‡ A Malay dessert made of shaved ice, colorful sugar syrup, and a variety of toppings such as red beans, sweet corn, agar-agar jelly, palm seed, and ice cream.
§ Hokkien for “coffee shop.”
? Indonesian fried rice, an immensely popular dish in Singapore.
a Fried vermicelli, another local favorite.
b A Hokkien term that could mean “fuck your mother,” or, as in this case, “fuck me.”
c “Palace” in Malay; here it refers to the official residence of the president of Singapore. Completed in 1869 on the orders of Sir Harry Saint George Ord, Singapore’s first colonial governor, it was formerly known as Government House and occupies 106 acres of land adjacent to the Orchard Road area.
13
Philip and Eleanor Young
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, AND SINGAPORE
Philip sat in his favorite metal folding chair on the dock that stretched out from his waterfront lawn, keeping one watchful eye on the fishing line that went straight into Watson’s Bay and the other eye on the latest issue of Popular Mechanics. His cell phone began to vibrate in the pocket of his cargo pants, disrupting the serenity of his morning. He knew it would be his wife on the line; she was practically the only person who ever called his cell. (Eleanor insisted that he keep the phone on his body at all times, in case she needed him in an emergency, although he doubted he could be of any help since he spent much of the year here in Sydney while she was constantly traveling between Singapore, Hong Kong, Bangkok, Shanghai, and God knows where else.)
He answered the phone and immediately the hysterical torrent from his wife began. “Calm down and speak slower, lah. I can’t understand a word you’re saying. Now, why do you want to jump off a building?” Philip asked in his usual laconic manner.
“I just got the dossier on Rachel Chu from that private investigator in Beverly Hills who Mabel Kwok recommended. Do you want to know what it says.” It wasn’t a question; it sounded like more of a threat.
“Er … who is Rachel Chu?” Philip asked.
“Don’t be so senile, lah! Don’t you remember what I told you last week? Your son has been dating some girl in secret for more than a year, and he had the cheek to tell us about it just days before he brings her to Singapore!”
“You hired a private investigator to check up on this girl?”
“Of course I did. We know nothing about this girl, and everyone is already talking about her and Nicky—”
Philip looked down at his fishing pole, which was beginning to vibrate a hair. He knew where this conversation was leading, and he wanted no part in it. “I’m afraid I can’t talk right now, darling, I’m in the middle of something urgent.”
“Stop it, lah! This is urgent! The report is even worse than my worst nightmare! Your stupid cousin Cassandra got it wrong—it turns out the girl is not one of the Chus from that Taipei Plastics family!”
“I always tell you not to believe a word out of Cassandra’s mouth. But what difference does it make?”
“What difference? This girl is being deceitful—she is pretending to be a Chu.”
“Well, if her last name happens to be Chu, how can you accuse her of pretending to be a Chu?” Philip said with a chuckle.
“Aiyah—don’t contradict me! I’ll tell you how she’s being deceitful. At first, the private investigator told me she was ABC, but then after more digging he found out that she’s not even truly American-born Chinese. She was born in Mainland China and went to America when she was six months old.”
“So?”
“Did you hear me? Mainland China!”
Philip was baffled. “Doesn’t everybody’s family ultimately originate from Mainland China? Where would you rather her be from? Iceland?”
“Don’t be funny with me! Her family comes from some ulu ulu* village in China that nobody has ever heard of. The investigator thinks that they were most likely working class. In other words, they are PEASANTS!”
“I think if you go back far enough, darling, all our families were peasants. And don’t you know that in ancient China, the peasant class was actually revered? They were the backbone of the economy, and—”
“Stop talking nonsense, lah! You haven’t heard the worst yet—this girl came to America as a baby with her mother. But where’s the father? There’s no record of the father, so they must have divorced. Can you believe it? Alamak, a child from some divorced no-name ulu family! I’m going to tiao lau!”†
“What’s wrong with that? There are plenty of people these days who come from broken homes and go on to have happy marriages. Just look at the divorce rate here in Australia.” Philip was trying to reason with his wife.
Eleanor sighed deeply. “These Aussies are all descended from criminals, what do you expect?”