Crazy Rich Asians

* The Straits Chinese, also known as the Peranakans, are the descendants of late-fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Chinese immigrants to the Malaya region during the colonial era. They were the elites of Singapore, English-educated and more loyal to the British than to China. Often intermarried with the native Malays, the Straits Chinese created a unique culture that is a hybrid of Chinese, Malay, English, Dutch, and Indian influences. Peranakan cuisine, long the cornerstone of Singaporean and Malaysian cooking, has become all the rage with foodies in the West, although visiting Asians are dumbstruck by the outrageous prices charged in trendy restaurants.

6

The Chengs

HONG KONG

Most people driving past the squat grayish-brown building on a busy intersection of Causeway Bay would likely assume it was some sort of government health office, but the Chinese Athletic Association was actually one of Hong Kong’s most exclusive private clubs. Despite its rather perfunctory name, it was the first Chinese-founded sports facility in the former British Crown colony. It boasted the legendary gambling tycoon Stanley Lo as its honorary president, and its restrictive membership had an eight-year waiting list open only to the most established families.

The CAA’s public rooms were still firmly entrenched in late-seventies chrome-and-leather decor, since members voted to spend all the money on updating the sports facilities. Only the acclaimed restaurant had been revamped in the last few years into a plush dining room with pale-rose brocade walls and windows overlooking the main tennis courts. The round tables were strategically aligned so that everyone was seated with a view of the restaurant’s main door, allowing its esteemed members to make a grand entrance in their après-sport outfits and making mealtimes a prime spectator sport.

Every Sunday afternoon, the Cheng family would come together without fail for lunch at the CAA. No matter how busy or hectic the week had been, everyone knew that Sunday dim sum at the Clubhouse, as they called it, was mandatory attendance by all family members who were in town. Dr. Malcolm Cheng was Asia’s most esteemed heart surgeon. So prized were his skilled hands that he was famous for always wearing lambskin gloves—made specially for him by Dunhill—to protect his precious hands whenever he ventured out in public, and he took additional measures to safeguard them from the wear and tear of driving, opting instead to be chauffeured in his Rolls-Royce Silver Spirit.

This was something his well-brought-up wife, the former Alexandra “Alix” Young of Singapore, felt to be overly ostentatious, so she preferred to call for a taxi wherever possible and allow her husband the exclusive use of his car and driver. “After all,” she was keen to say, “he’s saving people’s lives every day and I’m just a housewife.” This self-deprecation was standard behavior for Alexandra, even though she was the true architect of their fortune.

As a bored doctor’s wife, Alexandra began channeling every cent of her husband’s considerable earnings into properties just as the Hong Kong housing boom was taking off. She found that she had a preternatural talent for timing the market, so beginning in the oil-recession days of the seventies, through the Communist-panic sell-off of the mid-eighties and the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Alexandra was always snapping up properties when they hit rock bottom and selling at the peak. By the middle of the first decade of the new century, with Hong Kong property going for more money per square foot than anywhere else in the world, the Chengs found themselves sitting on one of the largest privately held real estate portfolios on the island.

Sunday lunch gave Malcolm and his wife a chance to inspect their children and grandchildren on a weekly basis, and it was a duty they undertook with utter seriousness. For in spite of all the advantages the Cheng children had growing up, Malcolm and Alexandra were constantly worrying about them. (Actually, Alexandra was the one doing most of the worrying.)