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life and times
A short biography of an actual mafia boss in Shanghai. It gives some idea
what life as Enishi just might have been.
An excerpt from "Tu Yueh-sen, the King of the Underworld, the opium magnate, the gangster
chief whose terrible power was wielded over an empire of crime that out-ranged
in evil even that of Al Capone in Chicago. Opium, the brothels, the trade
unions, the hired killers, the slave-girl trade, the protection rackets, gold
smuggling, gun-running and all kinds of crime were under the monopolistic
control of Tu, the chief of the Cb'in Pang - the Green Circle Society - the
Mafia of China. It was in 1927 that Tu, twenty-two years before Chiang Kai-shek fled in
defeat from Mao's armies, assured himself of a privileged existence under the
protection of the Nationalists. As Chiang advanced northward in his campaign to
defeat the warlords, the trade unions and the Communists in the Chinese areas of
the city staged an uprising and took control of Greater Shanghai. When Chiang
arrived they declared their intention of handing over the city, excluding the
foreign areas, to him. Fearful of the Communists with whom he had broken
completely following the revolution against the Manchus, he declared war on them
and the unions. His principal ally was Tu. His thugs and Chiang's troops
murdered 5,000 workers. Tu's reward was an appointment to the Board of the Opium Suppression Bureau
which enabled him freely to run the narcotics business with ever greater
profits. He was also decorated with the Order of the Brilliant Jade. Thus the
greatest criminal China ever produced was able in my time to demand - and to get
- a constant French police guard on his maansion as the Communists and the
workers, whom he had betrayed, forever looked for the opportunity to end his
life. Tu was too important a figure in the foreign areas to be affronted. The
fact that he was the king of thugs, the chief supplier of opium, had to be
overlooked in the cause of securing his cooperation to make life easier for the
foreigners. Woe betide the man who crossed Tu's path. Such a man was
Superintendent Loh Lien-kwe of the S.M.P. Tu gave him information about a
certain shipment of contraband coming to Shanghai that. was not to be interfered
with. Loh, seeking laurels, swooped on a river vessel with the cooperation of
the River Police and the Customs and Tu lost many thousands of dollars. Loh,
poor chap, was shot dead as he emerged from his car at his home. It was no
secret that he had fallen foul of Tu, but who could - or wanted to - prove where
the guilt lay? In any case, Tu led a charmed life, thanks, he believed, to the dried heads
of monkeys that were always fixed to the back of his long gowns. Like most
Chinese, Tu was superstitious. He consulted the soothsayers regularly. Early in
his life he had been told by one eminent fortune-teller that he would live to a
ripe old age and would die peacefully in his bed only if constantly the head of
a monkey reposed in the middle of his back. If Tu failed to follow the
fortune-teller's advice then he could expect to die a violent death. My friend, Charles Norman Gray, head of the tailoring firm of C. N. Gray and
Co. in Nanking Road, was grateful to that soothsayer. Tu's belief in the omens
meant regular trips for the tailor to Singapore in search of monkeys' heads -
all expenses paid and much on the side. Tu would never trust a Chinese tailor. A
knife in the back was more than a possibility during a measuring-up exercise.
Thus Mr Gray, acknowledged to be the city's best outfitter, became the
gangster's personal tailor. Always Tu was exceedingly polite to Gray, the
Londoner who had really served his time in Saville Row, and who had gone out to
China in 1912, there to start a business of his own some years later - a venture
which flourished and gave C.N. several cars, a large houseboat, a cottage in
Devon for holidays, a house filled with servants and such customers as the Duke
of Kent, serving as a Royal Navy officer on the China Station, Charles Chaplin,
paying a sightseeing trip to the city, ambassadors of several countries, consuls
and such like. The
soothsayer's forecast was accurate. Tu died peacefully in his bed in Hong Kong."
Sin City, by Ralph Shaw, a
British journalist in Shanghai in the 1930s and 1940s: