Five Star Billionaire: A Novel by Tash Aw

the
Shanghai Daily
—a small article, nothing more—in which she was asked to reveal the key to her success at a time when many small businesses were experiencing difficulties due to the global recession.
    “I smile every day while coolly evaluating my business model,” she replied, smiling coolly. “I remain one hundred percent optimistic even in a crisis, while being decisive enough to act as required.”
    Was she ruthless? the interviewer asked.
    “Sure,” she said. “You have to be tough to succeed.”
    Even as she said it, she regretted the way she sounded—matter of fact, unthinking, as if nothing bothered her. She tried immediately to laugh and find common ground with the interviewer, a young woman in her mid-twenties. But as Yinghui joked about things in the news—celebrity gossip, cute pop singers, and the latest films—she could feel the journalist withdrawing behind the safety of a polite smile, the gulf between them widening. She felt old; her laugh sounded fake and robotic. The girl merely smiled and listened as Yinghui’s jokes became more and more risqué.
    That interview sealed her growing reputation in more ways than one. Her image hardened into this: a bold businesswoman, certainly, but also a superefficient, humorless automaton who would coldly plunge a knife into you, except she wouldn’t bother to do it in your back, she’d stick it in your chest. She saw this written in a “joke” email circulating in her office, copied to her by mistake. Ultrawoman, Dragon Queen, Terminatress, Rambo—these were some of the nicknames for her that she discovered as she scrolled down the email chain, which was full of comments on her boring suits and severe hairstyle.
Like a rural Party official dressed for an interview with Hu Jintao
, someone joked. Some months later, at a cocktail party thrown by an American law firm, she heard one Western man say to another, “Hey, look, there’s that Chinese lesbian.”
    She had gotten used to having her hair short—it had been her style for almost twenty years, ever since university days. There was a time when people found the look charming and gamine, like Jean Seberg in
À bout desouffle
, from which Yinghui first got the idea. She didn’t think she’d changed much since then—she didn’t look very different from the Yinghui she saw whenever she looked at her college photos—but she wondered if she was getting a bit old for the hairstyle now. No woman in Shanghai had short hair—they all seemed to have long glossy locks that fell to their shoulders or gathered in a dramatic pile on their heads in the style of air hostesses. She began to grow her hair out and was frustrated by how long it took. At first it became thin and shabby, like a scarecrow’s, then thicker but still messy, like a schoolboy’s. When finally it reached a decent length, her hairdresser said, “Don’t expect me to perform miracles.”
    She began to dread the social functions that were becoming an increasing necessity in her professional life: A thrusting entrepreneur had to go out and be seen, but a single, always-unaccompanied woman of thirty-seven was, in Shanghai, an invitation for people to comment. The locals had names for women like her, whom they considered sadly past their prime.
Shengnü, baigujing
—that sort of thing. Sometimes she wondered if she were really that: a leftover woman, the dregs, or a shaggy monster waiting to be slayed by the Monkey God.
    “Style issues.” This was the phrase her friends used to describe what her new priorities should be. She needed to find a look that projected an image: someone effortlessly successful, who had accomplished all that she had while remaining gentle and feminine—a real Asian woman. She wanted to ask what a real Asian woman was, whether, in some way, she differed fundamentally from a real African woman or a real American woman. And if she wasn’t a real Asian woman, what was she—a fake one?
    These new concerns
—style