“It sounds fabulous, Mr. Gu. Only Shanghai is not Rome.”

“We have shikumen houses in Shanghai. I’ll have the whole complex designed in the shikumen style. In fact, a lot of houses already there are shikumen houses. And there will be lanes too. Some of the houses will be thoroughly restored and redecorated. If necessary, the old houses will be torn down, and new houses will be rebuilt in the same style. All new materials in the same old style, the outside unchanged, but the inside with air conditioners, heating, whatever modern conveniences you can think of.”

“Shikumen used to be one of the dominant residential architectural styles in Shanghai in the Foreign Concession era,” Chen said.

“It will also work for stores, bars, restaurants, and nightclubs. It will be an attraction for foreigners-exotic, strange, colonial, post-colonial, what they do not have at home. And it will attract Shanghainese too. I have done some market research. Nowadays people are becoming nostalgic, you know. What was the city called then? The Paris of the East.’ ‘An Oriental Pearl.’ Books about Shanghai in the golden days sell like hotcakes. Why? A middle class is rising up fast here. Now that they have money, they long for a tradition, or a history, they can claim as their own.”

“It is a grand project,” Chen said. “Have you gotten the approval of the city government?”

Gu was a shrewd businessman, Chen knew. There was no need to worry about the New World Group’s business strategy. But the price he had been offered to make a translation of their proposal was out of all proportion to the task. It was as if a moon cake had fallen from the skies; it was too good an offer for Chen not to be suspicious. He had better find out whether there were any strings attached.