by Tash Aw
“It’s like love,” one of her girlfriends said at dinner at their usual Hunanese restaurant (a rare occurrence, due to Yinghui’s massively increased workload, it was remarked).
“What do you mean?” Yinghui said, nibbling on a cumin-grilled lamb chop.
“The moment you’re in a relationship, guys start flocking to you. Before that, when you’re single, you search and search and wait and wait, but no one wants you. Guess business is just the same. Must be some law of the universe that makes people behave like that.”
Yinghui smiled. There was something poetic about the way recent weeks had developed—so dramatic that it seemed almost comical to her, as if life was playing a little joke, she thought. After years of struggling to mold her fortunes, fortune itself had taken hold of her life and sorted it out in one swift maneuver. Two weeks after their first meeting over dinner—an agonizing wait, which made Yinghui wonder whether he was deliberately keeping her on tenterhooks—when she received the file of documents from Walter (a slim leather folder containing not more than half a dozen sheets of paper), she sat in bed reading and rereading it late into the night. It was as if he had managed to access the furthest reaches of her memory, all her long-forgotten yearnings, and condensed his findings on a few pages of concise, matter-of-fact prose. At first she thought it was a joke or maybe she had been working too hard and, on the verge of a hysterical exhaustion-related breakdown, had begun to imagine things. But, no: She reread it, and it was not a joke. He was not a mind reader; it was just chance, pure and simple. All her messy ambitions had resurfaced, repackaged now in sophisticated, adult form: the hyper-businesslike version of her vague ramblings over a decade ago.
… in summary the project would, therefore, involve not just the preservation of the fabric of this historic building but the creation of a wholly contemporary, indeed revolutionary, state-of-the-art center for the performing arts as well as a cultural-resource center supported by a combination of public and private financing.
She turned back to the beginning of the folder, marked STRICTLY PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL. It read like something she might have written herself fifteen years ago, when her interests extended beyond how to extract the most favorable terms of credit from textile suppliers:
First built as an opulent opium den in the early 1900s (the exact date is unclear, but is believed to be sometime between 1905 and 1908, not long after the end of the Sino-Japanese War), the building now known simply as 969 Weihai Lu was later bought by a tobacco magnate, who remodeled the rooms and added two wings to the structure, including ornate decorative touches such as scrolling classical plasterwork on the external pillars and marble fireplaces, some of which survive today. In its heyday in the 1920s and early 1930s, 969 Weihai Lu witnessed extravagant gatherings that reflected Shanghai’s position as one of the world’s most cosmopolitan and hedonistic cities. It was here that Yao Lee and other great singing stars often appeared at private parties, interpreting such sultry classics as “The Cocktail Song” and “Can’t Get Your Love” (often called “The Prostitute’s Song,” the first song to be banned by the Communist regime).
With the Japanese occupation of Shanghai, the mansion was abandoned and later was used for light-industrial purposes. The generous proportions of its rooms lent itself to housing a printing press, a tannery, and a match factory. Walls were demolished, and the entire west wing of the building was torn down in the 1950s as industrial space was continually constructed around the original mansion, completely enveloping and dwarfing it by the end of the 1960s. The labyrinth of narrow green-painted corridors dates from this period, as do the glass-and-lead ceilings in the north range of the site. Although this Communist-era architecture might fall foul of modern tastes, it is also a prime example of the starkly striking aesthetic that marked the Cultural Revolution, illustrating the peasant and industrial roots of that period of Chinese history.
We strongly refute the idea that the easiest architectural solution to 969 Weihai Lu is to tear it down. While reorganizing its space and reestablishing a use for it might be difficult, we believe that every effort must be made to preserve not only the traces of the original mansion but the seemingly ramshackle industrial structures that form the bulk of the building.
Reading the documents in the folder, Yinghui felt the same passions she had experienced in her twenties, when, recently graduated from university, her view of the world had been clumsy in its naïveté, when she had seen possibility in everything—and, in particular, herself. Now these sentiments were allied to a harsher, more solid appreciation of reality, which intensified that rush of optimism. These were no longer the empty dreams of youth: She could change the world now; she could make it a better place for everyone, principally herself.
She took a few moments to appreciate how far she had come over the years, her gradual transformation from a girl who could barely distinguish between the debit and credit columns in the business accounts of a tiny cash-only café to the cool, collected businesswoman she was today. She had never really understood the financial pages in the newspapers, had always resented their existence even more than that of the sports pages, and yet nowadays she read them diligently, paying particular attention to activity in the real estate and retail sectors. It had been a slow, painful metamorphosis, she thought: a third of her life spent changing who she was. It was amazing what grief and pride could do to a person. But she did not wish to dwell on this just now; she merely allowed a brief self-congratulatory smile before continuing with the papers before her.
She looked at the financial provisions—an up-front lump sum plus a percentage of the total earnings of the center on its completion. The projected profits (so many shop units, right in the middle of town, so many high-class tenants, so much advertising space) were astronomical yet suddenly attainable. She triple-checked the figures, calculating and recalculating them in RMB and U.S. dollars. It was, in so many ways, too good to be true.
But this was China, she told herself. The unfeasible had a habit of being true; she had to believe the unbelievable.
All she had to do was invest a not-inconsiderable sum of money—in fact, most of the capital she possessed, augmented by a large bank loan. That certainly added a note of realism, but it was only to be expected—a sign of her dedication to the project, a symbol of trust and cooperation. She liked the groundedness of the figure, the six zeros looking reassuringly weighty, anchoring her thoughts in the seriousness of the deal. This was business, after all, not a charity. Risks—yes, they existed, but she had taken far greater in her career so far.
Although it took her a few days to get back to Walter—she wanted to give him the impression that she was thinking long and hard about it, considering every minute detail—it had in fact taken her less than a minute to decide: She would do it.
“Great,” he said calmly when she rang him, as if her decision had been entirely expected. “What are you doing this weekend?”
“Not much—catching up on paperwork. Why?”
“How about going to Hangzhou for the weekend—to discuss our proposal in detail? Shanghai is too distracting for this kind of negotiation. I mean, we’re talking about ideas, not only money. Why don’t we escape for a bit, free our minds? One of the reasons I wanted you on board was that I need someone with imagination, not some boring businesswoman. Let’s just go and chat. I think it’ll be very beneficial for our … transaction.”
Yinghui smiled. She liked the way he spoke, his curious mixture of easy and awkward, as if in searching for the right words to express how he felt, he knew he was going to find the wrong turn of phrase. “Beneficial for our transaction.” What did he mean? Was it a pickup line, an invitation to a romantic weekend? Or did he intend to spend two days in a conference room, standing in front of a whiteboard and PowerPoint presentations, expecting her to contribute with earnest financial calculations?
“That sounds appealing,” Yinghui said. “It seems ages since I’ve had some time away from work. As for ide
as, well, I don’t know if I have any these days.”
He laughed. “Of course you do. You’re bursting with beautiful thoughts. Shall I pick you up on Friday, say, early afternoon?”
When she put the phone down, Yinghui found she was still smiling. Maybe it was the thought of a weekend off work, her first in years; or maybe it was the idea of spending time with a man she barely knew; or perhaps it was simply the way he had delivered that line—“bursting with beautiful thoughts”—a pretty but, frankly, strange way to describe a new business associate. Maybe it was because she wanted to believe it was true: that she was still full of beautiful thoughts.
THEY ARRIVED AT THEIR hotel a few miles north of West Lake late in the afternoon, the driveway up to the main reception building rising and falling gently as it traced the undulations of the tea plantations that covered the hills in that area. They had driven from Shanghai with little conversation, other than to comment on the heavy traffic, the mass of cars that did not thin out no matter how far they traveled from the city. There was a point in the drive when, although they were both silent, Yinghui knew that Walter was thinking the same thing as she was: whether they would ever escape Shanghai, for its boundaries seemed never to end, stretching virtually all the way to Hangzhou. Perhaps their weekend would not be one of escape after all; perhaps, mired in a glorified suburb of Shanghai, they would simply speak of business and nothing else, all those beautiful thoughts remaining unexpressed.
But then, quite suddenly out of the unremarkable urban mess of downtown Hangzhou, they found themselves along the banks of West Lake, the surface of the water flat and cold and gray, tinged with mist so that the hills that rose on the far shore looked dreamy and indistinct. Pagodas rose from the perfect flatness of the water; arching bridges traversed little creeks that fed into the lake—like a perfect mise-en-scène of a play that Walter was directing. Within minutes they were driving through tea plantations, the rows of velvety bushes stretching toward pine-covered hills in the distance. Every so often they would pass perfect models of traditional villages, handsomely restored and decorated with osmanthus trees; there were tourist buses along the route, big parties of old men and women from other provinces following their flag-waving leader like children on a school outing.
They were greeted at the hotel by the Swiss manager, who showed them to their rooms—their respective rooms. Yinghui wandered around the suite: an entire village house gutted to create a bedroom and living room almost as large as her apartment in Shanghai, with a bathroom almost as large as the bedroom, and an outdoor terrace made from smooth cedar planks with a small pool set along its far edge. “Just to avoid any awkwardness,” Walter had said in the car, “my company is going to pick up the tab this weekend, so please don’t worry about anything.” He had said it as if issuing instructions, giving the impression that he did not want to discuss the matter—indeed, that he was not used to discussing such trivial questions as bill-paying. As she wandered around the room, admiring the gray silk furnishings and the tasteful low lighting, she thought about how Walter had organized everything thus far, leaving her with nothing to do except turn up. Even though he had not said anything about dinner that evening, she knew that it would already have been taken care of, as would everything else for the remainder of the weekend. She tried to remember if anyone had ever done this for her—anticipated her every need and provided every conceivable comfort—but she was certain that no one ever had. She had grown so accustomed to handling every tiny detail that she did not quite know how to feel now that someone was taking charge of her this way. It felt odd, certainly—but not disagreeable.
They took dinner that evening in the hotel restaurant, at a table set in an alcove that afforded a view of both the other diners and the undulating tea slopes, which spread across the verdant landscape like a fine rug. There were not many other people in the restaurant—a group of Taiwanese men still dressed in golfing clothes and two or three Western couples, weekend refugees from Shanghai. The room wore the minimalist aesthestic of a Buddhist temple, sparsely decorated with dark lacquered pillars and giant bronze pots sitting in pools of carefully trained light. Walter poured the wine as they began to eat, both of them delicately evading the matter of their impending business transaction, each waiting for the other to make the first move, neither wanting to seem vulgar or overanxious.
After her first glass of wine, Yinghui found that she was talking more than her companion was, that she had progressed from talking about her current life in Shanghai to her past in Malaysia. She wondered how it was that she had started to open up to him; she had not talked about her pre-Shanghai life since the day she set foot in Mainland China. She had left all that behind—for good, she had thought. But somehow it seemed easy to talk to Walter, or maybe it was just that he was skilled at obtaining information from her. He mentioned having recently been in London and asked if she knew it, and before long she was recounting humorous events from her university days. He was good at keeping her talking, interjecting brief questions that betrayed (she thought) a real interest in her life. Most of what she was telling him was completely irrelevant to their work—he did not need to know that she had named her first-ever business venture after a second-rate American film, or that she had a liking for Siamese cats—and yet she blithely spilled such information about herself upon him. He appeared to enjoy hearing this trivia, encouraging her with appreciative laughter here or a well-timed “oh, my God” there. His questions were well judged—earnest, probing, but never familiar. At one point, just as dessert arrived, she began to tell him about the fiancé she once had, all the disappointment she had endured. But she stopped herself.
Walter said nothing, allowing the silence to settle on the table. Their desserts lay before them—fragile, multicolored, architecturally precise confections arranged delicately on large white plates. Eventually he smiled and said softly, “It’s funny how life changes along the way—so full of disappointment but also surprises.”
It was a nothing comment, thought Yinghui, a platitude, but somehow, in its timing and delivery, it was perfect, as if he could sense what was going through her head and was trying to make her feel better without being intrusive.
She caught sight of her candlelit reflection in the window next to the table, her face slightly flushed from the wine, eyes shining, eager. She looked—it was so long since she’d been able to say this—like herself. “True,” she said. “You never know what’s going to be waiting around the next corner.”
She left the blinds and curtains open that night, the room in darkness. Lying in bed, she could make out the dragon’s-back undulations of the surrounding hills in the distance, their outlines fading into the night, leaving only hints of their shape; the paths that lined the river valley were lit here and there by isolated lamps, like fireflies lost in a field. As she fell asleep she decided that she would leave the curtains open, so that in the morning she would wake up with the strengthening spring light. For the first time in years, she did not set the alarm clock; when she thought about what the next day would bring, she could not articulate anything precise but felt only a warm sensation of unforced optimism, the way a child would. As she drew the fine cotton sheets around her shoulders and appreciated the silence of the air-conditioning, she was aware that she was smiling.
The next morning, despite the sunlight flooding the room, she slept until almost nine, an indecent hour by her standards. She hurriedly showered and got dressed, and when she walked into the breakfast room she knew that Walter was going to be there. His breakfast had already been cleared away, but he was reading a book; on the table, there was a cup of coffee in front of him and another place set for Yinghui.
“What are you reading?” she said as she sat down.
“Nothing special, just something silly I’ve been reading for ages and not really enjoying.”
She caught a glimpse of the cover as he slipped the book into his briefcase: The Poetics of Space, she thought it said, but couldn’t be
sure. It was a book she had read at university, nearly twenty years ago, when such noncommercial issues as the poetics of space still mattered to her. She would never have thought that a man like Walter Chao would read a book like that, but now that she had met him and was beginning to discover what he was like, nothing surprised her anymore.
“I was thinking about the project,” he said, “about what it is that we are trying to do with the building. Are we trying to reimagine an entirely new space—I mean, create a completely new identity—or is it simply a reinterpretation of an existing idea? You know, using what’s there as a template for a modern version of its predecessor?”
Yinghui hesitated for a second. “Is there a difference? I mean, from a practical point of view. You want it to be a cultural-resource center with a theater and cinema, so that’s what it’s going to be, right?”
“My God, you are very practical in your thinking! The end product might be the same. But imaginatively there is a difference—how you reach the end result is really important. All the building work—every screw and nail, every coat of paint—has to be underpinned by a certain philosophy. Without it, the building has no soul.” He stopped and smiled sheepishly, looking into his cup and finding only the remnants of a foamy coffee. “Sorry, I get carried away sometimes.”