A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (24 page)

The memory of Bo was not easy to erase.

T
he Chinese version of femme fatale is
huo shui
, which means “poisonous water.”
Huo shui
specifically refers to a beautiful woman who ruins the lives and careers of powerful men.

F
OR SIX WEEKS in October and November 1952, on a forested ridge near what would become the demilitarized zone dividing North and South Korea, Chinese soldiers repelled repeated attacks by US-led UN and South Korean forces in what became known as the Battle of Shangganling, or the Battle of Triangle Hill to the US. General Gu Jingsheng, who had helped Mao Zedong found the People’s Republic of China, knew the position was strategically important and he led the tough defense that inflicted heavy casualties on American forces despite their superior artillery and aircraft. The battle was made into a movie, now regarded as a Communist propaganda classic. After the war, General Gu held various leadership positions in China’s air force and the defense department. He worked with Qian Xuesen, the father of rocketry, to develop China’s space and rocket programs and subsequently the country’s first atomic bomb.

Fan Chengxiu was the direct descendent of an illustrious eleventh-century writer, politician, and militarist, whose writings are still part of the Chinese high school curriculum. Fan joined Mao’s troops at the age of fourteen; she fought in the Resistance War against Japan in the late 1930s and the Chinese Civil War in the 1940s. When the revolution succeeded, Fan was appointed a leader of the Central Party School.

The revolutionary Fan married General Gu in the 1940s and gave birth to five daughters. The youngest was Gu Kailai, who would marry Bo Xilai.

Neighbors called the five Gu girls “Five Golden Flowers,” the title of a popular 1950s musical featuring the love stories of five beautiful, strong-willed young Chinese women. The Gu sisters possessed not only good looks but also business acumen. Three of them operate business ventures worth a cumulative US $1 billion.

Despite her parents’ extraordinary past, Gu Kailai grew up in a family rocked by political upheavals. The year she was born, her mother was labeled a rightist and a counterrevolutionary for defending a young staff member who had dared criticize the party’s policies. Following her mother’s detention, the local party organization demanded she file for divorce to protect the political career of General Gu, who was a crucial figure in developing the country’s national defense industry. Forced to choose between his career and his family, General Gu picked the latter and asked his wife to ignore the party’s demand. “I understand Fan Chengxiu very well,” General Gu wrote. “She joined the party at the age of fifteen and studied Marxism at the party school. She repeatedly risked her life for the party during the war years. She has been loyal and given her whole life to the party. Calling her a counterrevolutionary is the biggest injustice under heaven. Divorcing her would ruin her life. I will not do it. The party can do whatever they want with me.”

General Gu paid dearly for his defiance. He was sidelined and barred from participating in important defense projects. In 1966, when the Cultural Revolution started, General Gu and his wife were separated and imprisoned for twelve years, during which time they had no contact with their children. Gu Kailai and her sisters lived like
orphans. In a letter to his daughters, General Gu offered a glimpse of their lives in that period:

       
You should not have second thoughts about the party, just because your mother and I are being paraded around for public denunciation every day and our homes are being raided every couple of days. I know that Zheng Xie [the second daughter] has been disqualified from joining the Red Guard organization. Don’t be angry. If you are a true revolutionary, you should carve out your own path. The younger girls should manage to finish school. Practice your calligraphy at home and learn to protect each other. Don’t be scared of knocks on the door and raids at midnight. Stay away from the bullies among other children in the neighborhood.

At the age of thirteen, Gu Kailai graduated from junior high school. Although her four siblings had been sent to remote rural areas for what was then called reeducation, she was spared the harsh treatment. The local government assigned her a job in the city with a construction firm. Gu Kailai became a bricklayer first and was subsequently transferred to a state-run meat store, where she became a model female butcher. One of Gu Kailai’s friends told the Chinese media she looked tiny for her age, but she was tough and dedicated. She established a reputation as the woman with a “single cleaver cut”—with one strike of the cleaver, she could give customers the exact amount of pork they requested.

In her spare time, Gu Kailai picked up the
pipa
, a traditional pear-shaped Chinese musical instrument, hoping that she could improve her career and become a professional musician. She was a fast and diligent learner. Within a short time, she could play like a professional. Indeed, in 1976, she joined the orchestra at the Beijing Film Studio as a
pipa
soloist and was selected to play the theme music for the documentary
The Passing of Chairman Mao
.

After Mao’s death, her parents were released from jail and the family became whole again. With the return of the national college entrance examination system, Gu Kailai set her sights on college, but having quit school in her early teens, she had never received training
in mathematics and scored a near zero in that examination. Fortunately, she performed well in her social science subjects, especially her Chinese calligraphy, and in the fall of 1978, Gu, then age twenty, was enrolled at Beijing University, one of the oldest and most prestigious academic institutions in China. She pursued a bachelor’s degree in law and a master’s degree in political science. Bo’s first wife, Li Danyu, told the
New York Times
in October 2012 that Gu’s admission to Beijing University was rejected initially and that the Bo family helped her get in through their connections at the request of Gu’s mother.

At the university, Gu Kailai found herself a member of the much-admired princelings group on campus. Her talent, good looks, and family background soon made her popular among boys. In the late 1970s, dance parties were held every weekend at Beijing University and Gu Kailai was said to be a regular. She met a tall and handsome but quiet young man at one of the parties and fell deeply in love. The young man’s father was a military commander and a friend of General Gu’s. In her second year, Gu Kailai and her boyfriend became inseparable, and soon she became pregnant. In the late 1970s, premarital sex was considered a serious moral and political offense. If found out, Gu Kailai and her boyfriend would face expulsion. The boy became scared and disappeared for several weeks. His cowardice and indifference devastated Gu Kailai. With the help of his sisters, she reportedly procured an abortion and dumped her boyfriend. A classmate remembered her as a tough, unconventional woman.

In 1984, during a field trip with a professor at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, Gu Kailai told the state media that she had become acquainted with Bo Xilai and was starstruck. Li Danyu, Bo’s first wife, claimed that Bo and Gu were good friends while they were at Beijing University—both were regulars at student dance parties. In a profile in the Singapore-based
United Morning News
, Gu compared the young party chief to her father—“educated, idealistic, and reliable,” like “those heroes in movies.” Bo and Gu also bonded over their shared experiences: both their parents had come from Shanxi province where they joined Mao’s revolution, and were later persecuted during the Cultural Revolution. While Gu Kailai and her sisters had grown up in prison with her mother, Bo Xilai and his siblings were left to wander
the streets when their father was detained and their mother died in the hands of the Red Guards.

The relationship soon blossomed, even though Bo Xilai had to maneuver through his messy divorce. In 1986, Gu Kailai gave up an opportunity to study in the US and married Bo Xilai, who was nine years older. The next year, their son, Bo Guagua, was born.

At the end of 1987, she passed the newly installed National Lawyer’s Examination, an equivalent to the American bar examination, and became one of the earliest licensed attorneys in China. In 1988, after Bo Xilai moved to Dalian to take up a district party secretary’s job, she followed him and set up the Kailai Law Firm in the city. She was one of the first lawyers in China to start a private practice under her own name. As her husband rose through the ranks, Gu Kailai’s practice flourished. In 1995, she established a branch office in Beijing.

In her short career as a lawyer, two high-profile cases boosted her reputation. In 1997, she represented a Chinese manufacturer of laundry detergent, which had purchased a computerized assembly line from a machinery company in the US in 1987. The US company filed for bankruptcy before it transferred any of the main software or operating instructions. The equipment that had arrived was useless and the Chinese manufacturer lost US $5 million. When it attempted to retrieve the relevant technology needed to run the equipment, a court-appointed bankruptcy trustee sued the Chinese for stealing trade secrets and for intellectual property infringement. The court entered a default judgment, ordering the Chinese company to pay US $1.4 million in damages. Because the Chinese company was a state-owned enterprise, the federal court in Alabama notified the Chinese Foreign Ministry in 1996, threatening to freeze the assets of Chinese state companies operating in the US if the government refused to pay. The latter part of the court order triggered a strong response from the Chinese government. According to an official Chinese media report, Gu Kailai agreed to take on the case pro bono. She flew to Alabama and hired a legal team to argue the case. In March 1997, a federal appeals court in Alabama overturned the verdict.

In the mid-1990s, Sino–US business disputes were relatively rare and there was little by way of precedent. The case made Gu famous.
The Chinese public saw her as a hero who had dared to stand up to American bullying to protect the interests of Chinese enterprises. Based on the experience, Gu Kailai wrote a book,
Winning a Lawsuit in America
, which became a best seller. However, some critics later accused Gu Kailai of exaggerating her role in the case. On August 14, 2012, the Hong Kong–based
New Century Magazine
released an article that pointed out Gu Kailai had no license to represent clients in court and that her role was limited to advising American counsel and monitoring the court proceedings. Besides, China did not really win the lawsuit, because the Chinese company never recouped the US $5 million loss from the US equipment manufacturer.

Gu Kailai seemed to thrive on controversy. In 1998, she projected herself into another contentious case involving Ma Junren, a track coach in Dalian. Ma had captured worldwide attention when his team broke national and world records sixty-six times in middle- and long-distance women’s track events. Amid the praises came an unexpected article in the
Chinese Writers
magazine, which alleged Ma had engaged in “illegal activities,” such as physical and sexual abuse of athletes, confiscation of athletes’ prize money, and more important, doping. The exposé shocked the nation and dented the reputation of the once seemingly invincible coach. Supported by her mayor husband, Gu Kailai threatened to launch a lawsuit against the magazine to defend the iconic figure, who was closely associated with Dalian. While preparing for the legal battle, she wrote a book,
My Defense of Ma Junren
, which listed one hundred alleged errors and inaccuracies in the magazine article. The release of her book pitted her against the magazine writer, making them the center of the controversy.

The lawsuit never materialized. During an interview with state media, Gu Kailai said that she had decided not to sue the magazine because the lawsuit had the potential to turn into a farce and could damage the reputation of her city and the coach. That proved to be a smart political move, which probably spared her national embarrassment. Two years later, many of the allegations in the magazine article were proved to be true: during random drug testing, investigators suspected that Ma had used performance-enhancing drugs as part of his training regime. Despite his strong denial, six of his athletes were
barred from China’s team at the Sydney Olympics in 2000 after they failed blood tests. Ma Junren quit the Chinese Olympic team and is now breeding mastiffs in Liaoning province.

It was also in 1998 that Gu Kailai decided to leave her practice and devote more time to her son’s education. Her decision was uncontroversial; many senior leaders’ spouses took similar paths—relinquishing their careers and keeping a low profile to support their husbands’ political futures. The wife of Li Keqing, China’s new premier and former party chief, used to teach American literature at a university but switched to research that did not require much presence in the public. President Hu Jintao’s wife was a hydroelectric engineer at a government agency before she quit.