I made it back to my apartment at around six o’clock in the morning. To my surprise, a package was already sitting on my steps when I got there. It contained a carton of FPMO cigarettes, a printed confirmation for my one-way ticket to Beijing in one week, a confirmation letter for an indefinite stay at an aparthotel in Sanlitun, a check for $40,000, instructions to report to suite 4810 in China World Trade Center II at 9:00 A.M. on Wednesday, and a one terabyte hard drive. There was also a short note on Terra Cotta Capital stationery explaining that the hard drive was for my “convenience, to assist in the transfer of any materials that may be relevant to your new role,” while the check was for additional relocation expenses, though I could rest assured the apartment in Beijing was already fully furnished.
On my walk over to the office, I thought about how I would game plan the next few days. Obviously the main thing I needed to do was download the files I promised Bo. I decided it made the most sense to do this at the last possible opportunity to minimize the likelihood of getting caught before I was out of the country. Today was Monday; I’d download the files I needed on Friday and quit on the same day. So the main thing I had to do in the meantime was just to lay low and avoid arousing suspicion.
The problem with avoiding suspicion, of course, was the fact that I’d just been MIA for the past several days. As I got closer to the office I started feeling more and more anxious about how to explain my sudden absence and pulled up to the entrance sweating a weird amount for the cool morning weather. On my way to my cubicle, I found seventy percent of the office gathered in the kitchen munching on breakfast burritos. I accidentally locked eyes with one of the quality assurance managers, a gopher-like man named Jerry I’d only interacted with once or twice in my life.
“Oh, hey, Michael, how was your vacation? Someone from the lobby stopped by on Friday with mail for you, but you weren’t at your desk, so we figured you must’ve gone somewhere for a long weekend.”
So until Friday they hadn’t even noticed that I was gone.
“Yup. College buddy’s wedding in Nashville,” I said.
“Oh, terrific. I heard the weather there’s amazing this time of year.” Then he went back to eating his burrito.
I should have been relieved, but now I was feeling pissed that they never noticed I was gone in the first place.
I sat down at my cubicle and started to kill time by reading the news on my laptop. A New York Times headline titled US REPORT WARNS ON CHINA IP THEFT caught my eye, so I clicked into it. The article described a certain report by an influential think tank that had been circulating in Washington, which claimed that the Chinese government was stealing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of American intellectual property each year, in a brazen and systematic campaign that one prominent American general called “the greatest transfer of wealth in history”—an eyebrow-raising turn of phrase if ever there was one. This astronomical figure accounted for not only software piracy but also acts of corporate espionage—the theft of trade secrets, etc. The language of the report was unquestionably bellicose, calling the problem “an issue of national security.”
One term that the report kept alluding to was Economic Espionage Act, so I looked it up and learned that it was a 1996 act of Congress that criminalized the act of stealing trade secrets to benefit a foreign government. So far there had only been a handful of cases, mostly involving naturalized Chinese American scientists; one guy got ten years for attempting to steal, of all things, the formula of a chemical whitening agent often used in refrigerator doors and Oreo cookies.
During this research session my mind kept wandering back to the Philosopher-General’s thrilling coinage of “the greatest transfer of wealth in history” and wondered whether that appraisal included American slavery, British imperialism, or the rise of Wall Street. Then I thought about the Chinese men that American businessmen imported to work on the railroads, lifted down in baskets, like ritual offerings, to the explosive tunnels, and what Lawrence had said about the real value of the patents their present-day descendants—those meek scientists in R&D labs—churned out year after year. Where did that transfer of wealth rank in history? What about the vast fortunes that had been stolen from the Chinese inventors that left their home country for the promise of opportunity in America? I felt a massive reserve of righteous anger welling up inside of myself and took a sharp sip of my Nescafé.
Lacking an immediate outlet for these thoughts, I spun up a VPN on my laptop and started writing a thread on Samarkand linking to the news article: HYPOCRITICAL US ESPIONAGE POLICIES/BAMBOO CEILING. Wired on coffee, I banged out six paragraphs in twenty minutes and hit POST. Then I went next door to grab a sandwich and came back eager to check for comments.
LOL what are you so mad about bro? I’m Asian, work in SWE at Airbnb, two years out of college, total comp is almost $300K and I get free gourmet food at the office / $5k of Airbnb credit each year. Typical day I work abt 4 hours and spend rest of time hitting gym / raves.
You sound like a boomer tbh lol. Managing other people just takes your freedom away, that’s why we’re all on Samarkand… should just leave America /get a remote job if you’re so pressed. Btw, 28, SWE level 3 at DoorDash, $400K total comp.
Random yuppie redpilled by CCP propaganda. Very sad. You need to get off WeChat.
It sounds like you’re not happy at your current job. Are you a SWE? PM me, I’m a technical recruiter, just placed another candidate 1 year out of school for +$120k his previous comp, $350k total comp.
I slammed my laptop screen in disgust and went outside to smoke a cigarette. Just one more week of breathing the same air as these vape-inhaling boba liberals, I thought. After a few puffs I started to wonder why I was so heated about this topic in the first place and found myself remembering the panel of patent award plaques that hung above my father’s desk at home. The Company issued one whenever one of his patents were approved (roughly once every six months), and by the end of our time together, no fewer than sixteen adorned the wall of his study, arrayed in a neat 4x4 grid. My father considered it a great distinction to receive these plaques, and they were his most prized possessions. But while the plaques accumulated, our modest station in life stayed the same. There were many hushed fights about money, which I overhead with guilt and dread. My mother, who was proud, wore the same cheap dresses for a decade until they were threadbare. When our family friends started suggesting more expensive vacation destinations, we stopped going with them. Though he never voiced his frustration out loud, the professional stagnation had a clear impact on my father, who became even more taciturn and reclusive, often excusing himself from dinner before my mother and I were finished eating to hole up in his study—presumably to continue his prolific inventing. He never had any promotions to celebrate, just the aluminum-and-plaster plaques that were mass printed by a trophy manufacturer in Pennsylvania for thirty dollars apiece. And yet those damn plaques were the only items he took with him to China.
At 4:30 P.M. I promptly headed home and tried to put the plaques out of mind. I couldn’t shake the irritating suggestion implied by the surface-level parallel that I was somehow following in my father’s wayward footsteps. Could that be a subconscious motivator of my actions; was there a part of me that even thought of myself as avenging him? Of course not, I thought; my defection was my own invention, a radical act of decisiveness and self-determination. Still, the thought filled me with a deep discomfort and lingered for the rest of the week.
When Friday finally came around, I got to the office at 7:00 A.M. to try and download the files I needed before anyone else got in. Luckily, that morning the office was completely empty. I took the hard drive Bo sent me from my backpack and plugged it into my computer. Then I logged into the secure General Motors cloud, selected the directories I needed, and clicked TRANSFER TO EXTERNAL DRIVE. A blue dialog box popped up with an hourglass icon and a time estimate: fifteen minutes. After the download was complete, I signed out and used the IT manager’s log-in credentials to clear my download activity from the cache.
At the end of the day, I printed my resignation letter, dropped it on Lucas’s desk after he went home for the day, and left.
I had certainly planned on quitting under more glorious circumstances. For days, actually, I’d been fantasizing about what I’d say to Lucas on the day of. But then I realized that no matter what I said, there was a chance it would come back to bite me, which was a risk I couldn’t take. As I left the office that day, there was a bitter taste in my mouth. I couldn’t shake the image of Lucas and Sanjay and everyone else laughing hysterically at my nonspecific, boilerplate letter on Monday morning. In all likelihood, they’d never even realize I’d gone on to greater things.
Later that evening, I felt I should celebrate, but I wasn’t sure who to call. I was still annoyed at Lawrence from the last time we hung out, plus I had a bad feeling he’d ask too many questions about the new job. I had a few missed calls from Jessica too, but I knew she’d try and drag me out to some Princeton gathering with her smug boyfriend and try to play matchmaker.
Back at my apartment, I went downstairs to smoke one of the Chinese cigarettes and found Daniel, Tony, and Jeffrey hanging out in the alleyway. A sort of somber air hung over their heads, which were bowed and specked with water; I immediately felt that I had intruded on a private conversation. Upon seeing me, Daniel smiled weakly and made a spot for me to lean on the wall. Tony and Jeffrey, seated on plastic stools, gave me polite nods and turned away. Remembering the pack of FPMO cigarettes in my pocket, I took them out and offered some to the group. When he saw them, Jeffrey chuckled and asked me how I came across the extravagant smokes; had I joined the Chinese Communist Party? “More where that came from,” I said jokingly.
A couple puffs of the fragrant cigarettes seemed to lighten the mood. I remembered their plan to open a Chinese restaurant together and asked them how it was going. Suddenly all three of them fell quiet. Then Daniel, after locking eyes with Tony and Jeffrey, broke the silence and started telling me about the “money troubles” they had recently gotten into. Apparently, about ten weeks ago, they found a suitable lot on Stockton Street and started pooling together the money they needed for the deposit. They emptied their savings accounts, borrowed all the money they could from their extended families, and took out a loan from a local tong. Jeffrey sold his car. The deal was all set to close until the day they were supposed to pick up the keys, when the landlord called to say that he had never received the deposit. They went to the police station, where a detective explained that they had just been the victim of wire fraud, and there was no possibility of recovering the money. Now they were out $10,000 and owed interest on the money they had borrowed from the tong. On top of that, Daniel was in trouble with his pregnant girlfriend’s parents, who had loaned a significant portion of the funds and were furious at him for losing it. They couldn’t find a lender for the remaining amount and were thinking about pulling out from the business.
“You’re short $10,000?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Daniel. I pulled out my checkbook and wrote a check for $10,000.
“Here,” I said. “I’m happy to help you.”
Daniel shook his head. “Dage, we can’t take your money. It’s not right.”
“It’s not a gift, it’s a loan,” I said. “Only I charge zero percent interest and you can pay me back anytime. What’s the landlord’s name?”
Daniel turned back to Tony and Jeffrey and they started to have a serious discussion in Cantonese. When they finished they all turned toward me, suddenly business-like, and Daniel cleared his throat.
“Okay, how about this. No loan—we give you ten percent share in the business. You can be our partner.”
I smiled. “It’s done,” I said. As I finished writing the check, Tony went back into the restaurant to fetch two bottles of house red. We had a celebratory drink and smoked through the pack of FPMO. I went back upstairs and brought another carton down, and told the guys they could keep the rest of the carton. Suddenly I remembered the sour interaction I had with Jessica and Nick in this very spot many months ago. Would smug, GSB-bound Nick have given Dan, Tony, and Jeff a “micro loan” for their predicament? Was there, perhaps, something a little exaggerated in my sudden show of generosity? Now Jeffrey was putting his arm around me and calling me dage—big brother.