The Wild Beasts of Wuhan Read Online Free PDF Page B

the kind of partner everyone needs in China.”
    “ Guanxi ,” she said.
    Uncle sipped his tea. “A man in business in China is nothing without family and guanxi .”
    “What kind of family does he have?”
    “I was going to speak to you about that,” he said slowly. “As I told you, we will be staying at his house, so you will undoubtedly meet part of the family there, and at dinner. He works from home and entertains there as well.”
    “I see.”
    “And he has surrounded himself with his family.”
    “How large is the family?”
    “When I met him, he had a first wife with one daughter. She had been a teenage sweetheart, a factory worker. And he had just taken a second wife, the child of a business associate, a very smart woman who handled his money, and from what I have been told she still does. They have no children. I am told he took a third wife about eight years ago and they have two sons.”
    “They live under one roof?”
    “They do, on separate floors.”
    “How difficult is that?”
    “We will find out,” Uncle said, as the lounge P.A. announced that their flight was boarding.
    There was a long, winding line at the gate, a smattering of businesspeople, but the majority of the passengers were tourists being herded by guides waving umbrellas with coloured flags attached to them. Ava wasn’t sure what the attraction was in Wuhan. She had been to China more times than she could count, but always for work. Her only trip to Wuhan had been a two-day blur of meetings in hotel lobbies and boardrooms as she tried, successfully, to convince a meat importer that the fact he had lodged a quality complaint about four containers of chicken feet didn’t mean he could avoid paying for them, especially when he had managed to sell them all. It had been one of her first assignments for Uncle.
    Her memories of Wuhan were as blurred as the meetings had seemed. The city was surprisingly big — more than nine million people — and like all major Chinese cities it was awash in construction cranes. Her most vivid memory was the shroud of dirt and dust from the building sites that melded with bus fumes and industrial smog. Many of the people she saw on the streets wore masks, which she had thought was unnecessary until she went jogging one morning. When she got back to the hotel, her lungs were sore, and when she blew her nose, black mucus coated the tissue.
    She and Uncle bypassed the boarding lines and went directly through the first-class entrance. Wuhan was in Hubei province, almost in the centre of eastern China and a two-hour flight from Hong Kong. As soon as they had settled into their seats Uncle pulled out a racing form and began studying the Sha Tin race card. Ava closed her eyes and napped.
    When she woke, they were over a large body of water and starting to make their descent into Wuhan.
    “Lake Dongting,” Uncle said. “When I was a boy, we would go there in the summer to swim and to watch the dragon-boat races. That is where dragon-boat racing began.”
    She knew that Hubei meant “north of the lake” and that the name of the neighbouring province, Hunan , meant “south of the lake,” but she had never associated the names with an actual body of water.
    Like virtually every city in China, Wuhan had a relatively new airport, and Tianhe International was one of the busiest in the country, serving the nine million people in Wuhan and the sixty million who lived in Hubei. It reflected the province’s central position in China’s economic life.
    Ava and Uncle were met at the arrivals gate by a middle-aged man who was about the same size as Sonny. His large belly pushed out a blue Lacoste shirt to what Ava thought had to be its breaking point, and what little hair he had was worn long in the back and braided. Ava couldn’t help but notice the tattoos that covered both his bare arms and peeked out around his collarbones. He bowed to Uncle and nodded at her.
    “This is Tam,” Uncle said to Ava.
    Tam took