Still Two Hundred Miles of Deep Wood to Chang’an

Mark Lu carefully removed his nameplate from the office door.

“What are you going to do with it?” asked his secretary in Cantonese.

“Keep it, of course,” he retorted in Mandarin. “When this blows over, I’m coming back to Hong Kong. I’m not going to wait another eight weeks for a new nameplate.”

She smirked. “Why don’t you take this one too?” She slid open her desk drawer.

Krrunnkkk!

Out came another shiny metal plate. Under the same bank logo, another name.

(lu country-glory)

“You made me a Chinese one?!” he exclaimed.

“Yeah, we made both. We thought since you were from the PRC, you might prefer a Chinese one, but you chose the English one. Take it.” She waved it at him. “I have no use for it.”

“If I am really convicted,” said Mark, “I will be famous, and you could sell it for tons on eBay.”

The phone began ringing. His secretary rolled her eyes, reaching for it. “Nothing sells for tons on eBay in Hong Kong unless it has Hello Kitty on it. Good morning Mark Lu’s office. Oh, Mr. Chan.”

Mark shook his head at her.

She said politely, “I’m so sorry, Mr. Chan, Mr. Lu has business travel; you need not come measure him for suits this week. We’ll have to suspend his regular schedule until further notice, OK? Thank you.” She hung up.

“I’m definitely coming back,” warned Mark. “Don’t let them touch my stuff. And try not to get fired.”

“Oh, bankers come and go,” she said sweetly. “Secretaries always stay. I’ve been here nearly twenty years. I see you all more than I see my own sons. Where are you going? Do you want me to book your flight?”

“No, I did it myself.”

“How?”

He held up his phone. “I have an app!”

She laughed heartily. “And where is Boss Man Lu going in order to hide from the American investigators? Back to the Lu family compound in Shanghai?”

“Lu family compound?”

“Yeah. The mansion. I Googled it. Nice place. I’d like to live there.”

“So would I,” grinned Mark. “I buy a ticket to get in, like everyone else.” He tucked the nameplates in his satchel and grabbed an umbrella. It was a rainy summer in Central. “Ciao.”

“Seriously now, where are you travelling to?” she called after him.

“I had this vision of being arrested by the Americans in a casino in Singapore.”

“Very nice. Safe travels, Boss Man Lu.”

Cantonese can sound so sarcastic, thought Mark.

Country-Glory, indeed.

All sons in his family had variations on the same common, ambitious name: Country-Radiance, Country-Honor, Country-Virtue, Country-Prosperity. The Lu family name was significant in certain circles in southern China. His great grand-uncle had been a general on the right side of the war, but the brothers, schooled in America, famously supported the other party. In the late 1940s, the sizeable extended family, pressured by political differences, eventually blew up and scattered like confetti on both sides of the Taiwan Strait. By the time Mark was born, most of the family had regrouped in Shanghai. Ironically, they ended up just a few streets from the ancestral home. The Lus had lived there for centuries before it was confiscated by the government. The compound suffered a variety of uses; in the nineties, it was finally restored and turned into a museum, replete with tour buses parked outside in the mornings and noisy touts selling official guides. The ornate walls of the great ancestral hall still bore Red Guard graffiti denouncing his family. It was never painted over, and now had a placard next to it, carefully explaining the context.

The Lus traced their lineage back to the sixteenth century. Since then, they had alternated between being on the wrong and right sides of the Imperial administration. Every generation had to navigate this difficult legacy. In the twenty-first century, Mark Lu found himself victim of an apparently whimsical project of the U.S. government to investigate international banks...