Memoirs of a Courtesan. Mingmei Yip

myself tightening my arm around Lung. I’d only just met this young man; I wondered, why should I want to arouse jealousy in him?

      Finally, when we had made enough dents on the dance floor, Lung and I returned to our seats. But Jinying’s friends kept calling him back to his own table, so he quickly apologised to us and left. Then Mr Zhu, Lung’s right-hand man, picked up a newspaper and handed it to me, pointing to an article. It was the latest gossip column by Rainbow Chang.

       A Naked Shadow

      We can now reveal the identity of the girl who plunged to her disappearance three days ago. This stunning escapade was staged by a magician, Miss Shadow.

      The incident was a prelude to promote her show opening on Thursday at the Ciro Nightclub, the upcoming rival of the older and more classy Bright Moon Nightclub. With this fanfare, Miss Shadow has instantly become the talk of the town. So I believe that the Ciro Nightclub will steal many customers away from Bright Moon.

      We were also told that the night she jumped, Miss Shadow was not really naked but wearing a flesh-toned tunic. The blood, of course, was fake, probably from a slaughtered chicken or pig or dog.

      Like me, many of my readers must wonder what will happen now to Camilla, our beloved Heavenly Songbird. Will she still dominate the Shanghai nightclub scene, or will she soon be pushed into the turbulent sea? Who will be our supreme entertainment queen? Who will be Shanghai’s ultimate skeleton woman?

      Well, we will soon find out.

      One question to Miss Camilla: how will you feel when you finally meet your worthy rival?

      More to follow …

      Rainbow Chang

      I bit my lip, then quickly regained my focus and conjured up my most flirtatious smile. ‘Master Lung, have you read this?’

      ‘Do you think I’d waste my time on gossip?’

      Good. ‘Will you be here Thursday night?’

      He cast me an amused look. ‘Depends. Why?’

      My heart suddenly turned cold, like the ice floating in my drink. I couldn’t bring myself to ask if he would go to Ciro to see the naked magician and her show.

      Back in my apartment, I couldn’t shut my eyes. Sipping wine, I could only think of this new rival, her inconceivable trick and her genius in getting attention. Why did she call herself Shadow; did she not have a real existence? Was she a ghost? The name was fake, of course, just like mine. Not that this Shadow, having already bewitched Shanghai, would need a response from me. Did she want to replace me as the number one nightclub attraction? Or maybe Rainbow Chang had guessed wrong. Maybe Shadow’s target was not me but someone else. My heart rose in alarm. Could that someone else be … Master Lung?

      Of course, I was smart enough to realise that this Shadow had not jumped to her death and was not a ghost but a human rival.

      So of course I was smart enough to deal with her. I remembered the lines from Sunzi’s Art of War:

      Know when to attack and when to wait.

      The essence of warfare is not attack but strategy.

      Know yourself, and know your enemy even better.

      Yes! That’s it. Know yourself, but know your enemy even better. Knowing her would be the next step towards clearing this weed on my path to completing my mission of eliminating Lung.

      Thus resolved, I reached to turn on the radio. As if on cue, a recording of my singing ‘Night-time Shanghai’ began to flood the room.

      They only see my smiling face

      But never guess my heart’s pain …

      I sighed, then downed the whole glass of wine.

       3

       Madame Lewinsky

      As a spy, I had to study strategies about scheming. My favourite was the Art of War by the most famous military strategist, Sunzi, who lived twenty-five hundred years ago.

      Everything I learned from this book can be summarised in one sentence:

       Build your presence, and use your cunning.

      Sunzi says that on a battlefield there are only two realities: win or lose. So there is no room for virtue, unless being virtuous or being a gentleman is your strategy. To win, every position has to be thoroughly known, every plan meticulously studied and every act carefully worked out. As there is no room for virtue, there is no such thing as ‘a glorious failure.’ On the battlefield, ‘honour’ is just an empty comfort for losers.

      Losers don’t get sympathy; they get killed.

      History is written by the victors. So no matter how heartless and dishonest you are, after it is written, if you win, you’ll be remembered as a paragon of virtue and honour. The Chinese say, ‘Those who win become kings, those who fail, thieves.’ Steal a nail, you’re a thief, steal a nation, a king.

      You must show no weakness, no human feeling. Like King Liu Bang, who lived over two thousand years ago.

      When they were battling for the kingdom, Xiang Yu kidnapped Liu’s father and threatened to cook him alive. Expecting his rival to surrender, Xiang Yu was shocked when Liu Bang exclaimed, ‘No problem. After you’ve cooked my father, don’t forget to save me a piece for dinner!’

      In war, you have to be that ruthless.

      Having studied the Art of War, the Thirty-Six Stratagems and all other major works on strategy, I believed no one, trusted no one. So I’d already guessed that little naked Miss Shadow had not plunged to her death – and was probably not really naked, either. I didn’t trust my own shadow, so why would I trust anyone else’s?

      To decide how to deal with Shadow, I needed to talk to my real boss, Big Brother Wang.

      A bodyguard let me into Wang’s spacious study, filled with antiques, polished redwood furniture and string-bound books. My boss sat at a massive desk, where smoke curled up from a cone of incense nestled on a celadon disk. He was reading a book cradled in his jade-ringed, long-nailed fingers. Above him on the wall was a calligraphic scroll:

       Befriend all scholars under heaven; study all books written by sages.

      So I worked for a scholar-gangster. Maybe that was why he had never been able to beat the cunning, streetwise Master Lung.

      The door closed as quietly as a drop of water in a bucket. Staring at the bald spot on Wang’s lowered head, I could see that he would not look up at me until he finished the page. I was curious to know what he was reading, but kept my lips tight to prevent questions from popping out of my itchy mouth. Instead, I glanced at his many books on the shelves.

      Trained to be aware of everything in my surroundings, I wanted to know what these books were about and why, as a gangster, Wang liked to read. In addition to his more active pursuits of cheating, scheming, gambling, threatening, kidnapping, torturing, killing and, of course, womanising.

      Despite this last proclivity, Big Brother Wang had never tried to seduce me or even force me to have sex with him. This was not because he respected me but because I was the queen on his chessboard. If the pieces on the chessboard of the gangster world shifted, I would have to shift in response, even at the risk of sacrificing my life. But not my happiness, because I’d never known that sort of emotion.

      Wang put down his book. His eyes searched mine, gazing intensely above the gold-rimmed reading glasses perched on his square-jawed face.

      I straightened myself, cleared my throat and spoke in my most respectful tone. ‘Big Brother Wang …’

      ‘This