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.’
Yinghui stared at the dull-eyed fish, its eyes opaque and porcelain-white. She reached for it with her chopsticks and prodded it slightly without great enthusiasm. ‘I’m too busy for a relationship,’ she said.
‘Listen, where do you want to be in ten years’ time? Still flogging panties to rich women?’
Yinghui could not hide her annoyance, but nonetheless she allowed herself to be persuaded to go on a couple of blind dates – friends of friends of friends. The first was in a Mexican restaurant near Tianzifang, the next in a Xinjiang restaurant at the far end of Hengshan Lu. On both occasions the men were polite, professionally successful, and bland. Towards the end of the second date, Yinghui decided that it would be her last. As she watched the man (Michael? Mark? A nice American lawyer) pull the leathery pieces of lamb off the skewer, she realised that she wasn’t able to summon any energy to be witty or flirtatious, to behave as she knew she should on a first date with a perfectly OK man. It wasn’t, as her friends claimed, that she was out of practice: she doubted she had ever known how to do so. The small talk left her feeling bewildered and exhausted, and she was constantly afraid that the conversation would turn towards more personal things, towards the past: how and why she had first come to Shanghai – the normal things foreigners asked each other. She tried to seize control of the conversation, filling it with lengthy explanations of how each dish was prepared, what bizarre Xinjiang ingredients they contained. The man listened politely and asked questions with the requisite level of cultural awareness, which made the transaction less painful for Yinghui. At one point, as she felt the evening slipping dangerously into ‘Tell me about your family’ territory, she changed the subject abruptly by turning to the waitress who had fortuitously arrived with more tea. She began to engage her in idle chat, hoping to glean insights on her exotic homeland, which she would then translate as conversation fillers, making it impossible for Michael/Mark to ask more personal questions. The waitress’s name badge read ‘Aliya’ – such a beautiful Xinjiang name, Yinghui remarked; tell us about where you are from. The waitress giggled and shrugged – she was actually from way down south, Fujian province; she wasn’t an exotic Muslim at all. Mercifully, the lights suddenly dimmed for the entrance of the Uighur dancers. Yinghui was pleased that the music was loud and that the dancers yelped and shrieked all the way through their performance, for it meant that no further conversation was necessary. She smiled at Michael/Mark, and he smiled back.
She really did not need a man to be successful.
One afternoon Yinghui left work early to get dressed for an evening function. It had not been a particularly stressful day, but she was fidgety and distracted. Hours before the event, she had begun to feel anxious; even thinking about what dress to wear and how to style her still-too-short hair made her nervous, which in turn filled her with self-loathing for having allowed such trivial concerns to enter her life.
She had been nominated for the Businesswoman of the Year awards, in the ‘Breakthrough’ category, in which she was the oldest person. The ceremony was held in the ballroom of a hotel in Jing’an, decorated with huge bouquets of pink flowers and banners bearing quotes from Sunzi’s Art of War: ‘Opportunities Multiply as They are Seized’; ‘A Leader Leads by Example, Not Force’. The other nominees all looked the same to Yinghui – pretty, sylphlike, twenty-something local women, their hair effortlessly long, curling featherlike towards their collarbones. Yinghui wished she had been nominated for the ‘Lifetime Achievement’ award that was made up almost exclusively of older Western women; she might have looked more delicate and feminine lined up next to them when the group photographs were taken. Instead, surrounded by women at least ten years younger than herself, she looked square-cut and boxy. She did not win the award (which went to a girl of twenty-four who sold recycled toilet paper to Europe), but her work gained considerable publicity.
Among the guests were a few people she knew well, including one or two she considered friends, some business associates, and many others who were mere acquaintances. A man caught her eye but she couldn’t figure out which category he belonged to. He had a familiar gait – stiff at the joints, the way a marionette might walk, like an arthritic soldier. He was about her age, well-groomed, impeccably dressed, deliberate in his movements: the way he shook hands, firmly, or held chairs back for women, or leant forward to kiss them on both cheeks in a courteous but professional manner – every gesture seemed elegant yet practised. He carried an air of privilege, but he was certainly not Shanghainese. He was well packaged, Yinghui thought, the right age too. The right age: she hated how she had come to assess men this way, the way they assessed her – it was a way of seeing people that had seeped into her thinking unconsciously, as if by osmosis. Right age. Good match. A real woman. Style issues. That was what happened when you lived in Shanghai. She couldn’t escape it now.
She circled him from a distance, trying to work out whether she really knew him. He was wearing a light-grey suit made of a fabric with a faint herringbone pattern, a pale-blue shirt and a dark tie. His jawline was just turning from sleek to heavy. She eased her way through the throng, dodging precariously held champagne flutes, keeping him on the edge of her field of vision all the time. He was on his own now, reading a brochure, wandering away from the crowd, slowly circling the room. She moved closer, making sure he could not see her. Then, when the time was right, she turned and caught his eye. She felt a tightness in her throat, a quickening knot that threatened to turn swiftly into panic.
‘Sorry – Chee Keong? Justin?’
‘Yes. Leong Yinghui!’ He made a movement towards her, his head leaning forwards; but then he corrected himself and extended his hand. ‘Hi. My God, it’s been years. I’d never have thought I’d meet you at a business event.’
‘Justin Lim Chee Keong. What a surprise.’ She shook his hand as firmly as she could, with a brisk up-and-down movement. She wondered if her voice sounded artificially confident, over-bright. ‘How long has it been – ten years? More, perhaps.’