“Oh, sorry, I forgot you’re not up on the lingo. HNWI stands for ‘High Net Worth Individuals.’ We Singaporeans love to abbreviate everything.”
“Yeah, I’ve noticed that.”
“As you may know, there’s been an explosion of HNWIs from Mainland China, and they are the ones really driving up the prices. They are flocking here in droves, buying up properties with golf bags stuffed full of hard cash.”
“Really? I thought it was the other way around. Doesn’t everyone want to move to China for work?”
“Some, yes, but the super-rich Chinese all want to be here. We’re the most stable country in the region, and Mainlanders feel that their money is far safer here than in Shanghai, or even Switzerland.”
At this point, the car turned off a main thoroughfare and drove into a neighborhood of tightly packed houses. “So there actually are houses in Singapore,” Rachel said.
“Very few. Only about five percent of us are lucky enough to live in houses. This neighborhood is actually one of the first ‘suburban-style’ developments in Singapore, begun in the seventies, and my family helped to build it,” Peik Lin explained. The car drove past a high white wall, over which peeked tall thick bushes of bougainvillea. A large gold plaque on the wall was engraved VILLA D’ORO, and as the car pulled up to the entrance, a pair of ornate golden gates parted to reveal an imposing façade that bore a not so accidental resemblance to the Petit Trianon at Versailles, except that the house itself took up most of the lot, and the front portico was dominated by a massive four-tiered marble fountain with a golden swan spouting water from its long upturned beak.
“Welcome to my home,” Peik Lin said.
“My God, Peik Lin!” Rachel gasped in awe. “Is this where you grew up?”
“This was the property, but my parents tore down the old house and built this mansion about six years ago.”
“No wonder you thought your town house in Palo Alto was so cramped.”
“You know, when I was growing up, I thought that everyone lived like this. In the States, this house is probably worth only about three million. Can you guess how much it’s worth here?”
“I won’t even try to guess.”
“Thirty million, easy. And that’s just for the land — the house itself would be a teardown.”
“Well, I can only imagine how valuable land must be on an island with, what, four million people?”
“More like five million now.”
The cathedral-size front door was opened by an Indonesian girl in a frilly black-and-white French maid’s uniform. Rachel found herself standing in a circular entrance foyer with white-and-rose marble floors radiating out in a sunburst pattern. To the right, an enormous staircase with gold balustrades wound its way to the upper floors. The entire curved wall going up the staircase was a frescoed replica of Fragonard’s The Swing, except that this re-creation was blown up to fill a forty-foot rotunda.
“A team of artists from Prague camped out for three months to paint the frescos,” Peik Lin said as she led Rachel up a short flight of steps into the formal living room. “This is my mother’s re-creation of the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Get ready,” she warned. Rachel ascended the steps and entered the room, her eyes widening a little. Aside from the red velvet brocade sofas, every single object in the cavernous formal living room appeared to be made of gold. The vaulted ceiling was composed of layers upon layers of gold leaf. The baroque console tables were gilt gold. The Venetian mirrors and candelabra lining the walls were gold. The elaborate tassels on the gold damask curtains were yet a deeper shade of gold. Even the tchotchkes scattered around every available surface were golden. Rachel was completely dumbstruck.
To make matters even more surreal, the middle of the room was dominated by an enormous oval pond-cum-aquarium sunken into the gold-flecked marble floor. The pond was brightly lit, and for a second Rachel thought she could make out baby sharks swimming in the bubbling water. Before she could process the scene fully, three golden-haired Pekingese ran into the room, their high-pitched yaps echoing loudly against the marble.
Peik Lin’s mother, a short, plumpish woman in her early fifties with a shoulder-length bouffant perm entered the room. She wore a tight shocking-pink silk blouse that stretched against her ample cleavage, belted with a chain of interlinked gold medusa heads and a tight pair of black trousers. The only thing incongruous about the outfit was the pair of cushioned pink slippers on her feet. “Astor, Trump, Vanderbilt, naw-tee naw-tee boys, stop barking!” she admonished. “Rachel Chu! Wel-kum, wel-kum!” she cried in her heavy Chinese-accented English. Rachel found herself crushed into a fleshy hug, the heady scent of Eau d’Hadrien filling her nose. “Aiyah! So long I haven’t seen you. Bien kar ah nee swee, ah!” she exclaimed in Hokkien, cupping Rachel’s cheeks with both hands.
“She thinks you’ve become very pretty,” Peik Lin translated, knowing that Rachel only spoke Mandarin.
“Thank you, Mrs. Goh. It’s so nice to see you again,” Rachel said, feeling rather overwhelmed. She never knew what to say when someone complimented her looks.
“Whaaat?” the woman said in mock horror. “Don’t call me Mrs. Goh. Mrs. Goh is my hor-eee-ble mah-der-in-law! Call me Auntie Neena.”
“Okay, Auntie Neena.”
“Come, come to the keet-chen. Makan time.” She clamped her bronze fingernails onto Rachel’s wrist, leading her down a long marble-columned hallway toward the dining room. Rachel couldn’t help but notice the enormous canary diamond flashing on her hand like a translucent egg yolk, and the pair of three-carat solitaires in her earlobes, identical to Peik Lin’s. Like mother, like daughter — maybe they got a two-for-one deal.
The baronial dining hall was somewhat of a respite after the rococo hell of the living room, with its wood boiserie walls and windows overlooking the lawn where a large oval swimming pool was encircled by Grecian sculptures. Rachel quickly registered two versions of the Venus de Milo, one in white marble, another in gold, of course. There was a huge round dining table that seated eighteen comfortably covered with a heavy Battenberg lace tablecloth and high-backed Louis Quatorze chairs that were, thankfully, upholstered in a royal blue brocade. Assembled in the dining room was the entire Goh family.
“Rachel, you remember my father. This is my brother Peik Wing and his wife, Sheryl, and my younger brother, Peik Ting, whom we call P.T. And these are my nieces Alyssa and Camylla.” Everyone went around shaking hands with Rachel, who couldn’t help but notice that not one of them happened to be over five foot five. The brothers were both much darker complexioned than Peik Lin, but they all shared the same pixieish features. Both were dressed in almost identical outfits of pale blue button-down dress shirts and dark gray slacks, as if they had adhered exactly to a company manual on how to dress for casual Fridays. Sheryl, who was much paler, stuck out from the rest of the family. She wore a pink floral tank top and a short denim skirt, looking rather frazzled as she fussed over her two young daughters, who were both being fed Chicken McNuggets, the paper boxes placed on heavy gold-rimmed Limoges plates along with the packets of sweet-and-sour dipping sauce.
Peik Lin’s father gestured for Rachel to take the seat next to him. He was a stocky, barrel-chested man in khaki trousers and a red Ralph Lauren shirt, the kind with the oversize Polo-player logo in dark navy emblazened across the front. His clothes, coupled with his short stature, made him appear incongruously boyish for a man in his late fifties. On his small wrist was a chunky Franck Muller watch, and he too was wearing a pair of cushioned slippers over his socks.