Crazy Rich Asians (38 page)

“That’s just a title, Wye Mun. Harry Leong is one of the kingmakers in our government.”

“No wonder I always see him in the prime minister’s box at National Day celebrations.
So this family is close to the center of power.”

“Wye Mun, they
are
the center of power,” Dr. Gu corrected, turning to Peik Lin. “You say your friend
is dating the grandson? She’s a fortunate girl, then, if she marries into this clan.”

“I was beginning to think the same thing myself,” Peik Lin said quietly.

Dr. Gu considered Peik Lin thoughtfully for a moment, and then he peered straight
into her eyes, saying, “Remember, every treasure comes with a price.” She caught his
gaze for a moment, before looking away.

“Dr. Gu, it’s always good to see you. Thank you for all your help,” Wye Mun said,
getting up. He was starting to get a backache from the rickety wooden chair.

“And thank you for the wonderful tea,” Peik Lin said, helping Dr. Gu up from his seat.

“Will you ever accept my invitation and come over for dinner? I have a new cook who
makes amazing
Ipoh hor fun
,
^*
Dr. Gu.”

“You’re not the only one who has a good cook, Goh Wye Mun,” Dr. Gu said wryly, walking
them to their car.

As Wye Mun and Peik Lin merged into the early-evening traffic on Dunearn Road, Wye
Mun said, “Why don’t we invite Rachel and her boyfriend to dinner next week?”

Peik Lin nodded. “Let’s take them somewhere classy, like Min Jiang.”

Dr. Gu stood by his gate, watching as their car disappeared. The sun was setting just
over the treetops, a few rays of light penetrating through the branches and glaring
into his eyes.

He awoke with a start in the blinding sun to find his bleeding wrists bound tightly
against the rusty chain-link fence. A group of officers walked by, and he noticed
one uniformed man staring at him intently. Did he look familiar somehow? The man went
up to the commanding officer and pointed directly at him. Curse to the gods. This
was it. He looked at them, trying to muster up as much hate as he could in his expression.
He wanted to die defiant, with pride. The man said calmly, in a British-accented English,
“There’s been a mistake. That one over there in the middle is just a poor idiot servant.
I recognize him from my friend’s farm, where he rears the pigs.” One of the Japanese
soldiers translated to the commanding officer, who sneered in disgust before barking
out a few curt orders. He was cut loose, and brought to kneel in front of the soldiers.
Through his bleary eyes, he suddenly recognized the man who had pointed him out. It
was Dr. Young, who had taught one of his surgical classes when he was a medical trainee.
“See, this is not a man of importance. He’s not even worth your bullets. Let him go
back to the farm where he can feed the dirty pigs,” Dr. Young said, before walking
off with the other soldiers. More arguing between the soldiers ensued, and before
he knew what was happening, he found himself on a transport truck bound for the work
farms in Geylang. Months later, he would run into Dr. Young at a meeting in the secret
room hidden behind a shop house on Telok Ayer Street. He began thanking him profusely
for saving his life, but Dr. Young brushed him off quickly. “Nonsense—you would have
done the same for me. Besides, I couldn’t let them kill yet another doctor. There
are too few of us left,” he said plainly
.

As Dr. Gu walked slowly back into his house, he felt a sudden pang of regret. He wished
he hadn’t said so much about the Youngs. Wye Mun, as usual, had steered him toward
the stories about money, and he had missed the chance to tell them the real story,
about a man whose greatness had nothing to do with wealth or power.

Rachel

“I’ve been trying to reach you for days! Where have you been? Did you get all the
messages I left at the hotel?” Kerry asked her daughter in rapid-fire Mandarin.

“Mom, I’m sorry—I was away all weekend and only just got back,” Rachel replied, raising
her voice as she always did whenever she was talking to anyone long distance, even
though she could hear her mother perfectly well.

“Where did you go?”

“I went to a remote island in the Indian Ocean for a bachelorette party.”

“Huh? You went to India?” her mother asked, still confused.

“No, not India. It’s an ISLAND in the INDIAN OCEAN, off the coast of Indonesia. It’s
an hour plane ride from Singapore.”

“You took a plane trip just for two days? Hiyah, what a waste of money!”

“Well, I wasn’t paying, and besides, I flew on a private plane.”

“You flew on a private plane? Whose plane?”

“The bride’s.”

“Wah! So lucky, ah. Is the bride very rich?”

“Mom, these people …” Rachel began, before discreetly lowering her voice. “Both the
bride and the groom come from very wealthy families.”

“
Really?
What about Nick’s family? Are they rich too?” Kerry asked.

How did she know this would be the next question out of her mom’s mouth?

Rachel glanced toward the bathroom. Nick was still in the shower, but she decided
to step out of the room anyway. She walked into the garden toward the quiet, shadier
side of the pool. “Yes, Mom, Nick comes from a wealthy family,” Rachel said, sitting
down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool.

“You know, this is something I suspected all along. He’s so well brought up. I can
tell just by looking at how he behaves during dinner. Such lovely manners, and he
always offers me the best part of the meat, like the fish cheek or the juiciest piece
of duck.”

“Well, it doesn’t really matter, Mom, because it seems like
everyone
here is rich. I think I’m still in a bit of a culture shock, or maybe it’s cash shock.
The way these people spend money—the houses and the planes and the dozens of maids—you
need to see it with your own eyes. It’s as if the recession isn’t happening here.
Everything is ultramodern and sparkling clean.”

“That’s all I hear from friends who visit Singapore. That it’s clean,
too
clean.” Kerry paused for a moment, her voice taking on a tone of concern. “Daughter,
you need to watch out.”

“What do you mean, Mom?”

“I know how those families can be, and you don’t want to give them the impression
that you are after Nick’s money. From now on, you need to be extra-careful how you
present yourself.”

Too late for that
, Rachel thought. “I’m just being myself, Mom. I’m not going to change how I behave.”
She wanted so much to tell her mother about the dreadful weekend, but she knew it
would only worry her needlessly. She had done the same thing with Nick, sharing only
the vaguest details. (Besides, they had spent most of the afternoon in a marathon
lovemaking session, and she hadn’t wanted to spoil their postcoital bliss with any
horror stories.)

“Is Nick being good to you?” her mother asked.

“Of course, Mom. Nick is a sweetheart, as always. He’s just rather distracted right
now with his friend’s wedding coming up. It’s going to be the biggest wedding Asia
has ever seen, Mom. All the newspapers have been covering it.”

“Really? Should I get one of the Chinese newspapers when I go into San Francisco tomorrow?”

“Sure, you can try. The bride is Araminta Lee, and the groom is Colin Khoo. Look out
for their names.”

“What are Nick’s parents like?”

“I don’t know. I’m meeting them tonight.”

“You have been there for almost
one week
and you still haven’t met his parents?” Kerry remarked, warning lights flashing in
her head.

“They were out of the country last week, Mom, and then we were away this weekend.”

“So you are going to meet his parents today?”

“Yes, dinner at their house.”

“But why aren’t you staying with them?” Kerry asked, her concern growing. There were
so many little signs that her Americanized daughter did not understand.

“Mom, stop overanalyzing this. Nick’s friend owns the hotel, so we’re staying here
during the wedding period for the convenience. But we’re moving to his grandmother’s
house next week.”

Kerry didn’t buy her daughter’s explanation. In her mind, it still made no sense that
the only son of a Chinese family would be staying in a hotel with his girlfriend instead
of at his parents’ house. Unless he was ashamed of Rachel. Or even worse, maybe the
parents had forbidden him to bring her home.

“What are you bringing to his parents? Did you get the Estée Lauder gifts like I told
you to?”

“No, I figured it would be too personal to give Nick’s mom cosmetics without having
even met her. There’s a terrific florist in the hotel, and—”

“No, daughter,
never
bring flowers! Especially not those white ones you love. White flowers are only for
funerals. You should bring them a big basket of mandarin oranges, and hand it to them
with both hands. And make sure that you bow your head very deeply when you greet his
mother and father for the first time. These are all gestures of respect.”

“
I know
, Mom. You’re acting like I’m five years old. Why are you suddenly getting so worried?”

“This is the first time you have been serious with a Chinese man. There is so much
you don’t know about the proper etiquette with these families.”

“I didn’t realize you could be so old-fashioned,” Rachel teased. “Besides, Nick’s
family doesn’t seem really Chinese at all. They seem more British if anything.”

“It doesn’t matter. You are Chinese, and you still need to behave like a properly
brought-up Chinese girl,” Kerry said.

“Don’t worry, Mom. It’s just dinner,” Rachel said lightly, even though her anxiety
was beginning to build.

The Youngs

With its prime position atop Cairnhill Road,
the Residences at One Cairnhill was
a striking marriage of architectural preservation and real estate wizardry. Originally
the home of prominent banker Kar Chin Kee and built during the late-Victorian period,
the house had long been a landmark. But as land values skyrocketed over the decades,
all the other big houses gave way to the developers and high-rise towers sprang up
around the graceful mansion like overgrown bamboo. By the time the great man died
in 2006, the house was deemed far too historic to tear down, yet far too valuable
to remain a single residence. So Kar Chin Kee’s heirs decided to preserve the original
structure, converting it into the base of a sleek thirty-story glass tower where Nick’s
parents now lived (when they were in Singapore, that is).

As the taxi climbed the hill toward the imposing Corinthian-columned portico, Nick
explained its history to Rachel. “Uncle Chin Kee was a friend of my grandmother’s,
so we used to visit every Chinese New Year, and I would be made to recite some elaborate
poem in Mandarin. Then the old man, who reeked of cigars, would give me a
hong bao
^*
stuffed with five hundred dollars.”

“That’s insane!” Rachel exclaimed. “The biggest
hong bao
I ever got in my life was fifty dollars, and that was from this asshole dating my
mom who was
really
trying to win me over. What did you do with all that money?”

“Are you kidding? My parents kept it, of course. They kept all my New Year money—I
never saw a cent of it.”

Rachel looked at him in horror. “That’s just wrong!
Hong baos
are as sacred as Christmas presents.”

“Don’t get me started on what they did with my presents on Christmas morning!” Nick
laughed. As they entered the elevator, Rachel inhaled deeply as she prepared to meet
Nick’s parents—these
hong bao
snatchers—for the first time.

“Hey, don’t forget to breeeeathe,” Nick said, massaging her shoulders gently. On the
thirtieth floor, the elevator opened directly into the penthouse’s foyer and they
were greeted by an enormous pane of glass that framed a panoramic view of the Orchard
Road shopping district. “Wow!” Rachel whispered, marveling at the deep purple dusk
settling over the skyline.