Shanghai (67 page)

“Sir,” a young writer said, “can I propose something different? A brand new approach we might consider in covering the Flower World contests?”

“All right,” Charles said, returning his attention to the room.

“Hold them at the racetrack, boss.”

Charles would never get used to being called “boss,” especially since the word the man used was not the Mandarin
shang si
, or even the more colloquial
lao ban
, but rather the pidgin
boss
. He had strictly outlawed the use of pidgin in his four offices and amongst his seventy employees, but he was appalled that the hideous language of degradation was becoming fashionable amongst young, literate Han Chinese. Many a time he'd heard a writer yell at a copy boy, “Chop chop!”

He checked his watch—he didn't have much more time. He had to prepare to meet the first of the girls the matchmaker had arranged for him as a prospective wife. He was twenty-four and single. He was a man of great wealth. It was time to start a family.

“Sir?” the young reporter prompted.

Charles looked at the avid faces around the large table. It didn't surprise him that Tzu Rong Zi was the only one who had not made a single suggestion for the editorial meeting. His old Japanese printer was snoring quietly, hands folded across his expansive belly.
Enjoy your rest, old friend,
he thought. Then he looked at the eager young man who had first spoken and asked, “You have a plan in mind for the racetrack?”

“I do, sir. We have had great success with our Flower World contests.”

“I know that.”

“But we can do even better, sir.”

“How?”

“By coordinating the contests with the beginning of each of the two horse racing seasons.”

There was a momentary hush around the table. Each of the men knew that the young man had spotted something obvious—as rare but as obvious as a shrimp making a surprise appearance in a shrimp dumpling in a Shanghai restaurant. The spring and fall openings of the Shanghai Race Course were the most avidly attended events in the entire social calendar of this extremely social city, and among the only times that
Fan Kuei
and Chinese mixed freely. Most importantly, hundreds of the city's almost two thousand courtesans were always in attendance, wearing their newest and most expensive finery. If Charles Soong's newspaper could arrange to have the Flower World contest take place at the racetrack before the first race, the coverage would be extraordinary. Interest in the contest would go through the roof—and newspaper sales would follow quickly.
Perhaps an English-language edition is called for,
he thought, but then dismissed the idea.
If they want to follow our sport they'll have to do it in our language
. For
weeks, perhaps months, after the beginning of the Flower World contest the newspapers would be able to feed off the copy they got from such an event. Then, of course, the thousands of letters and follow-up stories that would be published as they approached the crowning of the Flower World Princess would increase the audience tenfold, and then perhaps tenfold again.

Charles smiled as he thought how well this dovetailed with the meeting he had convened last night in his private quarters. Dr. Sun Yat-sen, whom he had been bankrolling for almost four years now, had encouraged him to use the power of his newspapers to attack the Manchu Dynasty.

“There are already subtle jabs at Beijing in most of the articles in my newspapers,” he had protested.

“Subtle, Charles, too subtle to do any good. Only those in the know understand what you are saying.”

Charles thought,
And that's how it should be. If I am ever accused of sedition, all I have worked for will be taken from me in one swift and sure Manchu reprisal
.

Charles's coverage of the Flower World was ribboned with comments that any intelligent reader knew were jibes at the creaky old dynasty. His use of an ancient Manchu name for a fictitious, ugly, old courtesan was as blatant as he was willing to get. He just prayed he never had to produce such a courtesan to prove that his stories were not fictions. With the failure of the Hundred Days of Reform in 1898, politics had become an extremely dangerous game.

Perhaps the most inherent and damning criticism of the present regime was the very way that the winner of the Flower World contest was named—by the counting of public votes submitted to the newspapers. Charles knew that this was actually the very first democratic
exercise ever undertaken in the Middle Kingdom, and his guests at last night's meeting had roundly applauded him for it. All but a surly man named Chiang Kai Shek, whose whole bald head seemed to scowl as he said, “What would commoners know of great beauty or talent in the Flower World?”

Charles heard the unmistakable sound of privilege at work. The sense of entitlement. That somehow this man's eyes were the only ones able to see true beauty, his ears the only ones that could hear sweet melody, and his jade spear the only one allowed to contemplate entering the jade gate of a great courtesan. And beneath it all, Charles heard a cruelty that he didn't understand. A cruelty that the courtesans of whom he wrote knew all too well. Sexual cruelty had its own music, its own smell, its own place in the hearts of men like Chiang Kai Shek.

The man was soundly put down by the others around the table, although Dr. Sun Yat-sen had suggested that “everyone here has the right to an opinion.” Charles doubted the wisdom of that statement when it was applied to creatures like Chiang Kai Shek. Not for the first or last time, he wondered about the judgment of the good doctor, whom the others looked to as the leader who would dethrone the corrupt old Manchu Dynasty.

It troubled Charles that the man was a doctor but was always penniless. It was Charles's money that allowed the Doctor to travel to America and Japan to organize his “revolution.”

“Sir? Thoughts on this?” the young man asked.

Charles's thoughts returned to the present with a clunk. “I think the racetrack is a fine idea, and, like the rest of the men around the table, I wonder why I didn't think of it first.” Laughter greeted the comment.

The old Japanese printer awakened with, “What's so funny?”

“Nothing,” Charles said. He saw some of the men collecting their papers, hoping to end the meeting. Charles knew that most of them were anxious to have a cigarette. Charles had strictly forbidden smoking in his presence. In lieu of tobacco, he always provided the most expensive of Annam teas, served in tall porcelain mugs fitted with lids to keep the liquid hot. Charles removed the lid from his mug. The long, slender Anamm tea leaves seemed to dance in the hot liquid that they so delicately flavoured. He blew gently into the liquid and his glasses fogged. Ignoring that he said, “Although, clearly, there is a problem with your plan.”

“And that would be, boss?”

He controlled the knee-jerk bridle at being called “boss” in pidgin and then said simply, “The racetrack belongs to Silas Hordoon. Nothing can go on there that he doesn't agree to. Now, who amongst you has contacts strong enough with that
Fan Kuei
to arrange a meeting?”

Charles knew the answer before he asked the question. None of them. How could they? The paper was filled to overflowing with open criticism of almost every aspect of
Fan Kuei
life in the city at the Bend in the River. The sense of deflation in the room was palpable. It made Charles smile. He cleaned the lenses of his glasses and finished his tea. “Ah,” he said resignedly, then got to his feet and headed toward the door.

Behind him he heard the rustle of papers and the sliding of chairs away from the table. He turned back to the assemblage in the room. The noise stopped. He said, “I guess I will have to mention it during my lunch with the great man, tomorrow.”

Although neither man moved from his chair, both were aware that they were circling each other, not unlike two fighting cocks before one delivers the first blow.

Silas had done his due diligence and knew much about the wealthy young Chinese man who sat across from him. Although he didn't know exactly how, he knew that Charles Soong had begun his extraordinary rise to wealth and power from the position of a lowly busboy in a tavern somewhere in the wasteland of America. He knew that somewhere in the process of his meteoric rise to wealth he had added the
g
to the end of his name. So that it would sound more Chinese? More dynastic, perhaps? Silas had been given bank statements that proved the young man had substantial wealth, although Silas couldn't see
how anyone could make all that money solely from publishing—even publishing about the Flower World. Silas had tried to figure out if there was a connection to Gangster Tu or any of the other Triads in the city but had found only hints—sometimes tantalizing—of association with the underworld figures. The one connection he had managed to unearth was with the pugnacious Chiang Kai Shek. Silas assumed that some of Charles's money was behind part of the revolutionary foment that periodically swirled through the Chinese living in the Foreign Settlement. But then again, almost every successful Chinese businessman donated to the cause of dethroning the old Manchu Dynasty.

Silas knew that there was something not open to public view about this unusually successful young man. It was just that he couldn't say exactly what that something was.

When the request came through a mutual Hong merchant friend for a meeting, several potential meeting spots were suggested, with the usual Middle Kingdom wariness, and then rejected. Runners carried personal letters between the two men's representatives for weeks until finally this place—the Old Shanghai Restaurant—was agreed upon. And now here they sat at a private table, ignoring the waiters, who kept approaching and suggesting that they order, and staring at each other in a stony silence.

The restaurant owner finally came over and stood still as a statue, waiting for instructions. When, after several minutes, none were forthcoming, he made a strategic decision and returned to the kitchen.

—

In the kitchen, the head chef looked up from a wok filled with boiling oil into which he was gently slipping a large, breaded river perch and demanded in a surly tone of voice, “What?”

The owner had always hated cooks. If only he could run a restaurant without a cook, he would be the happiest Han Chinese man south of the Yellow River. But no—here was yet another cook scowling at him. He had found that cooks have only two facial expressions: drunken oblivion and scowls. Right now the owner couldn't figure out which he would prefer—although the cook's scowl was making that choice easier to make, by the second.

“Speak! What do they want to eat? Why not give them deep-fried sheepshit smothered in brown sauce?”

There it was again. The owner never knew if cooks were fooling or not. From his experience with this cook, he believed it very possible that more than one of his valued customers had eaten large portions of various animal fecal material deep-fried and smothered with the cook's ubiquitous brown sauce.

“No. They should begin with shark-fin soup. I bought the shark fin yesterday and gave it to you myself.”

The cook stared back at him with a markedly blank expression on his face.

The owner gathered his courage and asked, “Do we still have the shark fin I purchased?”

The cook deigned to nod, then produced the incredibly expensive item.

The owner breathed a sigh of relief and, although he saw clearly that a prime piece of the fin had been cut off and probably sold by the cook, he decided to smile and say, “Good. But no brown sauce in the shark-fin soup, huh?”

The cook turned to the owner and smiled. “There are so many kinds of liquids I could add to the soup that maybe you'd prefer I add brown sauce—at least you'd know what the colour in the soup was.” Then without waiting for a response he said, “Now get out of my kitchen before I chop off some of you and put it into the broth—just for a little snivel flavour.”

—

Back at the table, Charles picked up the menu, written in Mandarin, and said in English, “Time to order. Or would you prefer an English-language menu?”

Silas reached across, took the menu from the younger man's hands, and asked in fluent Mandarin in the Shanghai dialect, “How would you like to begin our dinner?”

Before Charles could answer, the shark-fin soup arrived—but neither man touched it. The restaurant owner didn't know what to do, so he just stood there, his eyes moving slowly back and forth between the
Fan Kuei
who was born and raised in Asia and the Han Chinese man who was raised in America. Finally he said, “Is there something wrong, gentlemen? I assure you, this is the finest shark-fin soup in all of the Middle Kingdom.”

And neither Charles nor Silas doubted that. But that wasn't the point. Both had eaten shark-fin soup. Both could afford to eat this extremely expensive delicacy. But this wasn't about eating—it was about challenging.

“There's nothing wrong with the soup,” Charles said, “but I think Mr. Hordoon ought to have some-thing—oh, more exotic.” He smiled.

Silas smiled back and said, “Absolutely, the more—exotic—the better.”

“Good,” Charles said. Never taking his eyes from Silas he continued, “Bring us hot and sour soup. Very hot and very sour—with congealed pig's blood in mine.”

“And mine,” Silas responded, then added, “and bird's nest soup—real bird's nest soup.”

The owner nodded and took out a pad of paper and pen. Few people actually wanted real bird's nest soup, since it was made from the spittle-soaked straw and twigs that form the nest of a small bird in southeast China called a swiftlet.

“And chicken hearts on a skewer with a side of minnows in peanut sauce,” Charles said with a shrug.

“And squid jerky with stinky tofu and durian slices—I think that would go well, don't you?” Silas asked with a smile.