Susan Jane Gilman - Undress Me in the Temple of Heaven

SEVERAL PEOPLE WERE invaluable to me while writing this book. I owe them my eternal gratitude and, in some cases, a bottle of South Korean tranquilizers.

I bow before Eckehardt Grimm for not only coming to my rescue two decades ago, but for reading this twenty years later when I showed up on his doorstep in Germany. Ecke, thank you for your excellent memory, your enduring friendship, your profound kindness, and your permission to use your real, incredible name. Danke.

Sandy Fenton deserves a medal of honornot only for her unbelievable altruism, but also for making sure Id gotten this right years after our last contact, and for letting me use her name as well. Thank you, O Great Canadian, for remaining as funny, spirited, and indomitable as ever.

To Cynthia, Warren, and Anthony Lukens for their inspiration decades ago and their approval moments before press time.

To Lisa Li in Yangshuo: Xie xie ni.

I raise a glass to my first editor, Amy Einhorn, for her continued faith in me and for launching this project in all its messiness.

A whole case of champagne, meanwhile, goes to my current editor, Les Pockell, who from day one brought inexhaustible vision, intelligence, and enthusiasm to this book. Ditto for Grand Central Publishings Celia Johnson, who read this repeatedly with unflagging interest. Both deserve a Nobel Prize in the yet-to-be-established field of Humoring and Reassuring High-Maintenance Authors.

To my agent, Irene Skolnick, for taking my late-night phone calls and for years of emotional as well as professional support, and to Vida Engstrand, who went beyond all proofreading duties, giving me tons of feedback and talking me through hitting the Send button.

To my cohort and twin, Marc Acito, for his wise counsel, wit, and structural expertise, and to Floyd Sklaver for indulging us both.

To my beautiful cousin Joan Stern for brainstorming and cheering me on. To Stefanie Weiss for her reading, encouragement, and humor. To Susie and Gray Walker for their enduring interest and help in reconstructing Hong Kong in the 1980s. To Eric Messinger and Rebecca Tayne for the cookies. To Maureen McSherry and Desa Sealy Ruffin for their sympathy and support. To Lisa and Doug Grandstaff for their sushi, sympathy, and photography. To my brother, John Seeger Gilman, for artistic advice.

To the staff at Grand Central Publishing, who continue to promote and believe in my work.

To Claire Van Houten and Jonniewherever they are. To Jonnie, thank you for all your immense kindness and hospitality that I did not deserve twenty years ago. To Claire, thank you for insisting I not give in to fear, for opening up the world for me, for giving me my life. I wish things had turned out differently; Ill always be grateful to you.

Yet the person to whom I am most indebted is Bob Stefanski, my humble but truly brilliant husband, who has lived, breathed, and traveled through China and this book with me for three years. He has been my rock, late-night reader, and constant sounding board. I simply could not have written this without his love, patience, and insight. Bob, I thank you for everything. I give you my full heart.

Also by Susan Jane Gilman

Kiss My Tiara

Hypocrite in a Pouffy White Dress

I NEVER SAW Claire Van Houten again.

That morning in November in 1986 when I deposited her into the arms of her father, she ducked down into a limousine outside LaGuardia Airport and vanished from my life.

When I boarded the plane back to Hong Kong four weeks later to resume traveling, I had no idea that I would, in fact, end up circumnavigating the globe just as she and I had planned that spring night back at the IHOP. I trekked through Bali, Jakarta, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, and Sri Lanka, then soldiered on to Western Europe and the Middle East. All told, I ended up traveling ten months.

Since then Ive acquired more stamps in my passport than Id ever dreamed. As a journalist, Ive covered assignments overseas in Poland and Austria. As a teacher, Ive led students on an educational tour of Britain. As a tourist, Ive been lucky enough to tromp through Red Square in a miniskirt and dance salsa on the beaches of Venezuela.

On our first wedding anniversary, my husband, the Amazing Bob, and I move to Switzerland. His international employer sends him around the world. We go on safari in Tanzania, kiss at the Taj Mahal.

In October 2005, Bob is invited to a conference in Beijing. As luck would have it, I have a writing assignment: Hong Kong Disneyland is opening. As far as irony goes, this is the jackpot. Walt Disney was a rabid anti-Communist. Now his Magic Kingdom will be singing Be Our Guest to the biggest Communist regime on the planet. The working title of my article is Mickey Mao.

While were there, Bob and I decide to retrace my steps from 1986. Were able to do this because China now has a network of domestic airlines that makes it easy to hop from Beijing to Shanghai to Guilin in a matter of days. In another sign of just how much has changed, I now think that paying $110 for a plane ticket is a bargain.

There have not yet been the epic earthquakes, floods, or 2008 Olympic Games. Widespread visuals of twenty-first-century China have not yet been broadcast around the world. Only a few stock tourist images have repeatedly appeared. So everywhere we go is a revelation, a shock.

On the highway from the airport, the air is so thick with particles, our taxi seems to be hurtling into a void. Beijing is now permanently engulfed in a blizzard of pollution, a chemical snow. Ghoulish clusters of fifty-story buildings rise out of the smog. Outlines of modern office buildingsmiles upon miles of themslowly take shape. We pass a stadium, a riot of overpasses. Boulevards converge, huge tributaries of honking cars.

At the hotel, white-gloved porters take our bags and usher us past an Armani boutique into a soaring glass atrium. A cool, cathedral hush fills the lobby. Hello, Ms. Gilman, says a blond receptionist. Were overbooked, so weve upgraded you to a suite.

The suite is bigger than our apartment back home. A plasma-screen TV is embedded in the wall above the marble Jacuzzi.

The Temple of Heaven is closed for renovations. Most of the hutongs where Claire and I ate dumplings have been bulldozed. Tour groups are led through the few remaining alleyways in bicycle rickshaws.

At the Wangfujing pedestrian mall, a bank of televisions throb with music videos of an Asian rapper named Will performing a hip-hop song, Will Is MVP.

Im back, yo, you like it, he shouts, aping Eminem. Shay shay nee. MVP.

A private air-conditioned taxi with a guide whisks us to the Great Wall. A cable car has now been constructed at Badaling to transport visitors directly to the top, and a miniature roller coaster careens down the side to a snack bar. As Bob and I climb the stones with thousands of other tourists, we see power lines and cell towers.

Our guide, Tina, a giddy young woman in her twenties, wears rhinestone cat-eye glasses and tangerine-colored lipstick, her hair in a dozen loony barrettes.

I take you for traditional Chinese refreshment, yes? she says, playing with the ring tones on her cell phone.

Before we can protest, the car pulls into a Chinese Friendship Store, where we are subjected to a twenty-minute hard sell for what looks like drinkable potpourri, silk pajamas, and decorative jade snuffboxes. It doesnt take a genius to figure out that Tina is getting a kickback.

They should rename it, Bob says afterward as we flop down on our bed at the hotel with a bag full of cloisonn chopsticks and a canister of lichee tea. The Great Mall of China.

Are you spelling that M-A-L-L or M-A-U-L? I snort.

Both, he laughs.