Memoirs of a Courtesan. Mingmei Yip

stood up and cast a last glance at the mirror. Tonight I was dressed in a turquoise body-hugging cheongsam with high slits up the sides. On the front were embroidered pale golden camellias, enhanced by matching elbow-length gloves and dangling gold earrings. During my training, I was constantly told, ‘People respect your clothes before they respect you.’ And, ‘Women need beautiful clothes like the Buddha needs golden robes.’ The message is obvious: if you want to be accepted into high society, dress like a high-society lady. If you want respect, dress elegantly. If you want to lure a huge following, dress in gold.

      But the main reason I dressed my best was to lure Master Lung to keep visiting my bed so I could fulfil my mission: learning all his secrets, then eliminating him.

      I took a deep breath, smoothed my facial muscles, thrust out my chest and pranced onto the stage in my shredded-golden-lotus steps. The sensuous silk rubbed against my thighs as the cool air caressed my alternately hidden and exposed legs.

      As soon as the audience spotted me, thunderous cheers flooded the packed hall. I took my place at centre stage, under a banner emblazoned with big gold characters against a crimson background: Bright Moon Celebrates Heavenly Songbird Camilla’s Performance.

      My eyes scanned the audience until they landed on a scrawny man in front with a crew-cut head and a monkey face – Master Lung. For the last few weeks, Lung had been coming here regularly to watch my performances, always accompanied by his underlings and a slew of bodyguards. Because of his infamous reputation, he and his entourage were constantly fussed over by nervous waiters and the fawning manager.

      Lung alternated between chugging down expensive wine and twiddling a fat cigar in his bony fingers as he stuck it between his thin lips. While his fingers and lips were engaged in these suicidal activities, his eyes molested me unrelentingly. To my satisfaction, I saw him rhythmically strike his fist against his thigh, showing how excited he was by me.

      But something was different tonight, and at first I could not place what it was.

      I decided to make this audience wait while I took time to study them. The usual crew: successful businessmen, influential politicians, high government officials, black-society members. Also poets, artists, writers, a few professors: all no doubt the indulged sons of rich families. And the women with them: older ones who were obviously wives, younger ones who were just as obviously concubines, mistresses, courtesans or just prostitutes hired for the evening. But not everyone was what he or she seemed. A bomb-carrying revolutionary or two might be concealed in the crowd of revellers.

      High-end nightclubs were miniatures of the greater Shanghai. I knew well that the expensive attire, polite speech and elegant manners were but tools to hide the itch for blood and money. As if oblivious of the tension in the air, white-shirted and black-suited waiters busied themselves topping up wine glasses, warming teapots, proffering hot towels, extending trays laden with cigarettes and depositing a variety of respect dishes – complimentary snacks.

      Every evening I began with ‘Night-time Shanghai,’ a syrupy tune favoured by the rich and decadent. The small orchestra – consisting of a pianist, violinist, drummer and trumpet, trombone and double bass players – watched me, ready to strike the first note.

      I always held a prop – an embroidered handkerchief, a painted fan or simply my long, red-nailed fingers imitating an orchid swaying in a gentle breeze. Tonight the prop was a golden fan adorned by a red camellia, a gift from Master Lung. Holding the fan to hide my lips, I meditated a bit more, then dropped the fan to breathe out my first note, trying to make it as tender as a baby’s breath.

      Night-time Shanghai, night-time Shanghai,

      A city of sleepless nights,

      Lights dazzling, cars hustling,

      Crooning songs and flirtatious dances filling up the night …

      I half closed my eyes to let the tune, the dreamy air and the audience’s hushed attention wrap around me like a silk cocoon. I didn’t know what I was thinking, if anything. But I did feel, maybe a little nostalgic, even melancholy. About what, I had no notion.

      I continued to croon as I swayed my waist in synchronicity with my fan, on which the painted flower seemed to be shyly nodding in approval.

      They only see my smiling face

      But will never guess my heart’s pain.

      Singing for my living,

      Intoxicated not by wine but by this lush nightlife.

      My years are spent in dissipation.

      When someday I finally awaken,

      I will still love Shanghai at night.

      I could identify with the sentiments of the song. But had I been spending my life in debauchery? Did I still love Shanghai at night? Thinking, I let the last note end its decadent incarnation in the air.

      The audience, as if awakened from a dormant past life, burst into thunderous applause.

      ‘Wonderful!’

      ‘What a heavenly voice!’

      ‘Wah, melts my ear wax!’

      Again, my eyes made their obligatory rounds, right, left, middle, back. But then they stopped at a new face among a group of richly attired, refined-looking young men. He looked shy, seemingly ill at ease, as if he had been raised in a different environment and was thrust into a nightclub for the first time. Since the people with whom I had grown up all lived by cunning and cruelty, innocence always surprised me.

      I threw this youth a nonchalant glance, bowed deeply, then threw the fan in his direction before sashaying backstage in my golden stiletto heels.

      Ten minutes later, after the crowd had quieted down, I left my dressing room and headed straight to Lung’s table under the audience’s intense scrutiny. Because of my popularity, I was usually expected to make my rounds, stopping at different tables and pleasing the patrons by making sexy small talk. But for the past few weeks, I could sit only with Lung. Once the other men realised I was Lung’s favourite and might be his concubine someday, they quietly backed away. Because Lung or his thugs would not hesitate to strangle anyone – not only men but even a crippled oldster, a pregnant woman or a newborn baby.

      Behind his back Lung was nicknamed ‘Half-Brow,’ because, it was said, years ago his right eyebrow had been slashed into two by a would-be assassin using a sharp razor. The assassin had probably meant to slash his carotid artery, but during the struggle Lung must have dipped his head to protect his neck, so his brow was slashed instead. While a non-Chinese might have borne this as a sign of bravery, for Lung it was a mark of shame, to the point that no one would risk asking him how he had got it.

      For the Chinese, to ‘shave off the eyebrow’ is to inflict the most extreme insult, even worse than calling his mother a dog-fucked whore or his father a shit-chomping tortoise head. Splitting a person’s eyebrow is believed to cut off his vital energy, life breath and good fortune.

      Like all Chinese gangsters, Lung was terrified of bad luck, so after his eyebrow was split he had become extremely superstitious. Now he would never take off his amulets, not even when he bathed. From his thick golden neck chain were suspended Guan Yin, the Goddess of Compassion; General Guan, both loyal protector and relentless killer; the ubiquitous money god; and a new addition – a soaring dragon, his zodiac animal, carved from translucent jade. A gift from me for his recent fifty-fifth birthday.

      In less than twenty years, Lung had risen from a spat-upon shoe-shine boy to being respected and feared by Shanghai’s most powerful people, even the police chief. The gangster head had begun his ascent by shining shoes for celebrities, wealthy businessmen, powerful gangsters, influential politicians. His shoe-shining was rumoured to be so painstaking and immaculate that with it he softened the hearts of some of his influential customers. He’d rub harder, longer and use more cream than the others. He ran errands faster than anyone else and somehow knew whom to ingratiate himself with by not charging them for his services. If the right situation arose he would chat briefly with these dignitaries, but always