“Buck Rogers?” Rachel gave him a blank look.

“It was a 1980s TV show set in the future, and all the buildings looked like some ten-year-old’s fantasy of another galaxy. You probably didn’t watch any of the bad eighties shows that came to Singapore years after they bombed in the U.S. Like Manimal. Do you remember that one? It was about this guy who could change into different types of animals. Like an eagle, a snake, or a jaguar.”

“And what was the point of that?”

“He was fighting the bad guys, of course. What else would he be doing?”

Rachel smiled, but Nick could tell that underneath their banter, she was getting more and more nervous as they got closer to their destination. Nick stared up at the moon for a moment and made a wish to the universe. He wished for the dinner to go smoothly. Rachel had waited all these years and come all this way to meet her family, and he hoped her dreams would be fulfilled tonight.

They soon reached Three on the Bund, an elegant post-Renaissance-style building crowned by a majestic cupola. Nick and Rachel took the elevator up to the fifth floor and found themselves in a dramatic crimson-walled foyer. A hostess stood in front of a gold inlaid fresco that depicted a beautiful maiden in flowing robes flanked by two gigantic prostrating warriors.

“Welcome to the Whampoa Club,” the woman said in English.

“Thank you. We are here for the Bao party,” Nick said.

“Of course. Please follow me.” The hostess, dressed in an impossibly tight yellow cheongsam, walked them past the main dining room packed with chic Shanghai families enjoying their meals and down a hallway lined with art deco club chairs and green glass lamps. Along one side of the hallway was another gold-and-silver carved fresco, and the hostess pushed open one of the wall panels to reveal a private dining room.

“Please make yourselves comfortable. You are the first ones to arrive,” she said.

“Oh, okay,” Rachel said. Nick wasn’t sure whether she sounded more surprised or relieved. The private room was luxuriously appointed with a grouping of armchairs upholstered in raw silk on one end and a large round table with lacquered rosewood chairs by the window. Rachel noted that the table was set for twelve. She wondered whom she would be meeting tonight. Aside from her father, his wife, Shaoyen, and her half brother, Carlton, what other relatives would be joining them?

“Isn’t it interesting that since we’ve arrived, practically everyone has addressed us in English instead of Mandarin?” Rachel commented.

“Not really. They can tell from the minute we walk in that we’re not native Chinese. You’re an Amazon compared to most of the women here, and everything else about us is different—we don’t dress like the locals, and we carry ourselves in a completely different way.”

“When I was teaching in Chengdu nine years ago, my students all knew I was an American, but they still spoke to me in Mandarin.”