“What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Don’t feel like speaking, eh? Jeez, you Chinese are so goddamn unfriendly. Hey, look at me when I talk to you.”
Gary looked around. The bar was full and there was nowhere to move to.
“Hey, I’m talking to you.”
Gary turned and said, “Fuck off.”
The reports that appeared the following morning were full of inaccuracies, as usual, and there were conflicting accounts from bystanders as to who had provoked the ensuing argument, what the altercation had been about, who had taken the first swing. What was in no doubt was that Gary had swiftly lost control and knocked the other man off his feet, even though the man was heftily built. The Internet was full of photos taken with camera phones — grainy and badly lit but clearly showing Gary standing over the man with his fist raised. The now-infamous video — again captured on a mobile phone and freely available on YouTube the next day — shows Gary swaying and unsteady on his feet, then bouncing up and down like a boxer ready for a fight, before stumbling toward the man on the ground and aiming a casual kick to his midriff, as if toe-poking a football. When the man shouts out an inarticulate insult, Gary attempts to pick up a bar stool, presumably to attack him with it. But the bar stool is fixed and doesn’t budge, so Gary turns his attention to a signboard that says WOW! and he rips it off the wall, using it to attack the man. When some of the waiters attempt to restrain him, he fights them off and shouts, “Don’t touch me, do you know who I am? Do you know who I am?” The camera wobbles and cuts out, and when it starts to play again, Gary is seen surrounded by a group of consoling friends. The rest of the bar is emptying and the music has stopped. His head is in his hands, and his shoulders are heaving up and down as he sobs. In the gray-pink half-light of the video, he is briefly shown in profile, silhouetted against what seems to be a curtain made from shimmering glass beads that look almost electric in the way they sparkle. Although it is dark and his face is not properly lit, Gary’s features are unmistakable — the perfect straight nose that ends in a delicate point, the soft angle of the jaw, the hair that falls over his brow. His head is bowed, his shoulders hunched and defeated. It is this image that graces the cover of all the tabloid newspapers the following evening.
4. FORGET THE PAST, LOOK ONLY TO THE FUTURE
THAT MORNING’S EMAILS BORE NO SHOCKS, ONLY POSITIVE DEVELOPMENTS. These days, there were no longer any brutish demands by creditors or feeble excuses from nonpaying clients, and the daily ritual of beginning with emails had become a pleasurable affair for Yinghui, to be carried out at an almost leisurely pace over a cappuccino. There were, among other upbeat messages, an invitation to the opening of a new hotel on the river in Shiliupu and an interesting proposition from someone wanting to build a carbon-neutral cultural center in the middle of town. New contacts and possibilities revealed themselves nowadays without her even having to seek them out. What a change, she thought, as she finished her coffee.
Business was going well for Yinghui. The two upmarket lingerie stores she’d established were flourishing, and in little more than a year she had broken even and was now watching the profits accumulate, week by week, the spreadsheets filling out with handsome-looking figures bursting with promise. Occasionally, when she glanced at the documents her breathless accountant showed her, she ceased to take note of the substantial numbers, for their trajectory was so steep that she had difficulty imagining where they would take her twelve months hence. And yet she was not a person with a modest imagination — quite the opposite.
Her ad campaigns had been striking and wildly successful. She had used only Chinese models, never mixed-race ones, and they never flaunted their bodies in an overtly sexual way. Although they did display a good deal of bare skin, the models were styled beautifully, and the overall aesthetic was classy rather than trashy. The catchy taglines were mysterious and playful, like the images themselves.
Elegant Outside, Passionate Inside
Secret Exciting
Amazing Beautiful You
Although she had originally thought that the shop would cater mainly to the wives of high-ranking Party officials and low-profile billionaires who wanted a discreet custom service, Yinghui soon found a huge demand among ordinary professional women who were willing to spend upwards of four hundred yuan for the simplest bra. The low lighting and shadowy spaces of the stores, together with the women-only entry policy and touches of luxury such as the Venetian chandeliers, created an ambience that proved incredibly popular, with many clients lingering on the plush sofas and leafing through the glossy magazines and catalogs as they chatted and decided what else to purchase. Before long, Yinghui had taken over the adjoining shops and added a coffee bar in one store and a wine bar in the other, extending the opening hours and turning both venues into destinations in their own right. The lingerie was all but removed from the store itself and transferred into specially designed semiprivate “modeling rooms,” and the newly vacated space was now filled with stylish mannequins, artwork, and giant floral displays.
The income and publicity generated by the two stores made it possible for Yinghui to seek business partners for new ventures on a much larger scale, and her financial projections were such that banks were suddenly willing to listen to her requests for loans. Her plans for expansion included a chain of small shops in metro stations, which would sell the basic Amazing Beautiful You range; twelve shops selling clothes for teenage girls, called FILGirl (Fly in Love Girl); an Internet-based cosmetics brand called Shhh, aimed at women over the age of forty; and a luxury spa modeled on a northern Thai village, the construction of which was nearing completion.
These exciting ventures made people in the retail industry take notice of Yinghui, and the expatriate community was especially interested to learn that a foreigner was able to negotiate the complex world of Chinese retail. She began to give talks to the various foreign chambers of commerce, speaking to budding entrepreneurs about the pressures of being a foreigner and a woman in a male-dominated world. As she became more visible, she did an interview with the Shanghai Daily—a small article, nothing more — in which she was asked to reveal the key to her success at a time when many small businesses were experiencing difficulties due to the global recession.
“I smile every day while coolly evaluating my business model,” she replied, smiling coolly. “I remain one hundred percent optimistic even in a crisis, while being decisive enough to act as required.”
Was she ruthless? the interviewer asked.
“Sure,” she said. “You have to be tough to succeed.”
Even as she said it, she regretted the way she sounded — matter of fact, unthinking, as if nothing bothered her. She tried immediately to laugh and find common ground with the interviewer, a young woman in her mid-twenties. But as Yinghui joked about things in the news — celebrity gossip, cute pop singers, and the latest films — she could feel the journalist withdrawing behind the safety of a polite smile, the gulf between them widening. She felt old; her laugh sounded fake and robotic. The girl merely smiled and listened as Yinghui’s jokes became more and more risqué.