The King of Shanghai

by Ian Hamilton

  “He was a marvellous man.”

  “He would have died for me.”

  “And you for him.”

  “I like to think that I would.”

  “Ava, I know we’ll never be able to replace what you and Uncle had, but hopefully this business of ours will give you as much satisfaction as working with him did.”

  “I keep telling myself that it will be nice to invest in something long-term, something that we can grow. Every job Uncle and I did was one of a kind and had a short lifespan. It was get in, get the money, and get out, then sit around and wait for the next job. Whenever I had to describe what I did for a living, I said it involved months of boredom interspersed with days of stress and excitement, and sometimes punctuated with minutes — or even hours — filled with terror.”

  “I can handle boredom, or at least predictability,” Amanda said.

  “I’m not so sure about either of those,” Ava said, laughing. “Now go to bed. I’ll see you in Shanghai.”

  After hanging up, Ava sat quietly by the phone for a few minutes. Amanda and May Ling were loyal friends, and Ava felt as tightly bound to them as she had been to Uncle. It would be good to reconnect in person, and to be in Shanghai. That thought reminded her of Xu. She opened the contact list on her computer and found his email address.

  Something has come up and I have to be in Shanghai at the end of this week. I arrive Thursday. If you want to meet, May Ling and I will be available that evening for drinks or dinner. We’re staying at the Peninsula Hotel. If you can’t reach me beforehand, leave a message there. Regards, Ava.

  She went to the kitchen to make a cup of Starbucks instant coffee. When she got back, there was already a reply. Dinner it will be. I will make the reservation and contact you at the hotel with details. Thank you, Xu.

  It was an hour later in Shanghai than in Hong Kong, past two o’clock in the morning. Doesn’t anyone over there sleep? she thought.

  ( 3 )

  Ava booked the only direct flight from Toronto to Shanghai. It departed from Pearson International at one in the afternoon and would land her at three in the afternoon, fourteen hours and an International Date Line crossing later, in Shanghai.

  Air Canada didn’t have a first-class section, but the business-class pods gave her ample privacy. She drank a glass of champagne before takeoff, turned on the in-flight entertainment system, and searched for the latest Chinese films. She chose The Red Cliff. She had seen the edited version, which was just over two hours long, in Cantonese with English subtitles. This was the original cut, which ran more than four hours and had no subtitles. She ordered a glass of Pinot Grigio as soon as they reached cruising altitude, and nestled into her pod to watch Tony Leung, Takeshi Kaneshiro, and Zhang Fengyi put an end to the second-century Han Dynasty and introduce the era of the Three Kingdoms. The film was a spectacle, the highest-budget movie ever made in Hong Kong or China, with a cast of thousands doing battle on land and on the sea. She adored Tony Leung. Some actors, such as Andy Lau, were fine in contemporary roles but looked absurd in battledress. Leung was a chameleon, flitting from moody romantic roles to Hong Kong gangster films and period pieces such as The Red Cliff, always embodying his character fully in time and place.

  Ava drank three more glasses of wine and passed on dinner. By the time the film concluded, she was ready to sleep. She reclined her seat into a bed, put in earplugs, slipped on an eye mask, and within minutes was gone.

  She dreamed she was in a small one-room apartment, lying in bed with her feet towards the front door. She heard a noise and opened her eyes. Only then did she notice that the apartment walls went only three-quarters of the way to the ceiling, and that the door went only three-quarters of the way to the lintel. A man peered over the wall. “Go away!” she yelled. He disappeared for a few seconds and then popped up again, closer to the door. She watched as he swung a leg over the top of the door and began to squeeze through the gap. She tried to get up, but her legs were frozen in place and she could barely lift her head. “Get out of here!” she screamed.

  She sat upright, panic flooding over her. The dimmed cabin lights cast shadows. She drank some water and then settled back into the bed and closed her eyes. Within minutes she was out again. She didn’t dream this time, and when she woke, it was to the gentle voice of a flight attendant saying, “Ms. Lee, we will be landing soon. Would you like some breakfast?”

  Ava ate an omelette with sausages, drank two cups of coffee, and went to the bathroom to freshen up. Back in her seat, she opened her Chanel bag and took out the information May Ling had sent her on Suki Chan’s warehouse and distribution business. Then she reached deeper into the bag and took out a Moleskine notebook. She might not be collecting bad debts anymore but she still found that the simple act of putting pen to paper helped her organize her thoughts. She wrote Suki Chan across the top of the first page and then copied the numbers and impressions she wanted to remember in case she was called upon to participate in a meeting.

  About forty-five minutes from Shanghai, the plane began its descent. Ava looked out the window. Through light cloud cover she saw the East China Sea sparkling below. She had been to Shanghai once before, on a collection job. She had taken a flight from Dalian, a city in the north of China, near Manchuria, and had landed at Hongqiao Airport, on Shanghai’s west side. Her visit back then had lasted only a day and a half, and she hadn’t left the city’s western perimeter, so downtown Shanghai was unknown to her. Still, it almost felt like coming home.

  Ava’s mother was Shanghainese, and Ava had heard tales about the storied city for as long as she could remember. So she knew that in the 1920s and ’30s the city was considered the most cosmopolitan in Asia, if not the world, before being gutted and occupied by Japanese invaders and then Communist insurgents. In recent years it had come roaring back to claim its place as the number one economic and cultural power in China. According to Jennie Lee, it was as sophisticated as Paris, New York, or London.

  Air Canada’s destination was Shanghai Pudong Inter­national Airport, on the east side. The airport was only about ten years old and had been built to move large volumes of people. Within half an hour of landing Ava had cleared Customs and Immigration and walked into the arrivals hall, to see a uniformed man holding a Peninsula Hotel sign with her name on it. She waved at him and he hurried towards her to get her bags.

  She had packed just as she would have for any business trip for her and Uncle’s collection agency. Her Shanghai Tang Double Happiness black leather bag held most of her clothes: two black pencil skirts; two pairs of linen slacks; four Brooks Brothers shirts in various colours, all with French cuffs and modified Italian collars; Cole Haan pumps; a pair of crocodile stilettos; various items of underwear; a small makeup bag containing her hairbrush, black mascara, red lipstick, and a vial of Annick Goutal perfume; and a light blue kidskin pouch that contained her Cartier Tank Française watch, ivory chignon pin, and two sets of cufflinks, one green jade and the other blue enamel with gold Chinese lettering. She had put on a black Giordano T-shirt and her Adidas track pants, jacket, and running shoes for the flight. Rolled into a ball and packed into the corner of her bag were three more T-shirts, socks, a sports bra, and running shorts. Her Chanel bag contained her laptop, the Moleskine notebook, and work documents.

  She gave the driver the Double Happiness bag and followed him from the terminal to the car. The sun was pale in the sky overhead, and a brisk wind buffeted her. Ava shivered. The weather was much as it had been in Toronto, the last days of winter reluctantly giving way to spring. The man who had greeted her was two steps ahead, walking down a line of limousines. When he stopped at a green Rolls-Royce, Ava gaped. It was a Phantom. She had never seen a car quite so big. A driver stood by the back door, and he swung it open for her. She climbed in and was enveloped in the smell of freshly cleaned leather.

  As the Rolls pulled away from the curb, she realized she hadn’t tip
ped the man who had met her in the arrivals hall. When she mentioned it to the driver, he turned his head, smiled, and said in English, “Not to worry, miss. Now let me welcome you to Shanghai and the Peninsula Hotel.”

  “Thank you. I don’t know much about the city, but from what I’ve heard, it’s marvellous. What is your name?”

  “I’m Zhang.”

  “You speak English very well.”

  “Thank you. I graduated from the University of Shanghai with a degree in English and I worked as an interpreter for a few years. But driving for the Peninsula pays better,” he said. He spoke with his eyes locked on the highway ahead. It was so quiet inside the car that she could have heard him if he whispered. Not even the noise from the construction sites that lined the road on both sides could penetrate its silence.

  “How far to the hotel?” she asked.

  “We’ll drive about forty-five kilometres through Pudong and then we’ll cross the Huangpu River and enter Shanghai.”

  She leaned back and looked out the window. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes they drove past apartment towers, shopping centres, and what looked like industrial estates. Ava noticed that they seemed to be covered in the same dust she’d seen in many Chinese cities that were in the grip of building booms. “Everything looks so new,” she said.

  “Pudong is a special economic zone. Twenty years ago it was nothing but farmland. Now there are more than five million residents. The area’s economy is as big as that of some European countries,” he said. He smiled at Ava in the rear-view mirror. “They’re even building a Disneyland.”

  Ava noticed that the dust had now given way to a pale yellow fog. “Is this smog we’re driving through?” she asked.

  “Yes, Pudong and Shanghai share the Yangtze Delta with Jiangsu and Zhejiang.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “They’re major industrial provinces, with many heavy industries and lots of coal consumption. The discharge blows our way, and when you add the pollution from the Pudong factories and our traffic, you end up with this. It actually isn’t that bad today. Last week we had three days of yellow haze alerts.”

  Ava thought of the foul air she’d survived in cities such as Dalian and Shenzhen, another special economic zone, but they were rough-and-tumble places that concentrated on economic growth. She hadn’t expected anything like this in Shanghai. She was about to mention it to Zhang when her attention was captured by several massive buildings that had loomed into view on the hazy skyline. “What are they?” she asked.

  “The tower is the Oriental Pearl TV tower. The taller building next to it is the Shanghai World Financial Centre. They’re both more than four hundred and fifty metres high.”

  As they drew near, the Oriental Pearl Tower became more distinct. Ava tried to remember how high Toronto’s CN Tower was. She thought it was more than five hundred metres tall, but it lacked the grace of the Oriental Pearl, which had a huge coloured pod near its base that echoed another pod three-quarters of the way up. The pods looked like two giant pearls connected by a golden strand.

  “And that’s the Huangpu River,” Zhang said, pointing to a slow-moving body of water. “We’re going to cross it on the Nanpu Bridge. On the other side is Shanghai.”

  The bridge was almost a kilometre long and soared at least a hundred metres above the river. Ava looked down and saw a large collection of barges, tankers, and container ships, their brightly coloured hulls in stark contrast to the sluggish grey-black water they churned through. Like every urban river she’d ever seen in China, the only flashes of colour were from floating debris and the green and blue iridescence of oil slicks.

  The car crawled across the bridge and entered Shanghai on the Inner Ring Elevated Road. They had travelled only a short distance when Zhang said, “This is Zhongshan East First Road, and straight ahead is the Bund.”

  Ava knew about the Bund from her mother, who spoke of it often, but she wasn’t prepared for just how beautiful it was. The Bund had been the centre of the International Settlement, the section of the city where, from in the middle of the nineteenth century, the Chinese government had permitted foreigners to live and work. The community that resulted was striking in many ways, and no part of it more so than the Bund, with its kilometre of European-inspired architecture — all of it restored and preserved — situated in the middle of China’s largest city.

  In the 1920s the owners of this stretch of banks, embassies, newspaper offices, and company headquarters had hired European architects to reflect their Western roots in Shanghai. Few of the buildings were more than five or six storeys high, but they were expansive and represented a range of styles from art deco to beaux arts to Renaissance revival and Romanesque. Fifty-two buildings were officially listed as original, and they were double-numbered. Each had its official Zhongshan Road address and then, befitting the uniqueness of the Bund, it was assigned a number that cemented its place as one of the fifty-two. The first building in a line going from south to north was the Asia Building — 1 Zhongshan Road and also No. 1, The Bund. The Shanghai Club was 2 Zhongshan Road and No. 2, The Bund.

  Zhang drove slowly, naming each building as they went past. Directly across from the buildings, a paved esplanade ran alongside the river. It was almost as broad as the road itself, and a mass of people was moving along it in both directions.

  The Peninsula Hotel was at the north end of the Bund and stood on land that had once housed the British Consulate. “We are home,” Zhang said. He turned into the Peninsula’s circular driveway.

  The hotel’s design was art deco, all clean lines of glass and concrete, with touches of gold trim. As Ava stepped into the lobby, she marvelled at the marble floors flecked with black and gold, the marble front desk inlaid with gold curlicues, and a marble fireplace at least two and a half metres high that was burning real logs. Above the fireplace was a mirror that stretched six metres to the ceiling. An enormous white porcelain bowl sat on the mantel in front of the mirror, along with metre-high red vases filled with fresh-cut flowers. The fireplace was flanked by two rows of red velvet chairs. Overhead, an enormous chandelier flooded the lobby with sparkle and light.

  In her Adidas pants and jacket, her hair tied back with a red rubber band, Ava felt decidedly underdressed. The young woman behind the desk didn’t seem to notice. She smiled and welcomed her so effusively that Ava almost turned to see if someone was standing behind her.

  “Madam Wong reserved a deluxe garden suite for you on the same floor as her and Ms. Yee,” the woman said. “Please give me your passport and fill out the registration form.”

  “Of course.” Ava handed her passport to the desk clerk and took the registration form. She glanced at the room rate. The suite cost 10,500 renminbi a night, just over US$1,500.

  When the woman returned, she slid the passport across the desk with one hand while sliding the form towards her with the other. “Two notes have been left for you,” she said.

  Ava put them in her jacket pocket and turned to look for the elevators. A bellman was standing a few feet away with her bag in hand. “If you would follow me,” he said.

  They walked towards a majestic staircase made of black marble and gold. It was covered in rich red carpeting and looked as if it could accommodate twenty people on a single step. Before they reached it, the bellman turned left and led her to a bank of elevators.

  Ava had a corner suite on the fifth floor. The living room was furnished with grey and taupe thickly cushioned sofas and chairs that were covered in throw pillows. She walked into the bedroom and was bathed in a sea of white.

  She went to the window and looked out onto a garden and a bridge that spanned a small body of water. “That’s not the Huangpu River,” she said.

  “No, it’s Suzhou Creek. It feeds into the river,” the bellman said.

  “And the garden belongs to the hotel?”

  “No, it’s a publi
c garden. It used to belong to the British Consulate.”

  “Very nice view.”

  “Many of our guests prefer rooms in this part of the hotel to those that look out onto the Bund and the river.”

  “I can see why,” Ava said as she gave him a tip.

  When the bellman left, she took the notes from her pocket. The first was from May: Hope you had a nice flight. We’re meeting Xu at seven for dinner. The restaurant is within easy walking distance from the hotel. I’ll be with Suki until five thirty and back at the hotel around six. If you’re up to it, meet me in the Compass Bar downstairs. Amanda may join us if she’s back from the factory in Pudong.

  The next was from Xu: I spoke with May Ling and she has the dinner details. Looking forward to seeing you.

  Ava looked at her watch. It was four thirty. Her body felt stiff from the flight, and her head was muddled from jet lag. Ideally she would have loved to go for a run, but then she remembered the air quality and discarded the idea. Instead she went into the bedroom and unpacked her bags.

  When that was done, she went back to the living room and stood by the window. She closed her eyes, breathed in deeply, and began to fill her mind with images of bak mei, slowly allowing her body to respond to them. The martial art was designed to cause damage, with kicks that never went above the waist and short, pile-driving hand thrusts that attacked the opponent’s most vulnerable body parts: eyes, nose, ears, and areas with sensitive nerve endings. The phoenix-eye fist was bak mei’s most famous move; it concentrated all the muscle power from the shoulder, back, and abdomen into the first knuckle of the right hand. Strength and speed were generated by the legs and hips so that the knuckle became a lethal weapon. For half an hour she followed a routine that hadn’t varied since she’d begun to learn the art. Bit by bit her body loosened and then came back together in a different form — fighting form. She went through her exercises: the kata for the tiger, for the dragon. Bam! Her right fist shot forward, almost too fast for the human eye to track. Bam, bam, bam! She stopped, closed her eyes again, and resumed deep breathing. When the tension had left her body and her mind could focus on where she was, she was done.