Stanley leaned closer. He knew this artist. He was one of the document masters people talked about. He worked with a flawed inlay machine, and his documents always had a pale patch in the lower left corner.
Stanley looked at the visa. There it was. The pale patch.
A fake.
So this sale wasn’t for the government at all. It was inauthentic, a private sale with fake paperwork.
Yet this visa in front of him had only been needed to cross from China to Hong Kong. Stanley smiled to himself. This visa was never presented at that border. It would have been spotted. That meant the pots were not brought through openly. They were smuggled. By the ah chan Bai. And so very many of them. Stanley’s esteem for the man, despite everything, increased.
And now the collection was in Hong Kong, legal, unimpeachable. Of course, Stanley thought, with the present tensions between the U.S. and China, if someone on the American side noticed this fake visa, in Customs, say, there might be a problem. More for diplomacy than for legality. Because if the Chinese government found out about this, they would most assuredly strike multiple postures demanding it back. It was just too big, too priceless; and matters between the countries too uneasy.
Well. Stanley Pao slid the visa back into the stack of pages.
He certainly would not be the one to mention it.
He slipped into the lobby of the hotel after two A.M. He felt his chest singing with excitement. He rode the elevator to the fourteenth floor and walked in quick silence down the brilliantly patterned carpet. It was late. Everything was hushed.
He came to her door and knocked. The sound seemed to echo all the way down the wallpapered corridor. He waited. Nothing.
He knocked again.
Inside, Lia sat up in bed. Her hair was down. She got up in the twisted confusion of dreaming. She found the door by its little pinpoint of light that gave out onto the hall. She looked.
Michael. Really? Was it really? His shoulders under his loose white shirt, the sleeves rolled up… now she knew she was dreaming. This was false. But his broad face leaned toward her through the peephole, his hand came up and knocked again.
She opened the door. She stood behind it, pale, half lit by the shafting light from the hallway. Three steps and he was in the room, turning, looking for her. Who knows about me, she thought. The door clicked shut and they found their way to each other in the dark.
CHINESE DYNASTIES AND REIGN TITLES
Qin Dynasty (221-206 BC)
Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220)
Wei, Jin, and Northern and Southern Dynasties (220-581)
Sui Dynasty (581-618)
Tang Dynasty (618-907)
Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms (907-960)
Song Dynasty (960-1279)
Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368)
Ming Dynasty (1368-1644)
Hongwu (1368-1398)
Jianwen (1399-1402)
Yongle (1403-1424)
Hongxi (1425)
Xuande (1426-1435)
Zhengtong (1436-1449)
Jingtai (1450-1456)
Tianshun (1457-1464)
Chenghua (1465-1487)
Hongzhi (1488-1505)
Zhengde (1506-1521)
Jianjing (1522-1566)
Longqing (1567-1572)
Wanli (1573-1619)
Taichang (1620)
Tianqi (1621-1627)
Chongzhen (1628-1644)
Qing Dynasty (1644-1911)
Shunzhi (1644-1661)
Kangxi (1662-1722)
Yongzheng (1723-1735)
Qianlong (1736-1795)
Jiaqing (1796-1820)
Daoguang (1821-1850)
Xianfeng (1851-1861)
Tongzhi (1862-1874)
Guangxu (1875-1908)
Xuantong (1909-1911)
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thanks to my editor, Jackie Cantor, a sage and caring guide who somehow, at every turn, made me choose the way myself. Thanks to my agent, Bonnie Nadell, for intelligence, grace and good humor at the helm.
Mee-Seen Loong took me by the hand and led me into her world of porcelain. Her knowledge and love of pots, her adeptness in the intersecting subcultures surrounding them, and her endlessly interesting ideas about them educated and inspired me. My research also owes much to published scholarship, especially the work of Julian Thompson, Regina Krahl, Liu Xinyuan, and Wen C. Fong.
To those in Hong Kong and Jingdezhen who talked to me about ah chans, thank you for your candor and for cracking the door to this underworld, just enough.
I am grateful to the Morgan Library for allowing me to examine the 1913 correspondence between J. P. Morgan’s office in New York and F. H. McKnight in Peking, and to James Traub for first writing about this historical episode and then generously answering my questions.
Dr. Joan Rothlein and Dr. Herb Needleman were of great help in researching lead poisoning. In matters related to pediatric hearing loss I am indebted to Beth Cardwell, M.D., and the Audiology department at Oregon Health Sciences University.
For insight, ideas, and information, my gratitude to Fred Hill, Sabrina Ullman Mathews, Richard Herzfelder, Jason Tse, Nicolas Chow, Jon Conte, Marta Aragones, Lucy Metcalf, Jin Mei, Rone Tempest and Laura Richardson, Anthony Kuhn, Kemin Zhang, Chris Perkins, Nancy Beers, and Huang Zhifeng.
A debt of inspiration is due to The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci by Jonathan Spence, “Funes, the Memorious” by Jorge Luis Borges, The Recognitions by William Gaddis, and especially The Art of Memory by Frances Yates.
Ben and Luke, I could never have written this book without your generosity in releasing me to the task. For everything else, my first and last thanks are for Paul Mones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NICOLE MONES was awarded the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for her first novel, Lost in Translation, which was also named a New York Times Notable Book. She lives with her family in Portland, Oregon.
