The hotel was called Agulita. The manager who picked them up from the airport was a local man—short, tanned jet-black, with the whitest things on him being his teeth. He spoke remarkably fluent Chinese, though.
On the way to the hotel, Lin Chu casually chatted with him.
He learned that the hotel's owner was, surprisingly, from China. The man had been doing business on the island for over a decade, starting with a restaurant and moving on to a dive shop, a B&B, and a massage parlor before finally opening a five-star luxury villa resort hotel.
Lin Chu had initially assumed the owner was from Fujian. 'I guess that's a stereotype of mine...'
But after asking for more details, he learned the man was from the Northeast.
Huh.
'The guys from the Northeast are pretty formidable, too.'
'Anyone who can make it big overseas is a tough character. You need both ability and the right mindset; one without the other won't cut it.'
