TAIPING, MALAYSIA, MAY 11, 2004
Chan Kok Kuan still wasn't home. Too worried to sleep, his father, Chan Ah Chai, stood at the window watching for a sign of his son through the blinding downpour. The rain had started at midnight and was still pummeling the ground at 4:00 a.m. –flooding the streets and overflowing the lakes in the public gardens, where the century-old saman trees stretch their massive canopies over Residency Road.
A wiry, exuberant man of thirty-one, the younger Chan was not the type to stay out late without calling. He had been home for dinner that evening, as usual, after working all day at the aquarium shop he opened a few years back. Even as a child, he had loved anything with fins. Now he was expert in one species in particular: the Asian arowana, the most expensive tropical fish in the world.
In Chinese, the creature is known as lóng yú, the dragon fish, for its sinuous body plated with large scales as round and shiny as coins. At maturity, the primitive predator reaches the length of a samurai sword, about two to three feet, and takes on a multihued sheen. A pair of whiskers juts from its lower lip, and two gauzy pectoral fins extend from its sides, suggesting a dragon in flight. This resemblance has led to the belief that the fish brings prosperity and good fortune, acting as a protective talisman to ward off evil and harm.
The popularity of the species had exploded around the time that Chan Kok Kuan quit his job as a welder to pursue his dream of selling exotic fish. Rumors swirled that a single rare specimen had fetched $150,000 from a Japanese buyer. Though Chan didn’t cater to such elite collectors, he possessed an eye for selecting arowana that were healthy and strong, with the most desirable metallic luster and aggressive bearing. As many as fifty occupied his store at a time, each isolated in its own tank to prevent the fish from fighting to death. Most were young, between the size of Chan’s palm and his shoe, and sold for up to $1,500 apiece to local aficionados and dealers who distributed them throughout the world.
One such businessman had called earlier that afternoon, asking to buy the remainder of his stock. His father helping out at the shop as he did everyday, had overheard the conversation and warned his son to accept only cash. Now, as the elder Chan peered out the window through the torrential deluge, he wondered if the boy had returned to the shop after dinner to meet this buyer and decided to wait out the storm. Around 6:00 a.m., as soon as the rain stopped, the father climbed onto his motorbike and drove downtown.
