Fortune Is a Woman - Elizabeth Adler [167]
CHAPTER 35
The Lai Tsin Corporation headquarters in Hong Kong towered a lofty fifteen stories. The best geomancers had studied the site carefully and made their pronouncements and the white granite, many-columned building stood at a slightly off-angle to the street with its main doors also placed off-center to prevent the good ch’i from escaping. Eight broad marble steps, a lucky number, led up to massive red-lacquered doors, which were guarded by a pair of fierce bronze lions. The magnificent reception hall was paved in different-colored marbles and decorated with columns of malachite, wonderful mosaics, statues, and carvings. Lai Tsin’s office was not tucked away on the top floor, but at ground level off the main hall where he could be easily accessible to all who wished to see him, from the grandest taipans to the humblest worker, and it was as simple as his first office in the warehouse in San Francisco.
True, the walls were not old wooden planks anymore, they were of plaster laquered his favorite dark plum. His desk was not made of teak but of ebony wood, and there was no ugly old iron safe lurking in the corner because he no longer needed it, since there was now a safety vault in the basement. But it was still as neat as the old one with the Chinese inkpad and brushes, the Western inkstand and pens and the sheaf of papers lined up neatly on his desk.
More than ten years had passed since Francie was last in Hong Kong and this time she stayed with the Mandarin in his white villa overlooking Repulse Bay. The exterior was neoclassical in style but inside it was Chinese with pierced window screens, exquisite blackwood furniture, and a carefully chosen collection of ancient wall hangings, calligraphy, porcelain, and paintings. Francie had created the house on Nob Hill, but this was Lai Tsin’s heritage.
He studied her carefully over dinner one evening. She had been in Hong Kong for over a week and he had shown her the wonderful headquarters, the fleet of ships—no longer just shabby steamers bought cheaply from Swires but the latest from the shipyards of Japan and the fastest in the world. He had shown her his mansion and all his treasures and now he said humbly, “Everything you see is yours, Francie. Without you, I would be nothing.”
She looked at him, shocked. “Surely it’s the other way around.”
He was silent while the soft-footed servants removed their dishes and placed small fragrant pots of tea in front of them.
“Tomorrow we shall journey to Shanghai,” he said, “and from there we shall sail upriver to my home village.” She looked at him astonished because in all these years he had never suggested such a trip, and he added, “I would like to show you my village and the ancestral hall of Lilin, so that you may better understand what I have to tell you. I travel there twice each year to remind myself of my humble beginnings, lest I forget that the luxury surrounding me is merely temporal. I go to cleanse my heart of acquisitiveness and to refresh my soul.” He paused, then added, “It is important that you come with me.”
He looked down at the bowl of tea in front of him and she watched him, puzzled. She had never seen him like this before, nervous and unsure of himself. “Of course I’ll go with you,” she said. “I am honored you wish to show me these things.”
They sailed for Shanghai the next morning and when they got there they boarded Lai Tsin’s shiny white steamship, the MV Mandarin. As they sailed upriver Francie hung over the rail, exclaiming at the sights, but Lai Tsin remained strangely