Shanghai Fools

by Vann Chow

  "What kind of crap do they teach you in Chinese school? They didn't tell you anything about Liu Bei and the Three Kingdoms?!"

  We were bickering back and forth and had no idea that the conference call had ended already five minutes ago. There were a group of annoyed people waiting outside the floor-to-ceiling glass panes conference room for their slot. They had been there the whole time we were acting like two chipmucks fighting about bananas.

  "Diu bu qi. Sorry, sorry!" Marvey and I said to them repeatedly while trying to assemble all of our belongings as quickly as possible.

  When we got out of the room, they spoke to each other as if we were invisible.

  "Who are these people in Mr. Qi's team?"

  "They are ridiculous."

  "The guy is always coming in late and one time I spotted him playing video games on company time."

  "My friend in HR told me he studied in some rotten, unknown university in the Southwest. I wondered how he got into Bilious. He would have failed the entrance aptitude test miserably."

  "Hey, he's a programmer, he's not a financial analyst. There is no entrance exam for programmer."

  "He's a programmer? That explains his eccentric behaviors and unkempt looks." The girl who said that giggled. "I think he's autistic or something."

  "That's why he's always clinging to the new intern from America like a dog. He does everything she says. She's like at least ten years younger than him." The other girl snickered. "What a loser."

  "Talk about that intern! She was so impolite. She always speaks out of turn in conference calls."

  "That's American style," the other replied. "Americans are so rude. They have no sense of seniority."

  "Well, this is a Norwegian bank," her colleague reminded her.

  "But she's in China," she hissed. "She cut me off three times in the last monthly reporting call. Who does she think she is? She's just a lowly intern."

  The other chuckled at the comment.

  "Why on earth did Mr. Qi hired these two fools?" They turned around to look at me, who was trying to leave from the front entrance, while pouring themselves two cups of lukewarm, watery coffee that had been sitting on the table since, probably yesterday morning.

  "No clue," the other replied and start dialing a number on the conference phone.

  "Maybe it was part of the diversity program."

  "For idiots and flower vase?" Beautiful girls with no other merit were often referred to as 'flower vase' for their mere decorative values in China.

  They laughed in unison at their own cheap jokes.

  Note:

  *Liu Bei once said to his swore brother that "Brothers are as arms and legs, cut one off and it's irresplaceable; women and children are as clothing, easily changed."

  Chapter 33

  We normally didn't get to see Mr. Qi in the office until the end of the month at the monthly demo day because he preferred a kind of hands-off approach to management. But as both the Project Leader and the Chief Engineer of the Project Dragon One needed to take last-minute days off, his secretary decided that it warranted a face-to-face explanation and booked us in for a five minute meeting so we could ask to take leave ourselves.

  Mr. Qi was surprisingly pleased to see us. He granted both of our holiday requests right away. I suspected that his good mood had something to do with the sale I helped him with the day before.

  "Sichuan," he said thoughtfully. "A beautiful region. Jiu Jia Gou (Nine Village Vally), Le Shan (Happy Mountain) Buddha, Huang Long (Yellow Dragon) National Park. Hmm....so many things to see over there."

  "We're just going straight to the area where my wife's hometown is, I think.” I said 'I think', because I did not know what kind of plans Kelvin had in mind.

  "You must see them." He picked up his cell phone and called somebody. In less than ten seconds, his secretary came, and he said to her something I did not expect. "Cancel all my appointments in the next four days. I'm going to Sichuan, with them." He winked at me.

  Marvey looked at me and I could only return the same look of surprise. Did he just invite himself to my wedding? People living in this city of efficiency was seriously in need of a break, I guess. Everyone was jumping on the occassion as an excuse to party disregarding how I felt about it.

  "Am I not welcomed?"

  "No, no, no, no....you're certainly welcomed!" I hadn't forgotten about his gift. His gift made it happened. So I answered with as much flattery as I could while trying to mask my hesitation to the best of my abilities. I had to, however, give my one last try to thwart my boss from attending my wedding, because what I was about to say, was very much true. "It is just that...it's going to be a small wedding since I could not spend a lot of money. You might find it, how shall I put it, rather disappointing. And since not many of my friends are going to be there, it will just be mostly my wife's family and friends."

  "You didn't invite your own friends?" Mr. Qi said in shock. "Give me a list of everyone you want to invite and we'll try to make it happen for you."

  My jaw almost dropped to my feet. What's wrong with him? Experience had told me that nothing good could come out of it when people are nice to you for no apparent reason. But of course, it could also have been because of ThriftyEP, and he felt indebt to me.

  "Don't look at me like that," Mr. Qi said. "One of your apps, IntellEA, got selected by the executive board in Norway as key innovation to invest in in the next five years. We are getting 40 million funding to deploy and test it, and make it work in China. And mind you, that is only for one of your apps. When the others are more or less ready, I will share them with the board, together with my new strategy." Mr. Qi winked at me. He was obviously very pleased with the results of both of our works.

  "40 million?" Marvey who was usually rather calm in the face of big numbers was herself taken aback. "40 million Yuan RMB?"

  "40 million Euro, miss." Mr. Qi had to laugh at her question.

  Marvey pulled my sleeves and said to me, "Jong, this is amazing! We can deploy your app to real customers and see how it will work out."

  I simply nodded. I totally understood how it must be very exciting for her to be able to deploy her first piece of product to the market. Over the years, I had over sixty applications deployed in the app store to a worldwide audience, not just in China. And regardless of how much money the companies I worked for poured into its production and marketing, personally I had not seen a single cent of it, apart from my regular salary. I even got fired a couple of times, in spite of the market succeses of my works. 40 million Yuan nor 40 million Euro meant nothing to me. Moreover, the private talk with Mr. Qi made it very clear. Getting 40 million funding from inside the department was not the same as making 40 million. It was just a chunk of money moved from one department to another within the same limited pool. The six hundred thousand dollars we made on the other hand, was a different story.

  "Mr. Qi," I had to ask. "When did you pitch IntellEA to the board?"

  "Oh, a few days ago. I don't have to report everything I do to you, do I?" He said.

  "No, of course not." I was surprised to hear that he had made two successful pitches in such a short period of time. What was peculiar was that he did not ask me to join him in the demonstration to the board, but invited me to the one with Mr. Seymour instead.

  Regardless, the board seemed to be happy with Mr. Qi, otherwise they wouldn't be giving us any funding for Project Dragon One. Perhaps Mr. Qi's idea would really work.

  "Your wedding party comes at a good time, Jong. We will celebrate the hell out of it together. You won't deny me of my pleasure, will you?"

  "Are you sure, Mr. Qi?" I had to double check that he wasn't trying to prank me.

  "Yes, I am. Have my secretary talk to the people who's arranging the wedding in Sichuan and we will make something out of it. Not a thing to worry." I could not help but noticed that he sounded exactly like Kelvin in the way he spent his money and how he used people, except Kelvin was likely just bluffing, since his father
's secretary likely would not have time for his silly requests. Mr. Qi here, on the other hand, was really in charge. His secretary, also his personal assistant, was already taking notes of what he just said and her blank expression showed that she was very busy in her head making plans to please her boss already.

  Marvey thanked him for me, since I was still completely baffled at the popularity of my wedding and was unable to give an award-winning performance of 'sucking up to my boss' by letting him have his way.

  Chapter 34

  Because it was such a last minute exercise, Mr. Qi's secretary booked us all on a 4-day luxury cruise, the Yangtze Gold, upstream the Yangtze river from Shanghai to Chongqing, and a bus ride from Chongqing to Lizhou, so that we would be able to combine party, sightseeing and getting to my wedding banquet on time all in one.

  Mr. Qi was exceptionally satisfied with his secretary's arrangement and he repeatedly complimented her on the cruise whenever he got the chance.

  "Your boss is amazing," Little Buddha whispered in my ear as we were picking our food from the extravagant buffet. On the news of free holidays, most of my soccer mates who could get time off work at the last minute came along on the cruise. The extra seats that were not filled were occupied by some colleagues from Bilious that I knew only by their faces. "I guess these Chinese bosses we hear on the news who invited the entire company to beach vacations in Spain or France Riviera are not fictitious after all. Bosses like this really exist in real life," he marveled. "I hope I will be able to work for someone like that in the future." Little Buddha was two years away from finishing his master program and was already daydreaming about his future boss.

  "There's no free lunch in this world," I said, although I was obviously eating it at the moment.

  "Your father-in-law is going to be so impressed with you, he'll only have good things to say from now on about you."

  "Son," my father and my mother entered the buffet restaurant after a nice round of tea and cake on the deck, watching splashing waves against the breathtaking backdrop of endless mountainous range. "Where should we sit?"

  Mr. Qi spotted them and invited them to sit at his table. "Come join me!"

  My parents gladly obliged without protest, unlike yesterday when I personally went to Feng Cheng village to get them to pack for the cruise. My dad even asked me if I had hit my head really hard somewhere to make up such an unbelievable story about the free cruise. Unexpected gifts were better accepted when they were presented by total strangers, I had learned.

  "Your parents must be so proud of you!" Little Buddha commented. "You've found a good job with a good boss, and you're getting married in a few days." (Inspite of what my marraige certificate said, in China, you're not 'married' until your marriage was announced at the banquet.)

  "How did he make so much money?" Kelvin, who was standing in front of me, taking enough food for himself and Marvey, asked. "He's just a manager of a department in a bank."

  "Yeah, and you're the future CEO of your dad's company and you never invited us to even a boat ride in a lake. How come?" Little Buddha said sarcastically.

  "If you ever managed to find a girl foolish enough to marry you, I might consider it," Kelvin replied.

  "What are you guys talking about?" Marvey walked over. "I'm starving over there."

  I was glad to hear that she was, for once, no longer insisting on her diet in the face of tubs of meticulously arranged delicacies at the buffet.

  "We were discussing how Mr. Qi made all this money. He's not spending company's money, I hope, because if he was, then Jong you're in trouble."

  "No, he makes it through his own investment, I am sure," Marvey said. "I accidentally saw him watching his investment portfolio online one day at work. It totalled couple millions RMB."

  "A couple millions?" Little Buddha hissed in excitement. "WOW."

  "It's nothing," Marvey said. "A decent apartment in Shanghai could cost a million. If he had been investing smartly, which I was sure he did, since technically employees of an investment bank cannot take opposite position as their employers and our company's portfolio is manned by teams of investment professionals like himself, then he probably has some nest eggs."

  "I want to work in an investment bank!"

  "You study psychology." I turned around to knock my fist lightly at the top of his head, to knock some sense into him. "I thought you were going to be a psychologist!"

  "Pssst!" He grunted at me.

  "My all-time favorite show on the cruise is about to start! What are you guys doing over there?" Mr. Qi called out to us animatedly. It appeared that he had been on this same cruise more than once and knew exactly what to expect.

  As soon as he finished his sentence, a group of scantily clad Brazilian girls in beautiful carnival outfits and head ornaments came in and arranged themselves in a dance formation to the beats of what I guessed was Samba music. Mr. Qi sucked an oyster from one of the shells lying on a plate in front of him and came alive. Oblivious to what others thought of him, he stood up and mingled himself amongst the dancing girl, imitating their dance moves to the laughters of all the guests on the cruise that was gliding slowly and surely towards Chongqing, Sichuan.

  Chapter 35

  You will not believe what was on the agenda of our cruise trip. Remember the Jiu Jia Gou (Nine Village Vally), Le Shan (Happy Mountain) Buddha and Huang Long (Yellow Dragon) National Park Mr. Qi talked about? None of them was on the agenda. Instead, we were shuffled into nightclubs after nightclubs from city to city, and when there were no night clubs or casinos, any place with loud music and disco lights were the locations of his choice.

  Once outside of the working environment, Mr. Qi was a totally different person. Or should I say that I never really paid much attention to what kind of person he was, because of my genetic disability, you might say, to give a shit about other people?

  Marvey, however, grew quite restless as she was shuffled from one noisy, smokey place with lots of 'working women' to another noisy, smokey place with more women hard at work, readily sucking up to the types of Mr. Qi that threw away a wad of money everywhere he went like it was not his.

  "Maybe it wasn't his," Marvey finally said, unable to contain her distain for the Mr. Qi's lavish ways any longer.

  In just 48 hours, Mr. Qi had amassed an entourage of at least twenty people, both men and women, who followed him everywhere he went, be it the baccarat table or the bar in front of the pole dancing girls on stage at the casino. Kelvin, who was rich by my standard, was one of them. I guess the appeal of seeing someone making big, irrational spends and acting so rackless with his finances had its thrilling appeals.

  He was of course not the only one behaving like he was the God of Gambling (the name of the heroic figure with superior gambling skills, if such thing exists, from a popular movie series franchise in China from the 90s). The others with him were equally reckless with their money in each other's wanton company.

  "It's disgusting how he spends his money!" Marvey continued her sentiment throughout the evening, while she and I sat side by side at the penny slot machines of the underground casino, watching him puffed away in cigars as he received one after another hand at the blackjack table, wagering more and more as the night progressed.

  Gambling is illegal in China, but despite that, it was not hard to find these joints if you dare to ask the locals about them. Since Mr. Qi, or Mr. Qi's money, had made so many willing friends out of every stranger he met wanting to get some spare change from his deep pocket, he was shown the way almost immediately everywhere he went. My parents were not interested in any night time entertainment, so they went back to their room on board of the cruise parked at the port after short walks around the port to stretch their legs and enjoyed the scenary a bit, leaving us to explore the hidden underworld with Mr. Qi and his entourage.

  I was pressing mindlessly over and over again at the white button on the side of the slot machine that said "repeat bet" while nodding to Marvey's groans about how
irresponsible she thought gamblers were. Suddenly my slot machine made a series of bing's and ding's, its electronic display screen shown that with my puny five cent bet, I had won five hundred Yuan. "I won something!"

  Marvey took a look at the screen, clicked 'cash-out', grabbed my hand and dragged me to the cashier. "It's enough. Let's get the money and get out of here."

  She was right to drag me to leave.

  Despite knowing how easily these gambling softwares could be made and rigged, me being a programmer and what not, deep down in me I had the gambler's gene. It was hardwired into every Chinese's brain. Kelvin once told me that what struck him the most on his European travels was how most of the advertisement by casinos over there either featured Chinese-looking people, or African-looking people. Since we were sure that these casinos must have done their marketing research with statistics and all that, we were relieved to know that our predisposition for the game of chance was not just a moment of weakness, but an ethnical faults in our biological imprints.

  "My gosh!" Marvey said. "Am I glad we got out of there. My eardrums were about to burst from the loud music."

  "It's not all bad." I held up the five one-hundred-Yuan bills in the air.

  "Let's do something with it."

  "Should we go grab Kelvin?" I asked, out of respect for our common friend.

  "Nah..." Marvey answered. "Do you think he would really miss us?"

  "Not really," I replied. "You don't see these kinds of casinos in Shanghai. I could understand why he is so fascinated about it."

  "Hpmfff..." Marvey sighed. "And I thought I could count on him to take me around. I guess it's up to you again."

  "Yup," I nodded. I had been her main company from the moment we boarded the cruise until now, except the time when she went to bed. Needless to say, I enjoyed every moment of her company, listening to her fascination about my beautiful country that sometimes I forgot to appreciate.

  Wuhan, the city where we were, was extremely well-lit and alive at eleven in the evening. A vigorous trading port, Wuhan's name was an amalgam three former cities, Wuchang, Hankou and Hanyang where the Yangtze river intersects with the Han river. Not only is it an important economic hub of central China, it was also the origin of the Wuchang uprising by Doctor Sun Yat Sen's nationalist group, ending two thousand years of empirical rules in China. The historical significance of the city contrasted sharply at the trivial activities occurring inside the wanton establishment we escaped.