by Kevin Kwan
Copyright © 2015 Kevin Kwan
Anchor Canada edition published in 2016
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Anchor Canada is a registered trademark.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kwan, Kevin, author
China rich girlfriend / Kevin Kwan.
ISBN 9780385682244 (pbk.)
I. Title.
PS3611.W36C45 2016 813’.6 C2014-907472-7
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by Anchor Canada,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
A Penguin Random House Company
www.penguinrandomhouse.ca
v4.1_r7
a
Contents
Master - Table of Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Everybody Who’s Anybody in Crazy Rich Asians
Epigraph
Prologue: Beijing Capital International Airport
Part One1: The Mandarin
2: Cupertino, California
3: Scotts Road
4: Ridout Road
5: Tyersall Park
6: Morton Street
7: Belmont Road
8: Diamond Ballroom, Ritz-Carlton Hotel
9: The Locke Club
10: Arcadia
11: Four Seasons Biltmore
12: Arcadia
Part Two1: Ko-Tung Consulting Group Social Impact Assessment
2: Rachel and Nick
3: Astrid
4: The Baos
5: Charlie
6: Carlton and Colette
7: Nick and Rachel
8: Colette
9: Michael and Astrid
10: The Bings
11: Corinna and Kitty
12: Astrid
13: Save the Seamstress Fashion Show
14: Trenta
15: 28 Cluny Park Road
16: Paris
17: The Mandarin Oriental
18: The Shangri-La
Part Three1: Shek O
2: Changi Airport
3: Jinxian Lu
4: Riverside Victory Towers
5: Pulau Club
6: Imperial Treasure Restaurant
7: The West Lake
8: National Library of China
9: Ridout Road
10: Queen Mary Hospital
11: Bukit Brown Cemetery
12: Mar Vista
13: Triumph Towers
14: Central Police Station
15: Ridout Road
16: 188 Taiyuan Road
17: Newspapers Around the World
Acknowledgments
For my brothers and my cousins
EVERYBODY WHO’S ANYBODY IN
CRAZY RICH ASIANS
NICHOLAS YOUNG—NYU history professor and heir to one of the largest fortunes in Asia. He innocently took his girlfriend to Singapore for his best friend’s wedding, not realizing how it was going to ruin her life. Now they live together in Manhattan, despite the wishes of his mother and grandmother.
RACHEL CHU—An American-born-Chinese (“ABC”) economics professor who is now the envy of every eligible woman in Singapore because of her relationship with Nicholas.
ELEANOR YOUNG—Nicholas’s estranged mother, who could devour Tiger Moms for lunch. She divides her time between Sydney and Singapore.
SHANG SU YI—Nicholas’s imperious grandmother. The matriarch of the Shang and Young clans, she lives at her palatial Singapore estate, Tyersall Park, and refuses to forgive Nicholas for defying her wishes about whom he should marry.
ASTRID LEONG—Nicholas’s ravishingly beautiful and faultlessly elegant cousin. A “double heiress” destined to inherit from both sides of her aristocratic family, she lives in Singapore with her tech-titan husband, Michael Teo, and son, Cassian.
EDISON CHENG—The maniacally snobbish Hong Kong cousin of Nicholas Young and Astrid Leong. With a personality not even a mother could love, Eddie works in private banking but really spends more time getting fitted for custom suits at his tailor’s.
OLIVER T’SIEN—An art and antiquities historian whose real expertise is knowing all the gossip on Asia’s most important families. Naturally, he’s also Nicholas’s cousin.
KITTY PONG—The former Hong Kong soap-opera star who broke up with Alistair Cheng and took off to Las Vegas to get married to Bernard Tai, the boorish playboy son of tycoon Dato’ Tai Toh Lui.
CHARLIE WU—Astrid Leong’s first love and ex-fiancé, a Hong Kong–based tech billionaire.
GOH PEIK LIN—Rachel Chu’s best friend from college. Daughter of a very wealthy Singapore real estate family, she had no idea there were families even richer than hers.
LONDON, 8 SEPTEMBER 2012, 9:00 A.M. GMT
A red Ferrari 458 Italia crashed through the window of the Jimmy Choo shoe boutique on Sloane Street sometime between 4:00 a.m. and 4:30 a.m. last night. No one witnessed the accident. Metropolitan Police reported that two passengers were taken to St Mary’s Paddington, where they are being treated for serious but noncritical injuries. The vehicle owner’s name was not released pending further investigation.
—SARAH LYRE, The London Chronicle
PROLOGUE
BEIJING CAPITAL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
SEPTEMBER 9, 2012, 7:45 P.M.
“Wait a minute—I’m in first class. Take me to first class,” Edison Cheng said contemptuously to the flight attendant escorting him to his seat.
“This is first class, Mr. Cheng,” the man in the crisp navy uniform informed him.
“But where are the cabins?” Eddie asked, still confused.
“Mr. Cheng, I’m afraid British Airways does not have private cabins in first class.*1 But if you’d allow me to show you some of the special features of your seat—”
“No, no, that’s fine.” Eddie tossed his ostrich leather briefcase onto the seat like a petulant schoolboy. Fucky fuck—the sacrifices I have to make for the bank today! Edison Cheng, the pampered “Prince of Private Bankers”—famous in Hong Kong society pages for his bon vivant lifestyle, his dapper wardrobe, his elegant wife (Fiona), his photogenic children, and his superb lineage (his mother is Alexandra Young, of the Singapore Youngs)—was unaccustomed to such inconveniences. Five hours ago he had been interrupted during a luncheon at the Hong Kong Club, rushed aboard the company jet bound for Beijing, and then hustled onto this flight to London. It had been years since he had suffered the indignity of flying commercial, but Mrs. Bao was on this godforsaken plane, and Mrs. Bao needed to be accommodated.
But where exactly was the lady? Eddie expected to find her seated nearby, but the chief purser informed him that there was no such person by that name in the cabin.
“No, no, she’s supposed to be here. Can you check the flight manifest or something?” Eddie demanded.
Minutes later, Eddie found himself being led to row 37, seat E of the aircraft—economy class—where a petite woman in a white vicuña turtleneck and gray flannel slacks sat sandwiched between two passengers.
�
��Mrs. Bao? Bao Shaoyen?” Eddie inquired in Mandarin.
The woman looked up and smiled wanly. “Are you Mr. Cheng?”
“Yes. So glad to meet you, but I’m sorry we had to meet like this.” Eddie smiled in relief. He had spent the past eight years managing the Bao family’s offshore accounts, but they were such a secretive lot, he had never met any of them until today. Even though she looked rather tired at the moment, Bao Shaoyen was much prettier than he had imagined. With alabaster skin, large eyes that slanted upward at the edges, and high cheekbones accentuated by the way she wore her jet-black hair—pulled into a tight, low ponytail—she did not look old enough to have a son in grad school.
“Why are you seated here? Was there some mix-up?” Eddie asked urgently.
“No, I always fly economy class,” Mrs. Bao replied.
Eddie couldn’t hide his look of surprise. Mrs. Bao’s husband, Bao Gaoliang, was one of Beijing’s top politicians, and what’s more, he had inherited one of China’s biggest pharmaceutical firms. The Baos weren’t just one of his regular clients; they were his ultra-high-net-worth clients.
“Only my son flies first class,” Bao Shaoyen explained, catching Eddie’s look. “Carlton can eat all the fancy Western food and, being a student under so much pressure, he needs all the rest he can get. But for me, it’s not worth it. I don’t touch airplane food, and I can never sleep on these long flights anyway.”
Eddie had to resist the urge to roll his eyes. Typical Mainlanders! They lavished every penny on their Little Emperor and suffered in silence. Well, look where that got them. Twenty-three-year-old Carlton Bao was supposed to be at Cambridge finishing his master’s dissertation, but had instead spent the previous evening doing his best Prince Harry impersonation—running up a £38,000 bar tab at half a dozen London nightspots, wrecking his brand-new Ferrari, destroying public property, and almost getting himself killed. And that wasn’t even the worst of it. The worst of it Eddie had been explicitly instructed not to reveal to Bao Shaoyen.
Eddie faced a conundrum. He urgently needed to go over the plans with Mrs. Bao, but he would sooner endure a colonoscopy than spend the next eleven hours slumming it in coach. God in heaven, what if someone recognized him? A picture of Edison Cheng crammed into an economy-class seat would go viral within seconds. Yet Eddie grudgingly realized that it would be unseemly for one of his bank’s most important clients to remain here in steerage while he was up front, stretched out on a flatbed recliner, sipping twenty-year-old cognac. He eyed the spiky-haired youth slouching dangerously close to Mrs. Bao on one side, and the elderly woman clipping her nails into the air sickness bag on her other side, a solution springing to mind.
Lowering his voice, Eddie said, “Mrs. Bao, I would of course be happy to join you in this cabin, but as there are some highly confidential matters we need to discuss, would you allow me to arrange a seat for you up front? I’m certain the bank would insist that I upgrade you to first class—at our expense, of course—and we will be able to talk much more privately there.”
“Well, I suppose—if the bank insists,” Bao Shaoyen replied a little hesitantly.
After takeoff, when aperitifs had been served and they were both comfortably ensconced in the sumptuous, pod-like seats facing each other, Eddie wasted no time updating his client.
“Mrs. Bao, I was in contact with London just before boarding. Your son has been stabilized. The surgery to repair his punctured spleen was completely successful, and now the orthopedic team can take over.”
“Oh thank all the gods.” Bao Shaoyen sighed, easing back in her seat for the first time.
“We’ve already lined up the top reconstructive plastic surgeon in London—Dr. Peter Ashley—and he will be in the operating room alongside the orthopedic team attending to your son.”
“My poor boy,” Bao Shaoyen said, her eyes getting moist.
“Your son was very lucky.”
“And the British girl?”
“The girl is still in surgery. But I’m sure she will pull through just fine,” Eddie said, putting on his peppiest smile.
• • •
Barely thirty minutes earlier, Eddie had been on another plane parked in a private hangar at Beijing Capital International Airport, taking in the grim details during a hastily arranged crisis-management meeting with Mr. Tin, the gray-haired head of security for the Bao family, and Nigel Tomlinson, his bank’s Asia chief. The two men had climbed aboard the Learjet as soon as it landed, huddling over Nigel’s laptop while an associate in London gave the latest update via secure-feed videoconference.
“Carlton is out of surgery now. He was quite a bit banged up, but being in the driver’s seat with his airbag and everything, he actually suffered the least injuries. But with the English girl, it’s touch and go—she’s still in a coma, and they’ve relieved the swelling in the brain, but that’s all they can do for now.”
“And the other girl?” Mr. Tin asked, squinting at the small pixilated pop-up window.
“We’re told she died on impact.”
Nigel sighed. “And she was Chinese?”
“We believe so, sir.”
Eddie shook his head. “What a fucky, fucky mess. We need to track down the next of kin immediately, before they are contacted by the authorities.”
“How do you even fit three people into a Ferrari?” Nigel asked.
Mr. Tin twirled his phone nervously on the lacquered walnut console. “Carlton Bao’s father is on a state visit to Canada with the premier of China, and nothing must interrupt him. My orders from Mrs. Bao are that no hint of any scandal must ever reach his ears. He must never know about the dead girl. Do you understand? There is too much at stake—given his political position—and it is an especially sensitive time with the big once-in-a-decade changeover in party leadership happening right now.”
“Of course, of course,” Nigel assured him. “We will say that the white girl was his girlfriend. As far as the father is concerned, there was only one girl in the car.”
“Why does Mr. Bao even need to know about the white girl? Don’t worry, Mr. Tin. I have handled much worse dealing with some of those sheikhs’ children,” Eddie boasted.
Nigel shot Eddie a warning glare. The bank prided itself on the utmost discretion, and here was his associate blabbing away about other clients.
“We have a tactical response team in place in London that I am personally directing, and I can assure you we will do everything to contain this,” Nigel said, before turning to Eddie. “How much do you think it will take to keep Fleet Street quiet?”
Eddie inhaled deeply, trying to do some quick calculations. “It’s not just the press. The policemen, the ambulance drivers, the hospital staff, the families. There’s going to be an assload of people to shut up. I would suggest ten million pounds for starters.”
“Well, the minute you land in London, you need to take Mrs. Bao straight to the office. We need her to sign off on the withdrawal before you take her to the hospital to see her son. I’m just wondering what we should say if Mr. Bao asks us why we needed so much,” Nigel pondered.
“Just say the girl needed some new organs,” Mr. Tin suggested.
“We can also say we needed to pay the boutique,” Eddie added. “Those Jimmy Choos are bloody pricey, you know.”
2 HYDE PARK
LONDON, SEPTEMBER 10, 2012
Eleanor Young sipped on her morning tea, crafting her little white lie. She was holidaying in London with three of her closest friends—Lorena Lim, Nadine Shaw, and Daisy Foo—and after two days of being with the ladies nonstop, she desperately needed a few hours on her own. The trip was a much-needed distraction for all of them—Lorena was recovering from a Botox allergy scare, Daisy had gotten into yet another fight with her daughter-in-law over the choice of kindergartens for her grandchildren, and Eleanor herself was depressed that her son, Nicky, had not spoken to her for mo
re than two years. And Nadine—well, Nadine was appalled by the state of her daughter’s brand-new apartment.
“Alamaaaaaaak! Fifty million dollars and I can’t even flush the toilet!” Nadine screeched as she entered the breakfast room.
“What do you expect, when everything is so bloody high-tech?” Lorena laughed. “Did the toilet at least help you suay kah-cherng?”*2
“No, lah! I waved and waved at all the stupid sensors but nothing happened!” Feeling defeated, Nadine plopped down into an ultramodern chair that appeared to be constructed out of a tangled pile of red velvet ropes.
“I don’t want to criticize, but I think this apartment of your daughter’s is not only hideously modern, it’s hideously overpriced,” Daisy commented between bites of toast topped with pork floss.
“Aiyah, she’s paying for the name and the location, nothing more,” Eleanor sniffed. “Personally, I would have chosen a unit with a nice view of Hyde Park, rather than the view facing Harvey Nichols.”
“You know my Francesca, lah! She could care less about the park—she wants to fall asleep staring at her favorite department store! Thank God she finally married someone who can pay her overdraft.” Nadine sighed.
The ladies kept quiet. Things hadn’t been easy for Nadine ever since her father-in-law, Sir Ronald Shaw, woke up from a six-year coma and turned off the money spigot on his family’s free spending. Her profligate daughter, Francesca (once voted one of the Fifty Best Dressed Women by Singapore Tattle), did not respond well to being put on a clothing budget, and decided that her best solution was to embark on a brazen affair with Roderick Liang (of the Liang Finance Group Liangs), who had only just married Lauren Lee. Singapore’s social set was scandalized, and Lauren’s grandmother, the formidable Mrs. Lee Yong Chien, retaliated by making sure every old-guard family in Southeast Asia shut their doors firmly on the Shaws and the Liangs. In the end, a severely chastened Roderick chose to crawl back to his wife rather than run off with Francesca.
Finding herself a social pariah, Francesca fled to England and quickly landed on her feet by marrying “some Iranian Jew with half a billion dollars.”*3 Since moving into 2 Hyde Park, the obscenely expensive luxury condominium backed by the Qatari royal family, she was finally on speaking terms with her mother again. Naturally, this gave the ladies an excuse to visit the newlyweds, but of course they just wanted to check out the much-publicized apartment and, more important, have a free place to stay.*4