Fragrant Harbour (29 page)

We bought the house in Mosman and moved to Sydney in 1996, four years ago. I felt that with the handover to China coming I should do something about my family’s security. Australia has a program of accelerated immigration for prospective citizens with sufficiently high net capital. To qualify for Australian citizenship it is necessary to spend two years in the country: seven hundred and thirty days. It is not necessary for these days to be
consecutive
. My mother, wife, daughter, father-in-law and mother-in-law all qualified within seven hundred and thirty days of their arrival in Sydney and are now all Australian citizens. I had so far
accumulated
a hundred and eighty-four days towards the necessary total. It was a source of contention with my wife.

‘By the time you have spent two years here you will be three hundred years old,’ she said.

‘My work will not always make these demands on me,’ I said.

‘You are a spaceman. Live on aeroplanes. Always breathing that bad air.’

‘If I travelled by boat and train, I would be away for much longer.’ The argument went on from there.

But my wife was right. I spent too much time travelling. The headquarters of our company were in Hong Kong, where I had an office in Tsim Sha Tsui. There was a small room there, once a cupboard, where I had a bed I sometimes used. When I had more time, and the ferries were convenient, I went to stay with Grandfather on Cheung Chau. I worked on my computer on the ferry, and I had a three-band mobile phone which works
everywhere
I go. My partner also had one. Sometimes he rang me when I was on the ferry and he was at our factory in Ho Chi Minh City. Sometimes he rang me when he was in the office and I was in Shanghai or Sydney. Once I was on the toilet in a hotel in Chengdu in Szechaun province.

Our company was called AP Enterprises. My Chinese name is Ho Man-Wei; my English name is Matthew. My partner, Lee
Wong-Ho, has the English name John. Our company
manufactures
and sells air conditioners. We specialise in industrial-sized solutions for buildings and industrial plants. This is a big growth area in China, which is the principal focus of our business. We own a franchise of a German company called Weigen AG. Our business plan in the medium term is to concentrate on the
industrial
aspects of air conditioning. Then as China becomes more prosperous, we aim to move into the market for personal and domestic air conditioning. This is an undeveloped area of
enormous
potential. At the time I am describing, our head office was in Kowloon, and we had subsidiary factories where the machines were constructed in Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Ho Chi Minh City. Hong Kong was extremely important to our business as the legally incorporated basis for our company. There is no company law in mainland China so it can be a difficult place to transact business.

Unfortunately there was a problem with our plan and with our company. We were running out of money. In the aftermath of the Asian crash in 1997 we took the opportunity to expand
aggressively
, confident that the downturn was a temporary one. We borrowed heavily from banks. We bet the company on rapid expansion. But expansion was not rapid. The region recovered more slowly than we expected. In addition, we had problems at our factories in Guangzhou and Ho Chi Minh City. I was facing the prospect of losing everything which I had worked to build up since arriving in Hong Kong as a refugee. It was the most difficult time in my life. At night I would have dreams about being back in Shen Lo during the Cultural Revolution, with my mother and wife and daughter, in front of a crowd shouting slogans at us.

‘I have to be honest, I don’t think Ah Li’s lobster is as good as it used to be,’ Grandfather said as we walked up the hill to his house on Cheung Chau. We had met in the village and had
dinner
at the tea house.

‘Sometimes it’s good, sometimes less good,’ I said. ‘That was always true.’

‘The noodles were good.’

‘His noodles are always good.’

Food is one of the interests we have in common.

Grandfather was a little out of breath by the time we got to his house, but he walked up the hill without stopping. His walking has been very good for his health. Also he drinks a lot of tea and coffee, which helps keep him thin. He insists on living by himself even though he is now eighty-seven. He has a girl from the
village
who helps with the cleaning and cooking.

Grandfather was the first person I ever knew who had money. His way of living influenced me a great deal. His front garden has raked pebbles and a Japanese stone lantern. He keeps it in order himself. Inside the hall there is an umbrella stand. We have a
similar
one in Sydney and I also have one in the hall of our apartment in London. It rains more in Sydney than it does in London, but the weather in London is less predictable so I use the umbrella more when I am there.

The living space of Grandfather’s house is a big room with a dining table at one end and comfortable chairs at the other. When he is on his own my grandfather uses the dining table as his desk. It was covered in a big pile of papers, which I
recognised
as the book written by a dead friend which he had been trying to have published for many years. One wall of the room is dominated by a window which looks out over the South China Sea. French windows open to a patch of garden at the back. The side wall is given to bookcases. The other two walls are covered in photographs of me and my wife and Mei-Lin
and my mother and my wife’s parents. A small door leads to the kitchen.

I ask about the manuscript approximately once a year. Any less would show I have no interest. Any more would be to touch too often on a painful subject.

‘Any news?’ I said.

My grandfather’s face changed. He looked away from me as he put his wallet and keys down on a side table. There was a twist to his expression.

‘Well, something a bit different. I’ve had an unsolicited
expression
of interest and a request to look at the book.’

‘But Grandfather! This is excellent news!’

‘There’s a catch. I can’t accept it.’

He was reluctant to talk more.

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

‘It’s a new outfit called Hong Kong Heritage. A press. It’s part of the Wo empire. I won’t have anything to do with it. An editor there heard of the book. It’s not so surprising, everyone with half a mind in publishing has been sent the damn thing at least once. So I’ve been drafting a polite letter telling her to piss off.’

Grandfather will not have any contact with any part of the Wo family’s business enterprises. He will not watch their TV station, listen to their radio station, go to films made by the studios they partly own, eat in any of the hotels or restaurants they own, visit shops situated on any of their properties, buy or read anything published by any of the book companies in which they have a stake, or travel on the airline in which they have a share. If the
ferries
were sold off and the Wos bought them, he would swim to Cheung Chau. Like many other Hong Kong tycoons the Wos gave enormous amounts of money to the British Conservative Party to fight the 1992 general election. I once asked my
grandfather
, as a joke, if that meant that the British government was another thing that the Wos owned, so that he wouldn’t be able to go to Britain until a different government was in office. I thought that was not a bad joke. He walked out of the room. I have a
business
contact at the Wo company whom I have never been able to use for fear of upsetting my grandfather. The irony is that I don’t even know what the source of his grievance with the Wos is, since he refuses to tell me.

‘You have been seeking to have your friend’s book published for a long time,’ I said.

‘Not at any price though,’ he said. ‘Look, this is all history – I don’t want it to loom over your life. It’s old business of mine. The future is more important than the past. Let’s talk about
something
else. Is Mei-Lin showing any signs of becoming a Methodist yet?’

My daughter is at Mosman Methodist Girls School, so Grandfather jokes that she will grow up to be a Methodist. We talked about her until it was time to go to bed.

My partner called in the morning. I had just had a bowl of congee at a noodle shop. The Chinese say that the poor like congee because it gives them the taste of what it would be like to be rich and the rich like it because it reminds them of when they were poor. I was drinking coffee, a bad Western habit I learned from Grandfather. No one else had yet arrived at work.

‘Ah Wong, good morning. You are well? Where are you?’ I said.

‘Ah Man, hello. I’m at Chek Lap Kok. I couldn’t get on a Shanghai to Guangzhou flight, so I’ve had to take Dragonair here to pick up another flight to Guangzhou. Aeeyah! It leaves in three quarters of an hour. I hope I’m there in time for the
meeting
. Chan is not capable of measuring his own genitals without help.’

Chan was the son-in-law of a senior Communist Party official whose cooperation was important to our interests in Guangzhou. We had to give Chan a job for
guanxi
reasons. His nickname was Fat Fucking Fool.

‘I’m going to Ho Chi Minh City,’ I said. ‘This afternoon or tomorrow depending on who I can talk to in Germany. Best to arrive with as many answers as possible.’

While we spoke, Min-Ho, the company secretary, came in, nodded, and began sorting through letters at her desk. My wife says Min-Ho is the most smartly dressed person she has ever seen, so much so that she frightens men off.

‘They take one look at her and think no, she is too expensive,’ my wife says. She once told Min-Ho this and Min-Ho said she didn’t care. Her family works in the garment business and almost all her clothes are very high quality fakes. As well as being an
efficient secretary, she is an excellent source of advice about shopping for clothes and presents.

At ten past ten, an hour after everybody else, Wilson Chi came in. Wilson is the younger brother of someone I was at technical college with.

He was wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, even though there was no sun. He was carrying what looked like a Japanese comic book. When he took off his Walkman I could hear the noise of Cantopop. Wilson says his ambition is to earn so much money that he has to work only three months a year.

‘You will damage your eyes and be unable to see,’ said
Min-Ho
. Wilson took off his dark glasses.

Wilson’s job was to set up a web site to enable the factories to order components directly, customers to check orders, and the Hong Kong office to supervise both sides of the process and manage the supply chain. The Germans are very keen on this idea.

‘I was up working till four in the morning,’ he said and then, seeing me standing over my desk and realising that meant I might have been there all night, added, ‘at home of course.’ He held up his laptop case as evidence.

‘I need you to check the remote log-on for the server,’ I said. ‘I’m going to Vietnam and the last time I was there I had trouble getting my email. You said you were going to fix it.’

‘If I remember correctly, I think I said the problem was likely to have been with the wiring in the hotel switchboard.’

‘I had difficulties at the factory also.’

‘There it is very primitive.’

‘As long as we both agree that it doesn’t work, and that it would be better if it did work, and that it is your job to make it work, we are in perfect harmony.’

Wilson sat at his desk and began unzipping his computer
carry-case
. I felt remorse at having delivered a too-public rebuke. I find it difficult to talk to Wilson. He is not a natural subordinate, which makes me conscious of not being a natural boss. My
partner
, by nature a more blunt man than I am, handles him better.

I spent the day dealing with the backlog of matters that had built up since my partner’s departure two days before. My
partner
and I have a rule that whoever is in Hong Kong deals with all
the outstanding difficulties, and since one or the other of us is usually travelling, this means that time in the office is usually spent solving problems. As the Americans say, ‘Business is one damn thing after another.’

At 6 o’clock only Min-Ho and Wilson were left in the office. I said goodbye to them, took my bag out of the cupboard, and caught the train to Chek Lap Kok. At the Vietnam Airlines counter there was only a short queue.

‘Could you tell me what type of plane it is, please?’ I asked when it came to my turn.

‘Airbus,’ said the girl. I gave her my ticket and passport. Vietnam Airlines has some old Russian aeroplanes which often crash. When I went through to the departure lounge I called my grandfather. I explained that I had to go to Ho Chi Minh City.

‘I’ll call Lily and keep her up to date,’ he said.

I almost began to say that I would speak to my wife myself. But the exchange of news was not the main reason my grandfather would call Sydney. He had acquired a family only late in his life and was still like a man with a new toy. After speaking to him I rang Sydney.

‘Hello,’ said my daughter. Mei-Lin speaks English with an Australian accent. She is six.

‘How is my little flower?’

‘I came top in a test of drawing and putting words with
pictures
and the teacher said my tiger was more frightening than a real tiger.’

‘Very good. You must have been working very hard.’

‘It took five minutes. Beth-Ann asked me to go swimming on the weekend at Avalon but Mummy said maybe and I have to ask you.’

‘Of course you can go swimming, dearest. Can I speak to Mummy?’

‘You should call from the office, not from the mobile phone,’ said my wife when she came on the line. ‘It is expensive.’

‘I had to get away quickly. I did not want to miss the plane. Why is she still up?’

‘She wanted to stay up until you called,’ my wife said. ‘I said she could.’

In the background I could hear the television.

‘What are you watching?’

‘Father and Mother are looking at one of their detective
programmes
. I was studying.’

My wife was a dentist before she had Mei-Lin. Now she was preparing for examinations so that she could qualify to work in Sydney. We wanted to have another baby but she refused to do so until I was at home more.

‘Anyway, I am saving money,’ I said, ‘because if I was not
talking
to you I would be in the airport shops buying presents.’

‘Then I should let you go now,’ said my wife. We laughed and hung up. I wandered around Chek Lap Kok, walking quickly to get some exercise. Then my flight was called and I boarded the Airbus 320. It was full. The man next to me tapped figures into a laptop until the cabin doors closed. We took off three quarters of an hour late. I had a window seat and as we banked over the harbour Hong Kong was a black bowl of lights.