Gene Eu stepped out of the black Mercedes S-Class onto the rain-slicked pavement of Xinyi District, his Hermès loafers making a soft splash. The driver held an umbrella over him, but Gene waved it away.
"Keep it. I like the rain," he said in Mandarin, though his accent still carried traces of his California upbringing.
His phone buzzed. Another invitation—this time to a private auction at the Grand Hyatt. He grinned. Three months in Taipei, and doors were finally swinging open.
"Gene! Over here!"
A woman in a crimson qipao waved from beneath the restaurant awning. Lin Yue—daughter of a textile magnate, granddaughter of someone who'd allegedly sipped tea with Chiang Kai-shek's inner circle back in the day. Tonight, she was his golden ticket.
"You're late," she said, eyeing his wet shoulders with mild disgust.
"Traffic was murder. You know how it is."
"I don't, actually. I have a driver who knows the back routes." She smirked and turned on her heel. "Come on, everyone's waiting. And they're already judging you."
"Great. Love a good hazing."
The restaurant's private room was thick with cigarette smoke and perfume that probably cost more per bottle than his first car. Eight people sat around a lazy Susan loaded with abalone and sea cucumber. Gene recognized two faces from financial magazines—the kind of old money that didn't need LinkedIn profiles.
"Ah, the American!" An older man with silver hair gestured to an empty seat. His Rolex was so understated it was probably vintage. "Lin Yue told us about you. Your family made their fortune in real estate, yes?"
"Import-export, actually. My grandfather started shipping electronics from Shenzhen before anyone knew what the hell Shenzhen was." Gene sat down, refusing to show his nerves. "Now we're in semiconductors, rare earth elements, that kind of thing."
"Semiconductors!" A younger man—probably mid-thirties, slicked-back hair, designer glasses—laughed so hard he nearly choked on his tea. "Everyone's in semiconductors now. It's like saying you're in breathing air."
Gene leaned back and grinned. "Then I guess we're all suffocating together, right? Especially with the trade restrictions tightening like a noose. But smart money knows—whoever controls the supply chain controls the whole damn game."
The silver-haired man—Mr. Chen, according to Lin Yue's earlier briefing—raised his glass. His eyes had that sharp glint of someone who'd made and lost fortunes before Gene learned multiplication. "Hm. Most young people your age just want to babble about crypto and startups that'll be dead in eighteen months."
"Crypto's gambling with extra steps and worse odds. Startups are for trust fund kids who like setting money on fire and calling it 'disruption.'" Gene poured himself tea, deliberately skipping the baijiu. He needed his wits sharp tonight. "I prefer things that actually exist. Land, resources, connections."
"Connections!" Lin Yue laughed, a tinkling sound that somehow managed to be both charming and slightly mocking. "That's why you're here, isn't it? To collect us like Pokémon cards?"
"Exactly. And I'm not even pretending otherwise." He met her eyes. "Irvine was nice—good schools, safe neighborhoods, so boring I wanted to claw my eyes out. But if you want to play the real game, you come to where the game's actually being played."
Another woman, older, wearing jade bangles that probably cost more than Gene's car, spoke up. Her makeup was flawless, her smile sharp as a scalpel. "The real game, he says. Tell me, young man with such big ambitions, what do you think the real game is?"
Gene didn't hesitate. "Legacy. Anyone can make money if they're lucky or smart enough. Bay Area's crawling with tech bros who have nine figures in the bank and nobody knows their names outside their echo chamber. But the families that matter? They've been mattering for generations. That's what I'm after."
"And you think you can buy your way in with daddy's money?" The woman's smile could have cut glass.
"No. I think I can prove I deserve to be here." He set down his cup with just enough force to make a point. "My Chinese isn't perfect, I dress too American half the time, and I probably screw up honorifics more than I'd like to admit. But I'm here, I'm learning, and I'm stubborn as hell. That's gotta count for something."
Mr. Chen studied him like he was a balance sheet that didn't quite add up. "You're direct. Most people tiptoe around these things like they're walking on rice paper."
"Tiptoeing wastes time. And I hate wasting time."
"Hmm." The old man exchanged a long glance with the woman in jade—some kind of silent negotiation Gene couldn't decode. "There's a gathering next week. Very private. Some Party officials, some business leaders, mostly drinking and sizing each other up. My son will be there—he's always sniffing around for… ambitious partners."
Gene kept his face neutral, but inside his heart was doing backflips. This was it. The door. "I'd be honored to attend."
"I'm sure you would." Mr. Chen picked up his baijiu glass. "But here's the thing, Gene Eu from Irvine. At this gathering, people will test you. Not with questions—with silence. With subtle insults wrapped in compliments. With jokes that aren't really jokes. Can you handle that?"
"I grew up half-Chinese in Orange County. I've been handling that my whole life."
Lin Yue burst out laughing. "Oh, I like him. He's either going to crash and burn spectacularly, or he's actually going to pull this off."
"Which outcome are you betting on?" Gene asked her.
"Both." She topped off his tea. "That way I win either way."
The younger man with the glasses leaned forward. "Let me ask you something, Gene. What's your backup plan? Say this all falls apart. Say you spend a year here and nobody takes you seriously. What then?"
Gene thought about it. Really thought about it. "Then I spend another year. And another. Because going back to Irvine would be admitting I couldn't hack it, and I'd rather eat glass than do that."
"That's not ambition," the man said. "That's stubbornness."
"What's the difference?"
"Ambition has a goal. Stubbornness is just… refusing to quit even when you should."
"Good thing I'm both, then." Gene raised his teacup. "To stubborn ambition and bad decisions. The only way forward."
The table went quiet. Then Mr. Chen started laughing—a deep, genuine belly laugh that made everyone else relax.
"Alright, American boy. You'll get your invitation. Don't embarrass us." He clinked his glass against Gene's teacup. "And for God's sake, get a proper tailor. Those shoes are nice, but that suit looks like you bought it off a rack in Los Angeles."
"I did buy it off a rack in Los Angeles."
"I know. That's the problem."
As the night wore on and the dishes kept coming, Gene felt something shift. Not acceptance—not yet. But possibility. Like he'd gotten his foot in the door before it could slam shut.
Lin Yue caught him on the way out, rain still coming down in sheets.
"You know," she said, "most people who try what you're trying? They fail. Not because they're not smart or rich enough. But because they can't let go of who they used to be."
"And you think I can?"
"I think you're so desperate to become someone new that you might actually have a shot." She pulled out her phone. "Next Thursday. 8 PM. I'll send you the address. Wear something that doesn't scream 'I shop at Nordstrom.'"
"Got it. Anything else?"
"Yeah." Her smile was softer now, almost kind. "Don't try too hard. Nothing screams outsider louder than someone trying to fit in. Just be your weird half-Chinese-American ENTP self and see what happens."
Gene stood in the rain, watching her Mercedes disappear into the Taipei night.
Weird half-Chinese-American ENTP self. He could work with that.
His phone buzzed. A WeChat message from his dad back in Irvine: *How's Taiwan? Made any friends yet?*
Gene typed back: *Working on it. Might take a while.*
*That's my boy. Patience is a virtue.*
Gene snorted. Patience. Right. He'd give it another week before he started plotting twelve new schemes to accelerate his social climbing.
But tonight? Tonight he'd just stand in the rain and enjoy the small victory of not completely screwing up his first real test.
Tomorrow he'd worry about everything else.