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MERGER MANIAC
Before I have asked a half dozen questions, Wang warns me that he doesn't like to go into his personal life. "I thought Chris made that clear." He had not. "I'm very sorry because my personal life is my private life." In a matter of seconds Wang has gone from relaxed to uptight. He is so heated in his insistence that I not delve into personal matters that there is a tense moment during which the interview is in danger of being called off. "Certainly, I would not take offense if you say, 'Look, I really don't want you for our magazine," Wang says before I have expressed any such sentiment. He talks fast when he is agitated, and just the thought of someone trying to ask about his personal life has gotten him very agitated. What ultimately calms Wang is my assurance that he would be a valuable role model for other Asians. "If I can be some kind of role model for Asian entrepreneurs -- that, I want to do," he says, somewhat mollified but still agitated, still talking fast. "I speak often, mostly to college students, Asian clubs. I do make an effort to speak to them, if for nothing else [than] to say, 'You don't have to be scientists to succeed in this country. you can be businessmen, you can be entrepreneurs, you can even be salesmen sometimes, because, you know, the Orientals have this feeling, if you're not doctors, engineers, something, you know ... I do serve as that, as a role model and so forth." His outburst calms him. He is willing to give the interview a try. "What I won't answer, I won't answer," he says conciliatorily. He is more relaxed now though his crossed legs are still jiggling. "You can use whatever, and if it's not enough then I just want you to know, it's fine, no offense. That's fair enough, okay?" Halfway through the interview my tape recorder clicks off. I press the record button but it refuses to restart. Wang takes it from me and fiddles with it. For a moment he almost looks as though he is looking for a screwdriver with which to take the thing apart. Precious minutes are ticking away. I tell him that I will just take notes. Wang refuses to give up. Several minutes later he discovers the glitch -- the tape has run out. He flips it over and we resume. "Even stupid things like this tape recorder," Wang says, using the incident to make a point about his willingness to go ahead and try things instead of agonizing over them, "it can be fixed, let's figure it out -- that kind of a thing." |
We break for pictures. Wang flatly refuses to let himself be photographed in sweatshirt and jeans. "I have to think about the company's image," he says. The contrast with the earlier joking informality is a bit startling. He goes back into one of the bedrooms and emerges five minutes later wearing a shirt, tie and a neatly pressed pair of wool slacks. Draped over an arm is an expensive navy blazer. "I'm not sure if this will work," he says. "I didn't bring a suit." I assure him that it is fine. We go out through the sliding glass door onto a small private jacuzzi and deck. Wang complains, half jokingly, that standing in the sun will force him to squint and make his eyes look small. He is a cooperative subject, changing the tilt of his head and animating his facial expressions as he talks to produce what he thinks is the desired effect. He is obviously unused to being moved around for a camera's benefit and , after a half hour, I sense his resentment at being put through the paces. Wang's interest in his public mage has clear and rather modest limits.
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ike a surprising number of America's most successful Chinese, Charles B
Wang was born in Shanghai on August 19, 1944. He was the second of three
sons. Older brother Tony was born a year and a half earlier. Younger
brother France was born in 1947, shortly before the Communist takeover.
The boys' paternal grandfather was a landowner involved in business and
politics. At about the time France was born Wang's father was away for a
year and a half sudying law at Harvard. He returned to Shanghai with a
masters degree and served for a time as a justice of the Shanghai Supreme
Court. He seems to have been a model of the cosmopolitan Shanghainese. Not
only did he speak beautiful English but could read and write French.