He came to Shanghai the way poets in the 1920s flocked to Paris. An aspiring Hemingway, he had read and reread A Moveable Feast. He desired to fashion a new life for himself, or at least the semblance of one. An escaped life. Yes, he liked that. A weekend had turned into a week, a week into a month. Three months later, he found himself unmoored in this city of capitalistic dreams. He was a fugitive among the ruins of an old port. In its place, the Eastern gate of a Westward-facing China, Shanghai promised a foreigner’s playground.
He watched as his companion for the past hour left, not bothering to cast even a backwards glance as she exited the bar arm in arm with another man. A DJ began spinning the usual Top 40’s crowd-pleasers. The local girls took this as their cue to hop on the loudspeakers. Their bodies, silhouetted against a large screen projecting the ongoing 2006 World Cup match, gyrated inelegantly to the music. It was the bar’s feeble attempt at recreating an “authentic” American sports bar, complete with neon Budweiser signs, pool table, and an inoperable jukebox in the corner.
He downed the rest of his green tea and whiskey.
Outside, the air was cooler than it had been earlier in the day, though the humidity lingered and would only worsen as May wore on. A warm breeze tickled the nape of his neck, just below the collar of his navy polo shirt.
He thought about heading down the street to Mint, which boasted a ladies’ night on Wednesdays. The club was a favorite among European partygoers who loved their house music. He was a less of a fan, though he was learning to adapt.
Instead, he hailed a cab. He had to shout the location a couple of times in his broken Mandarin before the driver understood.
Wai tan, wai tan!
He suspected half the time the cab drivers hassled him out of spite, shaming him for mangling what should have been their shared native tongue. Inevitably, they would ask where he was from—a question he couldn’t seem to escape no matter what country he lived in. He’d grown used to having to explain he was American. Yes, his parents were ethnically Chinese. He’d forgotten the word for “immigrants.” Other times he didn’t say anything, leading them to guess he was Korean, which was fine with him.
From the back seat, he stared out of the window at the jumble of buildings they passed, dilapidated three-story houses losing ground to half-constructed steel behemoths proclaiming a new mall, a new office building, new luxury condominiums—a new Shanghai. This shiny, new city also came with new infrastructure, repaved roads, and modern highways. He assumed the strips of blue lighting used to trace the raised expressways were intended to underline that progress. As the cab drove beneath a cerulean-lit overpass, he saw reflected in the glass his face, the color of a Smurf.
As they approached the Bund, he signaled for the driver to stop.
Ting zhe li, ke yi.
He paid according to the meter, pleased even after all this time in China about foregoing the tip.
As he got out of the cab, he nearly knocked over a beggar woman and her two children, a boy and a girl. They chased after him.
Hello! Please!
He crossed the street, hurrying away. Reflexively, he felt for his wristwatch, a leather strapped, 16-karat, gold-plated timepiece—a college graduation gift from his parents. Almost immediately, he regretted the gesture, as if subconsciously he suspected the family capable of stealing. He hoped they didn’t notice.
It was late. The tourists and panhandlers had gone home. Across the water, the Oriental Pearl TV Tower’s disco ball of light flashed. He walked along the Huang Pu River against a European facade of old banks and hotels. The evening, like so many others, ended with him wandering on his own.
He found himself missing Kiyomi most this time of night, when he might have been tempted to call her. If on the off chance she did pick up, what would he even say? Nothing in their situation had changed.
He was just lonely enough to contemplate going to one of Shanghai’s many karaoke lounges, better known as KTV clubs, where hostesses entertained patrons in private rooms. The women—girls, really, not any older than 19 or 20 usually, only a couple years younger than himself—would dance or strip, according to his brother-in-law, who had offered to let him tag along on more than one occasion. But the thought of behaving like the type of Western men he despised depressed him.
He was checking his pockets for his pack of cigarettes when he saw someone walking toward him. The figure, clad in khakis and a bright green polo, practically mirrored his own. Only the shirt’s misshapen logo—a knock-off, no doubt—offered any indication that his doppelganger might have lived a different life. As the other neared, he discerned beneath the sweat and the grime on his face he was not a man but a boy, possibly a teenager. The boy returned his gaze without emotion. He stared, as if searching for a sign of recognition.
The boy muttered something. He stopped to listen. The boy repeated himself. He could identify the Shanghainese dialect but not the words. In a flash, the boy reached his hand around to the back pocket of his trousers. The initial effort proved not quick enough. Fueled by anger and not an insignificant amount of alcohol, he snatched back his wallet and shoved the amateur thief hard.
Ni gan ma? he spat.
Panicking, the boy’s fist connected with his face. He went down, and the night turned to black.
*
Earlier that morning, his mind had gone blank. He simply stared at the words on his computer monitor—
DIRECTIONS:
Massage all over body.
WARNINGS:
Not a personal lubrication. Lubricant.
Using with latex condom can cause condom damage.
Not compatible with latex condoms.
Not for intra-vaginal(NO HYPEN) use. If burning sensation irritation occurs, discontinue use immediately.
Do not use if quality control seal is broken.
Warming Massage Oil is distributed by Vitality Ltd.
—a jumble of roughly translated English he was supposed to be polishing. He wondered how his job compared to his friends’ back home, former classmates who were on Fulbright Scholarships, interning at prestigious news media outlets, or working as research assistants at various NGOs and think tanks. After graduation, with dreams of travel and learning Mandarin filling his head, he had applied for and was accepted to a graduate language program at a prestigious Beijing university, which temporarily mollified his parents. Initially, he thought himself clever for escaping the trappings of what was expected, following a predictable life path. Now, he wasn’t so sure.
At his desk, the stack of papers, which formed a makeshift barricade between his workspace and that of his neighbor’s, had been pushed a conspicuous ten centimeters toward to his computer and hovered precariously over the right edge of his mouse pad. Seated next to him, the round-faced woman ignored his pointed look. He sighed and pulled his mouse pad in closer.
Generally speaking, the layout of the office did not afford much personal space, let alone privacy. Instead of cubicles, employees sat in rows. He only had to glance to his left or right to see whether his coworker was entering data into a spreadsheet like she was supposed to, or if behind the document she actually had playing in a separate window her favorite soap opera. If he craned his neck around, he held in plain view the screens of all the employees in the rows ahead. The classroom-like configuration continued past the receptionist’s desk, which faced the elevator bank, and into the adjoining room, where he went to collect the cash that was his pay each month.
Situated on Guangdong Road between the Bund and People’s Square, the building housed a variety of start-up companies and small corporate branches. Vitality Ltd., where he worked, shared the 12th floor with another firm of an equally paradoxical name, The Singleton Group, LLC. From his past eight weeks with the company, he had gathered enough to know that their floormates were in the business of consulting. Who or what they consulted on, he had yet to figure out.
Vitality Ltd., on the other hand, provided a much more tangible good: they sold dildos. More euphemistically, as the marketing department preferred to say, Vitality Ltd. manufactured and supplied buyers with “quality adult care products.” In addition to the traditional silicone rubber variety, the company’s catalog also included borosilicate glass dildos, twin- and triple-headed dildos, phalluses in the shape of animals and food items, pocket-sized vibrators for the lady always on the go, self-lubricating dildos, strap-ons, cock rings, and anal beads. Their latest technology—a vibrator that plugged into an iPod and pulsated to the beat—would be unveiled at the Third Annual Adult Toy Expo in Shanghai later that summer.
Vitality Ltd.: Empowering the consumer through innovation and choice.
The sex toy industry was a hundred-billion-RMB industry, with 80 percent of the world’s adult toy products exported from China—statistics he had been urged to memorize by his manager. Some 8,000 adult toy retailers alone were reported to operate within the country. An estimated 2,500 of them had opened right here in Shanghai. Most of the manufacturing was done outside of the big cities, in provinces like Anhui, where Vitality Ltd.’s factories were located, or in towns further south. Buyers went down to the factory headquarters to negotiate prices and to see the products firsthand. He wondered if they ever walked away with any free samples. Maybe if they were lucky.
After giving the instructional insert he had been editing a once-over, he attached the document with his recommended corrections in an email to his manager and hit “Send.”
He checked his watch. Half-past twelve.
Like clockwork, the desks emptied around him as everyone made the daily pilgrimage to the communal kitchen. From 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m., lunchtime was a sacred hour. All work stopped. Bodies flowed into Mecca. Encased in brightly colored plastic containers and thermoses, the home-packed lunches of meats and vegetables, stir-friend and served over rice, crowded the refrigerator like temple offerings. One by one, the owners came and collected what was theirs, and each worshipper clamored for their turn before the altar where the only two available microwaves sat. Accompanying the collective surge, the chatter of scripted exchanges—What are you eating today? Ah, mmm! That smells good—mingled with the aromas of garlic and fish sauce.
At the edge of the fray, he spotted a woman with a long, wavy mane—hair so black, it looked almost blue. He slid along the back wall and tapped her on the arm. She turned around, her hair swishing behind. As she smiled at him through her apple-ripe cheeks, he felt a warmth spreading across his chest.
Xiao Di, ni chi bao le ma?
Eight years his senior, Anna liked to refer to him as her little brother. He would have found it patronizing did he not admittedly enjoy the attention. She was employed by the Singleton Group. Her job was a mystery him, except for the fact that she would be gone for days at a time, traveling to pitch potential clients. The days she was absent felt considerably longer. Anna was the first and only person in the office to engage him in real conversation. His colleagues tended to keep to themselves and their established inter-office cliques: the gnat-like women in payroll, the self-important sales team, and the invisible accountants. It helped that Anna’s English was nearly impeccable. She asked after his general health, whether he was eating well, and berated him for smoking too much. He shrugged his shoulders sheepishly. She stepped forward in line. He inched alongside her.
“Did you not bring lunch today?” she asked, despite the fact that he never brought lunch from home. He shook his head. He would go to the Korean-owned, French-style bakery across the street for a ham and cheese croissant. It was Anna’s two minutes at the front of the line. She waited for her chicken and rice to heat. “Isn’t it expensive, always eating out?”
“I’m not a very good cook.”
She laughed. He sighed inwardly. An older woman loomed behind, pressing closer to them as she waited for her turn. Anna didn’t seem to notice.
“My boss gave me his tickets to the ballet tonight. Would you like to come?”
He managed a nod. A bell chimed. The woman asked if he wouldn’t move out of the way. Anna returned to her desk to eat, and he left the zealots to their shrine.
At the end of the workday, the air-conditioned office evaporated like a distant memory as soon as he spun through the revolving glass door into soaring temperatures and cloying humidity. Commuters, sweating and smelling, packed into train cars on the MTR. The strap on his messenger bag dug painfully into his shoulder, but he had no way of moving his arm without brushing against another person. Nor could he escape the mysterious marinade of odors that, along with his own perspiration, soaked into his skin, clinging to his clothes and hair even after he surfaced above ground. He often felt as if he were being cooked alive. There was an idiom to describe the city as an oven. Or was it a furnace? He never did pay enough attention in Chinese class.
Exiting the subway station, he turned off the main road, down a quiet tree-lined street—a rare treat in Shanghai—for which the French Concession was famous. The foreign traders who arrived on the heels of the Opium War had established and maintained their own settlement outside of Shanghai’s municipality. They recreated a Paris in miniature, building their homes in the colonial style and flanking the roads with imported sycamore trees. Many of the mansions, remnants from a bygone era of prosperity, had since been converted into clothing boutiques, beauty salons, and restaurants to service a new generation of colonizers.
On this particular block, only the leafy trees remained. A pile of concrete rubble and bricks coated in a chalky film of dust came into view. Outside of the construction site, an enclave of shirtless men reclined on flattened cardboard boxes. The migrant workers came in droves from the countryside. Essentially, they slept where they worked. At the moment, they were playing cards and smoking, occasionally erupting into laughter as they ribbed one of their own for his bad luck at drawing a lousy hand. He found himself envious of their easy camaraderie.
Turning toward a gated driveway, he continued past the guard’s station, waving to the old man on duty. The guard, having learned to recognize him over the months, waved him through. At the building entrance, he punched in the security code. The glass doors slid apart with a reassuring whoosh! and welcomed him into the air-conditioned sanctuary.
He rode the elevator to the penthouse on the 18th floor, where he let himself into his sister’s apartment. His sister had been living there with her husband and five-year-old son since the family relocated to Shanghai one year ago. She had given him a spare key when it became apparent two weeks into his stay he wasn’t returning to grad school in Beijing. It had been his sister’s idea he fly down to Shanghai that winter. Everyone else in his program had made travel plans for Lunar New Year. He figured he could use a few days away. She was the one who encouraged him to stay the entire week, longer if he wanted. She even used her contacts to find him a job. He should have been grateful, but he didn’t like being beholden to her. He wanted to find his own way. He had said as much to Kiyomi, that he needed time to figure things out.
He had slept in his nephew’s room for a month before finding a place to sublet. The only apartment he could afford by himself was all the way across the river in Pudong. So sometimes after work, or when he was feeling too cheap to call a cab home after a late night out, he took advantage of their more centrally located home in Puxi.
After a hot shower, he found a set of khaki pants and a cotton polo, which he had left behind, washed and folded on top of his nephew’s dresser. He changed and reemerged, taking a seat in the dining room. A painted portrait of his sister and her husband, commissioned for the couple’s tenth wedding anniversary, occupied the center wall. Above the table hung an imitation crystal chandelier. The whole apartment seemed to be made entirely of glass. There were floor-to-ceiling windows with views of the skyline. A translucent staircase led to the upper floor, where a balcony was also paneled with glass. He slid a pack of Camels out from his work bag and lit a cigarette—something he would not have been free to do had his sister been home.
Currently, the family was enjoying the summer holiday back in the States, specifically in the suburbs of New Jersey visiting their parents. If he was being honest, he was grateful to have a break from his sister. Their almost ten-year age gap wasn’t the only difference separating the siblings. Many of his complaints and criticisms, he directed at her husband, whose wealth had heightened her taste to a new level of gaudiness, rather than refining it.
He got up to find a receptacle for his ashes. The kitchen was outfitted with brand-new stainless-steel appliances, including a dishwasher, dual oven, and six-burner stovetop, used primarily by the ayi who prepared the family’s nightly meals. Resuming his seat at the table, he set a clean bowl on the Lazy Susan, giving it a few petulant spins before tapping the tip of his cigarette into the makeshift ashtray. Smoking was an easy habit to pick up in China, where cigarettes were cheap and ubiquitous, though one had to be careful about buying counterfeit brands.
He stabbed the cigarette butt into the bowl and pocketed the remainder of his pack. Rifling through his bag, he selected other items he would need: wallet, keys, cellphone. He hesitated as he held his passport. He didn’t want to leave it behind in case he didn’t end up returning after the ballet.
He found himself wandering the perimeter of People’s Square twenty minutes early. He had taken his time, careful to avoid dampening his outfit. Somehow, he still managed to overestimate his commute. He wasn’t used to the trains running on schedule, almost every two minutes—a far cry from New York’s antiquated subway system.
The Shanghai Grand Theatre stood apart as a relatively squat structure amid the Tower-of-Babel building fever that had infected the rest of the city. The box-like base and cylindrical cutout at the top reminded him of the wooden pillows used by courtesans to avoid running their elaborate hairdos.
Japanese tourists flocked behind a bullhorn-carrying guide. Following them through the front doors into the shiny abyss of the theater, Shanghai’s nouveau riche included Chinese women dolled up in variations of the same sequined dress, hanging on the arms of their white husbands. No matter where he went in Shanghai, it seemed impossible to escape this pairing.
His chest lightened when he spotted Anna, dressed in a short skirt, smiling brightly as ever. But she had not come alone. Seeing her companion, with his shaved head, square jawline, and muscles rippling under his tight, black shirt, crushed him like a metaphorical boulder.
“This is Guy…” she said. “…my boyfriend.”
Enchanté.
Before he had a chance to shake the Frenchman’s hand, Anna reminded them of the time. They hurried through the glass doors just as the gong sounded, signaling the final call for the audience to take their seats. Climbing the stairs to the uppermost tier, they slid into the first row of the balcony just as the first three bars of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake commenced.
As he soon learned, the Guangdong Acrobatic Troupe’s rendition had very little in common with the Swan Lake he remembered from a previous Mother’s Day outing with his family to Lincoln Center. Scarcely passing for ballet at all, the first act proceeded with feats of gymnastics: men scrambling up poles, jugglers, a young boy performing flips on a pliable beam known as a Chinese trampoline. Any resemblance to the original story was lost in the barrage of circus acts. Only the music, emitted from static-infested loudspeakers, remained recognizable. Everything else, from the glow-in-the-dark backdrop to the garish neon costumes, was over-the-top embellishment. A group of tumblers had emerged onstage in lime green unitards with yellow paws for hands and feet, and headgear of bulging red and black spheres for eyes contrived to look like Amazonian tree frogs—characters he was fairly certain were not found in the traditional Russian version.
Soon, the Swan Princess appeared dangling midair, lowered by not-so-invisible wires onto the stage amid the blast of fog machines. Joined by her Prince, she proved she was less dancer and more contortionist. When her partner lifted her above his head, she arched her legs so far back, her pointe shoes touched the top of her tightly wound bun. The harrowing displays of balance and flexibility continued. She collected the applause after each trick.
If he had to say which part of the production he found most cringeworthy, it would have to be the cross-dressing swans. It wasn’t even proper drag. Four burly men in tutus, tights, and padded brassieres teetered around the edge of the stage, clowning and mooning the audience for cheap laughs.
At intermission, standing outside on the terrace, he partook of Guy’s offerings, Marlboro cigarettes and a shared aversion to the spectacle. Anna, to placate the men, proposed they ditch the second act. Resigned to playing third wheel, he followed the couple into a cab. Guy ranted in his syrupy accent to Anna in the backseat about China’s “lowbrow tastes” and “peasant culture.” He remained silent as he sat in the front passenger seat. Even though he might have secretly agreed with some of Guy’s opinions, hearing them come out of the Frenchman’s mouth somehow sounded worse. He glanced at the driver next to him, hoping the man didn’t understand English.
They got out in the Jing’an Temple district in front of Windows Too. Not exactly the posh establishment he envisioned someone like Anna frequenting. Maybe she had picked the dive bar for Guy’s benefit. Inside, the music was loud, the people drunk. He ordered himself a green tea and whiskey, attempting to drown out images of Guy’s hairy arm around Anna’s waist, Guy’s stubby fingers resting on Anna’s exposed leg, Guy’s uncircumcised—
“You’re from New York, right?” Guy shouted three drinks in.
“New Jersey, technically.”
“Like in The Wire?”
“Baltimore is in a different state. You’re thinking of The Sopranos.”
Guy shrugged, unbothered by the geographical error. “Which do you like better?”
“I haven’t decided,” he answered.
“I prefer Paris.” Guy slapped Anna’s knee. “But she disagrees with me.”
“It’s late.” Anna sipped her martini demurely. “We should go.”
He hung back. Even after Anna left with Guy, he continued to wonder how best to answer the question.
New York was where Kiyomi had come into his life as an exchange student from Japan. They had met at a party thrown by the Asian fraternity at Columbia. He almost pledged his freshman year. The idea of belonging to a brotherhood, in which guys like himself, who once had been made to feel out of place, could band together—to be leaders among men—had initially appealed to him. But between all the boozing and hazing, the pack mentality and tiresome politics of running with the alpha males, he could never quite connect with their circle. And so, he gave them up.
At the party, he had singled her out for her far-set eyes and high cheekbones. She laughed at his feeble jokes, not because she found them funny but because her English was not very good and she was trying to be polite. He knew that, and yet he was desperate to keep her smiling at him.
He recalled more tender moments, like the way he used to hold Kiyomi when she would sometimes cry in her sleep. Witnessing one of her night terrors for the first time, he had been unprepared for its ferocity, she nearly kicked him out bed. Subsequently, he learned how to subdue the violence so that she no longer awoke when it occurred. He would simply press her to him, until the thrashing subsided, and he could hear her breathing slow. She would fall back into a peaceful sleep, muttering incoherently in Japanese, the staccato consonants and augmented vowels breaking softly against his ear.
He couldn’t get out of his head their last argument. By then, she had returned to Tokyo, where she was studying for the civil service exam to pursue a career in public policy. It had been her plan all along. As lonely and frustrated as he had been during his final undergraduate year, he wasn’t about to stop her. They kept in touch at first, emailing and talking online regularly. But the distance and the distractions between them got to be too much. She hadn’t been able to afford the time off to visit him over the winter holidays, and he couldn’t bring himself to fly to her during his spring break. Her future was in Japan. He wasn’t sure where he wanted his to be, but he knew he couldn’t bear to remain in New York without her.
Finally, he made his getaway. Out on the street, he waited for a cab.
*
Ni gan ma?
After the boy struck him, he might have blacked out. He wasn’t sure. The unyielding nature of the ground had come as a shock to his skull. He lay in a state of semi-consciousness.
Achingly, he picked himself up, brushing the dirt from his trousers as his stood. He felt his back pocket for his wallet. It was missing, along with his passport. It had been stupid of him to carry it. He clutched his wrist. At least the thief hadn’t taken his watch. Maybe the boy assumed it was a fake.
He peered out at the empty streets to no avail. The sidewalk was deserted in both directions. He found his cigarettes and lit a Camel. Exhaling a cathartic plume of smoke, he leaned against the railing and contemplated his fate about the sloshing water.
Accompanying the rush of blood to his head, a pang of homesickness swelled and receded. Who was he but another vain American living abroad trying to find himself? Or worse, a self-hating impostor who couldn’t even speak Chinese. He was not reflected in the anonymous faces of passersby, the crumbling porticos of the Old World around him, nor the dirty, black waters below. He was perceived as a perpetual foreigner in the country of his birth, while he was a true foreigner here in the country of his ancestors. Hell, even his parents had never even set foot on the mainland. His maternal grandparents, when they were barely a year or two older than he was now, had fled China for Hong Kong, and ultimately brought their family with them to the United States. They had raised their children on American soil, and they were buried in American soil.
He, on the other hand, wasn’t sure where he belonged.
The Pearl Tower loomed before him, beaming its lasers to distant starships. He gazed up at the indistinct meeting points where the ceiling of clouds tempered the illumination of alien lights.
The threat of rain was palpable.
Taking one last hit from what remained of his cigarette, he tossed the butt over the railing and watched it flutter onto the water’s inky surface. The white, papery remnant bobbed up and down with the rhythmic lapping of the waves. Maybe he’d have to go back eventually. But tonight, with the air dissolving into his skin, he retreated from the edge, turned, and continued into the hours of darkness that lay ahead.
