Ming continued. “My cousin is nine years older than me. She grew up during the Cultural Revolution. I grew up after it. She works in a factory that builds coffeemakers and sells them to the West. I cannot even imagine how hard her life has been. And she is my cousin. Peter’s sister is what’s known as a ‘Shanghai princess,’ a girl who has been raised in wealth and privilege.”
Ming, it turned out through further conversation, was moving up in the world. He had just moved in Shanghai from a scrappy little neighborhood to a place named New California Estates. It was a private Western-style compound with huge villas made of fake adobe and a whole miniarmy of private guards. He showed Alex a picture of his home. Ming’s minivilla had a manicured lawn, a deck overlooking a man-made lake, a barbecue pit, an ornamental well, and a perfectly groomed Labrador retriever.
“My dog’s name is Clinton,” Ming said.
“Named after the American president,” Wong chided.
“The dog is a female. It’s named after the ex-president’s wife,” Ming said. Ten years earlier, Ming said, his family had nothing; now not only did he have this house but he also bought an apartment for his parents. The economic thaw had started during the Clinton years in America, and so many young Chinese felt gratitude. Naming a pedigreed dog after the ex-first lady, to Ming’s way of thinking, was the very least he could do. Alex thought of several smart remarks but didn’t make any of them.
The waiter, responding to Peter’s hand signal, appeared suddenly with a bottle of champagne and six glasses. He opened the bottle and poured drinks all around. Alex watched as Peter slipped the waiter an American hundred dollar bill and declined change. A tip. The waiter, his evening an instant success, gave Peter a low bow.
Wong’s background was closer to Ming’s than to Peter’s. He had been brought up in Xinjiang, in the far northwest near the old Soviet border. His parents had been forcibly relocated there in the seventies. The Cultural Revolution had been the greatest disaster of their lives. Before the Civil War, he explained in a side conversation to Alex, his grandparents had been landlords, so they were considered capitalists. The Red Guard had come around one day with a vengeance and ordered them to the remote countryside.
“They didn’t want to go work in the fields,” he said, “but they were taken there and then left in the middle of the countryside. They had to build their own house. We were miles from anywhere. The government wanted to keep us apart from the local people. The nearest village was a two-hour cycle ride away, and it had nothing, only a little market.”
Alex’s curiosity was piqued. “That must have been terrible beyond belief,” she said.
Her comment allowed Wong to open up even more.
“My parents were at the Shuanghe Labor Reeducation Camp,” Wong said. “It was a prison farm near the Russian border. The other inmates were mainly young pickpockets, burglars, and brawlers. In the camp, guards and prisoners used the word ‘reeducation’ to mean you’d be locked up in a small cell and struck with electric prods or beaten. Afterward, you’d have to write a self-criticism. Then there was another form of daily torture. During the hours between breakfast and the second and final meal in the late afternoon, no one was allowed to use the toilet. My parents told me little more than that about the camp. I never wanted to know more. How could I?”
“I’m sorry,” Alex said. She was.
“The same government apparatus that tortured my parents today makes me rich,” he said. “Some days I find it confusing. Most days, I don’t think about it.”
He shrugged. Then he buried the thought with a long gulp of Moët and Chandon.
A wave of culture shock flowed through Alex. In almost everything she had read on China, sooner or later the phrase human rights turned up, coupled with the terms policeman, linked with words such as torture or brutality. And yet here was David Wong in Versace with a Polish babe in a slashed-to-the-thigh Liz Hurley. Next to him, Ming was a David Beckham look-alike-wannabe with pouffy hair, hanging all over his knockout French bimbo. These days, the iconic image of a lone figure standing up to a tank in Tiananmen Square was a relic of the past.
More champagne went around the table.
“So,” Alex said, “does anyone ever criticize the government?”
“Of course,” Peter answered. “It’s common knowledge that the government is corrupt and is hiding scandals. And that they don’t tell the truth. Everyone knows.”
“What about democracy?” Alex asked.
“We can vote for representatives,” Wong said quickly. “But in China there are too many people. True democracy is not possible.”
“Why would anyone want nine hundred million unwashed, uneducated peasants from the countryside telling the government what it should do?” Peter added with dismay. “That would be absurd! The decisions of state are best left to the educated elite.”
“Fine for you since you’re part of it,” Alex said.
“Of course. But look at the economic miracle of the last two decades. We are obviously doing a lot that is right. Our system might not be like yours, but for China it has worked.”
“What about human rights?” Alex said. “Like detaining prisoners without trial? Like torture.”
“Like Guantanamo?” laughed Ming. “One cannot always control the excesses of our government.”
“So,” Alex finally said, “is this really what Deng Xiaoping meant when he talked about ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’ almost thirty years ago?”
“It might not be what Chairman Deng meant,” Peter answered quickly, “but it’s what it has become, for better or worse. A lot of business success is through the traditional virtue of guanxi, through elaborate social relationships.” Well educated, male, and born in Hong Kong, he had been in a perfect position to profit.
“Okay then,” Alex finally said. “You have all these luxuries and material successes,” she said. “What about spiritual stuff?”
“Of what sort?” Wong asked.
“Maybe inner beliefs,” she said. “A personal creed or a set of morals or a code?”
“Like a religion?”
“Call it that if you like,” she said.
“You mean like Lee Yuan?” one of the younger two men said.
Alex wasn’t sure who had mentioned the name, but conversation at the table stopped cold. It was as if someone had fired a shot. Peter’s eyes widened slightly, as if to admonish whoever had crossed a line. And a line definitely had been crossed because both Wong and Ming, well lubricated as they were, had a regretful look to them.
“I’ve never heard that name before,” Alex said. “Who’s Lee Yuan?”
More of a pause. “Lee Yuan is why we’re here,” Peter said.
“Why’s that?” she asked. “I’m not following.”
Peter began to explain, obviously taking great care with his words.
“Lee Yuan was a wonderful man,” he said. “He was a mentor to the three of us. A mystic perhaps. A great teacher and friend. He recruited all three of us into the current positions we now hold.”
“I see.”
“We would not be where we are today,” Wong said, “if he had not handpicked and groomed us.”
“He is no longer with us,” Peter said. “He died recently. To honor him, his memory, his spirit, we are attempting to complete his final mission. There is a tradition. If a person perishes from this earth and an important part of his life’s work is left unfinished, those who held that person in high regard are honor bound to pick up the fallen standard and finish that task. Sometimes such things are very small. Other times the task is great and may take a lifetime. The three thousand mile march begins with a single step, after all.”