What We Were Promised

by Lucy Tan

  They stepped forward and hugged, then pulled back to look at each other. Wei was surprised to see that the skin on his brother’s face was looser. Little lines drawn on by the years. But his smile and the way his eyebrows grew in near-perfect arcs, their ends pointing down toward the mischief in his eyes and mouth, were just as Wei remembered.

  “Di,” Wei said, “you made it.” He pulled Qiang in for another hug, and then the two began laughing. Wei recalled just how deep his brother’s laugh was as it vibrated against him. Deep, but not booming.

  “Ta ma de,” Qiang said. “It’s been too many years.” He turned toward Lina and hugged her as well. She responded a beat late, laying an arm around his shoulders as he was already pulling away. For a moment, their eyes connected and they shared an embarrassed laugh—perhaps finding a foothold in their past familiarity. Now Qiang faced Sunny, unsure how to address her.

  “This is Sunny, our ayi,” Wei said. “Actually”—he paused awkwardly—“I don’t think we know your Chinese name.”

  “Sunny is fine,” she said with a nod. “Just leave your bag where it is. I’ll take it to your room in a minute.”

  “Karen!” Lina yelled, as the three of them moved into the living room. “Come out here and meet your uncle! Should we have some tea? Or are you all ready to eat?”

  Just as they were about to sit down, Karen came in from the hall.

  “Wah,” Qiang said. “This is your daughter?”

  Anyone else would have followed that up with compliments and questions (She’s beautiful! She looks like you! How old is she? She’s tall for her age), but Qiang said nothing. He looked from Wei to Lina to Karen and back again, his face full of genuine wonder. He reached his palm out to her, and to Wei’s surprise, Karen went to him and put her hand in his. Karen had always been spoiled with adult attention and was catlike when it came to giving and receiving love. She was interested in winning the affection solely of those who had better things to do than woo her and was rarely receptive to attention so readily given. But now, Qiang stared at her speechlessly for so long that he made her laugh. Without saying a single word, he had charmed her.

  “Address your uncle,” Lina said, urging Karen to pay her respects.

  “Shu shu,” she obliged.

  They took their seats in the dining room, Lina and Qiang on one side of the table, Wei and Karen on the other. Qiang’s eyes traveled from the dishware to the chandelier to the gold-rimmed glasses that Sunny was filling with wine. As closely as Wei looked, he could find no trace of contempt in Qiang’s expression—only what might have been awe.

  “Zui jin zenme yang a?” Wei asked. In this sentence—How have things been lately?—were the echoes of a hundred other times Wei had asked it of business contacts or their wives, people whose personal lives he cared very little about. It felt wrong to hear himself saying it to his brother when he truly wanted to know every detail of where he had been and what he had done all the years he’d been away.

  “All right,” Qiang answered, spooning tofu and ground pork into his bowl. “Same old. Getting on in years, doing some traveling.” He chewed heartily, making no attempt to elaborate and not bothering to return the question. Wei had forgotten the cadence of conversation with Qiang, how one-sided it could be. Qiang felt neither the need to give details nor the pressure of silence. It was refreshing. Qiang’s eyes traveled between Karen and the spot above Wei’s head on the dining-room wall where Karen’s picture hung. Finally, he shook his head and said, “You have a daughter. I still can’t believe it.”

  The school portrait was taken of Karen a few years ago, before she had discovered makeup. She was seated before the type of backdrop favored by school-portrait photographers—a vomity mixture of blues and greens—and she was wearing her Black Tree Academy polo. Her teacher had done Lina and Wei a kindness by pinning Karen’s hair back so that her smile came through unobstructed. Her torso was turned from the camera as though in midtickle.

  “That one’s so old, Dad. You keep promising to take it down.” Karen had spoken in English to observe Qiang’s reaction—to see if he understood the language. It was her way of assessing how much power she had over this new adult in the room.

  “Karen’s home for the summer but goes to school in the States,” Wei said, bringing the conversation back to Chinese.

  “She looks like Lina.”

  The curious thing about Lina was that you could never tell what would move her. Wei had seen her accept compliments and censures alike with poise. He’d also seen her flustered at an offhand comment, something not necessarily directed toward her but that had still landed someplace tender.

  Wei’s attention was suddenly captured by a glint of light on Qiang’s wrist, and for a few seconds he stared, disbelieving. It was the very same watch he’d just bought for them both. There was that black and blue bevel. It couldn’t be real. How could Qiang afford a Rolex?

  “So what are you doing for work nowadays?” Wei asked casually. Another pause here in which Wei could not tell whether he had provoked discomfort.

  “I’m an entrepreneur,” Qiang said. “I work in hospitality.”

  Wei tried to contain his surprise. He hadn’t given much thought to what Qiang could be doing for employment, but he assumed it was something straightforward, like a line cook or a deliveryman. Not something that required, well, drive. And where had Qiang learned how to build a business? He hadn’t even finished high school.

  “You have your own business?” Wei asked.

  “Yes,” Qiang said. “In hospitality.”

  “Hen liao bu qi. What kind of hospitality?”

  “We’re like a travel agency. We book vacations to Macao.”

  Now Lina and Wei shared a look—Macao was a favorite destination for idlers and men bent on doing business the old-fashioned way: by getting drunk and gambling. The gambling part they knew Qiang was familiar with.

  “We provide financial services too. People who book with us can gamble freely without worrying about taking money in and out of the country. They gamble on credit. We sort things out later.”

  “And I guess your profit is commission-based?” Wei asked.

  “Dui,” Qiang said. He offered nothing more—just a simple yes. In Wei’s experience, it was liars who overexplained. But Qiang wasn’t like other people, and Wei was almost certain that his brother’s income was not all commission-based.

  “It looks like you’re doing well,” Wei said. “That’s a nice-looking watch you have on. Rolex?”

  Qiang glanced at his wrist and seemed surprised to find the watch there.

  “I have to keep up appearances, you know. If you want rich men to use your service, you need to dress rich.” He held eye contact with Wei. Was it his imagination or was there a bit of aggression there? As if he was trying to say You’ve made your way and I’ve made mine.

  “Let me see,” Lina said, taking hold of Qiang’s wrist. A lock of her hair fell forward, alighting on its reflection in the watch crystal. Lina tilted the watch face this way and that, as though examining the face of a thoroughbred. “Nice,” she said finally, giving Qiang’s wrist a squeeze and settling back into her seat. Then she looked up at Wei and nodded ever so slightly—yes, it was real.

  Dress rich. Qiang’s words echoed in Wei’s head. He considered his brother’s buzz cut and colorfully stitched T-shirt, the faded appearance of his jeans. He had misjudged them, believed them cheap and ill-considered. Qiang had likely spent some time choosing an outfit for this occasion. He’d probably visited a store that he thought modern and trendy, held shirt after shirt in front of him as he looked into the mirror. How different it was to dress rich than it was to dress wealthy. And Qiang hadn’t even been able to pull off rich, not really—the hotel staff was proof of that. They’d sent him up by the service elevator, for heaven’s sake. They’d thought he was there to fix the sink.

  “In fact,” Qiang went on, “that’s really the main problem we’re running into right now. We’ve made a few t
rips already with our clients and the setup works. It’s totally legal and everybody has a good time. We just need more interest from clients. There are only so many rich businessmen in Kunming, you know?”

  He raised his eyes to look at his brother then, and Wei’s heart clenched. So this was what Qiang had come for. He wasn’t here to make amends or to reconnect with his family. He was here because he wanted Wei’s business contacts.

  There was something that had been bothering him about Qiang as soon as they’d begun this topic, and Wei now knew what it was. It was the way this speech seemed rehearsed, like he had worked up to this moment in the conversation. Wei had been at enough dinners with vendors to know what a pitch sounded like. He brought his attention back to the table, where everyone seemed to be waiting for him to speak.

  “Who’s we?” he asked, his voice breaking on the first syllable.

  “What?” Qiang asked.

  “You said we. That implies you’re working with other people. Who are the other people?”

  Admit it, Wei thought. You’re still involved with the gang. Qiang understood what Wei was asking and didn’t know how to answer. Startled by the sudden intensity in his brother’s voice, he lowered his gaze and resumed chewing his food. Wei wanted to shout at him, make him get up from the table and look him in the eye. How disrespectful to show up at Wei’s house asking him to support his business—the business owned by people he had abandoned his own family for. Wei could neither keep questioning Qiang nor back out of this conversation. Lina and Karen were now looking at Wei as if his head were on fire.

  “Colleagues,” Qiang finally said. “You wouldn’t know them—”

  “Wei’s in advertising now,” Lina interrupted. “Did you know that?”

  Qiang shook his head and once again met Wei’s eyes. “Weren’t you at school for something else? Math. No—” He cast about for the correct subject, and the longer the silence lasted, the more unbearable it seemed. Wei relished his brother’s discomfort until he felt a sharp pain pierce the top of his foot. He jerked his leg back, out of reach of Lina’s high heel.

  “Mechanical engineering,” Wei finally said.

  “That’s right.” Qiang smiled, relieved. “Why did you decide to switch?”

  “The job prospects were better in software, so I did that after I got my master’s and then—well, one thing led to another and I ended up in advertising.”

  “It’s a funny story,” Lina said brightly. “After he graduated from Penn, Wei had already signed on for a job with a railway company, but then one day he gets a phone call from a software company asking him to apply for a job as a data analyst. He told them he didn’t know anything about analyzing data and that he’d studied mechanical engineering and they said that they were just looking for someone good with numbers—right, Wei? And the salary somehow turned out to be much higher than what the railway company had offered him. So he broke his contract.”

  “And now you have your own TV show,” Qiang finished for him. He said it softly, testing. A flash of shame came over Wei as he thought about his brother seeing him on Pitch 360. How must he have looked, mumbling those words of introduction to a roomful of pert twenty-somethings, his face full of makeup? Of course Wei would want his own TV show, Qiang had probably thought. He’s always been vain like that.

  Wei chose his words carefully. “We created the show to attract job applicants out of college. I appeared in the first couple episodes just to introduce the pitch challenges, but it was taking up too much of my time. So I asked them to replace me—”

  “Dad,” Karen cut in. “You promised I could see you shoot.”

  When Karen had seen the episodes online, she’d called him right away. Wow, she’d said. You’re like somebody. You run those guys. And suddenly, he’d felt proud of what he’d done. Because even though the show was a bad representation of what went on in the advertising world, his daughter had been interested in his career for the first time. It made him wonder if one day she might understand and be proud of the work he did, the way he had once felt about his own father’s work.

  “I just have to find a good day to bring you in there, honey,” he said in English. “Lately I’ve been so busy.”

  Qiang didn’t seem to notice that he’d been excluded from the conversation. “So what is it that you do for them exactly?”

  Wei took a deep breath before beginning to explain. “Back in New York, I was working in strategy, but as general manager for the Shanghai office, it’s more business development–related.”

  “So, sales,” Qiang clarified.

  “I oversee the big deals,” Wei said, “but I also manage the overall direction of the company and its composite parts. We can handle everything from copywriting to market research. We also translate campaign ideas into Chinese and come up with marketing strategies.”

  Qiang nodded slowly. “You help sell American products to the Chinese. Does it ever happen the opposite way? Do you help the Chinese sell to Americans?”

  Lina flinched.

  “Well, no,” Wei said with a laugh. “I know it sounds a little imperialistic. But Medora is an American company. Our biggest clients are American.”

  “Of course,” Qiang said quickly. “That makes sense.”

  “But we serve Chinese businesses too,” Wei added, trying to lighten his tone. “For example, last year we collaborated with the Ministry of Commerce to create the ‘Made with China’ campaign.”

  “Wait, I know that one!” Qiang said. “The one with the iPod and the shoes…”

  “That’s right.”

  Last year, the Ministry of Commerce had collaborated with four Chinese trade associations to sponsor a thirty-second commercial. Its goal was to rebrand China’s international image by reworking the phrase “Made in China” as “Made with China.” The commercial opened with a shot of a runner stopping to tie his shoes and a close-up of the inside of the sneaker tongue that read MADE IN CHINA WITH AMERICAN SPORTS TECHNOLOGY. A shot of a family eating breakfast and a close-up on their refrigerator: MADE IN CHINA WITH EUROPEAN STYLING. The back of an iPod: MADE IN CHINA WITH SOFTWARE FROM SILICON VALLEY—and so on.

  “It was an interesting approach,” Qiang said.

  “But?” Wei prodded.

  Qiang chewed, thinking. “It’s just that China is already seen as a contract country. People don’t think China is coming up with any of its own stuff. They think it’s just producing other countries’.”

  Wei nodded but felt his hand tighten around his chopsticks. Usually, he was a master of patience in the face of ignorance—his job all but depended on his ability to appear open and generous toward people with uninformed opinions. And yet.

  “Maybe. But the point is that other countries rely heavily on China. At the end of the day, it’s the production backbone of so much of what the rest of the world consumes. It’s a collaborative effort because Western companies have chosen Chinese business. And China should be recognized for that.”

  Lina began to say something, but Qiang interrupted.

  “I just don’t think we can get ahead by pushing this idea that we work for other countries. China should be more like America and try to be recognized for its innovation, not how well we can help Americans make money,” Qiang said.

  Since when was Qiang concerned about the economic health of the nation?

  “You know, it’s not always about who is making money off whom. The Chinese have a lot of buying power right now. Because there is so much opportunity here, American companies are making products to suit China. Take Hollywood, for example. They just cast Jay Chou in a blockbuster because they know it will do well in the Chinese box office. When’s the last time an Asian man got to play a superhero?”

  Qiang began to reply, but Wei barreled on. “What I’m saying is that money isn’t the only kind of power that counts. Culture is power too. For so long, cultural conversation has been dominated by the West. But not anymore. And we’re helping to make that happen.”

&n
bsp; “Okay, but who says we need Hollywood? Isn’t it better to start our own conversation than respond to what the West is doing? Have you seen any Chinese films lately? The Chinese make great films—they’re getting better every year.”

  “He’s right,” Karen said. “They’re much funnier than American films.”

  Just as Wei was about to respond, Sunny appeared in the kitchen doorway. “Is anyone’s soup cold? I can heat it up for you.”

  “Yes, please,” Lina said, her voice half an octave higher than usual. “Take mine. Wei, you haven’t touched yours either. Give it to Sunny to warm up.”

  Wei leaned back in his seat, allowing Sunny to reach across him. As she did, she broke the men’s eye contact, and in this brief interval they gathered themselves.

  After a moment, Qiang raised his wineglass. “I’m proud of you, Wei, really. All of this…” He gestured toward the apartment, the food, and his family. “I’m not surprised by any of it. You deserve it. Everything you have, you’ve earned. You always have.” Wei studied his brother’s face for resentment or irony but found none. Qiang looked almost remorseful. Taken aback, Wei raised his glass too.

  “To homecoming,” Qiang said. “I’m glad to have found you again.” He turned to Lina, who took up her glass as well.

  “To homecoming,” she repeated. “We’ve been in Shanghai for years and it’s never felt more like home than it does now, with you here.”

  They drank.

  “What about you?” Qiang asked, turning his attention to Lina. “Are you a historian now or did you get picked up by a software company too?”

  Lina’s eyes brightened and she gave the barest hint of a smile.

  “A historian?” Wei asked, surprised.

  “Yes—I remember she studied history,” Qiang said.

  “Actually, she studied English,” Wei said.

  “Actually, I studied both.” Lina patted her mouth with a napkin and placed it on the table. Karen stopped chewing and looked back and forth among the three other Zhens.