The Secret Letters of the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari (17 page)

As we pushed out the glass lobby doors I scanned the cars lined up along the sidewalk. There was a Lexus, an Alfa Romeo, a BMW and an Aston Martin. My money was on the Aston Martin. I almost began walking in that direction when I heard Gao Li say, “Over here, Jonathan.” He was walking in the opposite direction, toward a man in a livery uniform who was holding a set of keys. The man was standing beside a Volvo station wagon.

“Thank you, Sung Hao,” Gao Li said, taking the keys and walking around to the driver’s side of the Volvo.

I realized that I had been standing on the sidewalk, watching Gao Li, my mouth slightly open, my feet frozen in place. I snapped my jaw closed and stepped quickly toward the passenger side. I opened the door and was about to sit down, but a magazine was on the seat.

“Sorry about that,” said Gao Li, picking up the magazine and tossing it in the backseat. “My daughter’s.”

I was so surprised by the car that I didn’t say anything as Gao Li pulled out into traffic. This was, after all, the kind of car my neighbors drove, the type that lined the parking lot at Adam’s soccer games. There was nothing wrong with it, but it wasn’t the sort of vehicle that I thought a man with Mr. Gao’s obvious resources would drive.

We were moving on and off major roads, through seas of high-
rise offices and apartment buildings. At every turn, I expected a break, a move into low-rise suburbia or even a stretch of green space, but the line of dense buildings went on and on and on. Gao Li and I chatted amiably. He told me about some of his big ventures, including the production company and a new enterprise he was funding in Brazil. I told him about my work in the auto industry. Eventually I asked how he knew Julian.

“We met in court. While he was suing me,” Gao Li said with a chuckle. “Actually, his client was suing me,” Mr. Gao continued. “Unsuccessfully, I might add.”

“I thought Julian never lost,” I said. I had heard the stories.

“His client didn’t have a case, but for Julian that usually didn’t matter. I was just lucky that the suit was at the end of Julian’s legal career—when he wasn’t exactly at the top of his game.”

“Let me guess,” I said. “He got in touch with you again after his return from the Himalayas.”

“You are not mistaken,” said Gao Li, who was slowing down before pulling into a rare parking space along the side of the street.

“Please excuse me,” said Gao Li. “I just want to stop in at the coffee shop right there. I’ll only be a minute.”

I watched as Gao Li got out of the car, ran down the sidewalk, and disappeared into a small, brightly lit café. It was now at least eight in the evening, and the place looked packed. I could see dozens of people clustered tightly around small tables, stretching back into the narrow shop.

As he promised, Gao Li came out just a minute later. When he got into the car, he looked pleased.

“Another one of my investments,” he said. “Mr. Chang is
from my hometown. He started here in Shanghai with a little cart in the corridor of a shopping mall. I paid for half the cart. And now his café is one of the most popular spots in this part of the city. We are talking about opening a second location.”

“It seems to be doing pretty well,” I said.

“Well, certainly in the evenings it is. That’s when people go out for coffee here—afternoons and evenings. Coffee isn’t a morning thing in China yet. But Chang Ning is working on that. He has a few morning regulars. And he’s trying to reach out to the older crowd. Right now, his clients are mostly young. Some business-people, but most people my age still see coffee as a Western fad.”

Gao Li turned his attention to the road, while I watched the little shop disappear behind us in the rearview mirror. It seemed like an awfully small enterprise for a man who was playing at Gao Li’s level.

Another twenty minutes passed before we were turning off the busy street into an underground parking garage. The change in direction had startled me. We were surrounded by nondescript high-rise apartment buildings. I hadn’t seen anything that looked liked luxury condos or a wealthy urban enclave.

Gao Li pulled into a parking spot. The cars on either side of him were modest. Gao Li got out and opened the back door to retrieve the magazine and his briefcase. I followed him as he headed to a bank of elevators.

M
R.
G
AO’S APARTMENT
, like the car, was in striking contrast to everything I had seen earlier in the day. It was considerably bigger than my apartment to be sure, and the furnishings were certainly elegant and tasteful. It was on the fiftieth floor,
so the view of the Shanghai skyline at night was breathtaking. But everything else about the place was simple. His wife, Gao Ling, a pretty middle-aged woman, was dressed in dark jeans and a white shirt—something Annisha might wear—with bright turquoise jewelry. There were no diamonds weighing down her fingers or dripping from her ears.

Their daughter, Gao Mei, was out with friends, so it was just the three of us for dinner. Mr. Gao and I had a glass of wine, while Mrs. Gao brought various things to the table.

“May I help?” I asked, moving into the dining room.

“No, no,” said Gao Ling. “Thank you.”

The table was filling with covered dishes. The smell was heavenly.

“Did you cook all this yourself?” I asked in amazement.

Mr. Gao started to speak in Mandarin to his wife. My host was so fluent in English that it hadn’t occurred to me that Gao Ling might not be as well.

“My wife likes to cook,” said Gao Li. “If we have a big party, we will hire caterers, but when it is just the three of us, or a few friends for dinner, she prefers to prepare everything. Sometimes she even lets me help.” Mr. Gao laughed, and Gao Ling shot him a questioning look. He repeated his comment in Mandarin, and she smiled.

I
ATE FAR MORE
than I should have. When the meal was done, Gao Li and I helped clear the table and then he suggested that we drink our tea in his study.

“I have something to give you,” he said, leading the way.

We moved into a small room lined with bookshelves. A desk
was moved up against the window, the seat facing out toward the brightly lit city. Two deep upholstered chairs and a round coffee table filled the rest of the space.

I sat in one of the chairs while Gao Li went to the desk. He opened a drawer and pulled out something. When he turned back toward me he was holding a small, red, silk-covered box.

“Julian’s talisman,” he said proudly, placing the box carefully in my hand.

I lifted the lid and peered inside. The box held a small cylindrical shell—about two inches long and half an inch wide. I tipped it out of the box into my hand. A plain, ordinary sea-shell. It really didn’t look like an amulet or any kind of special treasure. A small piece of folded paper was wedged into the bottom of the box. I worked it out and unfolded it.

The note read:

Life’s simplest pleasures are life’s greatest joys.

Most people don’t discover what’s most important in life until they are too old to do anything about it. They spend many of their best years pursuing things that matter little in the end. While society invites us to fill our lives with material objects, the best part of us knows that the more basic pleasures are the ones that enrich and sustain us. No matter how easy or hard our current conditions, we all have a wealth of simple blessings around us—waiting to be counted. As we do, our happiness grows. Our gratitude expands. And each day becomes a breathtaking gift.

I looked up at Gao Li. All the trappings of wealth I had seen this afternoon, and then the simple apartment, the unassuming car.

“I imagine that you have more to say about this,” I said, holding up the shell.

“Yes, I have some thoughts about this talisman and Julian’s note. But first, I think you have some questions for me.”

I cocked my head. I wasn’t sure what Gao Li was getting at.

“I noticed your expression when you saw my car and the apartment. And I think you may be wondering about that coffee shop, too. You were just too polite to ask. But don’t worry about offending me. Ask your questions.”

I was clearly not fooling Mr. Gao—he already knew what perplexed me. But he wanted me to put it into words, so I would have to try.

“It’s just the yacht, the Bentley, the helicopter. I mean, it looks like your business is doing extremely well, but…” Now I was in trouble. I couldn’t think of any good way to put this. “I’m not trying to be rude, but your car, your apartment. I mean they’re nice, they’re perfectly nice, but…”

“But they are not the car and the home of a truly wealthy man,” said Gao Li, smiling. “You are wondering if I am trying to create the illusion of success for my business. You are wondering if I am struggling financially.”

I didn’t say anything. This was awkward.

“No, Jonathan. I am not struggling. The signs of wealth you saw today are all very real. I am an extremely rich man. But my car, my home, it all goes back to that little piece of paper you are holding.” I looked down at Julian’s note.

“The Volvo is a simple pleasure?” I asked.

Gao Li laughed. “Maybe for someone else, but I don’t really care about cars,” said Mr. Gao. “No,” he continued, “I guess the connection takes a bit of explaining. You see, Jonathan, I was not
born into wealth. My family wasn’t even middle-class. Not by North American standards, in any case. My father and mother both worked in a garment factory in Xintang. The tiny apartment we lived in would make this one look like a mansion.”

I could feel my face growing red. I began to realize that I had applied to Gao Li all sorts of assumptions and drawn conclusions formulated during my middle-class life.

“I am not trying to make you feel embarrassed, Jonathan. I am trying to gently explain all the contradictions you have seen today.”

I nodded.

“To tell you the story of how I got from the Xintang factories to here would take all evening, so I’ll just say that I managed to get out of there and start a small business here in Shanghai. I worked hard, I was lucky, and eventually I sold that business for what seemed like a king’s ransom to me. With that money, I began to invest in other companies, large and small. There has been no shortage of opportunities in this country over the past few decades.”

Gao Li explained that when his business began to take off, he did what I would have assumed any newly wealthy man would do. He bought expensive clothes, fancy cars and a yacht. He spent lavishly on dining out, vacations and gifts.

“The only thing I didn’t do was buy a glitzy penthouse apartment or a huge house. My wife wouldn’t hear of it. We got this place before our daughter was born. To Gao Ling, it was home. She never wanted to move.”

Mr. Gao went on to say that one day his wife had asked him to take her and their daughter for an afternoon stroll through the park. He told her that he didn’t have time—he was off to
a car dealership to check out a sports car he was interested in buying. Gao Ling looked at him with disappointment and asked, “You would rather shop than live?”

“She wasn’t angry, just sad. All afternoon, I could hear the echo of her words. And I kept hearing it for days, weeks.”

Gao Li didn’t buy the new car. He realized that he didn’t care at all about cars. And he didn’t care about having a fashionable place to live. In fact, he didn’t enjoy most of the objects he was spending so much of his time acquiring.

“I was buying them just because that is what I thought I should do. So I stopped shopping. And I didn’t miss the things one bit. What I did regret was missing out on that walk.”

Gao Li said he kept the Bentley and the helicopter for business purposes. The helicopter saved him a lot of time—time that he could spend with his family. And the yacht was a good place to entertain because his home was too small for that.

“That’s where the wisdom of the talisman comes in,” said Gao Li. “I realized that by living a certain way, I was missing out on simple pleasures, life’s
greatest
ones.”

“Money can’t buy happiness, right?” I said. That was one of my mother’s favorite chestnuts.

“Don’t get me wrong,” said Gao Li now, leaning forward earnestly. “I’ve been poor, so I would never say that money is not important. You have been enjoying Shanghai’s opulence today. But what you haven’t had a chance to see is the considerable poverty that exists in this country. The poor here—the poor everywhere—have fewer choices. They can’t always enjoy the simple things because they are working so hard to stave off hunger and suffering. They are too exhausted from the difficult work of feeding and clothing and sheltering themselves and
their families. My parents had very little time for pleasure—simple or otherwise.”

Gao Li sat back again. Then he bent forward to refill his teacup. He offered to fill mine, but I shook my head.

“You know, Jonathan,” Gao Li said slowly, “it seems to me that most of us who are lucky enough to escape poverty forget what having a little money does. It frees us to make choices about our careers, where we live, things like that. It frees us to spend time with friends and family. It allows us to enjoy the simple things. But people think that money is only about what can be bought, what is consumed. So they become distracted by the next shiny toy, just like I did. And if they start buying too much stuff, spending too much, they can get trapped. Almost more trapped than the truly poor. They become beholden to mortgages and credit card debt and loans. Or just trapped by having to make the big money their lifestyle depends on. After all, as Julian always says, the more addicted you are to
having
, the less devoted you will be to
becoming.
And what I’ve discovered is that real happiness doesn’t come from accumulating things. No, lasting happiness comes from learning how to savor common pleasures like a cool breeze on a hot day, or a star-filled sky after a day of hard work. Or laughter with loved ones over a three-hour-long home-cooked meal.”

“The shell,” I said, lifting it back out of the box. “Collecting shells on a beach?”