第二章
1978 年夏天，学校放假时，我和母亲去了香港。她告诉我，我们将进行一次短期旅行，所以我没有和任何朋友说再见。在那次旅行中，有很多第一次，其中包括我第一次坐飞机和第一次喝可乐。两者都不是很令人印象深刻。
我们在一个叫深圳的沉睡的边境哨所等待进入香港，这是一个有三万六千人的乡镇。(今天它的人口几乎达到 1300 万，是科技巨头腾讯和华为的所在地）。我们需要得到许可才能离开中国。每天，我母亲都向负责管理中国人口流动的面无表情的中国边防军恳求我们。两周后，他们终于让我们离开。后来我才知道，我的家人并不打算只是探亲。我们在等待一个 "短期 "出境签证的许可，这实际上意味着长期移民。
离开上海的计划是偶然开始的。1976 年文化大革命结束后，中国再次向海外华人寻求拯救其经济所需的资金。上海侨务局的官员要求我母亲说服她父亲，让我们在印度尼西亚和其他地方的一些较富裕的亲戚到上海投资。这就开始了与上海当局的讨论，讨论如何获得出境签证，离开中国去香港看望爷爷。在家里，我的父母认为这不是一个让投资进入上海的方法，而是一个离开中国的机会。我父亲一生都在记恨他父亲在 1949 年有机会时没有离开中国。现在机会又来了，他不打算再犯同样的错误。
我们进入香港时，我妈妈的口袋里有十块港币，或两块多一点的美元。我们在我母亲的父亲拥有的 750 平方英尺的两居室公寓里落脚。爷爷睡在一间卧室里。我母亲的哥哥在七年前就移民了，他和他的四口之家住在第二间卧室。妈妈和我挤在狭小的客厅里。我睡在一张折叠式沙发上。我怀念我们在上海的两室一厅。尽管它很拥挤，但至少它是个家。在香港，我所拥有的只是一个睡觉的地方。
我的母亲投身于香港的生活。她的父亲在她小的时候就对她说过广东话，所以她被认为是本地人。她将自己的数学专业转为在一家纺织厂担任会计的工作，并在晚上通过簿记课程提高自己的技能。
我母亲几次回到上海，恳求当局让我父亲加入我们。这些旅行的费用几乎使她破产。多亏了邓小平，上海当局已经完成了对有亲属或居住在海外的人的起诉。但是，中国政府还是不愿意让家人一起离开，想通过让家庭团聚变得困难来保持对海外人士的影响力。最后，两年后，我母亲顽强地唠叨了一番，当局终于松口了。直到今天，她还记得那个放走我爸爸的官员的名字。
我很紧张，知道我父亲要来香港。但是殴打停止了。我所有的亲戚都挤在我祖父的公寓里，给了我一定程度的保护。此外，我的父母忙于维持生计，就像黑夜中驶过的船只一样，我们并没有经常见面。然而，我们的关系并没有真正改善。我父亲在我的生活中一直是一个严厉的存在；他从来没有温柔过。在我父亲搬到香港后，我一直呆在折叠沙发上，而我的父母则搬到一个临时窗帘后面的小床上。
事实证明，对我父亲来说，这种转变比对我母亲的转变更艰难。他已经 37 岁了，不会说当地的方言。在上海，他曾是一名获奖的高中教师，但香港不承认中国大陆的教师资格。虽然我的祖父对我父亲很好，但我的叔叔和他的妻子却看不起他，并不断提醒他除了在香港最大的冷藏仓库里推着冻肉外，找不到任何工作。
不过，如果没有别的原因，我父亲的猪头般的毅力给了他成功的力量。工作之余，他也去上夜校，最终获得了 MBA 学位。他周末工作，生病的时候也工作，经常到深夜才打卡下班。在一个东西经常从车上掉下来的行业里，我父亲赢得了诚实的声誉。他不断晋升，7 年后成为公司的总经理。我仍然记得他的老板邀请我们去庆祝我父亲的晋升的那个晚上。我第一次坐上了劳斯莱斯。我被它半透明的胡桃木内饰迷住了。
我花了很多年才承认这一点，但是目睹我的父母在香港为使我们重新站起来而付出的劳动，对我影响很深。我们当时处于绝望的境地。三年来，我们一直在别人的客厅里蹲着。我们没有自己的浴室。我们只能勉强维持生计。但我的父母都知道隧道另一端的生活是什么感觉。他们明白他们必须做什么才能度过难关。所以他们就去做了。我在他们脚下学到了这一课。
我祖父的公寓位于美孚新邨，这是一个由香港九龙一侧的 99 座塔楼组成的稳固的中产阶级房地产开发项目。最后，我父亲再也无法忍受与公婆住在一起，所以我们搬到了自己的地方，在一个叫油麻地的破败街区，那里是黑帮、毒贩和妓女的聚集地，也位于九龙一侧。我父亲的老板给我父亲提供了一个免租金的地方。我们住在一栋肮脏的低层建筑的二楼，一个用胶合板隔开的光秃秃的单间。一个淋浴间和一个漏水的马桶占据了一个角落。至少我们不用和另外两个家庭分享这些东西。
到了晚上，老鼠就在这个地方活动，在我和我父母睡觉的时候在我们身上乱窜。放学后，我寸步不离地走在黑暗的楼梯间和阴暗的走廊上，从不知道谁或什么东西在拐角处。一旦进入公寓，我经常把门闩锁上两道。有几次我睡着了，我的父母不得不敲门叫醒我，让我进去。
搬到香港是一个冲击。部分原因与我父母处理此事的方式有关。他们从未告诉我他们打算移民。我以为我只是在延长假期，并在其中加入一些学校。只有在我读完小学的第一个学期后，我母亲才告诉我我们要留下来。
香港的文化与中国的文化有很大不同。在上海，我和我的伙伴们总是把胳膊搭在对方的肩膀上，我们总是在互相打听对方的事情。在大陆，整个隐私的概念并不真正存在。在 20 世纪 70 年代和 80 年代，男孩，甚至是男人，都不会想到手拉手走在街上。
香港是另一个世界。我记得我第一次试图挽着一个与我同龄的香港孩子。他是一个住在同一个住宅区的同学。我想既然我们是朋友，我自然要把我的手臂放在他的背上。他像被电击了一样跳了起来。"你在做什么？"他尖叫道。我真的很惊讶。那是我第一次意识到，在香港，人们彼此之间的联系是不同的。他们对个人空间有更广泛的认识，对友谊有更少的干涉性解释。在大陆的友谊，由于缺乏一个更好的词，是粘性的。人们闯入你的生活。如果你看起来很胖，他们就会宣布这一点。如果你有财务问题，他们会要求提供细节。如果你想要一个犯罪伙伴，他们会自愿加入。香港的关系没有那么多管闲事。人们互相给对方空间。
除了必须找出一种新的社会联系方式外，我还必须重新学习如何说话。当我第一次在香港上学时，我无法理解两种教学语言中的任何一种。小学是用粤语教学。虽然从技术上讲，粤语是一种中国方言，但对于像我这样讲上海话和普通话长大的人来说，几乎是完全无法理解的。然后是英语。我甚至很难掌握字母表。我的父母请我的一个表妹来辅导我的英语。她来到我们的公寓，帮助我进行拼写。"苹果"... "蜜蜂"... "橘子"。我似乎什么都记不住。我和她一起花了很长时间，努力把基本的东西记下来。我基本上是个哑巴。
我在小学里跳来跳去。毛泽东在中国去世后的第二年，上海的所有小学生都要留级，因为学校花了很多时间来纪念他的一生，我们所有人都落后了。所以在香港，我在圣克莱门特小学度过了三年级的第一个学期，这是一所圣公会学校。但在下个学期，我的父母把我换到了一所警察家属学校，因为这所学校的标准较低，允许我跳级。我的父母还认为我在警察家庭学校会有更好的纪律。事实恰恰相反。那所学校很粗暴。男生打男生；我以前就见过。但女孩也会和男孩打架。我记得一个男孩向一个女孩挥拳。她躲开了他的拳头，然后反击了他的脸，砰！。我想，这是个好机会。我们班的孩子会因为劫车而消失在青少年拘留所里。这是在香港成立廉政公署，处理执法部门普遍存在的渎职行为之后的几年。至少在香港，警察和骗子是同出一辙的。
我被人欺负，因为我是一个大目标，我不适合。高年级的孩子特别有攻击性，我在课间休息的时候都躲起来。我不是一个坚强的孩子，我不知道如何战斗。尽管欺负我的人很多，但我还是逃避他们。来自中国大陆也没有帮助。我家搬到香港后不久，当地一家电视台开始播放一部喜剧，主角是一个刚从中国来的移民，名叫阿灿，一个粗枝大叶的乡巴佬，太笨太懒，无法适应香港的快节奏。在学校，我成了 "阿灿"。在家里，我的表兄弟们嘲笑我不够快，无法适应香港的节奏。随着时间的推移，我加快了速度，让自己被别人塑造。这种情况会一次又一次地发生。我身上的某些东西促使别人想要改变我。在某种程度上，我常常是一个心甘情愿的帮凶。
在香港，我也面临着贫穷的现实。在上海，我们和其他人一样生活。但在香港，我的父母东拼西凑以维持生计，而在学校，我的同学们总是有零钱。因此，我没有坐公交车去学校，而是每天步行两英里，这样我就可以把车费装进口袋，并买得起零食。在很小的时候，我就下意识地以我的父母为榜样，学会了必须要做的事情来过日子。我向自己保证，当我长大后，没有人会看不起我。
转移到香港是我的第一次，就像游泳一样，搬家成为我生活中的一个常态。几十年来，我从亚洲搬到美国，又回到亚洲，再到欧洲。这种不断的运动使我学会了适应，甚至是适应戏剧性的变化，并使我对来自世界各地的人感到舒服。在很小的时候就失去了自己的家，这让我学会了在任何地方都能找到自己的一片天地。我学会了随波逐流，适应不同的文化。我成了一只变色龙，善于改变皮肤来适应这个地方。如果没有其他原因，我的不断流浪给了我保证，新事物不会杀死我，而且，无论如何，我都会活下去。
经过一番努力，我掌握了粤语和英语。我转回了圣克莱门特学校。我一直在读书。圣克莱门特学校有两班学生，我的课从 12:30 开始，一直到 6:00。我在我家附近的图书馆度过了一个上午，吸食小说和非小说。
十二岁时，我考上了皇后学院，这是香港最古老、最负盛名的男子公立中学，其杰出的校友包括现代中国之父孙政才先生。我以 5-8 岁的年龄进入中一，相当于香港的七年级，是班上最高的。
开学后不久，一位体育老师问我们中谁会游泳。我们当中有几个人举起了手。自从我们搬到香港后，我还没有游过泳。他把我们带到学校对面维多利亚公园的一个公共游泳池。"他说："让我看看你能做什么。我跳了进去，跑了几圈。就这样，我加入了球队。
我赢得了比赛，并打破了五十米和一百米短跑的学校记录。15 岁时，我加入了一个有竞争力的游泳俱乐部。有一天，我正在一个公共游泳池训练，一位香港国家队的教练正好经过。他说："你看起来不错，"并邀请我去试试。我赢得了该市青年队的一个名额。
正如在中国一样，游泳教会了我决心和毅力。我们在香港没有真正寒冷的冬天，所以我从来不需要打破任何冰。但是，无论刮风下雨，无论寒冷还是炎热，我们总是在游泳，而且游泳池总是在户外。有的时候，我感觉很好，有的时候，我感觉不好。在我感觉不好的日子里，当我身后的人用手指触碰我的脚时，我就会推着自己，确保我不是那个挡住泳道的人。练习结束时，我带着成就感爬出泳池。就像我父亲那样，顽强的精神成为我最大的优势之一。我告诉自己，事情可能看起来无法克服，但你总能走出游泳池。
作为团队的一员，我的社交圈扩大了。我们在全国各地进行训练和比赛。队里的富家子弟开着有司机的宝马车来训练；最穷的人在公共住房里长大。我参加了在日本和广州珠江上游举行的青年队比赛。日本之行标志着我第一次离开大中华区。
我在皇后学院第一年的成绩很糟糕；我在班上 40 个孩子中排名第 33 位。为了被录取，我努力学习，但一旦进入学校，我就不再勉强，而是尽情玩耍。我没有做家庭作业，而是花时间在附近的维多利亚公园踢足球和打篮球。由于忙于工作，我的父母对我糟糕的分数大呼小叫，但除此之外没有时间。然而，我开始有了一些进步，在第三年结束时，我的成绩处于中等水平。
当我进入皇后学院的时候，我已经从一个上海人变成了香港人。我花在同龄人身上的时间比花在父母身上的时间多得多。在我们家的小公寓外，我的自我怀疑消失了，我充满了自信。我是一个优秀的游泳运动员；我个子高，人缘好。我的广东话说得很好，在新学校里我就像在家里一样。
我对自己的看法总是被某种类型的虚荣心所染指。从很小的时候起，人们就盯着我看。这在中国和香港是很自然的，那里男人的平均身高是 5-7 岁，而我总是比我的同龄人和大多数成年人都要高。人们总是以那种非常直率、非常中国化的方式评论我的长相。如果你有很多痘痘，他们会说："哇，这么多痘痘"。就我而言，是这样的。"哇，这么高，这么英俊。"这让我感到非常自责。这也让我背上了一个强大的愿望，不仅要达到他们对我 "如此高大英俊 "的印象，还要确保他们不看不起我。
大多数时候，我从皇后学院回家，和一群和我一样住在九龙那边的同学一起。我们从学校坐车到香港高端的中区，然后坐上渡轮去九龙。我们通常在旅途中打打闹闹，但有一天，有些东西引起了我的注意。我看到一个西方人在一个中国建筑队工作。他的脸色苍白，戴着硬帽，周围都是中国同事，他们的皮肤被香港的亚热带阳光晒得黝黑，显得格外引人注目。哇，我想，这可能是十年后的我，每个人都从我身边经过，用奇怪的眼光看着我。我向自己保证，我绝不想成为这样的人，像个怪人一样被人盯着。直到我四十多岁，我一直被害怕看起来不好的恐惧所驱使。这就是中国人使用 "要面子 "一词的意思。我被一种避免让人失望和适应的愿望所吞噬。但是，我总是感觉到人们的眼睛在盯着我。
赚大钱并不是这里的真正目标。我母亲总是说钱不是万能的，我相信她。但对我来说，面子才是最重要的。我不惜一切代价避免自己出丑，并延伸到我的家人。
尽管我是一个中等水平的学生，但我相信我的中等水平是出于选择而不是缺乏能力。我们学校有一个辩论队。因为我的成绩一般，所以从来没有人要求我参加。但我参加了辩论会，并在脑子里反驳每一方的论点。自然，我认为我的观点比房间前面的发言者的观点好。
在皇后学院的第四年，也就是我 16 岁的时候，我意识到，除非我在定于第五年年底举行的香港教育证书考试中取得好成绩，否则我将被迫去一所名气小得多的学校上学。我知道我的父母没有能力拯救我，所以我决定把自己投入到学习中去，努力取得好成绩。
我的老师花了一些时间来适应新的我。我已经获得了班级小丑的名声，不停地闲聊。在音乐课上，我拒绝学习如何阅读笔记。但我一直是一个很强的读者。在四年级的中文课上，我写了一篇关于中国诗人徐志摩的文章。徐志摩是一位英俊潇洒的作家，以其浪漫的联络方式和抒情的诗歌而闻名。徐志摩写于 20 世纪 20 年代，当时军阀将中国分割成若干个封地，日本威胁要入侵。徐志摩认为，艺术不需要为社会或更大的利益服务；只要欣赏美就够了。我不同意徐的为艺术而艺术的观点。当中国在混乱中崩溃时，他怎么能对美抒发诗意？我问道。
在一次课结束时，我的中文老师让我留在后面。"她问："你真的是自己写的这篇论文吗？"你是自己得出这些结论的吗？"她认为我剽窃了它。但这是我自己的作品。
到那年年底，我在班上排名前十。五年级结束时，我进入了前五名，并通过了考试，这使我得以留在皇后学院，并进入六年级--相当于香港的高年级。
在皇后学院的班级排名中爬升，让我对自己的能力有了很多了解。我本身并不懒惰，但我确实有懈怠的倾向。一旦被皇后学院录取，我就很轻松。我只做了必要的事情。但那是因为在我内心深处，我有一种与生俱来的信念，即当我需要的时候，我可以踩下油门，完成工作。这些特征在我的职业生涯中一直伴随着我。
在我读完六年级后，我的游泳教练告诉我，如果我多加练习，也许能在即将到来的 1988 年汉城奥运会上取得加入香港队参加五十米自由泳的资格时间。皇后学院的校长与我父亲会面，大家都同意给我时间训练。我对父亲的同意感到惊讶，但他总是对权威印象深刻。校长建议的任何事情对他来说都是好的。
我充分地利用了这个延长的假期。当我的同学们从学校的窗户里嫉妒地注视着我时，我在学校的操场上练习跳投。老师们不喜欢我这样做，但我得到了校长的许可，可以参加比赛。最后，我没能入选，只差不到一秒--这在现实生活中是一瞬间的事，但在运动中却是永恒的。当我们刚搬到香港时，我再也没能挽回这些年的训练损失。不过，我并没有因为没有入选球队而感到特别沮丧。我很享受这个过程。无论事情变得多么糟糕，我都会告诉自己，你总会走出游泳池的。
在 17 岁的夏天，我第一次挣钱，在香港的南华体育俱乐部教孩子们游泳。我从早上七点教到晚上七点。我的学生们肆无忌惮地在泳池里撒尿，以至于我患上了讨厌的皮疹。不过，由于口袋里有相当于一千美元的钱，我开始沉迷于新发现的时尚品味。这对我来说是一个巨大的变化。自从我们搬到香港，我母亲在一家纺织厂做会计，她给我穿的都是山寨货和废品。现在，在皇后学院游泳队一位名叫史蒂芬的朋友的指导下，我发现了时尚的世界。
史蒂芬来自一个小康家庭，总是有钱可花。他带我去买我的第一件品牌衣服--拉尔夫 - 劳伦的橙色马球衫。我很快就升到了山本耀司和三宅一生。史蒂芬教我购物，我很快就学会了不慌不忙地偷看价格的微妙艺术。我母亲总是说钱不是万能的，但你不能没有它。现在我的钱包里终于有了一些钱，我注意到它带来的自由--满足我的愿望，探索世界，放纵我的好奇心。
其他事态发展强调了拥有资源的价值。我的父母买了一套新公寓。虽然它只有 540 平方英尺，但我有生以来第一次有了自己的房间。它成了我的避难所。
我的父母过去和现在都是非常节俭的，我在这方面继承了他们的做法。今天，当我做饭时，我切割蔬菜和肉类，目的是不浪费哪怕一茶匙的价值。每顿饭我都会把盘子洗干净。"每一粒米都来之不易"，这是我们在学校背诵的一首中国诗中的一句。
我们在那个属于我父亲的老板的破烂公寓里住了两年。有一天，我父亲和他的老板发生了争吵。我父亲的个人荣誉感过于发达，很容易受到任何轻视--这种敏感性由于我们住在免租金的地方而被放大。当我父亲和他的老板争吵时，我们搬了出去，用我父母的一大笔积蓄买了新公寓，我父亲也辞职了。
我父亲没有安排新的工作，他花了一年时间才找到稳定的工作。他加入了一家贸易公司，但这并没有成功。他涉足了其他企业，但这些企业都倒闭了。最后，一年后，美国鸡肉巨头泰森食品公司被他的冷库背景所打动，雇用他作为其在大中华区的第一位员工。泰森公司想把产品卖到中国，而我父亲认识到，所有美国人不吃的部分都是黄金。鸡脚、鸡屁股、鸡内脏、鸡胗、鸡脖子、鸡心--中国人对它们都垂涎三尺。泰森公司让他飞回美国，在那里他建议改变生产线以挽救这些鸡块。我父亲的朋友和同事们都嘲笑他的新工作。在中国，"卖鸡 "是拉皮条的俚语。但这是他们的笑话。几年内，泰森公司在亚洲销售了价值 1 亿美元的垃圾鸡，用美国人种的 "凤爪"（中国人对鸡爪的称呼）填满了中国消费者的肚子。
从我父亲在泰森的经历中，我第一次了解到美中关系的变幻莫测。阿肯色州进入中国的鸡肉管道受制于政治。只要你与美国关系紧张，中国政府就会突然将鸡爪的检疫期从两天提高到两周。面对因变质而损失的大量产品，我父亲不得不想办法绕过这些规定，把东西运进中国。他是这样一个魔术师，泰森公司将我父亲命名为 "世纪销售员"。
泰森还为我父亲提供了进一步的证据，证明生活是不公平的，特别是对他来说。当他在 2003 年退休时，泰森公司没有为他提供退休金。公司说，他是一名国际雇员，所以他没有资格享受福利。我母亲催促他要求更好的待遇，但他从未这样做。他不是那种人。
六年级结束时，我的游泳队友史蒂芬变成了时尚顾问，去了南加州大学。当我为奥运会训练时，我感到被抛弃了。我们没有写信，而是交换了磁带。我关上房间的门，对着录音机倾诉我的心声。史蒂文向我详细介绍了在美国买车的过程；他的母亲让他在沃尔沃、宝马或奔驰之间选择，他很难做出决定。我的父母问，为什么你是在跟机器说话，而不是跟我们说话？
香港的生活强化了我在上海已经形成的独立性格。我的父母在适应他们的新生活方面面临着巨大的挑战，他们既没有时间也没有精力将自己注入我的世界中。我们的社交圈逐渐疏远了。我结识了当地的孩子，而我父母的朋友都是来自中国大陆的新移民，和他们一样。我的父母因为我的与众不同而批评我。"你和我们都不一样，"我母亲抱怨道。但在某种程度上，她是错的。我父亲在 1950 年代在上海也是被迫独立的。而且，像我父亲一样，我也知道，当被要求时，我有能力努力工作。
与妈妈和爸爸的家庭生活陷入了冷战。我不喜欢和他们在一起，我怀疑他们对我也有同感。在星期六，按照当时香港的习惯，他们都要工作半天。为了避开他们，我假装睡懒觉。之后，我会去参加游泳训练，并在一天中的其余时间里离开家。
虽然殴打已经停止，但我父亲继续对我大喊大叫。他疯狂地冲进我的房间，开始大叫。如果我早上上学迟到了，他就会敲门。星期天早上，我在收音机上听美国的 Top 40，他就会再次敲打，命令我把声音关小。"他问："你为什么要一直听这些垃圾？
我开始泡夜店，喝啤酒。当我开始喝酒时，有两件事让我感到惊讶。一件是我对酒精的耐受力。一瓶酒之后，我的朋友们已经开始醉醺醺的了，但我却毫无感觉。在当时，这既令人不安，也很昂贵；后来，在我的商业生活中，我保持酒量的能力将使我受益匪浅。
另一个令人惊讶的方面与我的自我意识有关，或缺乏自我意识。当我喝酒时，我变得不那么自觉了，更容易接近，也更外向。由于我的体型，我很有气势，即使是在青少年时期。人们在我身边感到害怕。再加上我天生不善于交际的事实。但是当我喝酒的时候，我就放松了。人们注意到，我变成了一个不同的人，更容易接近，更温暖。我敞开了心扉。我一直很好奇，我对酒精改变我的方式以及我与外部世界的关系感兴趣。在内心深处，我渴望更多的社交。酒精让事情发生。
我也开始尝试约会，但不知道该怎么做。有一次，一个姐妹学校的女孩冷不丁地打电话给我，约我出去。我很紧张，就找了一个警察家里的世交朋友陪我。我们都在一家麦当劳见面。我想不出有什么可说的。单一性别的教育可能有它的优点，但它使我在女孩面前感到不自在。
尽管与我父母的关系一直很紧张，但我们仍然保持着一个香港的传统。几乎每个星期天，我们都去吃点心早午餐。我们会和一大群人一起去，大人们会谈论生意。他们都是我父母在上海的老同学，也都移民到了香港。中国当时对外国投资开放，我父母的朋友经营贸易公司，参与跨境交易。我父亲的朋友注意到我喜欢倾听。我对中国的商业感兴趣。我开始阅读《华尔街日报》的亚洲版。我读了 Lee Iacocca 的自传，还有 Donald Trump 的《交易的艺术》。我喜欢做生意的想法，喜欢建立一些以前不存在的东西，喜欢留下一个标记。
在香港，商业几乎是唯一的职业道路。我们没有政治家，我对公务员制度不感兴趣。你不可能成为一个艺术家；反正殖民地是一个文化沙漠。在香港这个竞争激烈的环境中，人们都想出人头地，商业是证明自己的主要途径。
史蒂芬离开美国后，加强了我离开香港的愿望。但是，当教过我英语的表妹提出在澳大利亚接待我时，我拒绝了，因为她已经去那里学习了。在我看来，澳大利亚是一块超大的石头。我一心想着跟随史蒂文去"自由之地"，最好是去加利福尼亚的黄金海岸。我是在美国电影和音乐中长大的。我的第一盘磁带是来自 Bananarama 乐队；这个三人组可能是英国人，但对我来说，他们的新浪潮声音是纯粹的美国音乐。我从未想过要去美国以外的任何地方。
七年级结束时，我申请了加州大学伯克利分校（Cal Berkeley）和加州大学洛杉矶分校，还有圣路易斯的华盛顿大学和威斯康星大学。加州大学和加州大学洛杉矶分校拒绝了我，但我被另外两所大学录取。当时，华盛顿大学的学费为每年 10,000 美元，而威斯康星大学的学费为其一半。美国新闻与世界报道》将这两所大学分别排在第十七和第十八位。我父亲宣布，我将进入第十八位的威斯康星大学。我的父母在经济上做得比较好；尽管如此，在那些日子里，每年多出的 5000 美元意味着很多。
1989 年春末，当我等待前往美国时，我回到上海探望亲戚。在中国大陆的各个城市，前共产党总书记胡耀邦于 4 月去世后，爆发了示威活动。他于 1987 年被免职，因为他拒绝镇压学生的抗议活动。数百万人涌向这些新的示威活动，以胡耀邦之死为借口，要求更多的自由和政府行动，以阻止普遍的腐败，这种腐败使共产党高级领导人的家人得以发财。在上海，数十万人为变革而游行。我也是这样做的，但多少有点意外。1989 年 5 月下旬的一天，我在南京路，上海的主要购物大道上。街上挤满了示威者，他们吹着口哨，呼喊着自由，举着标语牌，呼吁建立一个更加开放的中国。没有汽车可以通过，人行道上挤满了观众。唯一的行动方式是加入游行队伍。我悄悄地进入了人群中。人们盯着我看，好像我不属于他们。这一定是因为我的衣服；在那些日子里，香港人的穿着与大陆人不同，尤其是这个对时尚感兴趣的痞子少年。
在上海，我和一位在文化大革命中受苦的叔叔住在一起。一天晚上，当他和我看电视新闻时，他的眼泪夺眶而出。"他预言："这些年轻人不会有好结果。"他说："他们不明白。"共产党是通过操纵抗议活动，发动群众运动而上台的，一旦达到目的，就凶狠地镇压他们。
"初生牛犊不怕虎，"他说。"你不能以这种方式击败共产党人。"
1989 年 6 月 2 日，我离开上海前往香港。6 月 3 日晚，共产党向全国各地的中国人民宣战。在北京，军队在将抗议者赶出天安门广场时屠杀了数百名学生和其他示威者。上海的示威活动被和平镇压，在天安门广场大屠杀之后，上海的共产党老大江泽民赢得了晋升为全国党的最高职位的机会。
在香港，我和父亲通过电视直播观看了北京的镇压。我们两个人都哭了起来。对我们来说，那是 9/11 事件中的一个时刻。我们清楚地记得我们所处的位置。鉴于我父亲早年与共产党人打交道的经历，他一直认为党的核心是邪恶的。他见过它对自己的人民转瞬即逝。他期待着最坏的结果。
随着中国事件的发展，中国政府发布了一份通缉名单，通缉比我大几岁的学生领袖，我的父母强调，他们在香港重新开始生活，以便我能够有一个更好的未来。他们说，他们所有的牺牲，都是为了让我避免中国大陆人民的命运。
我当时太年轻了，太受保护了，不明白这些混乱是怎么回事。整个事件使我更想离开香港，离开我的父母，去寻找自由和冒险，在任何地方，甚至在美国的威斯康星州。
IN THE SUMMER OF 1978, when school was out, my mother and I went to Hong Kong. She told me that we’d be going on a short trip, so I didn’t say goodbye to any friends. On that journey, there were plenty of firsts, among them my first plane ride and my first Coke. Neither was very impressive.
We waited to enter Hong Kong at a sleepy border post called Shenzhen, a township of thirty-six thousand people. (Today its population is almost 13 million and it’s home to the technology giants Tencent and Huawei.) We needed permission to leave China. Each day my mother pleaded our case to grim-faced Chinese border guards who were in charge of managing the flow of people out of China. After two weeks, they finally let us go. Only later did I realize that my family wasn’t planning on just visiting relatives. We were waiting for permission for a “short-term” exit visa that really meant long-term emigration.
The plan to leave Shanghai began by accident. Following the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1976, China again looked to overseas Chinese for the capital needed to save its economy. Officials from the Shanghai bureau for Overseas Chinese Affairs asked my mother to persuade her father to get some of our wealthier relatives in Indonesia and elsewhere to invest in Shanghai. That started a discussion with the authorities in Shanghai about getting an exit visa to leave China to visit Grandpa in Hong Kong. At home, my parents looked at this not as a way to get investment into Shanghai but as a chance to get out of China. My father had spent his whole life nursing that grudge against his dad for failing to leave China when he had the chance in 1949. He wasn’t about to make the same mistake now that the opportunity had come around again.
We entered Hong Kong with ten Hong Kong dollars, or a tad more than two US dollars, in my mom’s pocket. We landed in a 750-square-foot two-bedroom apartment owned by my mother’s father. Grandpa slept in one bedroom. My mother’s elder brother, who’d immigrated seven years earlier, occupied the second bedroom with his family of four. Mom and I squeezed into the tiny living room. I slept on a rollout couch. I missed our two-room place in Shanghai. Cramped as it was, at least it was home. In Hong Kong, all I had was a place to sleep.
My mother dove into life in Hong Kong. Her father had spoken Cantonese to her when she was young, so she passed as a local. She parlayed her math major into a job as an accountant at a textile plant and boosted her skills with bookkeeping classes at night.
My mother returned to Shanghai several times to plead with the authorities to let my dad join us. The cost of those trips all but bankrupted her. Thanks to Deng Xiaoping, the authorities in Shanghai were done prosecuting people for having relatives or living overseas. Still, the Chinese government was loath to allow families to leave together, wanting to maintain leverage over people abroad by making family reunification hard. Finally, after two years, my mom succeeded in nagging so tenaciously that the authorities relented. To this day, she remembers the name of the official who let my dad go.
I was nervous, knowing that my father was coming to Hong Kong. But the beatings stopped. All of my relatives crammed into my grandfather’s apartment gave me a measure of protection. Besides, my parents were so busy making ends meet that, like ships passing in the night, we didn’t see each other much. However, our relationship didn’t really improve. My dad was always a stern presence in my life; he was never tender. After my father moved to Hong Kong, I stayed on the rollout couch and my parents moved to a tiny bed behind a makeshift curtain.
For my dad, the transition proved tougher than it had been for my mom. He was thirty-seven and didn’t speak the local dialect. In Shanghai, he’d been an award-winning high school teacher, but Hong Kong didn’t recognize mainland China’s teaching credentials. While my grandfather was kind to my father, my uncle and his wife looked down on him and constantly called attention to his being unable to find any job besides pushing around frozen meat in Hong Kong’s biggest cold-storage warehouse.
Still, if nothing else, my father’s pigheaded perseverance gave him the strength to succeed. After work, he, too, attended night school, eventually earning an MBA. He worked weekends, when he was sick, and often didn’t punch out until late at night. In a business where stuff routinely falls off the truck, my dad earned a reputation for honesty. He moved up the ranks and after seven years became the firm’s general manager. I still remember the night his boss invited us to celebrate my father’s promotion. I got my first ride in a Rolls-Royce. I was mesmerized by its translucent walnut interior.
It took me years to acknowledge it, but witnessing my parents’ labor in Hong Kong to get us back up the ladder affected me profoundly. We were in desperate straits. For three years, we squatted in someone else’s living room. We had no bathroom of our own. We were barely making ends meet. But my parents both knew what life felt like at the other end of the tunnel. They understood what they had to do to make it through. So they went for it. I learned this lesson at their feet.
My grandfather’s apartment was located in Mei Foo Sun Chuen, a solidly middle-class real estate development of ninety-nine towers on the Kowloon side of Hong Kong. Eventually, my father could no longer stomach living with the in-laws, so we moved into our own place in a run-down neighborhood called Yau Mai Tei, a haunt for gangsters, drug dealers, and prostitutes, also on the Kowloon side. My father’s boss offered my dad the place rent-free. We lived on the second floor of a dingy low-rise building in a bare one-room studio partitioned by plywood boards. A shower and a leaky toilet occupied one corner. At least we didn’t have to share them with two other families.
At night, rats had the run of the place, scampering over me and my parents as we slept. After school, I’d inch up the dark stairwell and down the gloomy corridor never knowing who or what was around the corner. Once inside the apartment, I often double-locked the bolt. There were times when I fell asleep and my parents had to pound on the door to wake me up to get in.
Moving to Hong Kong was a shock. Part of it had to do with the way my parents handled it. They never told me they intended to immigrate. I thought I was just on an extended vacation with some school thrown in. Only after I finished my first semester at elementary school did my mother tell me we were staying.
Hong Kong’s culture differed significantly from that of China. In Shanghai, my buddies and I always had our arms over one another’s shoulders and we were always into each other’s business. The whole concept of privacy didn’t really exist on the mainland. In the 1970s and 1980s, boys, even men, thought nothing of walking down the street holding hands.
Hong Kong was another world. I remember the first time I tried to put my arm around a Hong Kong kid my age. He was a schoolmate who lived in the same housing development. I thought since we were buddies, it would be only natural for me to drape my arm across his back. He jumped like he’d been electrocuted. “What are you doing?” he screeched. I was really surprised. That was the first time it dawned on me that people associated with one another differently in Hong Kong. They had a more expansive sense of personal space and a less intrusive interpretation of friendship. Friendships on the mainland were, for lack of a better word, sticky. People barged into your life. If you looked fat, they’d announce it. If you were having financial troubles, they’d demand details. If you wanted a partner in crime, they’d volunteer. Hong Kong’s relationships weren’t as meddlesome. People gave one another room.
In addition to having to figure out a new way of connecting socially, I had to relearn how to talk. When I first went to school in Hong Kong, I couldn’t understand either of the two languages of instruction. Elementary school was taught in Cantonese. Although technically a Chinese dialect, Cantonese was almost totally unintelligible to someone like me, who’d grown up speaking Shanghainese and Mandarin. And then there was English. I had a hard time even mastering the alphabet. My parents asked a cousin of mine to tutor me in English. She came to our apartment and helped me with spelling. “Apple”... “bee”... “orange.” I couldn’t seem to remember anything. I spent a long time with her fighting to get the basics down. I was basically mute.
I bounced around in primary school. The year after Mao died in China, all elementary students in Shanghai were made to repeat a grade because schools spent so much time commemorating his life that all of us fell behind. So in Hong Kong, I spent the first semester in third grade at St. Clement’s Elementary School, an Episcopal school. But the next semester my parents switched me into a school for the families of police officers because the school had lower standards that allowed me to skip a grade. My parents also thought I’d be better disciplined at a school for police families. The opposite was true. That school was rough. Boys fought boys; I’d seen that before. But girls fought boys, too. I remember one boy taking a swing at a girl. She dodged his fist and then counterpunched him—bang! —in the face. What a shot, I thought. Kids from my class would disappear into juvenile detention for carjacking. This was just a few years after Hong Kong had established the Independent Commission Against Corruption to deal with endemic malfeasance in law enforcement. Cops and crooks, in Hong Kong at least, were cut from the same cloth.
I got picked on because I was a big target and I didn’t fit in. Older kids were particularly aggressive, and I spent break times between classes in hiding. I wasn’t a tough kid and I didn’t know how to fight. Despite looming over the bullies, I ran from them. Being from mainland China didn’t help. Soon after my family moved to Hong Kong, a local TV station began airing a comedy that featured an immigrant fresh from China named Ah Chan, a rough-edged hick, too dumb and too lazy to adapt to the territory’s fast pace. At school, I became “Ah Chan.” At home, my cousins laughed at me for not being quick enough to match Hong Kong’s tempo. Over time, I sped up, letting myself be molded by others. This would happen again and again. Something about me prompted in others a desire to change me. I was often a willing accomplice, to a point.
In Hong Kong, I also confronted the reality of being poor. In Shanghai, we lived like everybody else. But in Hong Kong, my parents scraped together money to make ends meet while at school my classmates always had spare change. So instead of taking the bus to school, I walked two miles each day so I could pocket the bus fare and afford a snack. At an early age, modeling myself subconsciously on my parents, I learned what had to be done to get by. I promised myself that when I grew up no one would look down on me.
The switch to Hong Kong was the first of many for me and, like swimming, moving became a constant in my life. Over the decades I’d move from Asia to America, back to Asia, and to Europe. This constant motion taught me to adapt, even to dramatic changes, and made me comfortable with people from all over the world. Losing my home at an early age taught me to find a piece of it wherever I’d be. I learned to roll with the tide and adapt to different cultures. I became a chameleon, adept at changing skins to match the place. If nothing else, my constant wandering gave me the assurance that new things wouldn’t kill me and that, no matter what, I was going to survive.
With some determination, I got a handle on Cantonese and English. I transferred back to St. Clement’s. And I kept reading throughout. St. Clement’s ran two shifts of students and my classes started at 12:30 and went to 6:00. I’d spend the mornings in a library near my house, inhaling novels and nonfiction.
When I was twelve, I tested into Queen’s College, the territory’s oldest and most prestigious all- boys public secondary school, with illustrious alumni such as Sun Yat-sen, the father of modern China. At five-eight entering first form, the Hong Kong equivalent of seventh grade, I was the tallest in my class.
Soon after school began, a phys-ed teacher asked who among us could swim. A few of us raised our hands. I hadn’t swum since we’d moved to Hong Kong. He took us to a public pool in Victoria Park across from the school. “Show me what you can do,” he said. I jumped in and did laps. Like that, I made the team.
I won meets and broke school records in the fifty- and one-hundred-meter sprint. By fifteen, I’d joined a competitive swimming club. One day, I was training at a public pool and a coach on the Hong Kong national team happened by. “You look good,” he said, and invited me to try out. I won a spot on the city’s youth squad.
As it had in China, swimming taught me resolve and persistence. We didn’t have really cold winters in Hong Kong, so I never had to break any ice. But rain or shine, cold or hot, we always swam, and the pools were always outdoors. There were days when I felt good and days when I didn’t. And on the days when I didn’t, when the guy behind me touched my feet with his fingers, I’d push myself to make sure I wasn’t the one blocking the lane. And at the end of practice, I’d climb out of the pool with a sense of accomplishment. As it had with my father, doggedness became one of my greatest strengths. Things may seem insurmountable, I told myself, but you’ll always get out of the pool.
Being a member of the team expanded my social circle. We practiced and competed all over the territory. The rich kids on the team came to practice in chauffeured BMWs; the poorest grew up in public housing. I swam in youth team competitions in Japan and up the Pearl River in Guangzhou. The trip to Japan marked the first time I’d left Greater China.
My grades during my first year at Queen’s College were horrible; I ranked thirty-third out of forty kids in my class. I’d studied hard to get accepted, but once in I stopped pushing and had fun. Instead of doing homework, I spent hours playing soccer and basketball in nearby Victoria Park. Too busy working, my parents yelled at me about my lousy marks but otherwise didn’t have time to spare. I began to improve a bit, however, and at the end of my third year I was in the middle of the pack.
By the time I got into Queen’s College, I’d morphed from a Shanghai native to Hong Kong local. I was spending a lot more time with my peers than with my parents. Outside our family’s tiny apartment, my self-doubt disappeared and I brimmed with self-confidence. I was a good swimmer; I was tall and well liked. I spoke Cantonese like a native and I was at home at my new school.
My view of myself has always been colored by a certain type of vanity. From an early age, people stared at me. That’s natural in China and Hong Kong, where the average height for men is five-seven and I was always head and shoulders taller than both my peers and most adults. People forever commented on my looks in that very blunt, very Chinese kind of way. If you’ve got lots of acne, they’d say, “Wow, so many pimples.” In my case, it was: “Wow, so tall and handsome.” It made me extremely self-conscious. It also saddled me with a powerful desire not only to live up to their image of me as “so tall and handsome” but also to ensure that they didn’t look down on me.
Most days, I went home from Queen’s College with a bunch of classmates who like me lived on the Kowloon side. We took a bus from school to Hong Kong’s high-end Central District and then got on a ferry to cross to Kowloon. We usually goofed around on the trip, but one day something caught my eye. I saw a Westerner working on a Chinese construction crew. He stuck out like a sore thumb, with his pale face and his hard hat surrounded by Chinese coworkers, their skin darkened by Hong Kong’s subtropical sun. Wow, I thought, that could be me in ten years, everybody passing me by, looking at me strangely. I promised myself that I never wanted to be someone like that, sticking out like an oddity. Until my mid-forties, I was driven by the fear of looking bad. That’s what Chinese mean when they use the term “to save face.” I was consumed by a desire to avoid disappointing people and to fit in. Still, I always felt people’s eyes trained on me.
Making huge sums of money wasn’t really the goal here. My mother always said money wasn’t a cure-all and I believed her. But to me, saving face was. I was wired at all costs to avoid embarrassing myself and, by extension, my family.
Even though I was a middling student, I believed I was middling by choice rather than lack of ability. We had a school debate team. Because my grades were so-so, I was never asked to participate. But I attended the debates and would counter the arguments of each side in my head. Naturally, I thought my points were better than those of the speakers at the front of the room.
During my fourth year at Queen’s College, when I was sixteen, I realized that unless I did well on the Hong Kong Certificate of Education exam scheduled for the end of my fifth year, I’d be forced to attend a far less prestigious school. I knew my parents didn’t have the means to save me, so I decided to apply myself to my studies and try to get good grades.
It took my teachers a while to get used to the new me. I’d gained a reputation as a class clown, chitchatting non-stop. In music class, I refused to learn how to read notes. But I was always a strong reader. In Chinese-language class in the fourth form, I wrote an essay about the Chinese poet Xu Zhimo. Xu was a dashingly handsome writer, famous for his romantic liaisons as much as his lyrical poetry. Xu wrote in the 1920s, when warlords had carved China into fiefdoms and Japan threatened to invade. Xu contended that art didn’t need to serve society or the greater good; it was enough to appreciate beauty. I took issue with Xu’s view of art for art’s sake. How could he wax poetic about beauty when China was collapsing in chaos? I asked.
At the end of one class, my Chinese teacher told me to stay behind. “Did you really write this essay yourself?” she asked. “Did you come to these conclusions on your own?” She thought I’d plagiarized it. But it was my own work.
By that year’s end, I was in the top ten in my class. At the end of my fifth year, I was in the top five and I passed the exam, which allowed me to stay at Queen’s College and move into the sixth form— Hong Kong’s equivalent of senior year in high school.
Crawling up the class rankings at Queen’s College taught me a lot about my capabilities. I’m not lazy per se, but I do have a tendency to slack off. Once accepted at Queen’s College, I took it easy. I only did what was necessary. But that’s because somewhere inside me, I had this innate belief that when I needed to I could step on the accelerator and get the job done. These traits stayed with me throughout my professional life.
After I completed the sixth form, my swim coach told me that if I practiced more, I might be able to make the qualifying time to join the Hong Kong team for the fifty-meter freestyle in the upcoming 1988 Seoul Olympics. Queen’s College’s principal met with my dad and everyone agreed that I’d be given time to train. I was surprised that my father consented, but he’d always been impressed by authority. Whatever the principal suggested was fine with him.
I took full advantage of this extended vacation. While my classmates gazed jealously from the school’s windows, I practiced my jump shot in the school’s playground below. The teachers didn’t like it, but I’d been given a license to play—from the principal, no less. In the end, I failed to make the cut, missing by less than a second—a flash in real life but an eternity in sport. I never recouped those years of lost training when we first moved to Hong Kong. Still, I wasn’t particularly crushed by not making the team. I enjoyed the process. No matter how bad things become, I’d tell myself, you’ll always get out of the pool.
During the summer as a seventeen-year-old, I earned money for the first time, teaching swimming to kids at Hong Kong’s South China Athletic Club. I taught from 7:00 in the morning to 7:00 at night. My students peed in the pool with such impunity that I contracted a nasty rash. Still, with the equivalent of one thousand US dollars in my pocket, I began indulging a newfound taste for fashion. This was a huge change for me. Ever since we’d moved to Hong Kong and my mother had worked as an accountant at a textile mill, she’d clothed me in knock-offs and rejects. Now, with the guidance of a friend from the Queen’s College swimming team named Steven, I discovered the world of style.
Steven came from a well-off family and always had money to burn. He took me to buy my first branded piece of clothing—an orange polo shirt from Ralph Lauren. I moved up quickly to Yohji Yamamoto and Issey Miyake. Steven taught me to shop, and I soon picked up the subtle art of nonchalantly peeking at the price. My mother always said money isn’t everything, but you can’t do without it. Now that I finally had some in my wallet, I noticed the freedom it afforded—to satisfy my wants, to explore the world, to indulge my curiosity.
Other developments underscored the value of having resources. My parents had bought a new apartment. Although it was only 540 square feet, for the first time in my life I had my own room. It became my sanctuary.
My parents were—and remain—incredibly frugal and I took after them in that respect. When I cook today, I cut vegetables and meat with the goal of not wasting even a teaspoon’s worth. I still clean my plate at every meal. “Each grain of rice is hard won,” goes a line from a Chinese poem that we memorized at school.
We’d lived in that ratty apartment that belonged to my father’s boss for two years. One day, my dad and his boss had a falling-out. My father’s overdeveloped sense of personal honor was susceptible to any slight—a sensitivity that was amplified by the fact that we were living rent-free. When my father and his boss bickered, we moved out, bought the new apartment with a big chunk of my parents’ savings, and my dad quit.
My dad didn’t have a new job lined up and it took him a year to find steady work. He joined a trading company, but that didn’t pan out. He dabbled in other ventures, but they went belly up. Finally, after a year, Tyson Foods, the American chicken giant, impressed by his background in cold storage, hired him as its first employee in Greater China. Tyson wanted to sell into China and my dad recognized that there was gold in all the parts that Americans didn’t eat. Chicken feet, chicken ass, chicken innards, chicken gizzards, chicken neck, chicken heart—the Chinese coveted them all. Tyson flew him back to the United States, where he suggested production line changes to salvage these nuggets. My dad’s friends and colleagues laughed at his new line of work. In Chinese, mai ji, or selling chickens, is slang for pimping prostitutes. But the joke was on them. Within a few years, Tyson was selling 100 million dollars’ worth of junk chicken in Asia, filling the bellies of Chinese consumers with Yankee-grown “phoenix claws,” the Chinese term for chicken feet.
From my father’s experience at Tyson, I first learned about the vagaries of US-China relations. The Arkansas chicken pipeline into China was hostage to politics. Anytime you had tension with the United States, the Chinese government would suddenly up the required quarantine period for chicken feet from two days to two weeks. Faced with losing tons of product to spoilage, my dad had to conjure ways to get around the regulations and get the stuff into China. He was such a magician that Tyson named my father “salesman of the century.”
Tyson also provided my dad further proof that life wasn’t fair, especially to him. When he retired in 2003, Tyson didn’t offer him a pension. He was an international hire, the corporation said, so he wasn’t eligible for benefits. My mother pushed him to demand better treatment, but he never did. He’s just not that kind of guy.
At the end of the sixth form, Steven, my swim teammate turned fashion adviser, went to the University of Southern California. As I trained for the Olympics, I felt abandoned. Instead of writing letters, we exchanged tapes. I’d close the door to my room and pour my heart into my recorder. Steven gave me a detailed rundown on the process of buying a car in the United States; his mother had given him a choice between a Volvo, a BMW, or a Mercedes, and he was having trouble deciding. Why, my parents asked, are you talking to a machine and not to us?
Life in Hong Kong reinforced the independent streak I’d already developed in Shanghai. My parents were so challenged adapting to their new lives that they had neither the time nor energy to inject themselves into my world. Our social circles gradually grew far apart. I befriended local kids, while my parents’ friends were all recent immigrants from mainland China, like them. My parents criticized me for being different. “You’re not like either of us,” my mother complained. But in a way she was wrong. My father had been forced to become independent, too, in Shanghai in the 1950s. And, like my dad, I, too, knew that, when called upon, I was capable of hard work.
Family life with Mom and Dad settled into a cold war. I didn’t enjoy being around them and I suspect they felt the same about me. On Saturdays, as was the Hong Kong habit at the time, they both worked a half day. To avoid them, I’d pretend to sleep in. Afterward, I’d go to swimming practice and spend the rest of the day away from home.
Although the beatings had stopped, my father continued to yell at me. He’d burst into my room in a frenzy and start screaming. If I was late getting up for school in the morning, he’d bang on the door. On Sunday morning, I’d listen to American Top 40 on the radio and he’d bang again and command me to turn it down. “Why do you have to listen to that junk all the time?” he’d ask.
I began clubbing and drinking beer. When I started to drink, two things surprised me. One was my tolerance for alcohol. After one bottle, my friends were already getting tipsy, but I felt nothing. Back then, this was both upsetting and expensive; later, in my business life, my ability to hold my liquor would serve me well.
The other surprising aspect related to my self-consciousness, or lack thereof. When I drank, I became less self-conscious, more approachable, and more outgoing. Because of my size, I was pretty imposing, even as a teenager. People felt intimidated around me. Add to that the fact that I wasn’t naturally gregarious. But when I drank, I relaxed. People noticed that I became a different person, more accessible and warmer. I opened up. Ever curious, I was interested in the ways that alcohol changed me and my relations with the outside world. Inside, I yearned to be more social. Alcohol allowed things to happen.
I also began to try to date but had no idea what to do. Once a girl from a sister school cold-called me and asked me out. I was so nervous that I got a worldly friend from a police officer’s family to accompany me. We all met at a McDonald’s. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Single-sex education might have its good points, but it made me uncomfortable around girls.
Despite constant tension with my folks, we maintained one Hong Kong tradition. Almost every Sunday, we went out for dim sum brunch. We’d go with a big group and the adults would talk business. They were all old school chums of my parents from Shanghai who’d also immigrated to Hong Kong. China was opening up to foreign investment and my parents’ friends ran trading companies involved in cross-border deals. My father’s friends noticed that I liked listening in. Business in China interested me. I’d started reading the Wall Street Journal’s Asian edition. I’d read Lee Iacocca’s autobiography and, also, Donald Trump’s The Art of the Deal. I liked the idea of doing business, of building something that hadn’t existed before, of leaving a mark.
In Hong Kong, business was pretty much the only career path. We didn’t have politicians and the civil service didn’t interest me. You couldn’t afford to become an artist; the colony was a cultural desert anyway. In Hong Kong’s hypercompetitive environment where people were primed to get ahead, business was the main avenue to prove oneself.
Steven’s departure to the United States reinforced my desire to get out of Hong Kong. But when the cousin who’d taught me English offered to host me in Australia, where she’d gone to study, I refused. In my view, Australia was an oversize rock. I was bent on following Steven to “the land of the free,” preferably to the golden coast of California. I’d been raised on American movies and music. My first cassette tape was from the band Bananarama; the trio might have been British, but to me their New Wave sound was pure Americana. It never occurred to me to go anyplace else other than the United States.
At the end of seventh form, I applied to the University of California, Berkeley (Cal Berkeley) and UCLA, along with Washington University in St. Louis and the University of Wisconsin. Cal and UCLA rejected me, but I was accepted by the other two. At the time, Washington University cost $10,000 a year while Wisconsin’s tuition was half that. U.S. News & World Report ranked the pair seventeenth and eighteenth respectively. My father announced that I’d be attending number eighteen Wisconsin. My parents were doing better financially; nonetheless, an extra $5,000 a year meant a lot in those days.
In the late spring of 1989, as I waited to head to the United States, I returned to Shanghai to visit relatives. In cities across mainland China, demonstrations had erupted following the death of the ex– Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang in April. He’d been removed from his post in 1987 because he’d refused to crack down on student protests. Millions of people flocked to these new demonstrations, using Hu’s death as an excuse to demand more freedom and government action to stem widespread corruption that had allowed families of high-ranking Communist Party leaders to enrich themselves. In Shanghai, hundreds of thousands of people marched for change. I did, too, somewhat by accident. One day in late May 1989, I was on Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s main shopping thoroughfare. The street was packed with demonstrators, blowing whistles, chanting for freedom, and carrying placards calling for a more open China. No cars could pass, and the sidewalk was chockablock with spectators. The only way to move was to join the march. I slipped into the flow. People stared at me like I didn’t belong. It must have been my clothes; Hong Kong people dressed differently than mainlanders in those days, especially this gangly teenager with an interest in style.
In Shanghai, I stayed with an uncle who’d suffered during the Cultural Revolution. One evening as he and I watched the TV news, tears came to his eyes. “It’s not going to end well for these youngsters,” he predicted. “They don’t understand,” he said. “The Communist Party rose to power by manipulating protests, ginning up mass movements, and then suppressing them ferociously once they’d served their purposes.
“A newborn calf doesn’t fear a tiger,” he said. “You cannot beat the Communists this way.”
I left Shanghai for Hong Kong on June 2, 1989. On the night of June 3, the Communist Party declared war on China’s people across the country. In Beijing, army troops massacred hundreds of students and other demonstrators as they expelled the protesters from Tiananmen Square. Demonstrations in Shanghai were suppressed peacefully, earning Jiang Zemin, Shanghai’s Communist Party boss, a promotion to the Party’s top position nationwide after the Tiananmen Square massacre.
In Hong Kong, my father and I watched the crackdown in Beijing live on television. Both of us broke into tears. For us, it was one of those 9⁄11-type moments. We remember vividly where we were. Given my dad’s early experience with the Communists, he always believed that the Party was evil to its core. He’d seen it turn on a dime against its own people. He’d expected the worst.
As the events in China unfolded and the Chinese government issued a most-wanted list of student leaders who were just a few years older than me, my parents emphasized that they’d started their lives anew in Hong Kong so I could have a better future. All of their sacrifices, they said, were made so that I might avoid the fate of people on the Chinese mainland.
I was too young and too sheltered to understand what the chaos was all about. The whole affair made me want to leave Hong Kong all the more, to get out from under my parents, to find freedom and adventure, anywhere, even in Wisconsin, USA.