A Death in the Lucky Holiday Hotel (25 page)

Gu Kailai’s sacrifice did not go unappreciated. In October 2011, Bo Xilai talked about his wife to a group of visiting Hong Kong media representatives in Chongqing, saying he was “grateful and guilty”:

       
Kailai has made tremendous sacrifices for me. She gave up her law practice and instead focused on research. She quietly accompanied me when I later moved to Shenyang and Chongqing. Each time I encountered a challenge, she supported and helped me wholeheartedly. I’m very grateful for that. . . . To tell you the truth, I’m over sixty now and as you get older, you like to think about the past. Each time I think of what she has done, I feel guilty. Twenty years have flown by fast. I think she’s a very capable person and did well in so many things, but she is willing to make tremendous sacrifices for me.

The adoration seemed to be mutual. One of the illustrations of her love was the adoption of her husband’s family name, an unusual practice in Chinese culture, in which women generally keep their maiden names after marriage. In April, when the government announced Gu Kailai’s detention and the official media identified her as “Bogu Kailai,” many were taken by surprise, assuming that the government might have deliberately associated her with Bo Xilai. In June, a source in Beijing unveiled the mystery. It all started with Gu Kailai’s mother. When she married General Gu in the war years, she adopted her
husband’s name as a vow that whatever happened, she would always be part of the Gu family. Gu Kailai was touched by her mother’s devotion and did the same with Bo Xilai.

In the public eye, Bo Xilai and Gu Kailai were seen as a loving, compatible power couple. Some of his staff members unabashedly called them the “John and Jackie Kennedy” of China. The Singapore-based
United Morning News
published an anecdote now widely circulated online:

       
In the 1990s, when a Korean friend gifted Gu Kailai a jewelry box, she said to Bo Xilai, “I’m giving your beautiful wife this beautiful jewelry box. You need to buy some beautiful jewelry to fill the box.” Without thinking, Bo Xilai answered, “I will put my heart in there.”

Gu Kailai’s friends say she also was dedicated to her only child. While she and her husband were busy with their careers, Bo Guagua was raised by his maternal grandparents and Gu’s fourth sister in Beijing. By the time Gu Kailai quit her law practice, Bo Guagua was eleven. Gu Kailai intended to send him abroad for his education. Many affluent one-child families in China send their children to boarding schools in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the US, or Singapore for their high school education so they can more easily attend elite universities and graduate schools in those countries. Official statistics show that the number of Chinese students studying abroad has doubled every three years since 2000 to nearly 340,000 in 2011. A young person with bilingual skills and an advanced degree from the West is considered “
dujin
,” or gilded with gold.

Around 2000, the Singapore government launched an aggressive recruitment campaign in China for the country’s universities, which were considered to have an excellent combination of Western and Eastern traditions. The universities became a big draw because Singapore is closer to China and many students found the cultural environment easier to adjust to than that of Western countries. Gu Kailai tried Singapore first and stayed there for several months before she decided to move with her son, Bo Guagua, to the UK so he could study “authentic” English. According to a British documentary, Bo Guagua first attended an English language school at Bournemouth and then, through
Fido Vivien-May, a Royal British Legion volunteer, he was admitted to Harrow.

Though her husband said in many speeches she had retired from work to spend more time with family, reports say that Gu Kailai never stopped working even when she was accompanying her son in the UK. The
Wall Street Journal
and the
Guardian
reported Gu Kailai changed the name of her law firm to Angdao and remained on its books as a registered lawyer. An April 2012 article in China’s
Southern Weekend
newspaper indicated that Angdao’s biggest investor was the Bo family friend Xu Ming, a billionaire businessman in Dalian, and the firm handled mergers and bankruptcies for many large state-run enterprises in the northeastern province of Liaoning, where Bo Xilai was governor in the early 2000s. Gu Kailai was said to bring in the clients and take millions of yuan in commissions. She also entered into partnerships with several foreigners and founded Horus Consultancy and Investment, which advised clients wishing to do business in China. Horus, which is the name of an Egyptian deity, was Gu Kailai’s English name.

While in the UK, the
Guardian
reported that Gu Kailai had taken a keen interest in hot air balloons she saw when she lived in a penthouse flat with Bo Guagua in central Bournemouth, a seaside resort. It was a minor piece of business, but illustrates how she operated. Gu Kailai contacted a balloon manufacturer there and inquired about the possibilities of bringing them to Dalian. The deal was struck and the billionaire Xu Ming agreed to sponsor a gigantic balloon that would offer grand views over the city. However, the transaction soon hit a snag, according to the
Guardian
:

       
As the deal progressed, however, Mr. Hall [Giles Hall was the coordinator for the deal] became suspicious. Money was coming from more than one account—including Mrs. Gu’s personal account, which he recalls as being at Coutts [a large, London-based wealth management and private banking institution]—and then an extraordinary suggestion was made.

The cost of a secondhand winch was about £100,000 but Gu offered to pay £200,000, half of which she wanted Giles Hall to use to
pay for her son’s school fees. When Hall refused, Gu “changed from someone very friendly and gentle to someone who clearly didn’t like not getting her own way.”

The balloon flew over Dalian for two years until it was destroyed by a hurricane. A replacement balloon was purchased, only to be burned after getting hit by fireworks during a celebration in the city.

In 2002, Gu Kailai became restless in the UK and wanted to spend some time in China. Heywood, a Harrow alumnus, had specifically come to the UK to build connections with Gu and offered to take care of Bo Guagua during her absence. The Briton’s affability and sincerity eventually won Gu Kailai over—she allowed Heywood to spend time with Bo Guagua during school breaks and bought a used Mercedes for Heywood to pick up her son and run errands. Wang Kang, a Chongqing scholar, told the British media that Heywood and Gu might have had an affair while they were in London, but his claims have never been substantiated.

Gu Kailai was grateful to Heywood for his help with Bo Guagua upon her return to the UK. In 2005, after Heywood moved his family from Dalian to Beijing, Gu Kailai introduced him to Xu Ming, a billionaire businessman and princeling who managed a large state-run enterprise. The four of them agreed to work on land development deals in China. Heywood’s job was to connect Chinese developers with British investors. If any project succeeded, he would be awarded 15 percent in commission.

Gu Kailai stayed in the UK four years, and a person close to the couple said their marriage further deteriorated. “Many outsiders might still see them as a perfect family, but their marriage began to fizzle out in the late 1990s, especially with leaked stories of Bo Xilai’s many infidelities,” the source said. “Gu Kailai became suspicious and moody.”

One of Bo Xilai’s infidelities allegedly involved a well-known actress named Ma Xiaoqing. The affair started after Bo moved to Beijing and became minister of commerce in 2004. Several colleagues at the ministry claimed to have seen the two together. There were reports that Bo and Gu had separated around that time. At one point, Bo even pressured the actress to quit acting and marry him. The affair supposedly ended after Bo decided that reconciling with his wife could gain him a wholesome image and benefit his political career.

Following the breakup, the distraught actress never revealed her lover’s name, but numerous stories identified the “secret boyfriend” as Bo Xilai. In 2008, the actress talked about her former boyfriend in a media interview and said, “It’s all over now. I don’t want to mention that person’s name. He was in a field different from mine. If I publicize our past, it’s not good for me and for him. It’s meaningless to sacrifice for love.”

One could only imagine the devastating impact of Bo’s womanizing on Gu Kailai. She was said to have suffered from severe depression after she returned from the UK in 2003. A Beijing-based businessman with intimate knowledge of the Bo family disclosed in April 2012 that Gu Kailai also had skin cancer in 2006 on the left side of her face. The surgery was successful but she needed to undertake hormone therapy. “She was very self-conscious and she begged her friends to keep her illness a secret,” said the friend. “For months, she seldom stepped out of her house.”

In January 2007, Gu Kailai passed out at her father-in-law’s funeral. After she was taken to a hospital, the doctor found that her nervous system had suffered irreversible damage because she had been ingesting a mix of lead and mercury someone had slipped into the capsule of her daily herbal medicine. Gu Kailai suspected that there was a plot to assassinate her. She allegedly filed a report with the Ministry of Public Security. The
New York Times
also reported that Gu Kailai had suspected that Li Wangzhi, Bo’s son from his previous marriage, was masterminding a scheme to kill her. People around him, including her husband, dismissed her claims, believing she was simply paranoid.

In December 2007, Xu Ming, the billionaire businessman in Dalian, asked Wang Lijun, the nationally-known police chief of Jinzhou, to look into the matter. Wang did not disappoint and solved the mystery in a short time. He concluded that the Bo family driver and a domestic helper were responsible for the poisoning. Gu Kailai insisted that Bo’s ex-wife and first son were behind the scheme.

The Beijing businessman said the lead and mercury poisoning was very serious and Gu Kailai then became socially withdrawn:

       
I know that doctors from the Third Medical University used to come see her at home. One of the effects of the poison was that it caused
Gu’s hands to shake. The doctor advised that she practice all kinds of games to reduce the shaking in her hands by making all sorts of artifacts from used papers and plastics. When her son, Bo Guagua, heard about his mother’s illness, he volunteered to take a one-year leave of absence from school and came back to China to take care of her. Gu didn’t give permission. When Bo Guagua was home in the summer, the boy allowed his mother to cut his hair as part of the exercise to balance and stop her shaking hands. Gu Kailai was a strong-willed woman and she was desperate to reverse the situation.

Despite her poor health, Gu Kailai moved from Beijing to Chongqing after Bo Xilai was appointed the city’s party chief in late 2007. The Beijing businessman said Gu Kailai had high hopes for her husband and their marriage. They decided to get over the bad feelings they had around them and start afresh.

When they first arrived, Gu Kailai lived in a secluded apartment nestled on the side of a mountain on the south side of the Yangtze River. She seldom stepped out of the house to socialize with locals. However, at the height of her husband’s “Singing Red and Smashing Black” campaign, Gu consulted with Bo’s staff on many legal issues during the investigation of several anticorruption cases.

When Bo Xilai needed a police chief for Chongqing, Gu Kailai strongly recommended Wang Lijun. In June 2008, after Wang was relocated to Chongqing, he became a frequent guest at Bo’s house. In his court statement, Wang Lijun said Gu Kailai “treated him very well” during his daily visits to her home, known among officials as “No. 3.” In the midst of his anticrime campaign, Wang received many death threats from a triad organization against his wife and daughter. In October 2009, a widely distributed vicious rumor stated that Wang’s wife and daughter had allegedly been skinned alive as a tit-for-tat move against Wang’s execution of a triad leader. To protect the safety of his wife and daughter, Wang decided to move them to Beijing. Gu Kailai used her connections and found a school for Wang’s daughter and a job for his wife. Xu Ming, Bo’s friend who was president of Shide Group in Dalian, bought two apartments for Wang in Beijing for 2.85 million yuan (about US $460,000).

Wang Lijun paid back Gu Kailai’s generosity with utter obedience. According to an official in Chongqing, Gu Kailai once hosted a dinner for a group of friends at a five-star hotel. At the end of the meal, she had severe stomach upset. The news reached Wang Lijun and he immediately ordered the hotel to shut down and launch a full investigation. Wang even visited the hotel personally to check the food toxicity reports. There was a popular saying among Chongqing police: “Wang Lijun is not afraid of heaven, nor is he of earth, but he is in awe of Gu Kailai.” According to a feature in
Nandu Weekly
on December 16, 2012, Gu Kailai used to call Wang intimately by his nickname, “Devil,” and Wang addressed her as “Gua Ma,” short for Bo Guagua’s mom.

When Wang Lijun first started an anti-crime exhibition inside the building of the Chongqing Public Security Bureau, Gu Kailai, dressed in a red raincoat, black skirt, and tall black boots, showed up at the exhibits with her mother, who was visiting from Beijing. In the summer of 2010, when Wang Lijun took the lead and encouraged his subordinates to leave their offices and help direct traffic on the street, Gu was concerned that Wang could suffer a heat stroke and personally delivered water to him.

“Wang Lijun and I were close friends,” Gu Kailai told the court. “After the December 6 incident [when Gu Kailai claimed to be poisoned by lead and mercury and Wang Lijun helped capture the perpetrator], Wang Lijun personally headed a medical team to treat my illness. He was so dedicated to me and I became very dependent on him. In addition, when Guagua studied at Harvard, [Wang] was in charge of his security in the US.” Therefore, in July 2011, when Gu Kailai learned that Neil Heywood had made a threat against her son while he was in London, she immediately went to Wang for help.