“Oooh. Maybe I’ll do that one tonight. Oh wait, I think I scheduled the luxury caviar facial tonight. Shoot, we don’t have enough days for all the treatments I want to try!”

“Wait a minute, when did Rachel Chu, who wouldn’t even go for a pedicure back in her college days, become a spa whore?”

Rachel grinned. “It’s all the time I’ve been spending with those Shanghai girls—I think it’s catching.”

• • •

After several hours of pampering treatments, Rachel and Peik Lin met for lunch at the resort’s restaurant. Naturally, they were shown to one of the private dining rooms, which were in pagoda-style structures overlooking a serene lagoon. Admiring the massive Murano glass chandelier that hovered over their lacquered walnut table, Rachel mused, “After this trip, New York is going to seem like a dump. Every place I go to in China seems to be more luxurious than the last. Who would have ever guessed? Remember when I was teaching in Chengdu in 2002? The place where I roomed had one communal indoor toilet, and that was considered a luxury.”

“Ha! You wouldn’t recognize Chengdu now. It’s become the Silicon Valley of China—one fifth of the world’s computers are made there,” Peik Lin said.

Rachel shook her head in wonder. “I just can’t get over it—all these megacities springing up overnight, this nonstop economic boom. The economist in me wants to say ‘This can’t last,’ but then I’ll see something that totally blows my mind. The other day in Shanghai, Nick and I were trying to get back to our hotel from Xintiandi. All the taxis had their signs lit up, but we couldn’t figure out why they wouldn’t stop for us. Finally, this Australian girl standing on the corner said to us, ‘Don’t you have the taxi app?’ We were like, The what? Turns out there’s an app you use to bid on taxis. Everyone uses it, and the highest bidder ends up getting the taxi.”

Peik Lin laughed. “Free-market enterprise at its best!”

A server entered the room and lifted the lid off the first course with a flourish. It was a heaping plate of tiny shrimp that glistened like pearls. “These are the famous Hangzhou freshwater shrimp flash fried in garlic. You don’t find them anywhere else on the planet. I’ve been craving this dish since we first talked about meeting up here,” Peik Lin said, scooping a generous portion onto Rachel’s plate.

Rachel tried a mouthful and smiled at her friend in surprise. “Wow…they’re sweet!

“Pretty amazing, right?”

“I haven’t had seafood this good since Paris,” Rachel said.

“I always say that only the French can compete with the Chinese when it comes to preparing seafood. I’m sure you guys ate your way through Paris.”

“Nick and I did, but food wasn’t really the focus for Colette and her friends. Remember how I used to accuse you of ‘irrational exuberance’ whenever Neiman Marcus invited you to a trunk show? Well, these girls went completely batshit insane in Paris! They hit the shops from morning till night, and we had three extra Range Rovers tailing us everywhere we went just to carry the shopping bags alone!”