7

THE WEST LAKE

HANGZHOU, CHINA

As the last vapors of early-morning mist hovered over the still waters, the only sound to be heard was the discreet splish of the boatman’s single wooden oar as he rowed Rachel and Peik Lin through a secluded inlet of Hangzhou’s West Lake.

“I am so glad you dragged me out of bed to do this. This is beyond exquisite!” Rachel sighed contentedly as she stretched her legs out on the cushioned lounge seat of their traditional Chinese rowboat.

“I told you the lake is at its most beautiful right at dawn,” Peik Lin said, gazing at the poetry of lines created by the converging mountains. Far off, she could make out an ancient hilltop temple silhouetted against the pearl gray sky. There was just something about this landscape that touched her beyond words, and she suddenly understood how over the centuries all the great Chinese poets and artists were inspired by the West Lake.

As the boat drifted slowly under one of the romantic stone bridges, Rachel asked the boatman, “When were these bridges built?”

“There’s no telling, miss. Hangzhou was the favored retreat of the emperors for five thousand years—Marco Polo called it the City of Heaven,” he replied.

“I would have to agree with him,” Rachel said, taking another long, slow sip of the freshly roasted Longjing tea that the boatman had prepared for her. As the boat drifted through a watery grove of wild lotuses, the girls caught sight of a small kingfisher perched on the tip of a lotus stalk, waiting for the right moment to strike.

“I wish Nick could see this,” Rachel said wistfully.

“Me too! But you’ll be back with him before too long. I think you’ve been bitten by the Hangzhou bug, haven’t you?”

“Jesus, I wish I’d come sooner! When you first told me this place was China’s answer to Lake Como, I had my doubts, but after visiting that glorious tea plantation yesterday, followed by the amazing dinner at the mountaintop temple, I’m completely sold.”

“And here I thought I needed to arrange for George Clooney to pop up from under those willows over there,” Peik Lin quipped.

Arriving back at the elegant wooden dock of the Four Seasons Hangzhou, they climbed out of the boat slowly, still lulled by the sybaritic boat ride. “Just in time for our spa appointments. Get ready, this place is going to rock your world,” Peik Lin said excitedly as they walked along the pathway to the palatial gray-walled villa that housed the resort’s spa. “Which treatment did you end up scheduling first?”

“I thought I’d start the day with the Jade and Lotus massage,” Rachel answered.

Peik Lin raised an eyebrow. “Hmm…what parts of your body are they massaging, exactly?”

“Oh, stop! Apparently they buff your body with lotus seeds and crushed jade and then give you an intensive deep-tissue rubdown. What are you getting?”

“My favorite—the Imperial Consorts and Concubines Perfumed Water Ritual. It’s inspired by the bathing ritual that was reserved for whichever woman the emperor chose to spend the night with. You’re immersed in a perfumed bath of orange blossoms and gardenia, followed by a gentle pressure-point massage. Then they do this awesome body scrub with crushed pearls and almonds, before cocooning you in a white-china-clay body wrap. It all ends with a long nap in a private steam room. I tell you, I always come out of it feeling a decade younger.”

“Oooh. Maybe I’ll do that one tonight. Oh wait, I think I scheduled the luxury caviar facial tonight. Shoot, we don’t have enough days for all the treatments I want to try!”

“Wait a minute, when did Rachel Chu, who wouldn’t even go for a pedicure back in her college days, become a spa whore?”

Rachel grinned. “It’s all the time I’ve been spending with those Shanghai girls—I think it’s catching.”

After several hours of pampering treatments, Rachel and Peik Lin met for lunch at the resort’s restaurant. Naturally, they were shown to one of the private dining rooms, which were in pagoda-style structures overlooking a serene lagoon. Admiring the massive Murano glass chandelier that hovered over their lacquered walnut table, Rachel mused, “After this trip, New York is going to seem like a dump. Every place I go to in China seems to be more luxurious than the last. Who would have ever guessed? Remember when I was teaching in Chengdu in 2002? The place where I roomed had one communal indoor toilet, and that was considered a luxury.”

“Ha! You wouldn’t recognize Chengdu now. It’s become the Silicon Valley of China—one fifth of the world’s computers are made there,” Peik Lin said.

Rachel shook her head in wonder. “I just can’t get over it—all these megacities springing up overnight, this nonstop economic boom. The economist in me wants to say ‘This can’t last,’ but then I’ll see something that totally blows my mind. The other day in Shanghai, Nick and I were trying to get back to our hotel from Xintiandi. All the taxis had their signs lit up, but we couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t stop for us. Finally, this Australian girl standing on the corner said to us, ‘Don’t you have the taxi app?’ We were like, The what? Turns out there’s an app you use to bid on taxis. Everyone uses it, and the highest bidder ends up getting the taxi.”

Peik Lin laughed. “Free-market enterprise at its best!”

A server entered the room and lifted the lid off the first course with a flourish. It was a heaping plate of tiny shrimp that glistened like pearls. “These are the famous Hangzhou freshwater shrimp flash fried in garlic. You don’t find them anywhere else on the planet. I’ve been craving this dish since we first talked about meeting up here,” Peik Lin said, scooping a generous portion onto Rachel’s plate.

Rachel tried a mouthful and smiled at her friend in surprise. “Wow…they’re sweet!

“Pretty amazing, right?”

“I haven’t had seafood this good since Paris,” Rachel said.

“I always say that only the French can compete with the Chinese when it comes to preparing seafood. I’m sure you guys ate your way through Paris.”

“Nick and I did, but food wasn’t really the focus for Colette and her friends. Remember how I used to accuse you of ‘irrational exuberance’ whenever Neiman Marcus invited you to a trunk show? Well, these girls went completely batshit insane in Paris! They hit the shops from morning till night, and we had three extra Range Rovers tailing us everywhere we went just to carry the shopping bags alone!”

Peik Lin smiled. “Sounds familiar. These PRCs come to Singapore on crazy shopping sprees too. You know, for many of them, shopping on a massive scale is how they validate their success. It’s a way to make up for all the suffering their families had to endure in the past.”

“Look, I get it. I come from an immigrant family that’s done well, and I married a guy who’s well-off. But I feel that there’s a certain limit I would never go over when it comes to shopping,” Rachel said. “I mean, when you’re spending more money on a couture dress than it takes to vaccinate a thousand children against measles or provide clean water to an entire town, that’s just unconscionable.”

Peik Lin gave Rachel a thoughtful look. “Isn’t it all relative though? To someone living in a mud hut somewhere, isn’t the $200 you paid for those Rag & Bone jeans you’re wearing considered obscene? The woman buying that couture dress could argue it took a team of twelve seamstresses three months to create the garment, and they are all supporting their families by doing this. My mother wanted an exact re-creation on her bedroom ceiling of a Baroque fresco she saw at some palace in Germany. It cost her half a million dollars, but two artists from the Czech Republic worked on it every day for three months. One guy was able to buy and furnish a new house in Prague, while the other one sent his kid to Penn State. We all choose to spend our money in different ways, but at least we get to make that choice. Just think—twenty years ago, these girls you went to Paris with would only have two choices: Do you want your Mao jacket in shit brown or shit gray?”

Rachel laughed. “Okay, point taken, but I still wouldn’t spend that kind of money. Now I don’t think I can eat any of these braised meatballs. They’re reminding me too much of a steaming pile of Mao.”

After lunch, Rachel and Peik Lin decided to do some exploring around the resort, which was set on seventeen acres of landscaped grounds designed to resemble the gardens of an imperial summer palace from the Qing dynasty. As they meandered along the covered walkways, inhaling the fragrant cherry blossoms and admiring interconnected lily ponds, Rachel started to feel a little queasy. When they reached a garden filled with carved scholar’s rocks, she took a seat on one of the benches.

“Are you okay?” Peik Lin asked, noticing how pale Rachel suddenly looked.

“I’m going to head back to my room. I think it’s getting a little too humid for me.”

“You’re not used to this. This is paradise compared to Singapore this time of the year. Wanna cool down in that infinity pool by the lake?” Peik Lin suggested.

“I think I just need to lie down for a while.”

“Okay, let’s go back.”

“No, no, you should stay and enjoy the gardens,” Rachel insisted.

“Shall we meet for afternoon tea on the terrace around four?”

“That sounds perfect.”

Peik Lin lingered in the gardens a while longer, discovering a tranquil little grotto that sheltered a large stone carving of a very fat laughing Buddha. She decided to burn a few of the joss sticks that were sitting in an urn in front of the sculpture and then headed back to her room to change into her bikini. Upon entering her room, she noticed that the green message light on the telephone was blinking. She hit the button to listen to the message. It was Rachel, sounding extremely out of breath: “Um, Peik Lin, could you please come to my room? I think I need help.”

Alarmed, Peik Lin instinctively grabbed her cell phone and saw that Rachel had called three times. She rushed out of her room and ran down the long corridor toward Rachel’s room. Arriving outside the room, she began knocking on the door, but there was no answer. A hotel employee walked by, and Peik Lin grabbed him urgently. “Can you open this door? My friend is sick and needs help!”

Within a few minutes, a desk manager arrived with a security guard.

“Can we help you, miss?”

“Yes, my friend left me an urgent message asking for help. She wasn’t feeling well, and now she’s not answering,” Peik Lin said frantically.

“Er, maybe she’s asleep?” the manager said.

“Or maybe she’s dying! Open the fucking door now!” Peik Lin screamed.

The manager swiped his pass key over the door, and Peik Lin rushed in. There was no sign of anyone in the bed or on the private terrace, but in the marble bathroom beside the deep soaking tub, she found Rachel lying unconscious in a pool of dark green bile.