Su Yi was silent for a while, considering the girl before her. Rachel didn’t dare to move at all. Finally, Su Yi spoke. “Did you know that I had quite a few brothers and sisters? My father had many concubines who bore him children, but only one supreme wife, my mother. She bore him six children, but out of all my siblings, only three were officially accepted. Myself, and two of my brothers.”
“Why only the three of you?” Rachel ventured to ask.
“You see, my father believed he had a gift. He felt that he was able to ascertain a person’s entire future based on their faces … the way they looked … and he chose to keep only the children he felt would go on to please him. He chose my husband for me this way as well, did you know that? He said, ‘This man has a good face. He will never make any money, but he will never hurt you.’ He was right on both counts.” Nick’s grandmother leaned in closer to Rachel and stared straight into her eyes. “I see your face,” she said in a hushed tone.
Before Rachel could ask what she meant, Nick approached the conservatory door with a cluster of guests. The door burst open, and a man in a white linen shirt and bright orange linen pants bounded toward Nick’s grandmother.
“Ah Ma, dearest Ah Ma! How I’ve missed you!” the man said dramatically in Cantonese, dropping to his knees and kissing her hands.
“Aiyah, Eddie, cha si lang!”[73] Su Yi scolded, withdrawing her hands and smacking him across the head.
2
Nassim Road
SINGAPORE
“God is in the details.” Mies van der Rohe’s iconic quote was the mantra Annabel Lee lived by. From the sculpted mango popsicles handed out to guests lounging by the pool to the precise placement of a camellia blossom on every eiderdown pillow, Annabel’s unerring eye for detail was what made her chain of luxury hotels the favored choice for the most discriminating travelers. Tonight the object of scrutiny was her own reflection. She was wearing a high-collared champagne-colored dress woven from Irish linen, and trying to decide whether to layer it with a double strand of baroque pearls or an opera-length amber necklace. Were the Nakamura pearls too ostentatious? Would the amber beads be subtler?
Her husband, Peter, entered her boudoir wearing dark gray slacks and a pale blue shirt. “Are you sure you want me to wear this? I look like an accountant,” he said, thinking his butler had surely made a mistake in laying out these clothes.
“You look perfect. I ordered the shirt specifically for tonight’s occasion. It’s Ede & Ravenscroft — they make all of the Duke of Edinburgh’s shirts. Trust me, it’s better to be underdressed with this crowd,” Annabel said, giving him a careful once-over. Although there were grand events every single night of the week in the ramp-up to Araminta’s wedding, the party that Harry Leong was throwing tonight in honor of his nephew Colin Khoo at the fabled Leong residence on Nassim Road was the one Annabel was secretly most eager to attend.
When Peter Lee (originally Lee Pei Tan of Harbin) made his first fortune in Chinese coal mining during the mid-nineties, he and his wife decided to move their family to Singapore, like many of the newly minted Mainlanders were doing. Peter wanted to maximize the benefits of being based in the region’s preferred wealth management center, and Annabel (originally An-Liu Bao of Urümqi) wanted their young daughter to benefit from Singapore’s more Westernized — and in her eyes, superior — education system. (The superior air quality didn’t hurt, either.) Besides, she had tired of the Beijing elite, of all the interminable twelve-course banquets in rooms filled with bad replicas of Louis Quatorze furniture, and she longed to reinvent herself on a more sophisticated island where the ladies understood Armani and spoke perfect accentless English. She wanted Araminta to grow up speaking perfect accentless English.
But in Singapore, Annabel soon discovered that beyond the bold-faced names that eagerly invited her to all the glamorous galas, there hid a whole other level of society that was impervious to the flash of money, especially Mainland Chinese money. These people were snobbier and more impenetrable than anything she had ever encountered. “Who cares about those old mothball families? They’re just jealous that we’re richer, that we really know how to enjoy ourselves,” her new friend Trina Tua (wife of the TLS Private Equity chairman Tua Lao Sai) said. Annabel knew this was something Trina said to console herself that she would never be invited to Mrs. Lee Yong Chien’s legendary mah-jongg parties — where the women bet with serious jewelry — or get to peek behind the tall gates of the magnificent modernist house that architect Kee Yeap had designed for Rosemary T’sien on Dalvey Road.
Tonight she was finally going to be invited in. Even though she maintained homes in New York, London, Shanghai, and Bali, and even though Architectural Digest called her Edward Tuttle — designed house in Singapore “one of the most spectacular private residences in Asia,” Annabel’s heartbeat quickened as she passed through the austere wooden gates of 11 Nassim Road. She had long admired the house from afar — Black and Whites[74] like these were so exceedingly rare, and this one, which had been continuously occupied by the Leong family since the twenties, was perhaps the only one left on the island to retain all of its original features. Entering through the Arts and Crafts front doors, Annabel quickly soaked in every minute detail of the way these people lived. Look at this whole row of Malay servants flanking the entrance hall in crisp white blazers. What are they offering on these Selangor pewter trays? Pimm’s No. 1 with fizzy pineapple juice and fresh mint leaves. How quaint. I must copy that for the new Sri Lanka resort. Ah, here is Felicity Leong in tailored silk jacquard, wearing the most exquisite piece of lilac jade, and her daughter-in-law Cathleen, the constitutional law expert (this girl is always so plain, with not a drop of jewelry in sight — you would never guess she’s married to the eldest Leong son). And here is Astrid Leong. What was it like for her to grow up in this house? No wonder she has such great taste — that robin’s-egg blue dress she’s wearing is on the cover of French Vogue this month. Who’s this man whispering to Astrid at the foot of the stairs? Oh, it’s her husband, Michael. What a stunning couple they make. And look at this drawing room, oh just look! The symmetry … the scale … the profusion of orange blossoms. Sublime. I need orange blossoms in all the hotel lobbies next week. Wait a second, is that Ru ware from the Northern Song dynasty? Yes it is. One, two, three, four, there are so many pieces. Unbelievable! This room alone must have thirty million dollars’ worth of ceramics, strewn about as if they were cheap ashtrays. And these Peranakan-style opium chairs — look at the mother-of-pearl inlay — I’ve never seen a pair in such perfect condition. Here come the Chengs of Hong Kong. Look how adorable those children are, all dressed up like little Ralph Lauren models.
Never had Annabel felt more content than right now, when at last she was breathing in this rarified air. The house was filling up with the sort of aristocratic families she had only heard about over the years, families that could trace their lineage back thirty generations or more. Like the Youngs, who had just arrived. Oh look, Eleanor just waved at me. She’s the only one who socializes outside the family. And here’s her son, Nicholas — another looker. Colin’s best friend. And the girl holding Nicholas’s hand must be that Rachel Chu everyone is talking about, the one that’s not one of the Taiwan Chus. One look and I could have told you that. This girl grew up drinking vitamin-D calcium-fortified American milk. But she still doesn’t have a chance of catching Nicholas. And here comes Araminta with all the Khoos. Looking like she belongs.
73
Hokkien phrase that translates to “stop bothering me to death,” used to scold people who are being noisy, annoying, or, as in Eddie’s case, both.
74
The exotic Black and White houses of Singapore are a singular architectural style found nowhere else in the world. Combining Anglo-Indian features with the English Arts and Crafts movement, these white-painted bungalows with black trim detailing were ingeniously designed for tropical climes. Originally built to house well-to-do colonial families, they are now extremely coveted and available only to the crazy rich ($40 million for starters, and you might have to wait several decades for a whole family to die).