Crazy Rich Asians (3 page)

Nicholas Young and Rachel Chu

“You sure about this?” Rachel asked again, blowing softly on the surface of her steaming
cup of tea. They were sitting at their usual window table at Tea & Sympathy, and Nick
had just invited her to spend the summer with him in Asia.

“Rachel, I’d love it if you came,” Nick reassured her. “You weren’t planning on teaching
this summer, so what’s your worry? Think you won’t be able to handle the heat and
humidity?”

“No, that’s not it. I know you’re going to be so busy with all your best-man duties,
and I wouldn’t want to distract you,” Rachel said.

“What distraction? Colin’s wedding is only going to take up the first week in Singapore,
and then we can spend the rest of the summer just bumming around Asia. Come on, let
me show you where I grew up. I want to take you to all my favorite haunts.”

“Will you show me the sacred cave where you lost your virginity?” Rachel teased, arching
an eyebrow playfully.

“Definitely! We can even stage a reenactment!” Nick laughed, slathering jam and clotted
cream onto a scone still warm from the oven. “And doesn’t a good friend of yours live
in Singapore?”

“Yes, Peik Lin, my best friend from college,” Rachel said. “She’s been trying to get
me to come visit for years.”

“All the more reason. Rachel, you’re going to love it, and I just
know you’re going to flip out over the food! You do realize Singapore is the most
food-obsessed country on the planet?”

“Well, just watching the way you fawn over everything you eat, I figured it’s pretty
much the national sport.”

“Remember Calvin Trillin’s
New Yorker
piece on Singapore street foods? I’ll take you to all the local dives even
he
doesn’t know about.” Nick took another bite of his fluffy scone and continued with
his mouth full. “I know how much you love these scones. Just wait till you taste my
Ah Ma’s—”

“Your Ah Ma bakes scones?” Rachel tried to imagine a traditional Chinese grandmother
preparing this quintessentially English confection.

“Well, she doesn’t exactly bake them herself, but she has the best scones in the world—you’ll
see,” Nick said, turning around reflexively to make sure no one in the cozy little
spot had overheard him. He didn’t want to become persona non grata at his favorite
café for carelessly pledging allegiance to another scone, even if it was his grandmother’s.

At a neighboring table, the girl huddled behind a three-tiered stand piled high with
finger sandwiches was getting increasingly excited by the conversation she was overhearing.
She suspected it might be him, but now she had absolute confirmation. It
was
Nicholas Young. Even though she was only fifteen at the time, Celine Lim never forgot
the day Nicholas strolled past their table at Pulau Club
^*
and flashed that devastating grin of his at her sister Charlotte.

“Is that one of the Leong brothers?” their mother had asked.

“No, that’s Nicholas Young, a cousin of the Leongs,” Charlotte replied.

“Philip Young’s boy? Aiyah, when did he shoot up like that? He’s so handsome now!”
Mrs. Lim exclaimed.

“He’s just back from Oxford. Double-majored in history and law,” Charlotte added,
anticipating her mother’s next question.

“Why didn’t you get up and talk to him?” Mrs. Lim said excitedly.

“Why should I bother, when you swat away every guy who dares come near,” Charlotte
answered curtly.

“
Alamak
, stupid girl! I’m only trying to protect you from fortune hunters. This one you’d
be lucky to have. This one you can
cheong
!”

Celine couldn’t believe her mother was actually encouraging her big sister to
snatch
this boy. She stared curiously at Nicholas, now laughing animatedly with his friends
at a table under a blue-and-white umbrella by the pool. Even from afar, he stood out
in high relief. Unlike the other fellows with their regulation Indian barbershop haircuts,
Nicholas had perfectly tousled black hair, chiseled Cantonese pop-idol features, and
impossibly thick eyelashes. He was the cutest, dreamiest guy she’d ever seen.

“Charlotte, why don’t you go over and invite him to your fund-raiser on Saturday?”
their mother kept on.

“Stop it, Mum.” Charlotte smiled through gritted teeth. “I know what I’m doing.”

As it turned out, Charlotte did not know what she was doing, since Nicholas never
showed up at her fund-raiser, much to their mother’s eternal disappointment. But that
afternoon at Pulau Club left such an indelible mark on Celine’s adolescent memory
that six years later and on the other side of the planet, she still recognized him.

“Hannah, let me get a picture of you with that delicious sticky toffee pudding,” Celine
said, taking out her camera phone. She pointed it in the direction of her friend,
but surreptitiously trained the lens on Nicholas. She snapped the photo and immediately
e-mailed it to her sister, who now lived in Atherton, California. Her phone pinged
minutes later.

Nick gazed out the café window, marveling at the people with tiny dogs parading along
this stretch of Greenwich Avenue as if it
were a catwalk for the city’s most fashionable breeds. A year ago, French bulldogs
were all the rage, but now it looked like Italian grey hounds were giving the Frenchies
a run for their money. He faced Rachel again, resuming his campaign. “The great thing
about starting out in Singapore is that it’s the perfect base. Malaysia is just across
a bridge, and it’s a quick hop to Hong Kong, Cambodia, Thailand. We can even go island-hopping
off Indonesia—”

“It all sounds amazing, but
ten weeks
 … I don’t know if I want to be away that long,” Rachel mused. She could sense Nick’s
eagerness, and the idea of visiting Asia again filled her with excitement. She had
spent a year teaching in Chengdu between college and grad school but couldn’t afford
to travel anywhere beyond China’s borders back then. As an economist, she certainly
knew enough about Singapore—this tiny, intriguing island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula,
which had transformed within a few short decades from a British colonial backwater
into the country with the world’s highest concentration of millionaires. It would
be fascinating to see the place up close, especially with Nick as her guide.

Yet something about this trip made Rachel a little apprehensive, and she couldn’t
help but ponder the deeper implications. Nick made it seem so spontaneous, but knowing
him, she was sure he had put far more thought into it than he let on. They had been
together for almost two years, and now he was inviting her on an extended trip to
visit his hometown, to attend his best friend’s wedding, no less. Did this mean what
she thought it did?

Rachel peered into her teacup, wishing she could divine something from the stray leaves
pooled at the bottom of the deep golden Assam. She had never been the sort of girl
who longed for fairytale endings. Being twenty-nine, she was by Chinese standards
well into old-maid territory, and even though her busybody relatives were perpetually
trying to set her up, she had spent the better part of her twenties focused on getting
through grad school, finishing her dissertation, and jump-starting her career in academia.
This surprise invitation, however, sparked some vestigial instinct within her.
He wants to take me home. He wants me to meet his family
. The long-dormant romantic in her was awakening, and she knew there was only one
answer to give.

“I’ll have to check with my dean to see when I’m needed back,
but you know what? Let’s do this!” Rachel declared. Nick leaned across the table,
kissing her jubilantly.

Minutes later, before Rachel herself knew for certain her summer plans, the details
of her conversation had already begun to spread far and wide, circling the globe like
a virus set loose. After Celine Lim (Parsons School of Design fashion major) e-mailed
her sister Charlotte Lim (recently engaged to venture capitalist Henry Chiu) in California,
Charlotte called her best friend Daphne Ma (Sir Benedict Ma’s youngest daughter) in
Singapore and breathlessly filled her in. Daphne texted eight friends, including Carmen
Kwek (granddaughter of Robert “Sugar King” Kwek) in Shanghai, whose cousin Amelia
Kwek had gone to Oxford with Nicholas Young. Amelia simply
had
to IM her friend Justina Wei (the Instant Noodle heiress) in Hong Kong, and Justina,
whose office at Hutchison Whampoa was right across the hall from Roderick Liang’s
(of the Liang Finance Group Liangs), simply
had
to interrupt his conference call to share this juicy tidbit. Roderick in turn Skyped
his girlfriend Lauren Lee, who was holidaying at the Royal Mansour in Marrakech with
her grandmother Mrs. Lee Yong Chien (no introductions necessary) and her aunt Patsy
Teoh (Miss Taiwan 1979, now the ex-wife of telecom mogul Dickson Teoh). Patsy made
a poolside call to Jacqueline Ling (granddaughter of philanthropist Ling Yin Chao)
in London, knowing full well that Jacqueline would have a direct line to Cassandra
Shang (Nicholas Young’s second cousin), who spent every spring at her family’s vast
estate in Surrey. And so this exotic strain of gossip spread rapidly through the levantine
networks of the Asian jet set, and within a few hours, almost everyone in this exclusive
circle knew that Nicholas Young was bringing a girl home to Singapore.

And,
alamak
! This was big news.

Eleanor Young

Everyone knew that
Dato’
^*
Tai Toh Lui made his first fortune the dirty way by bringing down Loong Ha Bank in
the early eighties, but in the two decades since, the efforts of his wife,
Datin
Carol Tai, on behalf of the right charities had burnished the Tai name into one of
respectability. Every Thursday, for instance, the
datin
held a Bible study luncheon for her closest friends in her bedroom, and Eleanor Young
was sure to attend.

Carol’s palatial bedroom was not actually in the sprawling glass-and-steel structure
everyone living along Kheam Hock Road nicknamed the “Star Trek House.” Instead, on
the advice of her husband’s security team, the bedroom was hidden away in the pool
pavilion, a white travertine fortress that spanned the swimming pool like a postmodern
Taj Mahal. To get there, you either had to follow the footpath that wound along the
coral rock gardens or take the shortcut through the service wing. Eleanor always preferred
the quicker route, since she assiduously avoided the sun to maintain her porcelain-white
complexion, and also, as Carol’s oldest friend, she
considered herself exempt from the formalities of waiting at the front door, being
announced by the butler, and all that nonsense.