The King of Shanghai (4 page)

( 6 )

Amanda had booked a car to take them to the factory in Pudong. They chatted while they drove, Amanda bringing Ava up to date on the noodle shop and convenience store business that Michael owned with Simon To.

“I’m glad Sonny is driving for him,” Ava said.

“No more glad than Michael. He says he gets treated more seriously with Sonny around. Sonny has an edge that can’t be ignored.”

The talk then turned, almost hesitantly, to Borneo. The furniture business was running smoothly again, and they had found new customers in Europe and the United States. May had sent Peter and Grace Chik — a young man and woman who weren’t related — from Wuhan to run it, and the plan was to keep them in Borneo on a permanent basis.

“I hope Chi-Tze never has to go back there,” Amanda said as the car slowed in front of a red-brick building surrounded by a wire fence. A guard peered at them through a gate made from steel tubing. Amanda waved and the gate swung open.

They parked in front of the double wooden doors of a one-storey building with small, dust-encrusted windows. Ava glanced around. There was no sign on the door, or anywhere, for that matter.

“This hardly looks inspiring,” May said.

“As I told you, this is a sample factory. It’s functional and that’s about it,” Amanda said. “But everything the Pos need for their presentation is here. So, we thought, why not use it?”

They left the car and started towards the door. It opened before they reached it and a young woman stepped into the yard. “Welcome,” she said.

“This is Gillian,” Amanda said.

Ava stopped in her tracks, her mouth partially open. She was looking up at one of the tallest women she’d ever seen. Gillian Po had to be six foot two, her height magnified by her slim, almost gaunt frame. She was wearing jeans and a plain blue cotton tank top that exposed her sharp, angular collarbones. Her hair was cut short and shaved along the sides, and she was heavily made up.

“This is Ava and May,” Amanda said, motioning to her partners.

“Welcome. Please come in,” Gillian said.

“Where’s Clark?”

“He’s waiting for us in the boardroom.”

They shook hands at the doorway, Ava and May both making a point of looking up at Gillian. When they walked past her, they were immediately in the factory. There was a row of sewing machines and two rows of tables where women were cutting fabric and stitching it by hand. On one side was a blackboard with a dress pattern on it and several large corkboards with drawings pinned to them.

“Our offices are this way,” Gillian said, making a left turn down a hall.

Curious eyes tracked their progress past glass-walled offices. At the far end of the corridor a man was sitting in a room at a round table that looked just big enough to accommodate them.

Clark Po stood as they approached. He was dressed in a plain white silk shirt and white painter’s pants. He was as skinny as Gillian but three or four inches shorter, and Ava doubted that he weighed more than 140 pounds. But it was his face that really caught her attention. It was long and pointed, and his big brown eyes were rimmed with heavy black liner. His hair was gelled, swept to one side, and tossed over his shoulder. It was tied with a red ribbon.

Ava entered the boardroom first. “You must be Clark,” she said. “I’m Ava. Pleased to meet you.”

“The same,” he said. Ava noticed that his voice was very deep.

May and Amanda followed her into the room, greeting Clark with nods and smiles.

“I apologize for the size of our meeting place,” Gillian said. “Things are quite barebones here. It will be more comfortable if we all just sit.”

Gillian sat down in front of a stack of binders. “I will give each of you one of these binders when we finish our presentation,” she said, tapping them. “I went through the numbers with Amanda last night, and then I got up early this morning and refined them. But the first thing I want to do is thank you for being kind enough to come here today.”

“We are curious, not kind,” May said.

“Can I assume that Amanda gave you a rough description of what we want to do?”

“She did.”

“Madam Wong —”

“My name is May, or May Ling, whichever you prefer,” she interrupted.

“Of course, May Ling, and can I also assume that Amanda explained the history of our business?”

“She did, and she said you’re now working for a European owner. What she didn’t say was how well that owner is treating you.”

“Well enough,” Gillian said with a shrug. “But working for someone else wasn’t what we envisioned when we got into this business.”

Ava glanced at Clark. He sat completely still, his hands folded in front of him, his eyes locked on his sister.

“Not everyone is meant to have their own business. Why are you?”

“May Ling, my brother is an incredibly talented designer.”

“The world is full of them, no? What makes Clark particularly special?”

Clark moved quite suddenly, as if the mention of his name had given him a jolt. He stretched a hand across the table towards May. She looked at it uncomfortably.

“Give me your hand,” he said.

May hesitated and then placed her hand on the table. He took it and held it gently. “My father despaired for me,” he said, staring at May. “When I was a boy, it was obvious that I was different, and after he realized he couldn’t pretend that I wasn’t, he spent years trying to protect me. He thought that if he sent me to the best schools, got me the best education he could buy, it would prepare me for the world, that I could come into this business and run it. What he never understood was that I liked being different, and that I had no interest in his schools or mathematics or science or any of what he called the ‘building blocks’ a man needed to be successful. I flunked out of every school, and for a while we were estranged. It was Gillian who knew what had to be done, and she did it.”

“I went to our father,” Gillian said. “I told him that Clark should be brought into the business, but not to run it. I told him I was more than capable of doing that, if he was agreeable. I said Clark loved clothes — women’s clothes — and he wanted to design them. We needed to ensure that he was properly trained to do it.”

“He let me work here in the sample factory,” Clark continued, still holding May’s hand. “Most of our designers — though you couldn’t really call them that — are women. They may not know how to design but they know how to copy, how to cut and sew, and I spent three years learning the basics of the trade from them. Our customer base was mainly American and low-end, so there wasn’t much demand for originality. Mainly they wanted cheap. We tried to give them cheap and good.”

“Clark didn’t work just here. He went to the factories where we jobbed out our production and made sure that what was coming off the line was what we had intended,” Gillian said.

“There isn’t any point in a design if it can’t be manufactured in an efficient way,” he said.

Ava had to smile as she followed their conversation. They were like professional Ping-Pong players as they lobbed back and forth to one another.

“The point I’m trying to make is that Clark did his apprenticeship, learning the business from the ground up. After three years he could sew and cut with the best of our women and he was doing his own designing. As our customer base slowly moved upscale and expanded into Europe, he had a chance to work with other designers and a wider range of fabrics. If I didn’t know it before, I saw it then — that he was tremendously creative and could more than hold his own with professional designers. That was when I went to our father and said it was time to send Clark to a fashion design college.”

“He didn’t want to do it,” Clark said, a tinge of bitterness in his voice.

“He said it would come to more than fifty thousand U.S. dollars a year, with all the costs figured in. But I didn’t believe him. I think he was afraid that once Clark left the family business, he’d never come back.”

“But you went,” May said.

“Yes, he did,” Gillian replied. “We forced the issue and our mother took our side, so he gave in. Clark went to Central Saint Martins in London. It’s part of the University of the Arts.”

“I’m sorry, I’ve never heard of it. Is it supposed to be good?” May asked.

“It’s one of the very best — if not the best — fashion design schools in the world. Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Stella McCartney — they’re all graduates,” Gillian said.

“I took the fashion design womenswear program. It was a wonderful three years . . . and then I came back to the family business and total boredom.”

“Pardon me, but you had some very good customers. They weren’t all middle-of-the-road,” Amanda said.

“No, but they all copy, and that’s all they wanted me to do. Take some Stella McCartney or Jil Sander design and adapt it. That’s what they call it — ‘adapting.’ I call it stealing. Not to their faces, of course.”

“Then even that part of the business was sold out from under us,” Gillian said, “and we found ourselves employees in what used to be our family business — our heritage. I told Clark we had to find our way out of this.”

“All right, I understand your disappointment and your dream, but you need to tell us why we should support it,” May said.

“To begin with, the profit margins can be fantastic,” Gillian said quickly. “We can make eighty percent, maybe even more. Then, if the label attracts a following, there are so many licensing opportunities we can attach to the name.”

“You have a label in mind?” Ava asked.

“PÖ.”

“Just Po?”

Clark smiled. “No, actually capital P, capital O, with an umlaut over the O.”

“What’s an umlaut?” said May.

“Two dots.”

“That isn’t Chinese.”

“No, it’s German.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“I like the way it looks, and it represents the melding of East and West that I’m aiming for in my clothes,” Clark said.

“Going back to the numbers, I’ve prepared an analysis of the profit margins that can accrue to designer labels,” Gillian said.

“No, just a minute. I’m not interested in looking at those right now,” May said.

Ava glanced at Amanda and saw her lower lip tremble. Clark closed his eyes.

“What I want to see is what Clark is capable of creating. You do have designs for us to look at?”

“We certainly do,” Gillian said.

“Well, let’s do that, shall we? If we like what we see, then we’ll move on to the numbers.”

Clark leapt to his feet, put his hand to his mouth, and blew a kiss across the table towards May. “You have no idea how happy I am that you said that.”

They left the boardroom, walked back down the hall, and turned left into the factory.

“I apologize in advance for being so amateurish,” Clark said. “We’ve set up a small runway and I’ve brought in some models. Most of them are friends. I wanted you to see my clothes on real women.”

“How long will it take you to set up?” May asked.

“We’ve been ready all morning.”

“You assumed we would want to do this?” Ava said.

“When Amanda said you were coming, I couldn’t think of another reason.”

“Agreed.”

“I like your brother,” Ava said to Gillian as Clark ran ahead.

“He will care more if you like his designs,” Gillian replied.

As they walked through the factory, the employees left their machines and joined in behind them. Ava felt as if they were leading a parade. Clark led the congregation to a ten-metre-long strip of red carpet that ran along the concrete floor from a black curtain to four folding chairs. The employees took positions on either side of the carpet. They whispered among themselves, some of them eyeing the visitors, others staring at the black curtain, which was strung between two steel poles.

Clark directed the Three Sisters party and Gillian to sit and then disappeared behind the curtain. The cloth moved every time an invisible body brushed against it, and Ava could hear Clark urging everyone to move faster. Then the curtain opened ever so slightly and Clark slipped through the crack. The women lining the carpet clapped, and several shouted his name. He nodded in both directions and then slipped backstage again. A moment later the curtain was drawn.

Standing at the end of the carpet was a tall, thin, fresh-faced young woman, her hair drawn back tightly. She began to walk towards the seated women. She was wearing a frock coat, the upper part fitted, hugging her body, and the bottom flaring out into a skirt. The high collar looked as if it was inspired by the traditional cheongsam. Down the front were four orb-shaped powder-blue glass buttons; two smaller buttons of the same colour and shape were on each wrist. The coat was made of white linen, and even in the factory light it shimmered. As the model drew closer, Ava saw that the collar was trimmed in light blue.

“That is spectacular,” May said.

For the next thirty minutes, four young women modelled Clark’s work. There were jackets, coats, skirts, dresses, and blouses, all of them made from linen and all of them radiating colour in an array of reds, blues, purples, and pinks, by themselves or in combinations with white. Ava wasn’t a fashionista but she was her mother’s daughter; she could recognize quality, and Clark’s work was quality. Like the frock coat, the clothes hinted at their Chinese origin: collars she had seen on cheongsams, the voluminous sleeves associated with a man’s formal
shenyi
, jackets and skirts that combined elements of a Mao suit with the classic
pien-fu
style, and wide-bottomed pants that flowed as the models walked.

After May’s initial reaction to the frock coat, no one spoke. Gillian repeatedly glanced at the other women. But the factory workers weren’t so quiet. They greeted each design with applause and shouts of encouragement. When the last model slipped behind the curtain, they knew the show was over and began to clap rhythmically. Clark emerged and stood among the four models, two on each side. He bowed, reached for the hands of the women nearest to him, and walked with them towards his sister and Ava, May, and Amanda.

As they neared, Ava stood and began to clap herself. The others followed. Clark stopped a metre away from them and bowed again, his head almost touching his knees. When he looked up, Ava saw tears in his eyes.