Crazy Rich Asians (37 page)

Dr. Gu was a retired doctor in his late eighties, an eccentric who lived alone in
a small, dilapidated house at the bottom of Dunearn Road. He was born in Xian to a
family of scholars, but moved to Singapore in his youth for schooling. In the natural
order of how Singapore society worked, Wye Mun and Dr. Gu might never have crossed
paths had it not been for Dr. Gu’s maddening stubbornness some thirty-odd years ago.

Goh Developments had been building a new complex of semidetached houses along Dunearn
Road, and Dr. Gu’s little plot of land was the sole obstruction to the project getting
under way. His neighbors had been bought out under extremely favorable terms, but
Dr. Gu refused to budge. After all of his lawyers had failed in their negotiations,
Wye Mun drove to the house himself, armed with his checkbook and determined to talk
some sense into the old fart. Instead, the brilliant old curmudgeon convinced him
to alter his entire scheme, and the revised development turned out to be even more
of a success because of his recommendations. Wye Mun now found himself visiting his
new friend to offer him a job. Dr. Gu refused, but Wye Mun would keep coming back,
enthralled by Dr. Gu’s encyclopedic
knowledge of Singapore history, his acute analysis of the financial markets, and his
wonderful Longjing tea.

Wye Mun and Peik Lin drove over to Dr. Gu’s house, parking Wye Mun’s shiny new Maserati
Quattroporte just outside the rust-corroded metal gate.

“I can’t believe he still lives here,” Peik Lin said, as they walked down the cracked
cement driveway. “Shouldn’t he be in a retirement home by now?”

“I think he manages okay. He has a maid, and also two daughters, you know,” Wye Mun
said.

“He was smart not to sell out to you thirty years ago. This little piece of land is
worth even more of a fortune now. It’s the last undeveloped plot on Dunearn Road,
we can probably even build a very sleek, narrow apartment tower here,” Peik Lin commented.

“I tell you
lah
, he intends to die in this shack. Did I tell you what I heard from my stockbroker
Mr. Oei many years ago? Dr. Gu is sitting on one million shares of HSBC.”

“What?” Peik Lin turned to her father in amazed shock. “One million shares? That’s
more than fifty million in today’s dollars!”

“He started buying HSBC shares in the forties. I heard this tidbit twenty years ago,
and the stock has split how many times since then? I tell you, old Dr. Gu is worth
hundreds of millions by now.”

Peik Lin stared with renewed wonder as the man with a shock of unruly white hair came
hobbling out onto his porch in a brown polyester short-sleeve shirt that looked like
it had been tailored in pre-Castro Havana and a pair of dark green pajama bottoms.
“Goh Wye Mun! Still wasting money on expensive cars, I see,” he bellowed, his voice
surprisingly robust for a man of his age.

“Greetings, Dr. Gu! Do you remember my daughter, Peik Lin?” Wye Mun said, patting
the old man on the back.

“Aiyah, is this your daughter? I thought this pretty girl must surely be your latest
mistress. I know how all you property tycoons are.”

Peik Lin laughed. “Hello, Dr. Gu. My father wouldn’t be standing here if I was his
mistress. My mum would castrate him!”

“Oh, but I thought she did that a long time ago already.” Everyone laughed, as Dr.
Gu led them to a few wooden chairs arranged in his small front garden. Peik Lin noticed
that the grass was meticulously mowed and edged. The fence that fronted Dunearn Road
was
covered in thick intertwining vines of morning glories, screening the bucolic little
patch from the traffic along the busy thoroughfare. There isn’t a single place like
this left along this entire stretch, Peik Lin thought.

An elderly Chinese servant came out of the house with a large round wooden tray. On
it was a ceramic teapot, an old copper kettle, three clay teacups, and three smaller
snifter cups. Dr. Gu held the well-burnished kettle high above the teapot and began
pouring. “I love watching Dr. Gu do his tea ritual,” Wye Mun said to his daughter
quietly. “See how he pours the water from high up. This is known as
xuan hu gao chong
—‘rinsing from an elevated pot.’ ” Then, Dr. Gu began to pour the tea into each of
the three cups, but instead of offering it to his guests, he flung the light caramel-colored
tea dramatically from each cup onto the grass behind him, much to Peik Lin’s surprise.
He then refilled the teapot with a fresh batch of hot water.

“See, Peik Lin, that was the first rinse of the leaves, known as
hang yun liu shui
—‘a row of clouds, running water.’ This second pouring from a lower height is called
zai zhu qing xuan
—‘direct again the pure spring,’ ” Wye Mun continued.

“Wye Mun, she could probably care less about these old proverbs,” Dr. Gu said, before
launching into a clinically precise explanation. “The first pouring was done from
a height so that the force of water rinses the Longjing leaves. The hot water also
helps to acclimate the temperature of the teapot and the cups. Then you do a second
pouring, this time slowly and near the mouth of the pot, to gently coax the flavor
out of the leaves. Now we let it steep for a while.”

The sound of screeching truck brakes just beyond the fence interrupted the serenity
of Dr. Gu’s tea ritual. “Doesn’t all this noise bother you?” Peik Lin asked.

“Not at all. It reminds me that I am still alive, and that my hearing is not deteriorating
as quickly as I had planned,” Dr. Gu replied. “Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to hear
all the nonsense that comes out of politicians’ mouths!”

“Come on,
lah
, Dr. Gu, if it weren’t for our politicians, do you think you would be able to enjoy
this nice garden of yours? Think of how they’ve transformed this place from a backward
island to one of the most prosperous countries in the world,” Wye Mun argued, always
on the defensive whenever anyone criticized the government.

“What rubbish! Prosperity is nothing but an illusion. Do you
know what
my children
are doing with all this prosperity? My eldest daughter started a dolphin research
institute. She is determined to rescue the white dolphins of the Yangtze River from
extinction. Do you know how polluted that river is? This bloody mammal is already
extinct! Scientists haven’t been able to locate a single one of these creatures for
years now, but she is determined to find them. And my other daughter? She buys old
castles in Scotland. Not even the Scottish want those crumbling old pits, but my daughter
does. She spends millions restoring them, and then no one comes to visit her. Her
wastrel son, my only grandson and namesake, is thirty-six years old. Do you want to
know what he does?”

“No … I mean, yes,” Peik Lin said, trying not to giggle.

“He has a rock-and-roll band in London. Not even like those Beatles, who at least
made money. This one has long oily hair, wears black eyeliner, and makes horrible
noises with home appliances.”

“Well, at least they are being
creative
,” Peik Lin offered politely.

“Creatively wasting all my hard-earned money! I’m telling you, this so-called ‘prosperity’
is going to be the downfall of Asia. Each new generation becomes lazier than the next.
They think they can make overnight fortunes just by flipping properties and getting
hot tips in the stock market. Ha! Nothing lasts forever, and when this boom ends,
these youngsters won’t know what hit them.”

“This is why I force my kids to work for a living—they are not going to get a single
cent out of me until I am six feet underground,” Wye Mun said, winking at his daughter.

Dr. Gu peeked into the teapot, finally satisfied with the brew. He poured the tea
into the snifter cups. “Now this is called
long feng cheng xiang
, which means ‘the dragon and phoenix foretells good fortune,’ ” he said, placing
a teacup over the smaller snifter cup and inverting the cups deftly, releasing the
tea into the drinking cup. He presented the first cup to Wye Mun, and the second cup
to Peik Lin. She thanked him and took her first sip. The tea was bracingly bitter,
and she tried not to make a face while swallowing it.

“So, Wye Mun, what really brings you here today? Surely you didn’t come to hear an
old man rant.” Dr. Gu eyed Peik Lin. “Your father is very cunning, you know. He only
comes calling when he needs to get something out of me.”

“Dr. Gu, your roots go deep in Singapore. Tell me, have you ever heard of James Young?”
Wye Mun asked, cutting to the chase.

Dr. Gu looked up from pouring his own tea with a start. “James Young! I haven’t heard
anyone utter that name in decades.”

“Do you know him, then? I met his grandson recently. He’s dating a good friend of
mine,” Peik Lin explained. She took another sip of the tea, finding herself appreciating
its silky bitterness more and more with each sip.

“Who are the Youngs?” Wye Mun asked eagerly.

“Why are you suddenly so interested in these people?” Dr. Gu queried.

Wye Mun considered the question carefully before he answered. “We are trying to help
my daughter’s friend, since she is quite serious about the boy. I’m not familiar with
the family.”

“Of course you wouldn’t know them, Wye Mun. Hardly anybody does these days. I have
to admit that my own knowledge is very outdated.”

“Well, what can you tell us?” Wye Mun pressed on.

Dr. Gu took a long sip of his tea and leaned into a more comfortable position. “The
Youngs are descended, I believe, from a long line of royal court physicians, going
all the way back to the Tang dynasty. James Young—Sir James Young, actually—was the
first Western-educated neurologist in Singapore, trained at Oxford.”

“He made his fortune as a doctor?” Wye Mun asked, rather surprised.

“Not at all! James was not the sort of person who cared about making a fortune. He
was too busy saving lives in World War II, during the Japanese occupation,” Dr. Gu
said, staring at the crisscrossing patterns of ivy on his fence as they suddenly seemed
to transform into diamond-like patterns, reminding him of a chain-link fence from
a long time ago.

“So you knew him during the war?” Wye Mun asked, jarring Dr. Gu out of his recollection.

“Yes, yes, that’s how I knew him,” Dr. Gu said slowly. He hesitated for a few moments,
before continuing. “James Young was in charge of an underground medical corps that
I was briefly involved with. After the war, he set up his clinic in the old section
of Chinatown, specifically to serve the poor and elderly. I heard that for years he
charged his patients practically nothing.”

“So how did he make his money?”

“There you go again, Wye Mun, always chasing after the money,” Dr. Gu chided.

“Well, where did that huge house come from?” Wye Mun asked.

“Ah, I see the true nature of your interest now. You must be referring to the house
off Tyersall Road.”

“Yes. Have you been there?” Peik Lin asked.

“Goodness, no. I only heard about it. Like I said, I really did not know James very
well; I would never have been invited.”

“I dropped my friend off at the house last week, and I could hardly believe it when
I saw the place.”

“You must be joking! Is the house still there?” Dr. Gu said, looking quite shocked.

“Yes,” Peik Lin replied.

“I would have thought that the place was long gone. I must say I’m quite impressed
that the family never sold out in all these years.”

“Yes, I’m quite shocked that there’s a property this large on the island,” Wye Mun
cut in.

“Why should you be? The whole area behind the Botanic Gardens used to be full of great
estates. The Sultan of Johore had a palace over there called Istana Woodneuk that
burned to the ground many years ago. You say you were there last week?” Dr. Gu queried.

“Yes, but I did not go in.”

“A pity. It would be a rare treat to see one of those houses. So few are left, thanks
to all the brilliant developers,” Dr. Gu said, glaring in mock anger at Wye Mun.

“So if James Young never made any money, how did—” Wye Mun began.

“You don’t listen, Wye Mun! I said that James Young wasn’t interested in making money,
but I never said he didn’t have any. The Youngs had money, generations of money. Besides,
James married Shang Su Yi. And she, I can tell you for a fact, comes from a family
so unfathomably rich, it would make your eyes water, Wye Mun.”

“Who is she, then?” Wye Mun asked, his curiosity piqued to boiling point.

“All right, I will tell you and shut you up once and for all. She is the daughter
of Shang Loong Ma. Never heard that name, either, right? He was an enormously wealthy
banker in Peking, and before the Qing dynasty fell, he very smartly moved his money
to Singapore,
where he made an even greater fortune in shipping and commodities. The man had his
tentacles in every major business in the region—he controlled all the shipping lines
from the Dutch East Indies to Siam, and he was the mastermind behind uniting the early
Hokkien banks in the thirties.”

“So Nick’s grandmother inherited all of that,” Peik Lin surmised.

“She and her brother, Alfred.”

“Alfred Shang. Hmm … another fellow I’ve never heard of,” Wye Mun huffed.

“Well, that’s not surprising. He moved to England many decades ago, but he is still—very
quietly—one of the most influential figures in Asia. Wye Mun, you have to realize
that before your generation of fat cats, there was an earlier generation of tycoons
who made their fortunes and moved on to greener pastures. I thought most of the Youngs
had long since dispersed from Singapore. The last time I heard any news, it was that
one of the daughters had married into the Thai royal family.”

“Sounds like a pretty well-connected bunch,” Peik Lin said.

“Oh, yes indeed. The eldest daughter, for instance, is married to Harry Leong.”

“Harry Leong, the fellow who is director of the Institute of ASEAN Affairs?”