Picking the Golden Romance

Shanghai
It's all the fault of that mirror in the cloakroom.This cloakroom in the newly built three-story penthouse in Huangpu District under the name of Leo Min was driving Eddie crazy.

Since Shanghai has become the party capital of Asia, Leo has been flying here more and more frequently to accompany his latest mistress, a starlet from Beijing.He used 900 million to "buy out" her contract with a Chinese film company (100 million a year).Leo and Eddie flew to Shanghai for a day to inspect this new ultra-luxury apartment, and now they are standing in a cloakroom with a total of [-] square feet and an internal structure that looks like a coat hanger.The cloakroom has a floor-to-ceiling window, Makassar ebony cupboards and a full bank of mirrored automatic doors that unfold to reveal cedar-lined suit racks behind.

“There’s climate-controlled air conditioning throughout the room,” says Leo, “and it’s set at thirteen degrees on this side, especially for my Italian cashmere, houndstooth coats, and furs. The temperature is 21 degrees Celsius, which is the ideal temperature for leather, and the humidity is regulated at 30.00%[-], so that my Berluti and Corse leather shoes do not get wet. These babies need to be taken care of, don't they? "

Eddie nodded, thinking it was time to rebuild his cloakroom.

"I'll take you to visit today's 'press box treasure'." Leo said, changing "treasure" to "run".

With an exaggerated gesture, he slides his thumb across the mirrored panel, which suddenly transforms into a high-resolution screen, projecting a life-size male model in a double-breasted suit.Above his right shoulder is the brand name of each accessory on his body, as well as the date and place it was last worn.Leo flicked his finger in front of the screen as if turning a page, and the accessories on the model were replaced by corduroy pants and knitted sweaters. "This mirror is equipped with a built-in camera, which will take pictures and store them. It can display every single product that has been worn, and mark the classification with date and location. In this way, you will not wear duplicate clothes!"

Eddie stared at the mirror in surprise: "Oh, I've seen this kind of mirror." His tone was unconvincing, and the feeling of envy suddenly spread throughout his body.He had a sudden urge to smash his friend's ostentatious face against the brand new mirrored wall.

Here it goes again, and Leo is showing him another cool new toy he doesn't even deserve, it's been like that since they were kids—

When Leo was seven years old, his father gave him a titanium alloy bicycle, which was tailor-made for him by a former NASA engineer (but it was stolen within three days); at the age of 16, Leo determined to become a Cantonese Hip-hop singer, his father built him a top-notch recording studio and personally financed his debut album (you can still find that record on eBay); in 9000, his father sponsored Leo to set up An Internet company, which ended up losing a total of [-] million, declared bankruptcy at the peak of the Internet market; and now - this villa is the latest in his countless properties around the world, all of which are his amazing The adoring father threw money at him in exchange for it.

That's right, Leo Ming is the founding member of Hong Kong's rich second generation club, and the things handed to him are always placed on diamond-encrusted platters.It was Eddie himself who was unlucky and was born in a family where his parents would not give him half a penny.

It stands to reason that living in the world's most important city where material things and prestige are the main mottos, Hong Kong's most prestigious gossip circles would agree that Addison Cheng was born into an enviable family.They will admit that Eddie's family is well-known (even if the blood on the Zheng side is frankly a bit ordinary), that they went to prestigious schools (no other school is as famous as Cambridge...except Oxford), and now they are in the United States. The largest investment bank job in Hong Kong (too bad he didn't follow in his father's footsteps and become a doctor); at 36, Eddie still retains his youthful appearance (a bit fat, but don't worry - it makes him look more luxurious).He has a good vision and married the beautiful and generous Fiona Tong (who comes from a wealthy family in Hong Kong, but unfortunately his father was involved in the scandalous case of Datuk Dai Donglu manipulating the stock market); and his three children: Constantine, Augustine and Calliste are always well-groomed and well-behaved (though his second son seems to have a tendency to be withdrawn).

Eddie and Fiona live in a duplex penthouse in the Triumph Building on Victoria Hill, which is everyone's dream residence (five bedrooms and six bathrooms, more than [-] square feet of space, not including the occupied land. eight hundred square feet of balcony).They hired four maids, two of whom were good at cleaning and the other two were good at taking care of children.This Biedermeier-style apartment was designed and decorated by the well-known German and Austrian interior designer Caspar von Morganratti who settled in Hong Kong. It reproduces the hunting palace of the Habsburg dynasty. Recently, he also appeared in the special report of "Hong Kong Fast Fashion".It shows Eddie standing at the foot of a marble spiral staircase in a green Austrian blazer, his hair brushed back, while Fiona sits uncomfortably at his feet in a fuchsia evening gown by Oscar de la Renta.

The parking garage attached to his apartment has five parking spaces (each worth 25 yuan): Bentley Continental GT (Eddie’s daily car), Alston Martin Vanquish (Eddie’s weekend car), Regal S40 (fee Oona's car), the Mercedes-Benz S550 (the family car), and the Porsche Cayenne (the family SUV).Eddie also has a 64-foot yacht, the Caesar, at the Deep Cove Yacht Club.They have a vacation home in Whistler, BC (Canada) (the only place to see skiing, and there's a good Cantonese restaurant about an hour's drive from Vancouver).

Eddie is a member of South China Sports Club Stadium, Hong Kong Golf Club, China Club, Hong Kong Club, Cricket Club, Dynasty Club, American Overseas Chinese Association, Jockey Club, and Hong Kong Yacht Club. Private dining sessions.Like other upper-class Hong Kongers, Eddy may or may not hold what is called an "ultimate membership card" -- a Canadian green card for everyone in the family.

He has the habit of collecting watches, and now has a collection of more than 70 yuan watches, all of which are respected watch brands (except for vintage Cartier watches, all of them are Swiss watches).He keeps the watches in his personal dressing room, on a custom-made bird's-eye maple display (his wife doesn't have a personal dressing room).

He has been on the "Best Inviter" list of "Hong Kong Fast Fashion" for four consecutive years, and with his status, he has had three mistresses since he married Fiona for 13 years.

…………

Although there are so many desirable places in his life, Eddie still feels that compared with his friends, his life is really hard: he has no real estate on Victoria Peak, no family private jet, and his boat is too small to let more than A yacht where ten guests happily dine, and no [-]/[-] crew; Oh, Eddie's parents were very stubborn - insisting that Eddie learn to earn his own living as soon as he graduated.

It's not fair.Parents are terribly rich, and as long as his grandma in Singapore gets her hair up, Mom will be the heir to another ostentatious inheritance (Grandma has had two heart attacks in the past ten years, but since getting a cardioverter-defibrillator After that, the heart will keep beating until God knows when).It's a pity that his parents are very healthy. When they die, the inheritance he, his mean sister, and wimpy brother get is definitely not enough.

Eddie had been trying to estimate his parents' total net worth, mostly from information provided by his friends in real estate.He keeps a table on his computer at home, constantly updates the land price every week, and calculates how many rights shares he can get in the future.But no matter how he calculated, he found that with the way his parents managed their money, he would never be on the list of "Top Ten Richest People in Hong Kong" by "Fortune" (Asian Edition).

His parents have always been selfish.True, they raised him, paid his tuition, bought him his first apartment, but let him down when it came to what really mattered—they didn't know how to flaunt their financial resources properly.Although his father is a celebrity, because of his own ability, he is a child from a middle-class family with inherent middle-class ideas: as a respected doctor, he travels in that outdated Rolls-Royce and wears that old Rolls-Royce. A rusty Audemars Piguet watch to the club is enough to keep him content.Then there's his stingy mom, always on the money.As long as she uses her noble background, she can be a queen of the social world, such as wearing designer clothes, or moving out of that middle-class apartment--the damn apartment.

Eddie hated going to his parents' house.He hated the lobby of that apartment building, with the cheap-looking Mongolian black floor, and the old security lady who always ate stinky tofu in plastic bags.In the apartment, the peach-coloured leather sectional sofa, the white-painted side table (bought in the clearance sale of the Lane Crawford department store on Queen's Road in the mid-19s), stuffed in fake The glass pebbles at the bottom of the flower vases, the scrolls of Chinese calligraphy hanging on the walls (all gifted by his father's patients), and the certificates of honor and medals from the hospital on the wall shelves in the living room all disgusted him.He hated passing the bedroom doorway he was forced to share with his younger brother—even after all these years, the two nautical-themed beds and the navy-blue hanging cabinet from IKEA hadn’t changed.Most of all, he hated the family portraits hanging behind that big-screen TV in huge walnut frames—the black-and-brown background of a photo studio and the words "Sammy Photo Studio" in gold embossment in the lower right corner of the frame. As if mocking him all the time.He didn't like how he looked in that photo - he was [-] years old and had just returned home from a year of Cambridge University, with hair that grew to his shoulders like a feather, wearing what he thought was super cool at the time. Smith's tweed jacket, proudly resting his elbow on his mother's shoulder.

How on earth did his mother come from such an elegant family and become so tasteless?Over the years he begged her to redecorate or move, but she always said no, saying she would "never be able to live without the fond memories of growing up here with the kids".

What "good memories"?His only recollection is that as a child he felt ashamed to invite friends over (unless he knew they lived in a less prestigious place).And his adolescence was spent in a small toilet - sitting under the bathroom sink and masturbating, with both feet against the bathroom door (the bathroom didn't have a lock).

When Eddie stood in Leo's new cloakroom in Shanghai, looking at the city on the other side of the river through the floor-to-ceiling windows
In the normally brightly lit Pudong New District, he vowed to have a super cool cloakroom one day that would make it look like a damn pigsty.So far, though, he has one thing that even an upstart like Leo can't buy - a cameo invitation to Colin Khoo's wedding in Singapore.