FORTUNE COOKIE

by Bryce Courtenay

  I would have loved to know more about the so-called execrable Beatrice Fong but realised I’d give the game away if I asked questions. Elma Kelly was much too smart not to pick up on my feelings for Mercy B. Lord, who’d warned me not to make them public.

  We started with what Elma described as savouries, cincalok, a dip of salt-preserved fresh shrimps, if that doesn’t sound like a contradiction, as well as keropok udang, prawn crackers. This was followed by soup, bakwan kepiting, crab and pork meatballs in a light broth – absolutely delicious. Elma then got down to the serious business of working her way through the main dishes: curry kepala, fish-head curry; sotong sambal asam, squid fried in a spicy paste with tamarind sauce; udang ketak sambal, slipper lobster in spicy paste; beef rendang, beef simmered in fresh coconut milk and spices; and finally ayam betawi, fried chicken smothered in an Indonesian-style spicy paste. All the mains were accompanied by a large bowl of steaming sticky rice and a constantly replenished pot of green tea.

  While the portions were not large, they nevertheless amounted to a small banquet. I managed a bite or two of just about everything at Elma’s insistence, while she managed to polish off most of the food we’d ordered, which was certainly enough for four people. She ate quickly and seemed to barely chew, and I was somewhat surprised when the bakwan kepiting arrived and she simply raised her bowl in both hands, upended it and chug-a-lugged the broth and the meatballs. It was all over in less than a minute. ‘Ah, splendid! River crab, not farmed,’ was all she said before reaching hungrily for the next dish.

  She may have sensed my amazement at her voracious appetite because she said, ‘I won’t eat on the aeroplane back to Hong Kong tomorrow evening. The food is disgusting. The airlines, the lot of them, should be prosecuted – better still, lined up and shot – for positively poisoning their passengers! Worst thing is we have all their accounts.’

  I wasn’t quite sure what she meant. Was it that this was her last meal until she arrived back in Hong Kong a day and a half later? It hardly seemed possible, but if so, she was making sure she wouldn’t starve in the interim.

  Thankfully, when we’d hoed through all the food, she summarily dismissed dessert. ‘Mostly glutinous rice or tapioca, much too sweet. They use palm sugar. No, my dear, I shall end with one more small dish that is a decided favourite of mine – ayam buah keluak. Stewed chicken with black nuts, though I don’t suppose you’ll care for it – the nuts are an acquired taste.’

  Buah keluak, I was to learn, is the fruit of the kepayang tree that grows wild in Indonesia and Malaysia. It is roughly the size and shape of a rugby ball, and the nuts are not unlike chestnuts in appearance. They are soaked for days then pounded into an oily black paste with spices added. Elma seemed to relish this apparent delicacy most. I had a small portion and found the taste peculiar and not at all to my liking, almost gagging on my first and only mouthful.

  ‘Simon, you’ll know you’ve become a Peranakan, a true Singaporean, when you grow to love this delicacy,’ she assured me.

  ‘But you’re from Hong Kong,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Ah, but I enjoy honorary Peranakan status,’ she insisted. ‘Lee Kuan Yew offered me the keys to the city when he came to power. We, Cathay Advertising, helped with his political advertising campaign.’ She suddenly chortled, the shaking of her great breasts and thighs causing the dishes on the table to rattle. ‘ “No thanks, Prime Minister,” I told him. “Some other time, perhaps, when Singapore city isn’t such an awful dump! I have an image to maintain! Give me a few years, Elma,” he said. Shouldn’t be surprised if he succeeds. Things are beginning to change already. They had a fire in one of the Malay kampongs last month, nobody hurt,’ she laughed. ‘It is always a great relief to be told where and when an accidental fire is about to occur. With the ash still warm, the foundations for a public high-rise housing project are dug and the cement poured. A strong man, Lee. Doesn’t brook too much opposition from the trade unions and communists.’ Elma then added, ‘It was the luckiest day of his political life when those Mecca-mad Muslims in Malaysia kicked him out of the Federation. Terrified Lee and the Chinese would end up running the show.’ She chuckled. ‘They probably got that bit right.’ I was to learn that Elma had strong opinions, which she expressed using all the riches of the English language. She had a large vocabulary and liked alliteration.

  Elma continued talking and I mostly listened. Some of what she said I had already heard from Ronnie and Mercy B. Lord, but this was, to say the least, an education in a lunch hour. ‘What do you know about guanxi?’ she’d asked almost before we’d sat down.

  ‘You mean the Chinese way of doing business? Squeeze and interfamily relationships? A little from Ronnie Wing and Mercy B. Lord, and what I’ve observed over the past year. There’s a lot to know and I sometimes feel like a babe in the woods.’

  ‘Well, then, let me try to explain it. In the crudest terms, it’s “I scratch your back and you scratch mine”, but of course it’s more complicated than that. If you hope to work in a largely Chinese business community or with government in a place such as Singapore, you must understand guanxi or you won’t get very far.’

  ‘How did the British Colonial Service manage when they were here? Didn’t they – the local Chinese – have to toe the line?’

  Elma laughed. ‘My dear Simon, the system is tailor-made for us Brits. Besides, we made the rules. Guanxi is not all that different from our old boys’ network – Whitehall has been practising it for generations, though the Chinese version is vastly more complex and isn’t simply dependent on Eton and Harrow, Oxford and Cambridge. Nowhere in the world does the phrase “It’s all about who you know” have more relevance than in Asia, and among the Chinese in particular. It’s not only who you know but also how the other person perceives his or her obligations towards you. The more favours you do for someone, the more obligations they have to you and, of course, vice versa.’

  ‘I see. So what happens when you’re pitching against another agency? I mean, when the client is not happy with, say, my agency’s work and asks you to pitch for his business?’

  ‘Under the Chinese system of guanxi, that’s simply not possible.’

  I grinned. ‘So there’s no point in pitching for one of your accounts, Miss Kelly?’

  She smiled. ‘Not unless you want to waste a lot of time, money and effort. Pitching is a Western idea, one that’s simply incomprehensible to the Chinese.’

  ‘You mean you’ve never lost a Chinese account because the client thought your advertising wasn’t up to scratch?’

  ‘I should jolly well hope not!’ Elma said, plainly confounded by such an idea. ‘Nor for any other reason. We are very careful to work within the client’s orbit of influence – that is, as a part of his guanxi.’

  ‘But the British or international accounts you hold – surely they become vulnerable once in a while? A new product or marketing manager, a managing director wanting to make his mark or a client disagreement, I mean – that sort of thing is common enough in our business. Your advertising agency is an easy mark when things go wrong, isn’t it?’

  ‘Absolutely not! In our case that’s for other reasons, though not all that different from guanxi.’ Elma Kelly didn’t explain further.

  ‘I guess I have a fair bit to learn,’ I admitted.

  ‘Simon, in all of Asia, when dealing with, say, a government department, where approval for some action is required, people with the right connections, with guanxi, can get around almost any official regulation with comparative impunity. What can be accomplished in a day or two using guanxi can literally take months without it. Why do you think Samuel Oswald bought into Wing Brothers Advertising?’

  ‘Well, that’s easy enough to understand. Some of the American clients from our New York office are being encouraged by Lee Kuan Yew’s PAP Party to see Singapore as a gateway to the South-East Asian markets for consumer goods, offering all kinds of incentives to set up factories and distribution centres.’ I was aware she would k
now all this, but I didn’t want to appear entirely stupid or naïve. ‘After your own agency, Wing Brothers is the biggest, and New York wanted someone on the ground to service the advertising needs of their clients. I guess they also bought the Wing Brothers’ clients as part of the package.’

  ‘Absolute piffle, stuff and nonsense! Wing Brothers’ assets and profit potential in terms of existing advertising accounts were pretty negligible. Sidney Wing wouldn’t be stupid enough to show a profit, other than in the set of books he’d prepared specially for the Americans. What he sold them, at a considerable price, and what they bought – remarkably perspicacious of them, by the way – was the Wing brothers’ and in particular Sidney Wing’s guanxi.’

  ‘Do you think the Americans would have understood that?’ I asked doubtfully, thinking of Dansford Drocker and his spam-from-Uncle-Sam mentality.

  Elma shrugged. ‘Perhaps you’re right, but they’ve learnt a few lessons from the Vietnam War, where guanxi undoubtedly plays a part. Anyway, Sidney Wing’s connections are the only thing of real worth they will receive for their investment.’

  I sighed. ‘Like I said, there’s a lot to learn. How long will all this take? I’ve been here over a year and I still don’t understand the culture.’

  She leaned back in her chair. ‘Of course you don’t. It takes several lifetimes, I’m afraid. I don’t fully understand it and I don’t think anyone in the West does or ever will. Just know with absolute certainty that nothing is what it seems to be or is said to be. Don’t look for logical explanations. Guanxi in the big, rich Chinese families can go back ten generations. Often something that doesn’t make sense to you and me is repayment for what happened fifty or a hundred years ago. I am fortunate: almost all my clients are British companies and, in addition, I am careful to hire my local staff, mostly Chinese, within the major invisible guanxi networks both in government and private business.’

  ‘I’m not sure I understand. Do all Chinese families have these elaborate interconnections based on guanxi? How do the poor ever get a start?’

  Elma Kelly smiled ruefully. ‘With the Chinese it’s always family. They don’t believe in giving strangers, particularly poor strangers, a helping hand. Hiring a poor artist would be counterproductive. The poor are expected to drag themselves up by their bootstraps. That is, if they own a pair of boots in the first instance. Regrettably, I’ve learned only to hire the children of the powerful families.’

  ‘But what if a talented artist or copywriter comes from a poor family?’

  ‘Too bad – he or she doesn’t get the job. Talent without connections will always be passed over for perhaps a very mediocre artist from a big guanxi family or association. He or occasionally she will prove infinitely more useful and profitable in the long run.’

  ‘What about Miss Mercy B. Lord? You wanted to hire her. I don’t suppose she has much guanxi?’

  ‘Yes, strange that, but she seems to have been included in Beatrice Fong’s vast circle of influence. Never could understand how that might have come about. Very unusual.’

  ‘What? Her being included?’

  ‘Yes. Mark my words, there is something very peculiar going on with her. That old shrew has never been known to make a charitable gesture in her miserable life. Furthermore, that delightful young gal has, by Chinese notions, very bad mixed blood – mother raped by a Japanese soldier – and she’s a child of the Church of Rome.’

  Again I couldn’t let on I knew about the circumstances of Mercy B. Lord’s birth. There was also nothing I dared say about her association with Beatrice Fong either. Instead I shook my head. ‘It doesn’t seem fair – I mean, to the poor.’

  ‘Fair isn’t a word the Chinese recognise, Simon.’

  ‘Christ! No wonder I’m having such a bad time trying to put together a pool of talent. I tried to run several small ads in Chinese newspapers and magazines calling for applications for positions as artists and writers, but Johnny Wing flatly refused to place them. Sidney called me into his office and wanted to know why I was wasting the agency’s money.’

  Elma smiled. ‘Well, now you know why. Sidney Wing has a very big circle; his guanxi goes back four generations to China. He’s also very rich, and in Chinese terms that means powerful. You are going to have to find another way, my boy. I’ll help you if I can. Just tell me what you want. Hong Kong may be a better place to look.’

  It was a hugely generous offer. I was later to learn, though not from Elma, that she had been a prisoner-of-war when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong, having refused to be evacuated with the British and other European women. She’d pointed out that she had a degree in science and volunteered to be the expert in case of a gas attack by the Japanese. She’d ended up being interred along with all the expatriate business elite, the local heads of the great trading houses, banks and government institutions.

  Elma, it seems, was a large and formidable person even then, someone who didn’t take crap from anyone, including the Japanese guards, mostly Koreans and Taiwanese, whom she managed to intimidate, remonstrating in no uncertain terms when they acted harshly towards her fellow prisoners, both male and female. Elma showed no fear of them and thought nothing of marching in to see the Japanese commandant to lodge a complaint against a cruel or unjust guard. In order not to lose face in front of this formidable woman, and because he also despised the Koreans and Taiwanese, he usually took note of her demands. Elma was not the only virago amongst the prisoners. She was partnered in the cantankerous stakes by another formidable woman, who went back to Australia, where she is known simply as Andrea and is a well-known radio personality. They saved many prisoners from severe beatings and, some claimed more than one life in the process.

  By the end of the war Elma was a heroine among the British prisoners, and upon assuming their former important positions they called her to a meeting. ‘Elma, we owe you. What is it we can do for you?’ they asked.

  Elma, who prior to the war worked for a fairly small and rickety advertising concern, very cleverly nominated advertising as her future career. The Governor of Hong Kong, Sir Mark Aitchison Young, himself a prisoner under the Japanese, was present at the meeting and is claimed to have made her a proposition. ‘Elma, we shall give you a test. We have no telephone directory and it’s pure hell trying to contact anyone in Hong Kong. Do you think you can make us a new directory in three months?’

  Elma had no idea what might be involved or even how to go about the task, but she replied, ‘Certainly! Will the post office cover my expenses?’

  ‘Of course, my dear.’

  ‘Then they shall be my first account,’ she announced.

  The governor is said to have turned to the business nabobs, now restored to their former positions, and said, ‘Gentlemen, with success must come reward. Will you pledge your future advertising to Elma, should she be successful with the new telephone directory?’

  There was all-round agreement and Elma set to work. The telephone directory was duly delivered with a week to spare, and in one stroke Elma gained, virtually in perpetuity, all the important British accounts wherever they operated in South-East Asia. She had effortlessly created Cathay Advertising, the biggest regional Asian advertising network, without ever having to pitch for a single piece of business. In every meaning of the word she had achieved her own guanxi, or the British version anyway, to which she’d sensibly added the Chinese equivalent when she employed the sons and daughters of the rich local Chinese who were important in both government and business. It was well known, in Hong Kong in particular, though also in Singapore, Thailand and the other Asian countries with British industries, that pitching for an account held by Cathay Advertising was, as she’d warned me, a waste of time and money.

  We parted after I attempted to pay and Elma wouldn’t hear of it. ‘Oh, Simon, a timely warning: if a Chinese invites you to lunch or anywhere else that involves payment, never, under any circumstances, offer to pay. He will lose enormous face because, in effect, you’re suggesting he ca
n’t afford to treat you.’

  ‘Miss Kelly, thank you. I can’t say how much I enjoyed our lunch, and I am honoured to have met you.’

  Elma Kelly smiled her acknowledgment then paused momentarily before asking, ‘Simon, you said you could remember the name of every dish? So let me hear it, my boy.’

  I knew it was some sort of important test, one that was somehow going to affect the future. Chairman Meow’s advice to us as children had always been that boasting begins where wisdom ends, and I’d always been cautious about claiming to do more than I could. Fortunately, I have a mind not only for times and dates but also for details.

  ‘Right, we started with cincalok, then keropok udang, prawn crackers, then the soup bakwan kepiting …’ I recited the names of all the dishes that followed, ending with ayam buah keluak, the strange-tasting fermented fruit of the wild kepayang tree.

  ‘Good boy, Simon. I thought I was going to have to call your bluff. How interested are you in Chinese antiquities?’

  I explained my fascination with furniture and antiques, and how I didn’t want the responsibility of owning pieces as a serious collector but still wanted to learn about the subject. ‘It’s the who, what, why and where, the details that fascinate me. One day perhaps I’ll own a few choice pieces, but only if their stories are unique. Chinese antiquities appear to be much more complex in their personal significance than do European ones. I think I could well become very interested.’

  ‘Well, you’re not exactly a Simple Simon, are you?’ Elma Kelly observed.

  It was a nice compliment. ‘Thank you, Miss Kelly,’ I said for a second time. ‘I sincerely hope we meet again soon.’ I didn’t want to gush but I had truly enjoyed her company.

  She appeared to be thinking. ‘Look here, lad. I come to my Singapore agency from Hong Kong every first Friday of the month and stay until the Saturday evening flight back to Hong Kong. If this arrangement suits you, I will see you at the Kwan Gallery on the first Saturday every month at twelve o’clock sharp. Now don’t be late. We’ll enjoy a bite together and catch up.’