped in place for a much cuter white girl for. C’mon Tape, you’re the one banging’ the sister out of the two us. Let us in on a little inside chit chat now. I gave you some let-up on the drinks, after all.”
Taylor sighed, smiling a little now. He liked Jace’s company. The boy just didn’t give a shit about anything.
“You really want to go into this already?”
Jace grinned back at him. Girls went fucking wild over that smile, thought Taylor. Fucking legendary-scale wild.
“You bet I wanna know. Nothing personal. Just this new chick: so go on, get some more lines set out for your boy here. And then you can tell us what this smokin’ WASP’s story is!”
“How do you know she’s a WASP?”
“’Cause them WASPs are the ones of you Yankees marginally less demented than the Evangelicals. We had one of them bitches at Harvard. She was bat-ass crazy. Jesus posters all over her dorm wall like he was a rock star. You know – arms spread out, heels in the ground and all that! Thought the devil was gonna come take my ass one day, I think. Although she’s probably right on that account.”
The Millennial Reincarnations: A Novel Page 12