At least she was talking. I put a kettle of water on.
— America is no longer America, I said.
— Still America, she said. Just not the only one.
— Here we have freedom. Don’t people care about freedom?
— Freedom? Individualism? She laughed, touching her hair with her sleeve. — Too much individualism. Too much argue here. Chinese people love peace.
— What about freedom? Is there too much freedom?
— Freedom is not always so good, she said. Look at Russia. Anyway, other problems too. Too much violence.
— At school they say this?
She nodded.
— Why do I bet that even if they’re doing business abroad, they’re hanging on to their U.S. citizenship.
— Of course. U.S. citizenship very useful. Don’t even need citizenship. Just a green card.
The kettle whistled.
— Coffee? I offered. Tea?
She shook her head, but began to push her sleeves back. Uncovering her hands, long and pale and elegant.
— That’s what they say at school? That a green card’s enough?
A half nod.
— Someone in particular too says this, I guessed.
A second half nod.
— Woody.
— Not Woody, she said.
— Not Woody? Then someone with a green card. Who could use a Chinese-speaking partner.
She blushed.
— I’m sure it’s way too early to be thinking about marrying, I said, pressing on. Guessing wildly, boldly, but lo! She rolled the sleeves of her sweater back down. — Marry for love, I told her. Pouring my coffee, trying to keep my voice light, but hearing urgency in it all the same. — You can, you know. This is America.
— Of course, marry for love very nice, she said. Her return voice was at first very low, like a cell phone signal I was about to lose. But then it grew stronger. — In China, by the way, we have love too. Though sometimes not right away. Sometimes the man and woman learn to love each other after they are married a long time.
— Is he married already?
— He is supposed to divorce his wife, she said.
— Oh, Lan, I said.
LAN /
What was so terrible? If he didn’t want me, shouldn’t he at least let someone else try?
CARNEGIE /
— And how did you meet this guy?
— Blondie made arrangement, she said.
— Blondie?
— She met him in that feng shui class.
— Blondie?
— Gabriela dated him once.
BLONDIE /
It was Gabriela’s idea.
CARNEGIE /
You can’t trust that Blondie.
BLONDIE /
I just sort of went along.
CARNEGIE /
Being an agreeable person.
WENDY /
His name is Shang. He shaves his head bald like a monk and Lanlan is not sure about him. Too short, she says. But she smiles when she says it and starts looking at nothing, which Lizzy says means the guy knows a way to make money in China.
— How do you know? I say.
But she just says: — Watch.
And the next time this guy Shang comes up, she says: — Don’t sell your soul. You can make money in China yourself, you don’t need this guy.
— Not so easy, says Lanlan.
LIZZY /
— You just have to set your mind to it, I told her. You make your own luck. Have you heard the expression, ‘Where there’s a will, there’s a way’?
— Where there’s a will there’s a way, repeated Lan. Where there’s a will there’s a way.
But then she said: — In China, relationships are very important.
— Women don’t need men, I said. We are perfectly capable of standing on our own two feet.
— You are too young to understand, she said. Someday you will understand.
LAN /
He was a little older than me—in his fifties—and called himself Shang, after his grandfather, who came from Fujian. I think his real name was
Brian
. He did not look Chinese at all. Not even as Chinese as
Bailey
, just like any
lao wai,
brown hair all over. Everywhere but on his head. He was not handsome. But he was interested in China, more interested than
Carnegie
. He had lived in Taiwan and studied a lot about it. His Chinese was rusty, but he still spoke some. He had visited the Mainland several times. And of all the places he visited, he said he loved Suzhou best. He liked Lijiang also, and Hangzhou, and Guilin. But nothing was like Suzhou, he said. He said that before he even knew my
laojia
was Suzhou.
Of course a lot of people from Taiwan liked Suzhou, so many that people said there were Taiwan-style tea shops all over Suzhou now. Taiwanese people liked to invest money in Suzhou too. That’s what people said. They were like Singaporeans that way. Probably Shang just learned to love Suzhou from living in Taiwan.
Still, it made me want to see him again.
I hadn’t talked to anyone who even knew where Suzhou was in a long long time. It meant so much to me, I was embarrassed. Probably that looked like love. But really, I just wanted to talk to him.
He wasn’t as kind as
Carnegie
. But I thought maybe he would see, someday, that I was
Suzhouren.
I had that hope—that he would see how I should have grown up there, in my family’s garden. That I should have grown up writing poetry and practicing calligraphy by the pond. That our pavilion should have been full of musicians and opera singers instead of laundry. That I should have had a cook to cook all the Suzhou specialties. That I should have hardly known what the kitchen looked like. That I should have been married to someone very rich. Not necessarily so handsome; I should have been married to one of those old bespectacled scholars in a gown who went to the teahouse in the morning, and to the bath at night—who wrapped water in skin in the morning, and skin in water in the evening, as we used to say. I should have had a mother; my father should have lived a long and peaceful life. I should have had children. My children should have had cousins. I should have had sisters-in-law to gossip with, and a mother-in-law to complain about.
Later people said Shang was my ticket to a better life. That was true too. But in the beginning I mostly wanted to talk to him.
I was embarrassed.
CARNEGIE /
This guy was from the beginning the wrong story. I knew it from Google-ing him; also from someone who had once worked for him but now, it turned out, worked for one of my erstwhile direct-reports. Hazel Riley, her name was, a big-haired software engineer and PTA president who also ran kids’ soccer for her county.
The scoop from Hazel being: not only bald, but frighteningly thin. Drank lots of water. One of the first to predict, in fact, that there were big bucks in bottled water. That people would actually pay for it, and walk around with it. He made a lot of money investing on that hunch. Sushi too. Back when no one thought Americans would eat the stuff, he bought stock in a company that wanted, of all things, to sell sushi in airports.
The height verdict: not short exactly. However, on the short side and unpleasantly relational. The sort of man who felt a need to put his hands everywhere. Hazel said that if he entered your office, he was sure to pick something up off your desk. He could not pass a pregnant employee without putting a hand on her belly. And then, of course, there were other body parts with which to make contact.
The most generous view of this: that for all his money he was hungry for connection.
The dominant view: if he were a dog, he would have peed on absolutely everything.
Hazel said Shang was always borrowing things. Pens, calculators, pads of paper. Vacation ideas. Mannerisms. She said that before he put his hands on things, he put them up things; apparently, as a boy, what with those long, thin arms, he had worked as an inseminator of prize mares. But he lost that job, Hazel said, because he killed a horse once. Or at least that’s what people in the office said; and people believed it because of his temper. He threw things across the room. He tore things up. He once threw a computer out the window. That was after he smashed its screen with a marble-based Frisbee trophy. It shook Shang himself up, people said, that he had done that.
He took up yoga for stress reduction. However, he complained it was not competitive enough, and thought there might be money in yoga tournaments. He took many herbs. Also he tried feng shui—jumbling the office furniture so thoroughly that people barely knew where to sit. He was a crazy man to work for, Hazel said, a walking soap opera.
On the other hand, what companies the man came up with, you had to give him credit. The most recent featuring a stadium seat pad with reusable freezer packs, sold via CoolYourBuns.com. When the company went public, said Hazel, even the secretaries made a mint.
The dominant view: all that craziness just went with genius.
He viewed everything as a proposition, a stock in which he would or would not invest. For example, if you said to him, School committees, he’d say, Sell. School vouchers: Buy. Rent control: Sell. Campaign finance reform: Buy.
As for where he was putting his money now, the answer was China. He had always loved China; he loved it still. The women of China. The food of China. The sounds of China. He loved the
erhu,
he said. Such a planetary sound.
— Whatever the hell a whatever-it-was was, said Hazel.
But that had impressed Lan, that Shang knew what an
erhu
was. He said his Chinese driver played it for him regularly.
The most generous view: he was interested in other cultures, attuned as he was to the limits of Western civilization and the enlightenment tradition.
An alternate view: his real interest lay like a big dog at his feet, you couldn’t miss it even if it mostly just panted.
LAN /
I first saw him on a panel on
viral marketing.
I did not ask any questions but only listened and took notes, and so was surprised when he came up to me afterward and introduced himself. He gave me his card with two hands, Chinese-style. I did not have a card, so I gave him my number.
He took me out for a drink the next week. At such a fancy place! That was when he told me he loved Suzhou. Even before he knew I was from Suzhou, he told me that, and in Chinese! Apologizing for his accent, which was indeed terrible.
And so of course, yes. When he asked me out to dinner, I said yes.
A most beautiful dinner! With an ice sculpture indoors, right in the middle of the restaurant. A pair of swans—how they reminded me of China, they were carved almost as beautifully as ice sculptures in China. There were little vegetable flowers too on the dishes. Those were nowhere near as fancy as vegetable carvings in China. But still the food was delicious—French. The tablecloths were pink. There were candles. And so many glasses! I was surprised how many glasses there were, and with what slender, slender stems.
I could not believe anyone would treat me so well. At my age! I thought I must be in a dream.
He had brought pictures of all the gardens he visited. Some of them were very famous, of course—the Humble Administrator’s Garden. The Garden of the Master of the Fishing Nets. But also he had visited many smaller gardens, gardens more like my family’s. We looked at the pictures for a long time. I was impressed that he had taken so many, and of all sorts of things. The different-shaped windows, and the patterns of the tiles in the paths. The color of the roof tiles. The fish. The view before you turned a corner and the view after—the surprise. He had even photographed
Baodai Qiao,
a famous ancient bridge, at night, so you could see how on certain nights each of its many arches held a moon of its own—how the moon threw a string of reflections across the water, like a necklace of pearls, stretching from one shore to the other.
— To think you might have grown up there,
he said finally.
Unbelievable.
I almost cried then.
There was a dance floor; he asked me to dance. I said I didn’t know how, but he said it didn’t matter, and it didn’t. He taught me. And for dessert he ordered the special
warm chocolate soufflé for two.
He looked at me while we were eating; I thought I must be doing something wrong. That maybe there was something else he wanted to teach me. But still he looked, and finally he touched my arm. Not even my hand—just my arm. As if he did not dare touch my hand.
Then he told me he wanted me to go back to China with him. The big opportunities, he said, were in China. Not that every company succeeded. Of course not. But while in America only one in twenty
start-ups
made it, in China the odds were one in three.
—
You just have to try and try,
he said.
People say if you last five years, you are going to survive. So if you try one company at a time, in fifteen years you should have something to show, right? And if you try more than one at a time, just think. But of course you have to know how to handle the Chinese. That’s where you come in. I need somebody to soften them up. Speak their language.
— I understand your meaning,
I said.
— Everything is a joint venture over there. Say that in the U.S., a certain company does sales and only sales, no service, right? Well, they get to China, and what happens? They find themselves in a nice joint venture with the government, doing service. And then in another joint venture, doing investment. Until there are four companies doing something for the government, and only one company doing sales. I need somebody to handle all that. Keep the Chinese happy.
— I understand,
I said.
— You do,
he said, looking at me.
I see that. You understand China. And you’re a nice woman. Of course, if all goes well, one day you will not have to be so nice.
That surprised me.
—
I don’t understand your meaning,
I said.