by Vann Chow
We walked down the alley and turned into the main road where the street lamps were the brightest and the sound of humans the most joyest to search for another version of Wuhan, and we were not disappointed.
A large, red arch entrance signified the beginning of the famous Wuhan's Hanzheng street market. Behind it on the two sides of the road, not only the neon signs of the shops were alight, but also the rows after rows of traditional red, round lanterns with tassels falling under them. Stretched along the streets were snacks and trinket stalls, selling almost everything one could dream of, except dream itself. The vendors were loudly hawking their crafts, and night turned into day on the stretch of road ahead of us. Marvey and I were immediately engrossed in all the merchandise.
I spotted Wuhan's famous delicacy, duck necks, in one of them, and called out to Marvey to come over so I could dare her to eat them. She was however lingering in front of a mannequin next to a shop owned by an older woman. I walked closer to see what Marvey so engrossed in, to found that it was not some random souvenir every tourist needed to buy once in his or her life that said 'I Love Wuhan', but a light pink qibao, or mandarin dress, with embroidered flowers along the buttons that went all the way from the collar to the left chest.
"It's lovely!" She said to the woman selling it in Mandarin. The woman grinned happily and said that she made all of the dresses, including this one, herself. Marvey was sufficiently fascinated, and I just nodded skeptically in the back. The dress looked too good to be handmade.
"It's only 399 Yuan," the woman said, grinning. There were remnants of her dinner in between her teeth.
"Should I buy it?" Marvey turned around and asked me. "It's handmade!"
You could never be sure what was handmade in China. Foreigners loved handmade goods, and the stores knew that very well. Even if the dresses were rolled out of a textile factory line at a thousand per minute, they would still say they were handmade, since these 'lao wai' (foreigners) would not know and probably did not care enough to want to find out, because the prices of goods in China were often so low for them in comparison to the prices of goods in their own countries. Besides, how could tourists ever sprout doubts over the authenticity of goods sold by old women or young children? When was the last time you saw a perfectly strong, young man selling something 'handmade' on the streets?
Before I could explain all that play of psychology on the Chinese street markets to Marvey, she was already pulling out money from her wallet.
I grabbed the size L dress that was right in front of me, careful not to let her realize that I knew her size, and that it was probably not the size she would like to have, and paid the old woman with four of my five one-hundred-Yuan earnings from the slot machine. "Keep the change," I said to the old woman who was very happy to make a sale so late in the evening and nodded her head repeatedly in gratitude.
She should be. At the rip-off, tourist-price of four hundred Yuan, she could close for a day tomorrow when people of China made an average of merely hundred Yuan a day.
"This is my gift for you." I tore the size tag immediately off from the dress and threw the tag on the ground before Marvey could see it was a Large.
Marvey grabbed my gift hesitantly. The gratefulness on her face was, however, unmistakable.
"Thank you," she said with a smile. "You shouldn't have done that."
"You're very welcome," I said. I thought I saw the pink glow on her face but it could also just been the light from the low-hanging moon of July.
This was the first time I had ever bought a dress for a girl. I found my heart racing when the irresistible images of how Marvey would look in the lovely qibao filled my mind. It was not lust I felt but a mixture of curiosity of how she would look like in traditional Chinese costume, and satisfaction of making somebody happy.
"Let me take a picture of us, so I could remember this moment forever." Marvey took out her iPhone, made a selfie with me and started fiddling with an app.
I was hungry, since we only had some junk food at the casinos while watching the others gamble, and I started to lose patience because Marvey was taking so long with whatever she was doing with our picture.
"Give me your iPhone," I suggested.
"Why?" Marvey asked rather defensively.
"Have you forgotten who is the photographer among the two of us?" I snatched it off her hand, hoping to impress her with my superior night-time photographing skills, and just then, a notification from Weibo came in for her. Instead of swiping it away, my clumsy fingers opened the Weibo notification for a profile that could have belonged to me.
'Shanghai He Yuan Zhong', was the username of the account.
"Who's that?"
"You," Marvey answered the way how a child would answer her parents, being caught red-handed for one of her 4th-grade mischiefs.
"Have you been posting Weibo as me?" As I was holding her phone, it kept buzzing from torrents of new notifications.
"No, I was tagging you. And it's not you technically. It's kind of like your fan club," she explained. "Look, I am getting all these notifications now from your fans. You have almost two hundred thousand of them. This is gonna take a while to die down."
"Why did you do that?" I navigated into the main page of my so-called fan club on Weibo to see what else did other people post about me. Before I could see enough, she had snatched her phone back, annoyed, as if I was the one in the wrong. I did not mind, since it happened a lot.
"It's your fan club. No big deal," Marvey said. "People just posts about you, because they like you, like people posts about Kim Kardashians in the U.S. Kelvin posts, too, some times. That's one of few things we like to do together."
I did not understand what I was hearing. The girl I like and my best friend are bonding over me?
"We just want to keep our photographic memories with you and each other somewhere online."
"Who owns my fan club? You?" I asked.
"No, just some random people who like you. Probably a girl," She said, laughing, as if it was the most ordinary everyday thing to have someone posting about you around the clock on the internet. "I thought you knew. Caroline showed you this that night at the party, didn't she? We took a picture of us together that evening and tagged your fan club, that's how everyone knew you were there at the disco. Don't you remember?"
Marvey was right, Caroline did show me this that evening at the club, when a sudden swarm of fans came over for photographs — no doubt to be put online immediately again, tagging my fan club, triggering a vicious cycle of fandom.
So it appeared that I wasn't alone in my online stalking. Marvey was also stalking me online via the newsfeed that came from my fans all around China. There was an inexplicably romantic quality about this. This was surely how modern day love-affair start, wasn't it?
"Sign up for Weibo, then you would be able to speak for yourself," she teased, knowing how social-media-averse I was.
"This trip is crazy, really," Marvey said, trying to change the topic in the most natural way possible, "but all these cities and towns and quaint little ancient villages we passed, they are so amazing. This is actually the nicest part of the cruise trip, to be able to see so many sights at once, instead of just being cooped up in Shanghai had I not joined you. I'm glad I came along."
"Me, too," I said, letting the Weibo thing dropped.
Just then, I received a phone call from Kelvin, asking where in the world did I kidnap his beautiful company. Instead of being pissed at me, he asked me to return at once to the casino, because, in his words, "You would never be able to guess who is performing there right now", and that got me very curious.
Chapter 36
"Who is performing?" Marvey and I walked as fast as we could back into the casino to find Kelvin ogling a woman singing on stage in a silky, pink ball gown.
"You don't recognize the song?" Kelvin asked sarcastically. "It's the theme song of Love in the Summer!"
"I don't know the song, nor the show."
"Wha
t?!" Kelvin almost screamed at my ignorance for popular culture.
I shrugged. I understood his shock. I could look like I lived under a rock sometimes. I did not mind, because the place under a rock was usually cool and breezy...ah, the peace.
"Marsha Ling!" Marvey said excitedly. "The drama series was so romantic! I watched it over there in the US to keep up my Mandarin."
"Marsha?" I held up my hand over my eyes to shield the dancing stage lights pouring toward our direction and could finally make out Marsha's face. "Oh, it's just her."
"Just?! What are you talking about?" Marvey could really behave like a Chinese woman when she needed to, most of them addicted to cheesy soap dramas and hopelessly engrossed in television romances in which one of the main characters inevitably always suffer a serious accident if not tragic death. Kelvin put his arm around her shoulder and gave her a hug. I could not help but smiled that their relationship was exactly like the name of the drama series, a short-lived love affair that lasted only for the summer.
Marvey extended her arm and looped it over my shoulders as well. The message she sent was clear. She wanted the two of us to be friends again, and so she made it clear with Kelvin that nothing more than friendship could happen between them. The three of us swayed together to the tunes of the song. I smiled at Marvey for her considerate thoughts. She winked back at me.
"Let me take a picture of her and post it on my Weibo," Kelvin said, tearing himself from Marvey's arm to do something a lot more important, leaving the two of us alone, arm in arm. "It's definitely going to get a lot of retweets!" He said excitingly.
We were to see Marsha a lot more often than we thought in the next couple of days. She was invited by Mr. Qi to join us in the rest of the trip, as his 'plus one' to my wedding.
Star-appearance at my wedding — now that's really something to Weibo about.
That evening, I went to talk to my parents about it and instead of being happy, they were getting restless about my wedding being completely blown out of proportion.
"A celebrity at your wedding. It will attract a lot of people," My mom said concerningly.
"The wedding is getting way too big," My dad echoed her comment.
"I thought you'd always wanted a big wedding for me," I teased them. In China, wedding is the most important occassion of all life events for a family. To have a big wedding is the hope and dream every parent has for their children.
"Who's going to pay the bill for all of these?"
"Well, you know," I answered. "Mr. Qi is taking care of it, besides, Marsha Ling is not there to perform. She's Mr. Qi's girlfriend, so she's there as a guest. We don't have to pay for her appearance."
"I don't want you to get used to this kind of lifestyle," my dad interrupted me, crossing his arms in front of his chest.
"Nobody is getting used to anything here. I worked hard for him, for the company. He thinks your son is a great help to him and so he is being generous to me on this particularly important occasion in your son's life. We've gotten 40 million Euro investment on one of our projects."
My dad shook his head and said, "Remember, everything in this world is give and take." My mother nodded along.
"Yes," I reassured them. "I know." I was no stranger to scams, being a recent victim. Luckily it turned out okay for all of us, so we could enjoy the cruise trip together as a family, scot-free.
"Well, at least we know your wife and your father-in-law will love this. She looks like the kind of women who loves money."
Mr. Qi had moved our wedding banquet from a regular restaurant in the village where Paula came from, to a five-star hotel in the city center of Guangyuan about an hour's drive away. Paula did text me to let me know how pleased she was with it with a bunch of smileys, and a picture of her wedding gown that would have cost her a whole month’s salary, on my tab. Yes, only smileys and pictures because she had some birth defects that permanently disabled her from saying nice words to me.
My mom sighed. "How I wish you were marrying Jenny instead. She's such a nice girl. I don't understand how you could pick Paula, a married woman from outside of the province, instead of Jenny!"
I laughed. My mother said that about Shirley too, who cheated us out of our ancestral land. Her choices of daughter-in-laws were not exactly faultless.
"Are you sure she's not marrying you for your money?" My mother asked me. Judging from the concerned look on her face, my mother had wanted to ask me this for a very long time.
"I am penniless."
"Or for the Shanghai residency," My dad suggested. This time he hit the nail in the head. "Your Shanghai residency is worth a lot of money, you know? You shouldn't give it away just like that."
Of course I did not let on, because they would surely object to the wedding should they know about Paula's real motive.
"Who wants to live in Shanghai? Look where we are. China is so much more than just Shanghai. Even the air is fresher here."
"The grass is always greener on the other side, son."
"If you want to back out of this, we will support you," my mother said. "Just say it and we will go back to Shanghai. I will find you another girl in no time, don't worry."
"Mom!" I loved how my mom kept trying. "I know what I am doing."
"No, you don't. Son, I didn't want to say it because you were so excited about finally finding a wife..." she said, acknowledging my long march for spring. "You know, even if Paula has your baby, we can let her have an abortion. Or just give birth to the baby and buy it off from her. You don't have to have anything to do with her."
"What are you talking about?!" It was unbelievable to hear my mother scheming like the evil mother of Cinderella. And why was it so hard for my parents to believe that my feelings for Paula was genuine? Gosh, I really need to work on my acting skills.
My mom looked at my dad for help, who shook his head, indicating that he thought I was beyond hope.
"Women like Paula won't be the wife you are looking for. I heard things about her, and her job at the factory..." Paula had once lied about being a night-shift factory worker to justify the strange working hours of her real job, because sadly, sewing brand tags on H&M and Primark garments in sub-prime conditions without proper toilet breaks was even a more esteemed job than being a night club hostess, an escort. "I really don't want to see you get upset in a few years' time."
In a few years time I would hopefully be freed. I couldn't wait for that moment to come.
"I love her," I answered simply, fighting the goosebumps growing on my back. These three words have been the downfall of many women and men around the world, there was no reason why it shouldn't work.
My dad said nothing for a while, then he nodded. "If you believe what you're doing is right for you, we will respect your decision."
That was one of the most difficult lies I had to tell my parents ever in my life. I hope they would forgive me in a few years' time.
I called Paula that evening, so that I could hear her voice. "Are you serious? Do you know how late it is now? You want to wake my whole family up from their sleep?!" It was reassuring somehow to hear her condescending tone telling me off about something of trivial importance. "Marsha Ling is coming to our wedding. That's worth waking the whole house for, isn't it?"
"You're fucking kidding me. Marsha Ling?!" She said the actress' name out loud. "No wonder people are saying Marsha Ling is coming to town. Jong, this is not right. The wedding is getting too big!"
I couldn't believe my ears. Did Paula just say the same thing my mother did about the wedding? They might have more in common than they thought.
Chapter 37
When our cruise touched down at Chongqing, we were shuffled very quickly on to a luxury tour bus with all our luggage into the city in the north called Guangyuan, in the province of Lizhou. Paula and her clan, a group of fifty or so people, were already waiting for us at the banquet hall of the Golden Flower five-star hotel. They helped out with the decoration of the hall and arranged everything p
roperly not just for Paula, but for Marsha Ling's arrival.
The wedding was important. The appearance of a national superstar, however, was paramount to the small inland city. Celebrities of her stature were said to have 'the touch of gold' in places like this. The restaurant she ate at would become a popular tourist destination, the seat she sat on would be auctioned off for lots of money, the brand of water she drank would sell like crazy, the words she spoke about the place would be etched on to a stone soon to be erected somewhere to commemorate her visit, and people who served to her tea would earn some serious bragging rights.
So when we arrived at the hotel, instead of just the fifty something people I was expecting, there were almost a thousand people crowding outside the hotel entrance. Some of them were in their best outfit, likely guests of our wedding banquet, and some of them looked like they just dropped their shovels at the neighboring roadworks and came to spot the celebrity.
They swarmed towards us like bees over honey as soon as we got off the bus with a license plate from Chongqing.
"What's this?" My dad asked me. I grabbed both of my parents' arms and walked them as quickly as possible out of the crowd. It was not as difficult as it might seem, because they were not here for me. They were here for Marsha Ling instead. "That's way too many people!" He hated crowded places as much as I did. It was in time like this that I knew there was no mistaking that he was my dad.
"Marsha! Can I shake your hand?!" One fan screamed.
"Please give me a signature!" Some kids with notebooks and pens edged closer towards her.