Five Star Billionaire

That three-week period of internment and difficult public relations upset his tightly packed schedule and cost him in many ways. Not only was the cancelled concert an expensive write-off, but the negative publicity surrounding his sudden and mysterious disappearance caused several projects to be suspended, and one or two sponsors even doubted whether they should continue to support him. His calendar became compressed to the point where he could not fulfil his obligations, and his scheduled participation in the Beijing Olympics music video was cancelled, depriving him of a chance to be seen widely by the biggest audience of them all.

Now he had to work twice as hard to penetrate the Mainland market, his management team said. Everything they did over the coming year would be geared towards establishing him in China – every song he recorded, every TV show he appeared on, every commercial he shot, every hour he slept, every meal he ate. He had everything it took to be a superstar in China, but it would be hard. He had to be ready to sacrifice everything. Gary thought about all the things he had already sacrificed – friends, a social life, family commitments, love, relationships. And he was not at all frightened by what he was about to embark on, because he had none of the things that people normally hold dear. He had nothing to sacrifice.

The giant billboards that stood along the elevated highway bore the poster announcing Gary’s ground-breaking concert in Shanghai. Music Angel has arrived! The Angel of Music is here to save us … His image was spread across each billboard, his newly gym-toned torso showing through a shirt that had been strategically slashed to display his abdominal muscles, the result of eight months’ work with a personal trainer. His head was bowed to show off his thick black hair, that looked slick with sweat, and computer trickery had provided him with a giant pair of angel wings, giving the impression that he was landing gently on earth after a celestial journey. It was impossible to miss these posters. As his car drove him along the busy highway, he reckoned that they appeared every couple of miles, each time positioned in the middle of a cluster of three billboards. On one side of him there was a young woman dressed only in underwear, her index finger to her lips, which were pursed in a hushing shape; on the other side were washing machines and refrigerators.

He had just performed a sell-out concert in Wuhan which had been widely covered in the local press and gained enormous publicity for his principal sponsors, a soft-drink company. They had shot a TV commercial to coincide with his tour, a big-budget production involving sophisticated computer graphics, in which the Angel Gary flies over a devastated landscape defeating gruesome monsters by shining a light that emanates from his heart. As Gary flutters softly to earth, the desert around him turns lush and green. The power to turn darkness to light, he whispers, looking at the camera with his trademark sideways glance before taking a sip of soda.

It was remarked within the industry and by the public alike that Gary was looking great. After many months of limited public appearances, during which he was rarely photographed, he had unveiled his new image – muscular and with a streak of danger. He was still boyish and innocent-looking, but his presence now carried a faint physical threat, as if he had a dark side to him. His stylists and costume designers were showered with praise, as were the people at the record company who had devised the new marketing strategy.

‘Thank goodness we invested so much in your gym work,’ his agent said as they drove past the fifth billboard. ‘Your physical condition is crucial. We can’t afford to have a repeat of Taipei last year.’

Gary did not answer. As usual, the previous night’s concert had left him both exhausted and unable to sleep. It was always like this. The adrenalin of the performance would rush through his veins, and he would feel the deep pounding of the bass notes reverberate in his chest and ribcage hours after the concert had ended, when he was lying in bed trying to sleep. Every tiny light in the room – the green numbers showing the time on the DVD player, the red dot on the TV set – seemed noon-bright and blinding even when his eyes were closed. Often he would just sit in front of the TV with the remote control in his hand, staring at the black screen. He could not even summon enough enthusiasm to turn it on. Sometimes he would eventually fall asleep at around three or four o’clock, but often he would just count the hours until dawn, which would come as a relief, because daylight brought with it activity, and he would not have to sit alone with only his thoughts for company.

In Wuhan the night before, he had tried to surf the internet for the porn sites he had become addicted to, but had failed. That was the problem with China – he could not access any of his usual sites. It had become a late-night ritual for him: turning on his laptop and idly searching for new, more dangerous sites each time. He did this after work or a concert, when he was alone in his apartment or hotel room and the night ahead seemed very long. He was not even excited by these sites any more; they had simply become something like a calming reassurance after a long day. Even the nastiest failed to provoke any response from him. The moment he arrived on the Mainland, however, he was deprived of this source of comfort. He had spent several frustrating hours after the concert searching for the kind of hard-core images he was used to, but the best he could find were women who, though immodestly dressed, wore more than the models he was now seeing on billboards in Shanghai. So he had opened the mini-bar and drunk all the vodka in it, and when he finished he rang to order some more.

Drinking was a recent thing. It helped him sleep, that was all.

He had now been on the road for sixteen days, and in that time he had played fourteen concerts.

‘But, Little Brother,’ his agent continued, ‘you need to sleep. I don’t know what you are doing at night – probably chasing girls, I suppose – but we need to do a lot of public appearances, and you can’t wear your sunglasses all the time. The photoshoots, they’re OK because we can always adjust the photos later, but in public – that’s different. You know what these Shanghainese are like. They will scrutinise your appearance to the very last detail! Please remember what a huge investment we have made for this album – who else gets concerts like the one you’ve just had? Don’t waste this opportunity.’

Gary adjusted his sunglasses. They were becoming his trademark – oversized black plastic shades that gave him a mysterious, futuristic appearance.

‘We can’t say no to the press conferences and guest appearances at malls. You have to look good, Little Brother. To be honest, at the moment even our make-up artists are saying it’s hard to disguise the shadows under your eyes. If we send you out wearing too much make-up these Shanghainese will laugh out loud. They’re haughty and not easily impressed like provincial Chinese, you know. Hey, Little Brother, are you paying attention? Shanghai is at your feet. You can be one of the biggest stars in China, you’re almost there! We have two days to charm them before your concert.’

As his agent spoke Gary knew that sleep would be impossible that night. He tried to remember when he had last slept through the entire night and woken up feeling refreshed and free of worries. It did not seem as if there had ever been such a time. He could fall asleep easily on planes and in cars, and have uncomfortable fifteen-minute naps, but night-sleep was unattainable.

That evening, when he had finished the last round of press obligations, Gary went back to his hotel. He promised his agent that he would have a bath and a massage and go straight to bed, but of course he turned on his laptop instead and began to search idly for sites that did not load properly. He did not feel like drinking on his own while continuing a frustrating search for internet porn, so he took a cab to the Bund, where he knew the high-end Western bars were located. Going out in public, unaccompanied, just before a concert, was contrary to all the advice he had ever received, but he thought that if he went to a place frequented only by Westerners he might not be recognised. His guess proved to be correct. He found a place with a view of the wide sweep of the river and the skyscrapers of Pudong. Although the music was loud and the bar was evidently popular, it was large enough to have plenty of darkened nooks and comfortable chairs from which Gary could sit and watch the crowd of foreigners, some of whom were dancing in the spaces between the tables. They were heavy-footed and big-thighed, their buttocks clattering into chairs and occasionally upsetting the drinks of passers-by. He ordered several unfamiliar cocktails that turned out to be too sweet, and then changed to vodka. He kept his baseball hat on, having decided that the sunglasses would be too ostentatious. It was a relief for him to be away from his hotel room, to hear music that he did not have to perform to. For at least two hours he sat near a window, quietly sipping his drinks. He felt his cheeks flush with the alcohol and his temples begin to throb, but it did not matter – at least he was not alone in the oppressive silence of his hotel room.

His discomfort began when he noticed a few of the Chinese waiters huddling together and whispering. They were trying to hide their curiosity, but could not resist glancing at him. He did not want to leave the bar. It was not yet one o’clock and there were too many hours of darkness left ahead of him. And then the pleasant Australian couple sitting near him – who had just been holding hands and kissing – left, and their place was taken by a sweaty Western man who tried to engage Gary in conversation. The man was drunk, but Gary did not feel like moving from his spot. Soon the man would grow tired and leave him alone.

‘What’s the matter, cat got your tongue? Don’t feel like speaking, eh? Jeez, you Chinese are so goddamn unfriendly. Hey, look at me when I talk to you.’

Gary looked around. The bar was full and there was nowhere to move to.

‘Hey, I’m talking to you.’

Gary turned and said, ‘Fuck off.’

The reports that began to appear the following morning were full of inaccuracies as usual, and there were conflicting accounts from bystanders as to who had started the ensuing altercation, what it had been about, who had taken the first swing. What was in no doubt was that Gary had swiftly lost control and knocked the other man off his feet, even though he was heftily built. The internet was full of photos taken with camera phones – grainy and badly lit, but clearly showing Gary standing over the man with his fist raised. The now-infamous video – again captured on a mobile phone and freely available on YouTube the next day – shows Gary swaying and unsteady on his feet, then bouncing up and down like a boxer ready for a fight before stumbling towards the man on the ground and aiming a casual kick to his midriff as if toe-poking a football. When the man shouts out an inarticulate insult, Gary attempts to pick up a bar stool, presumably to attack him with it. But the stool is fixed and doesn’t budge, so Gary turns his attention to a signboard that says WOW! and rips it off the wall. When some of the waiters attempt to restrain him he fights them off and shouts, Don’t touch me. Do you know who I am? Do you know who I am? The camera wobbles and cuts out, and when it begins to play again Gary is seen surrounded by a group of consoling strangers. The rest of the bar is emptying and the music has stopped. His head is in his hands and his shoulders are heaving up and down as he sobs. In the grey-pink half-light of the video, he is briefly seen in profile, silhouetted against what seems to be a curtain made from shimmering glass beads that look almost electric in the way they sparkle. Although it is dark and his face is not properly lit, his features are unmistakable – the perfect straight nose that ends in a delicate point, the soft angle of the jaw, the hair that falls over his brow. His head is bowed, his shoulders hunched and defeated. It is this image that graces the cover of all the tabloid newspapers the following evening.

4

Forget the Past, Look Only to the Future

That morning’s emails bore no shocks, only positive developments. These days there were no longer any brutish demands from creditors or feeble excuses from non-paying clients, and the daily ritual of replying to emails each morning had become a pleasurable affair for Yinghui, to be carried out at an almost leisurely pace over a cappuccino. There were, amongst other upbeat messages, an invitation to the opening of a new hotel on the river in Shiliupu and an interesting proposition from someone wanting to build a carbon-neutral cultural centre in the middle of town. New contacts and possibilities revealed themselves nowadays without her even having to seek them out. What a change, she thought, as she finished her coffee.

Business was going well for Yinghui. The two upmarket lingerie stores she’d established were flourishing, and in little more than a year she had broken even and was now watching the profits accumulate, week by week, the spreadsheets filling out with handsome-looking figures bursting with promise. Occasionally, when she glanced at the documents her breathless accountant showed her, she ceased to take note of the substantial numbers, for their trajectory was so steep that she had difficulty imagining where they would take her twelve months hence. And yet she was not a person with a modest imagination – quite the opposite.

Her ad campaigns had been striking and wildly successful. She had used only Chinese models, never mixed-race ones, and they never flaunted their bodies in an overtly sexual way. Although they did display a good deal of bare skin, the models were styled beautifully, and the overall aesthetic was classy rather than trashy. The catchy taglines were mysterious and playful, like the images themselves.

Elegant Outside, Passionate Inside

Secret Exciting

Amazing Beautiful You

Although she had originally thought that the shop would cater mainly to the wives of high-ranking party officials and low-profile billionaires who wanted a discreet custom service, Yinghui soon found a huge demand amongst ordinary professional women who were willing to spend upwards of four hundred yuan for the simplest bra. The low lighting and shadowy spaces of the stores, together with the women-only entry policy and touches of luxury such as the Venetian chandeliers created an ambience that proved incredibly popular, with many clients lingering on the plush sofas, and leafing through the glossy magazines and catalogues as they chatted and decided what else to purchase. Before long Yinghui had taken over the adjoining shops and added a coffee bar in one store and a wine bar in the other, extending the opening hours and turning both venues into destinations in their own right. The lingerie was all but removed from the store itself and transferred into specially designed semi-private ‘modelling rooms’, and the newly vacated space was now filled with stylish mannequins, artwork, and giant floral displays.

The income and publicity generated by the two stores made it possible for Yinghui to seek business partners for new ventures on a much larger scale, and her financial projections were such that banks were suddenly willing to listen to her requests for loans. Her plans for expansion included a chain of small shops in metro stations, which would sell the basic Amazing Beautiful You range; twelve shops selling clothes for teenage girls called FILGirl (Fly in Love Girl); an internet-based cosmetics brand called Shhh … aimed at women over the age of forty; and a luxury spa modelled on a northern Thai village, the construction of which was nearing completion.

These exciting ventures made people in the retail industry take notice of Yinghui, and the expatriate community was especially interested to learn that a foreigner was able to negotiate the complex world of Chinese retail. She began to give talks to the various foreign Chambers of Commerce, speaking to budding entrepreneurs about the pressures of being a foreigner and a woman in a male-dominated world. As she became more visible she did an interview with the Shanghai Daily – a brief article, nothing more – in which she was asked to reveal the key to her success at a time when many businesses were experiencing difficulties due to the global recession.

‘I smile every day while coolly evaluating my business model,’ she replied, smiling coolly. ‘I remain 100 per cent optimistic even in a crisis while being decisive enough to act as required.’

Was she ruthless? the interviewer asked.

‘Sure,’ she said. ‘You have to be tough to succeed.’

Even as she said it she regretted the way she sounded – matter-of-fact, unthinking, as if nothing bothered her. She tried immediately to laugh and find common ground with the interviewer, a young woman in her mid-twenties. But as Yinghui joked about things in the news – celebrity gossip, cute pop singers, the latest films – she could feel the journalist withdrawing behind the safety of a polite smile, the gulf between them widening. She felt old, her laugh sounded fake and robotic; the girl merely smiled and listened as Yinghui’s jokes became more and more risqué.

That interview sealed her growing reputation in more ways than one. Her image hardened into this: a bold businesswoman, certainly; but also a super-efficient, humourless automaton who would coldly plunge a knife into you, but she wouldn’t bother to do it in your back, she’d stick it in your chest. She saw this written in a ‘joke’ email circulating in her office, copied to her by mistake. Ultrawoman, Dragon Queen, Terminatress, Rambo – these were some of the nicknames she discovered as she scrolled down the email chain, which was full of comments on her boring suits and severe hairstyle – ‘like a rural Party official dressed for an interview with Hu Jintao’, someone joked. Some months later, at a cocktail party thrown by an American law firm, she heard one Western man say to another, ‘Hey, look, there’s that Chinese lesbian.’

She had got used to having her hair short – it had been her style for almost twenty years, ever since university days. There was a time when people found the look charming and gamine, like Jean Seberg in À Bout de Souffle, from which Yinghui first got the idea. She didn’t think she’d changed much since then – she didn’t look very different from the Yinghui she saw whenever she looked at her college photos – but she wondered if she was getting a bit old for the hairstyle now. No woman in Shanghai had short hair – they all seemed to have long glossy locks that fell to their shoulders or were gathered in a dramatic pile on their heads in the style of air hostesses. She began to grow her hair out, but was frustrated by how long it took. At first it became thin and shabby, like a scarecrow’s, then thicker but still messy, like a schoolboy’s. When, finally, it reached a decent length, her hairdresser said, ‘Don’t expect me to perform miracles.’

She began to dread the social functions that were becoming an increasing necessity in her professional life: a thrusting entrepreneur had to go out and be seen, but a single, always unaccompanied woman of thirty-seven was, in Shanghai, an invitation for people to comment. The locals had names for women like her, whom they considered sadly past their prime. Shengnü, Baigujing – that sort of thing. Sometimes she wondered if she really was that: a leftover woman, the dregs; or a shaggy monster waiting to be slain by the Monkey God.

‘Style issues.’ That was the phrase her friends used to describe what her new priorities should be. She needed to find a look that projected an image: someone effortlessly successful, who had accomplished all that she had while remaining gentle and feminine – a real Chinese woman. She wanted to ask what a real Chinese woman was, whether in some way she differed from a real Indian woman or a real American woman. And if she wasn’t a real Chinese woman, what was she – a fake one?

These new concerns – style issues – were not a welcome addition to her list of considerations. She woke every morning at 6 a.m., had a glass of fruit juice, then went for a forty-five-minute run on the treadmill. After a breakfast of soy protein and mixed berry fruitshake she would head down to the office and begin to deal with phone calls and emails before the first meetings began to force their way into her day. In a city where lunch breaks began religiously at 11.30 a.m., she rarely had lunch unless she had arranged a business meeting at a restaurant. Most of the time she would work through midday and simply forget to eat. Afternoons were reserved for visiting her various businesses, spending time chatting to the staff in the stores, gauging their morale and energy levels – the little human touches that made her a good employer. The evenings were nowadays taken up with entertaining or being entertained, which she neither enjoyed nor disliked. She would get home at eleven and answer any outstanding emails on her BlackBerry while in bed, in the few moments other people might have spent reading glossy magazines to ‘wind down’. At precisely midnight she would put the light out and swiftly fall asleep, rarely allowing the thoughts of her day to overspill into her slumber.

Three times a week she went for Power Yoga at a studio in Xintiandi, never speaking to the other women who had time to hang around and chat in the corridors. At the end of her session, when she lay briefly on her mat blinking at the pistachio-green ceiling, her mind would still be racing, energised by the thought of all the things ahead of her. Empty your mind and be still, her teachers would say, enjoy being in the present: Let go of all that has happened in the past. Do not think about what lies ahead but stay in the stillness of this moment. But this was not possible for her. There was too much for her to do, too many thoughts spinning and clashing in her mind. She needed to look ahead, map out her future, every minute of the day – like a constantly moving ocean creature that would drown if ever it stopped swimming, forward, forward.

She could never stand emptiness, and stillness was even worse.

She had a small group of friends, a mixture of local and expat women, with whom she tried to meet up for dinner once every other week – the last semblance of her dwindling social life. They usually met at a Hunan restaurant on the top floor of a Japanese department store on Nanjing Lu, not far from Yinghui’s office. Recently, she had begun to notice during these get-togethers that the other women would casually mention male friends of theirs, all of whom seemed to be single or divorced and in their late thirties or early forties. Discussion of these men seemed innocent enough at first; Yinghui tried to shrug it off as merely catching up on gossip. But after a while she could no longer ignore the fact that her (securely married) friends were taking pity on her, particularly as the men in question were almost exclusively Western – for everyone knew that once a woman was past thirty-five, there was little point in even trying to hook up with a local guy: Westerners were so much more accepting of age.

‘Are you trying to matchmake me?’ she challenged them jokingly one day as the double-chilli fish head arrived. She expected them to be embarrassed by the exposure of their scheming ways, but instead they were upfront about it. ‘Let’s face it,’ one of them said, beginning to pluck the meat from the fish cheeks with her chopsticks, ‘you can’t be happy in a place like Shanghai if you’re single. We’re all feminists, blah blah blah, but this is not London or New York, you know, this is China. Without a husband, you won’t be successful in your work. You can’t expect to work the hours you do and come back to an empty apartment. Besides, if you want children, you have to get moving. We know it sounds cruel, but … get real.’