Empire of Blood: The Fall of the Godfather of Crime and the Green Gang

Summary

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The Underworld Podcast

Episode: The Rise and Incredible Fall of China’s Mob King
Date: July 28, 2026
Hosts: Danny Gold & Sean Williams

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Episode Overview

This episode—the conclusion of a three-part deep dive—charts the meteoric rise and dramatic downfall of Du Yuesheng, aka "Big Ears Du," the most powerful gangster in Shanghai (and quite possibly the world) during the early 20th century. Through gripping narration and discussion, hosts Danny Gold and Sean Williams unravel how Du’s pivotal alliance with Chiang Kai-Shek’s Nationalist government elevated him from street hustler to transnational mob king, placed him at the core of some of modern China's bloodiest and most consequential events (including the 1927 Shanghai Massacre and the White Terror), and ultimately paved the way for his tragic demise.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Shanghai in the 1920s: Tumult, Wealth, and Vice

• Description of Shanghai as a “boiling metropolis” with profound divides: 2 million people, seething with political unrest and foreign interests. ([07:19])
• “Shanghai, Pearl of the Orient, now belongs to the mob.” – Sean ([04:27])
• The city is highlighted as a unique urban cauldron—foreign enclaves inhabited by global business titans, shadowed by sprawling vice markets and hidden criminal empires.

2. Du Yuesheng & the Green Gang: The Emperor of Vice

• Early Ascendancy: Outmaneuvers rival gangs, consolidates Shanghai’s crime economy under the Green Gang through brutality and strategic alliances ([09:43]-[11:58]).
  • Employs a carrot-and-stick approach: “He has his own version of plata or plomo, keeping corrupt officials on board by an honor system called Guangzhi.” – Sean ([09:56])
  • For those who don’t comply: “Any crook who dared…was liable to end up shot, kidnapped, or with their tendons sliced apart with a fruit knife.” ([10:15])
• Economic Monopoly: Gains wide-ranging control—gambling, drugs (especially opium), prostitution, bodyguard rackets, and more.

3. The Shanghai Massacre of 1927 and Du’s Expanding Power

• Dramatic retelling: Du’s men massacre as many as 5,000 leftists to aid Chiang Kai-Shek in crushing the Communists.
  • “By nightfall, the Green Gangsters have murdered as many as 5,000 leftists across Shanghai.” – Sean ([04:08])
• The aftermath: Only 10,000 of 60,000 CCP members survive. The “White Terror” pogrom begins. ([08:08]-[13:09])
  • Danny exclaims: “A years long pogrom that’ll kill up to a million Chinese leftists…Almost wiping out the Chinese Communist Party altogether.” ([13:09])
• Du’s reward: Power, protection, and semi-official recognition by the government.
  • “He’s able to launder and reinvest his vast narco, gambling and prostitution money…buying up legitimate businesses.” – Sean ([20:52])

4. The Mechanics of Power: Corruption, Philanthropy, and Image

• Du’s business empire:
  • Controls everything from tramways and utilities to shipping, banking, and fisheries ([21:03]).
  • Opens his own bank, Zhonghui, becoming an unassailable financial powerbroker ([23:59]).
    • “Not only is this the most perfect money laundering system in the world, but it will also allow Du literally to manipulate Chinese markets…” – Sean ([24:15])
• Lavish lifestyle: Famed for his mansion, opium habits, polygamy, and even “a robe adorned with three preserved monkey heads—for luck.” – Sean ([18:56])
• Strategic philanthropy: Orphanages, schools, and hospitals—used to polish his image as “honorable outlaw hero (hǎojiǎ)”, a kind of Chinese Robin Hood ([21:53])
  • “Du builds an orphanage, a retirement home, and two schools…gives hundreds of the poorest homes a monthly stipend…” – Sean ([21:41])
  • “He is the president of two hospitals…the government appoints him deputy chairman of the Chinese Red Cross, which is pretty hilarious, given he’s just butchered thousands of people…” – Sean ([22:45])

5. The International and Political Contexts

• Japanese Invasion & The Green Gang’s Response:
  • 1931 Mukden Incident, Japanese aggression in Manchuria: Green Gang launches resistance groups (albeit cynically – often extorting or doing clandestine deals with both sides) ([27:08]-[30:27])
  • “Some of these great organizations…do genuine resistance. The last one, the Salvation Assassination Society…does employ gangland snipers to shoot Japanese troops” – Sean ([29:51])
  • “But in reality…Green Gang members have had a back channel to the Japanese consulate…discussing possibility of creating a Japanese concession in the city ruled over by their mobsters.” – Sean ([30:04])
• Global Organized Crime Parallels:
  • Frequent references to the Mafia and Yakuza, drawing comparisons to Du & the Green Gang’s structure and methods. ([45:06]–[46:09])
  • “The closest equivalent to the Green Gang is Japan’s Yakuza, which came out of ultra nationalist secret societies to become a worldwide mafia alongside the Japanese state rather than against it.” – Sean ([46:07])

6. Downfall: War, Betrayal, and Death

• Japanese Occupation: Du flees to Hong Kong as Shanghai falls in 1937, manages resistance and aid from exile ([38:10]–[39:06])
• Civil War Aftermath: Returns briefly to Chongqing, but as the Communists surge, his son is arrested for stock manipulation—an act of political or personal revenge ([39:47]).
  • “Du’s downfall begins…when his son Wei Ping…is arrested on Chiang’s orders, accused of stock manipulation and paraded about in handcuffs…Now Du is going through the same thing, bearing the shame of seeing his son branded a criminal…” – Sean ([40:10])
  • Possible reasons: “Maybe Chiang found out he was chatting to the Japanese behind his back for like 10 years…” – Sean ([40:33])
• Exile & Obscurity: Refuses Chiang’s invitation to Taiwan; instead, dies in Hong Kong in 1951 from chronic asthma (the result of lifelong opium smoking) ([41:48]).
• Legacy Censored, Then Rehabilitated: Mao’s regime makes writing about Du illegal. Only after China’s economic reforms in the 1970s is his story revived ([42:43]).
  • “When the country opens up economically in the late 1970s, however, this edict is relaxed. And…literature about the so called Emperor of Shanghai rebuilds the legend of Du Yuesheng.” – Sean ([42:57])

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Du’s criminal reach:
  “By 1927, nothing criminal, illegal or even questionable took place in Shanghai without Du’s say so…” – Sean, quoting Damn Interesting ([10:15])

• On his penchant for intimidation:
  “He does the mafia’s horse head thing in style…He sends actual coffins to the homes of anybody he wants to stop doing what they’re doing.” – Danny ([11:04])

• On Du’s philanthropic paradox:
  “He is the president of two hospitals…the government appoints him deputy chairman of the Chinese Red Cross, which is pretty hilarious…” – Sean ([22:45])

• On his economic acumen and downfall:
  “Not only is this the most perfect money laundering system in the world, but it will also allow Du literally to manipulate Chinese markets in his favor.” – Sean ([24:15])

• On cultural impact:
  “So admired is he by this point that even his rough peasant Pudong dialect becomes fashionable in central Shanghai.” – Sean ([26:01])

• On comparative organized crime:
  “The closest equivalent to the Green Gang is Japan’s Yakuza, which came out of ultra nationalist secret societies to become a worldwide mafia alongside the Japanese state rather than against it.” – Sean ([46:07])

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:09] – The Green Gang & Chiang Kai-Shek’s alliance for the 1927 massacre
• [13:09] – White Terror, near eradication of the CCP
• [18:42] – Du’s lavish lifestyle and symbolic display (the monkey head robe)
• [21:53] – Du’s philanthropic initiatives and self-image
• [23:59] – Foundation of Du’s own bank (the linchpin of his money laundering empire)
• [27:08] – Japanese invasion, Mukden Incident, and Green Gang’s shifting loyalties
• [33:32] – Du pivots, melds criminal & corporate power under the “Endurance Club”
• [38:10] – Japanese occupation forces Du into exile in Hong Kong
• [39:47] – Son’s arrest marks beginning of Du’s downfall
• [41:11] – Communist takeover, end of Shanghai’s “mob era”
• [42:43] – Du’s death and subsequent censorship/revival of his legacy
• [45:06] – Comparative analysis of the Green Gang, Mafia, and Yakuza structures

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

The episode is by turns darkly humorous, analytical, and starkly candid. The hosts blend vivid storytelling, historical research, and irreverent asides, painting a nuanced portrait of Du Yuesheng—a man who embodied “the barely visible mafias that affect all our lives, whether we know it or not.” Through the tale of “Big Ears Du,” listeners see how organized crime, state power, and global forces intertwine—forever shaping the fate of cities, countries, and millions of lives.

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For further reading:

• Brian Martin, The Shanghai Green Gang
• Multiple previous episodes on the Yakuza and Asian mob history (see The Underworld Podcast archives)

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“Don’t Instagram your crimes and we are going to see you next week.” – Danny Gold ([46:33])

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Transcript

[Host 1]

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[Narrator]

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[Sean Williams]

April 12, 1927. Downtown Shanghai.

[Danny Gold]

Dawn.

[Sean Williams]

China's biggest city boils with tension. Chiang Kai Shek and his Nationalist army have for a year swept aside the region's ramshackle warlords. Their goal? A united China run by Chiang and backed improbably by the Soviet Union. But Shanghai still stands in his path. On paper, Chiang rules everything except the city's international settlement. But Communists and trade unionists have run riot, striking and marching and sacking foreign businesses. Allow these shenanigans to continue for long, Chan reckons, and the Chinese Communist Party, the ccp, will soon pose a far greater threat than any two bit warlord. So Chiang reaches out to Shanghai's other great power, its underworld. More specifically, the Green Gang, a former secret society led by the unprecedentedly powerful

[Danny Gold]

mob boss Du Yue Sheng.

[Sean Williams]

Big ears Du, a man as ungainly looking as he is ruthless, willing to do anything to maintain his own grip

[Danny Gold]

on the city's booming trade in vice.

[Sean Williams]

The Communists have angered do too, tearing away his access to Shanghai's poor and desperate labour force. Men who once made perfect pimps, drug dealers and doormen are now rallying against imperialism.

[Danny Gold]

This, Du decides, will not do.

[Sean Williams]

The two men hatch a plan. Du will mobilize a gang army of his own, slipping amongst the leftists, and cause havoc. When it's over and you're leading China, he tells Chiang, you make sure you remember old Big Ears. Chiang agrees. On April 11, Du's men slaughter one of Shanghai's top trade unionists. Then, early the next morning, 2,000 more of them change into denim overalls and filter into crowds thronging Shanghai's city centre. The stage is set for mayhem. At dawn, a bugle and a gunboat siren play simultaneously the sign. The Green Gangoons whip out knives and other weapons and attack anybody they see. Protesters are rounded up and shot. Men beheaded in the street. More thrown into the flatbeds of trucks and led off to prisoner camps. A rumor even spreads that railroad workers

[Danny Gold]

are being burned alive in their train.

[Sean Williams]

By nightfall, the Green Gangsters have murdered as many as 5,000 leftists across Shanghai. Several of the CCP's top brass escape, but the massacre will kick off a period of bloodletting known as the White terror. And only 10,000 of China's 60,000 CCP members will survive.

[Danny Gold]

1927.

[Sean Williams]

The Chinese Civil war has truly begun, and Du has played its key role, butchering Reds. And coming out of the massacres, Shanghai is one true king. Chiang, true to his word, brings the Green Gang into his nationalist firmament, which Dou leverages into commanding businesses in banking, commerce, even education. Shanghai, Pearl of the Orient, now belongs to the mob. And Big Ear's Doo might just be the most powerful gangster on the planet. How long can he stay on top? Well, that won't depend on him for much longer.

[Danny Gold]

This is the Underworld Podcast.

[Sean Williams]

Hello and welcome to a podcast hosted by two investigative reporters that shows you how crime really works and how it

[Danny Gold]

drives pretty much everything about the world we live in.

[Sean Williams]

I'm Sean Williams, writer, based in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and I am joined by

[Danny Gold]

documentarian and co host Danny Gold in New York City.

[Sean Williams]

That.

[Danny Gold]

That's it, guys.

[Dale]

That's.

[Danny Gold]

That's the show.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I mean, we are running out of ideas for that. Like, I don't know how the Simpsons kept it up for 30 years, but that's. That's the intro. That's it.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah. Remember Covid? That's when we started.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Housekeeping. Follow us on all the social shorts

[Danny Gold]

and other stuff out there.

[Sean Williams]

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[Sean Williams]

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[Host 1]

Yeah. Patreon.com the Underworld podcast for those who want to sign up or sign up on Spotify or on itunes. We're even on Facebook now. And let me tell you, I love our Spotify commenters. Facebook commenters. Whole different measure of human being. Just a lot, a lot going on on that site. Budd. Lot going on.

[Danny Gold]

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[Sean Williams]

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[Danny Gold]

the Underworld podcast gmail.com.

[Sean Williams]

yeah, that. That'll be it. Unless you want to say something funny. But people don't like that, do they?

[Danny Gold]

So we better just do the story.

[Host 1]

No, they don't.

[Danny Gold]

No, no, they hate that.

[Sean Williams]

All right. So today's episode is the third in a mammoth three parter on the green gang and the rise of Du Yue, Shanghai. He's possibly. I mean, I'm convinced after reading all

[Danny Gold]

these things on him, like one of

[Sean Williams]

the biggest gangsters in history. Huge historical figure in China, as you just heard. Not a nice guy. But in many ways, Du is the

[Danny Gold]

part of the story of modern China

[Sean Williams]

you barely ever hear about. And that is pretty strange given that

[Danny Gold]

he straddles so many key moments in the 20th century.

[Sean Williams]

And Shanghai, this heaving metropolis, home to about 2 million people in 1927, I

[Danny Gold]

guess 1,995,000 by April 13, given the cold open you just heard. It is in the middle of a

[Sean Williams]

massive crazy boom period. Its population is going to surpass 3 million in the next few years. Most of them live in the vast

[Danny Gold]

poor Chinese administered area.

[Sean Williams]

But there's also the International settlement in the French Concession, home to some of

[Danny Gold]

the richest foreign businesses anywhere on earth.

[Sean Williams]

Vice everywhere. Crazy place. You might, for example, remember this scene from Movie Law.

[Host 1]

Dale, do not post it. It's, you know, we're going to get. That's one of the. They protect their ip. We're going to get demonetized. Dale, I want you to just come in right now and narrate what's happening in the scene for the audience. They love you anyway.

[Danny Gold]

That would be cool.

[Dale]

Okay, so first, Harrison Ford, like throws some water or something in his face and then just, I guess he's a Chinese guy comes in with like a Tommy gun and he's shooting. They're like in a club. Oh, it's called Club Obi Wan. It's in China, I guess. And then there's this giant gong and the Chinese guy, it's a Party and the Chinese guy shoots at the gong and the gong falls off. It's like holder. And then Harrison Ford's like running behind the gong and then the gong. Oh, he grabs this woman, I guess Harrison Ford knows her. And then they're running behind the gong like hiding from the Tommy gun. And then the gong knocks out a window and they jump out the window and they like fall through an awning and then they fall onto the streets of Shanghai and there's like a lot of neon and like old cars and the little kid short round and. Yeah, then they're in Shanghai I guess. And that's what Danny and Sean wanted me to tell you.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, if you are not getting it

[Danny Gold]

from Dale's beautiful description. Yes, that is 1984's Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.

[Sean Williams]

That that scene was actually filmed in

[Danny Gold]

Maau, not Shanghai for I guess obvious reasons given the weird legal status of Maau back then.

[Sean Williams]

But Shanghai really was that wild a

[Danny Gold]

place in the 1930s when the movie is set. And it was largely down to Du

[Sean Williams]

Yue Sheng as early as 1927 when the Shanghai massacre takes place. Du has already dismantled any rival gangs

[Danny Gold]

or political enemies to become the underworld authority.

[Sean Williams]

He has his own version of plata or plomo, keeping corrupt officials on board by an honor system called Guangzhi.

[Danny Gold]

Something we've explored in those money laundering Chinese episodes.

[Sean Williams]

For anybody else there is a slightly different approach. Writes the website. Damn interesting.

[Danny Gold]

Which I know you are all reading right now. Quote.

[Sean Williams]

By 1927, nothing criminal, illegal or even questionable took place in Shanghai without do say so. And any crook who dared to knock over a safe, rob a well heeled westerner or run a quiet numbers game without giving the Green gang their cut was liable to end up shot, kidnapped for ransom with their tendons sliced apart

[Danny Gold]

with a fruit knives.

[Host 1]

Remember websites? I know, I know you still go to some websites. I don't go to that many, but I know you like the ones with X at the beginning or hub at the end. Right, like that you still regular?

[Danny Gold]

Regular. Great. Yeah. I have to verify my age these days. Which is. Which is. Which is not cool when you. When you're lying on your own in a hotel room in Cuba.

[Sean Williams]

I mean what are you talking about anyway?

[Danny Gold]

No, I don't know what you're saying. I have no idea what Danny's talking about there.

[Sean Williams]

However do remember him.

[Danny Gold]

He does the mafia's horsehead thing in style as well. He sends actual coffins to the home of anybody he wants to stop doing what they're doing.

[Sean Williams]

And few on the receiving end of

[Danny Gold]

that little stunt fail to get the message.

[Sean Williams]

His great power is to unite Shanghai's

[Danny Gold]

disparate criminal powers into one giant cartel.

[Sean Williams]

Before he had done this, Shanghai crime is divided amongst gangs from different regions.

[Danny Gold]

One group, for example, are the feared kidnappers.

[Sean Williams]

Others are the armed robbers. As Shanghai merchants grow terrified of these twin specters, a cottage industry of gang affiliated bodyguards and security pop up too. They provide intel to the gangs while

[Danny Gold]

coining it from the rich industrialists.

[Host 1]

So he basically like Amazon's organized crime in Shanghai, just takes over everything they're doing, everything they're selling, everything they're committing, everything. And he's the one in control.

[Danny Gold]

He is, yeah. And as we're going to learn, his labor law practices are pretty iffy too.

[Sean Williams]

So there are darker sides to the

[Danny Gold]

city's thriving kidnapping black market. As if you can imagine that.

[Sean Williams]

And they don't just affect the rich and powerful. Some groups in Shanghai focus on trafficking boys to monasteries or businesses outside the city.

[Danny Gold]

Something called lifting rocks or. I mean, I know you know this, but I'll tell you anyway. Ban Shitu girls meanwhile are kidnapped into the sex trade. Something gangsters call pretty grimly plucking mulberry

[Sean Williams]

leaves or xia xiangjie.

[Danny Gold]

Yep, sorry about that. I don't even think I got the letters right there.

[Sean Williams]

So prevalent is this kind of bleak act that Western philanthropists establish an anti

[Danny Gold]

kidnapping society in China which manages to save almost 4,000 children across a decade.

[Sean Williams]

Du doesn't mind getting involved in his fights.

[Danny Gold]

It's just another market. His Green gang underlings manage to consolidate under his rule. But nothing propels him more than than the Shanghai massacre.

[Sean Williams]

For one, he's just become a truly

[Danny Gold]

pivotal figure in Chinese history.

[Sean Williams]

By April 13th, 1927, his denim wearing assassins have left 5,000 dead and kicked

[Danny Gold]

off the white terror.

[Sean Williams]

A years long pogrom that'll kill up to a million Chinese leftists. Almost.

[Danny Gold]

I mean yeah, history tells that story. Almost wiping out the Chinese Communist Party altogether.

[Host 1]

Yeah, that's a crazy story. The comeback they made. What? I mean that's a pretty. That's like being down 3 0. That's the Red Sox, Yankees and was a 2004. Anyway, you know there's like that Internet joke about how Chinese history are full of little known to us events called things like the Sad Year where just 15 million people die for like a massacre or like a famine or something like that.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, I think reading this stuff that

[Danny Gold]

would be called the happy year. I think just after this happens there's like a massive flood that basically wipes billion people off the face of the earth.

[Sean Williams]

But so Yeah, I guess 5,000 being

[Danny Gold]

stabbed and beheaded in a major city center is small change perhaps.

[Sean Williams]

Am I allowed to say that?

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, that's fine, isn't it? It's been long enough.

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[Host 1]

You have questions, They've got answers.

[Danny Gold]

Hey Meta, what's the capital of Peru?

[Advertiser 3]

Lima.

[Advertiser 1]

How do you say where's the restroom in Spanish?

[Advertiser 3]

Donde esta Elvano?

[Advertiser 1]

Hey Meta, is a hot dog a sandwich?

[Advertiser 3]

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[Host 1]

Hey Meta, what should I do with my life?

[Advertiser 3]

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[Advertiser 1]

Ask anything with the new Meta glasses.

[Priceline Negotiator]

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[Host 1]

It's the Priceline negotiator.

[Priceline Negotiator]

How do I negotiate so many great travel deals? My greatest gadget, the Priceline app. It's got hotel deals, flight deals, rental car deals, all of those deals in a bundle deals, game day deals, concert trip deals. No one deals more deals than Priceline. Hold your horses, there's more. The app lets you filter hotels by neighborhood vibe, star level and amenities like pools and spas and beachfronts and. Wait, I'm not done. Stop cutting me up.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Chiang Kai Shek, remember him? He then welcomes Du into the hierarchy

[Danny Gold]

of his Nationalist Kuomintang or the kmt, China's ruling party.

[Sean Williams]

Du and fellow Green Gang leaders are handed honorary major general roles in Chiang's army. Du then pays a massive bung to

[Danny Gold]

the leaders of Shanghai's international Settlement, which

[Sean Williams]

gives him the right to manufacture and

[Danny Gold]

sell drugs within its borders.

[Sean Williams]

This convinces the French authorities in their

[Danny Gold]

own concession to buckle under Doo's increasing criminal demands.

[Sean Williams]

They extend Due's opium selling licenses, further guaranteeing his drug laden riverboats the protection

[Danny Gold]

of the French navy.

[Sean Williams]

Writes Brian Martin, whose excellent book the Shanghai Green Gang, I read, enjoyed, read again and read it a third time

[Danny Gold]

because it's so cool. Yeah, I used it a lot for this trilogy.

[Sean Williams]

Quote, the largest chunk of Money do

[Danny Gold]

sent up river to Chang.

[Sean Williams]

The first of many illicit paydays and

[Danny Gold]

the start of a beautiful friendship. Of course, if you've listened to our other shows about the kmt, whether they were in Taiwan or Myanmar, they quite liked getting involved in drug money.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Doux then opens five massive gambling houses in the French Concession protected by an army of 500 gangsters. The biggest of these is a three

[Danny Gold]

story foreign style house known as number 181 for its address, of course.

[Sean Williams]

Continues Martin Quote it catered to all types of Western and Chinese forms of gambling for whose use do paid 4,000

[Danny Gold]

silver tiles each month. Yeah, in case you like me, don't have a clue what a silver tile is.

[Sean Williams]

Turns out it's this weird conch shaped

[Danny Gold]

ingot used as currency in Imperial Japan.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I still don't know after you describe it, what it, what it, what that means?

[Sean Williams]

Imagine.

[Danny Gold]

Imagine little tiny silver ears that you've got and then. And then you pay for prostitutes with it.

[Sean Williams]

Imagine that.

[Host 1]

Yeah, now you're painting a very vivid picture. Now I got it.

[Danny Gold]

There we go.

[Host 1]

Just should have led with that.

[Danny Gold]

There's websites again. Anyway, on with the quote quickly as possible.

[Sean Williams]

Besides such prestigious locations do also controlled

[Danny Gold]

innumerable gambling dives catered to working class gamblers.

[Sean Williams]

In the words of Britain's Consul General in Shanghai.

[Danny Gold]

Very British words, I should add. Apologies for that.

[Sean Williams]

The Green Game bosses are quote, extremely

[Danny Gold]

useful intermediaries in dealing by Chinese methods

[Sean Williams]

with any Chinese troubles which arise. Whether political, industrial or even peace and good order in the French Concession. They can continue their opium dealings just so long as the concession benefits very materially and is spared much of the

[Danny Gold]

trouble to which foreign authorities in China so often heirs. I am partner with a diplomat who writes diplomatic cables, so I'll probably shut up at this point, but yeah, the writing needs an editor.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway. With Du suddenly the toast of the KMT and protected by every fat cat

[Danny Gold]

in Shanghai and there are quite a few of those there, he doesn't miss the chance to live the gangst the high life.

[Sean Williams]

Gone are the fruit stalls and peasant clothes of his youth. Dude pours his cash into building a grand mansion on one of the city's main Spalding avenues and a wardrobe of incredibly lavish clothes, including a robe adorned.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, this is pretty nuts.

[Sean Williams]

With three preserved monkey heads.

[Danny Gold]

Quote for luck. Something not even Rick Ross has come close to outbinging since.

[Host 1]

Although Cameron does have that lie about his zoo being a closet. You ever. Dude. I mean, his closet being. I'm sorry. Yeah, it's a Great line. But what I don't. I'm having trouble visualizing. Is it like three, like their head? First of all, two makes sense, but three, they're like literally just heads attached to like the collar. Yeah. Like I have a fur collar that's dope as hell, but I feel like a head would smell A and B just not look good.

[Sean Williams]

Well, I was imagining them perched on

[Danny Gold]

the back of like a kind of Star Trek style like, collar.

[Sean Williams]

But maybe he has some like at

[Danny Gold]

the end of his sleeves, like little mittens and he can.

[Host 1]

Foxes, like when they have like the fox. The fox head thing. Yeah, yeah, I like fur, but I think the fox head, it's too far, man. Don't.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, I know.

[Host 1]

Anytime you get the heads involved. Not good.

[Danny Gold]

You heard it here first, folks.

[Host 1]

Yeah, let's leave the heads out of this, folks.

[Sean Williams]

Minks, foxes.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, all of that stuff. Yeah, don't do it.

[Host 1]

Leave the heads out of it. Yeah.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway. Yes. You know what they say about guys with big ears, Danny?

[Danny Gold]

You don't, do you? No. You never heard that before?

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, do likes the honeysuckle. By that I don't mean he's Winnie the Pooh. He's a serial polygamist with four wives

[Danny Gold]

and several more concubines in his mansion, bearing him a total of eight sons and three daughters.

[Sean Williams]

This happy household is protected by heavily armed Chinese bodyguards and an extra squad

[Danny Gold]

because why not of Russian bodyguards.

[Sean Williams]

When Du heads to a nightclub or a casino, he usually gathers 3 or

[Danny Gold]

4 quote sing song girls decked in mink. There it is again.

[Sean Williams]

And diamonds.

[Danny Gold]

I hope they didn't cross your head rule there.

[Sean Williams]

He's still chuffing on opium like it's

[Danny Gold]

tobacco, of course, and that is going to catch up to him in due course.

[Sean Williams]

But right now, at the end of the 1920s, du is on top, if

[Danny Gold]

not of Shanghai, then the entire world.

[Sean Williams]

He's able to launder and reinvest his vast narco gambling and prostitution money, largely because he spends the majority of his

[Danny Gold]

post Shanghai massacre time buying up legitimate businesses.

[Sean Williams]

In 1928, for example, he controls the French Tramways Union, which despite its name,

[Danny Gold]

also works on Shanghai's water and electrical grid.

[Sean Williams]

He buys food and fish concerns and he takes controlling stakes in the regional

[Danny Gold]

logistics and shipping industries.

[Sean Williams]

Du also pumps money into local initiatives and charities that boost his image as a.

[Danny Gold]

Wait for it, Robin.

[Sean Williams]

I don't know, maybe not quite, but he was looking to cement his image. Same thing as something called.

[Danny Gold]

Oh yeah, Danny already knows what the hell jar is.

[Dale]

Is.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah.

[Sean Williams]

It's the honorable outlaw hero.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, that is. That is Robin Hood. It is exactly the same thing. Sound the Claxendale.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Du builds an orphanage, a retirement home, and two schools, which is something he's particularly interested in, given that his

[Danny Gold]

own pecuniary upbringing had robbed him of his own education.

[Sean Williams]

Quote, this is the place where I

[Danny Gold]

studied as a child. He says, after one opening, the monthly

[Sean Williams]

educational fee was 50 cents.

[Danny Gold]

My family being poor, however, on the

[Sean Williams]

fifth month, they were unable to raise

[Danny Gold]

the necessary money, and so my studies came to an end.

[Sean Williams]

In fact, Du remains illiterate all the

[Danny Gold]

way up to the mid-1930s, when he hires a bunch of scholars to teach him the basics.

[Host 1]

Amazing. Just running hundreds of businesses, doesn't need an mba, doesn't even know how to read. And just making it happen, man.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, maybe all those YouTube adverts, they're right. Maybe I should click on them.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Du also gives two hundreds of the poorest homes in Shanghai a monthly

[Danny Gold]

stipend to help them survive.

[Sean Williams]

He is the president of two hospitals for which the government appoints him deputy chairman of the Chinese Red Cross, which

[Danny Gold]

is pretty hilarious, given he's just butchered thousands of people in broad daylight.

[Sean Williams]

And he provides relief during humanitarian disasters

[Danny Gold]

such as the 1931 Yangtze flood. To go back to your earlier point,

[Sean Williams]

Danny, perhaps the deadliest natural disaster in

[Danny Gold]

human history, killing 3.7 million people.

[Host 1]

So I am not well versed in Chinese history, I can admit that. Never heard of that. I don't know. Is that, like, it could be one of those things we learned in school and I just wasn't paying attention that day, or I forgot it. Like, I forgot everything else, but I. Did you know about that before you read this? Read this right now. Did, like, were you.

[Danny Gold]

No.

[Host 1]

Is there anything.

[Danny Gold]

No.

[Host 1]

Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Williams]

And then when I looked it up, it was like, only narrowly less people

[Danny Gold]

than the, like, 1932.

[Host 1]

Chinese history is crazy, dude.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, it is absolutely mad.

[Sean Williams]

Some people go from calling do big

[Danny Gold]

ears to big philanthropists, which they do not do that.

[Host 1]

No one does that.

[Danny Gold]

No, no one does that.

[Sean Williams]

According to a local phrase, he, quote, scatters gold as if it were dirt,

[Danny Gold]

which, you know, there's Chinese phrases. I can imagine that. But yeah, you're right. No one's calling him big philanthropist.

[Sean Williams]

That is because has got.

[Danny Gold]

Well, I mean, you guessed it by now. A lot of gold to be scattering

[Sean Williams]

about by the end of the 1920s. Do is worth around a billion US

[Danny Gold]

dollars in today's money.

[Sean Williams]

And the main catalyst for this isn't any of the stuff I just mentioned, but that in 1929, do opens his own bank called Zhonghui. Not only is this the most perfect money laundering system in the world, but it will also allow do literally to

[Danny Gold]

manipulate Chinese markets in his favor. This of course, just makes him more outrageously rich.

[Sean Williams]

But it also leads to one particular moment that's pretty funny. When Chiang Kai Shek nationalizes most of Chinese commercial banking sector and Du gets

[Danny Gold]

wind of the yuan's future foreign exchange rate, which isn't going to be good.

[Sean Williams]

But do misreads the tip and buys

[Danny Gold]

a huge amount of yuan.

[Sean Williams]

And when do realize he's messed up, he goes to the guy who gave

[Danny Gold]

him the tip, who's another top banking official, and tells him to reverse the deal. When the banker says no, do reverse

[Sean Williams]

the type and sends a coffin alongside

[Danny Gold]

six funeral attendants to the banker's home.

[Sean Williams]

The banker then calls a special meeting of the Board of Directors of the Central bank of China.

[Danny Gold]

Du, by the way, for context, has

[Sean Williams]

just been appointed one himself, where everybody agrees the state should take responsibility for

[Danny Gold]

Du's stash of worthless Chinese money.

[Sean Williams]

So you may have realized by this point, if you're best buddies with the President of China, you run the biggest gang in China, possibly in the world. You run the world's biggest opium trafficking operation. You own Shanghai shipping, water, electrical grid and other businesses. You're worth over a billion dollars and

[Danny Gold]

you're literally on the board of the Central Bank. And I'll add one in for luck. You've got three monkeys on your coat somewhere. You're quite a big deal.

[Sean Williams]

A Polish journalist who interviews do calls him a quote, combination of Al Capone

[Danny Gold]

and John D. Rockefeller.

[Host 1]

Yeah, I'm surprised no one's borrowed that. That's pretty good.

[Danny Gold]

That is good. It is very good. As he stared into one of those dead monkeys eyes doing his weirdest interview.

[Sean Williams]

In a city whose richest inhabitants are usually foreign, Shanghai's Chinese adore their compatriot

[Danny Gold]

dues rise to such giddy stratospheres.

[Sean Williams]

In fact, so admired is he by this point that even his rough peasant

[Danny Gold]

Pudong dialect becomes fashionable in central Shanghai.

[Sean Williams]

Writes a fellow Green gang member. Quote, loafers and their friends could all say a few sentences of Pudong dialect

[Danny Gold]

in order to show off, implying that

[Sean Williams]

they had connections to Do's group and

[Danny Gold]

that they were not alone in the world. I've showed off a lot of my own Pudong dialect over the years, but it's never got me this this far.

[Sean Williams]

According to a couple of sources I read there are as many as a

[Danny Gold]

hundred thousand gangsters in Shanghai by the turn of the 1930s.

[Sean Williams]

That is higher than the ratio of

[Danny Gold]

podcasters in New York.

[Host 1]

Just barely.

[Danny Gold]

Just barely. Yeah, yeah, it's true.

[Sean Williams]

But of course, this being China change,

[Danny Gold]

and violent change at that, is never not just around the corner.

[Sean Williams]

And this time it's not the British, the Americans or the French. It's Japan. A smaller but vastly more technologically advanced nation, hyper nationalist, with its eyes firmly

[Danny Gold]

set on building an empire across east Asia.

[Sean Williams]

In mid-1931, Du, his old buddy Huang Jinrong and their Green Gang comrades helped launch an anti Japanese boycott among Shanghai's business leaders.

[Host 1]

Can you just briefly, real quick, explain why they launched that boycott? Like what Japan was doing, what was going on with Manchuria, stuff like that?

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, I mean, Manchuria is the sort

[Danny Gold]

of northeastern part of China and Japan

[Sean Williams]

is sort of desperately trying to set

[Danny Gold]

up its own puppet state there so they could spread its empire and mostly get a bunch of metals and minerals out of the ground, which Manchuria is very wealthy in, so they can kind of fuel a future war effort.

[Sean Williams]

On September 18th that year, so that's 1931, Japan detonates some dynamite beside a railroad track near the Manchurian city of

[Danny Gold]

Mukden, now known as Shenyang. Probably like 50 million people or something.

[Sean Williams]

The explosion is weak, but Tokyo accuses Chinese of carrying it out and fighting breaks out between Japanese Imperial troops and

[Danny Gold]

soldiers belonging to Chiang Kai Shek's kmt.

[Sean Williams]

This event, the so called Mukden incident, is a massive false flag.

[Danny Gold]

Of course, Japanese officers have planted the

[Sean Williams]

explosives to blame China and spark an invasion of Manchuria, rich in the minerals

[Danny Gold]

it needs to fuel its imperial war machine.

[Sean Williams]

This, by the way, is what many historians consider to be the true beginning

[Danny Gold]

of World War II.

[Sean Williams]

It might even be the origin of

[Danny Gold]

the like the phrase false flag. I can't verify that. Please email and send loads of comments, especially to Facebook.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, a few days later, Du is appointed to the board of a group

[Danny Gold]

called the Shanghai Municipal Resist Japan National Salvation Association.

[Host 1]

Man, those guys, they just love their incredibly long group names with like just nine letter acronyms for anything. Huh?

[Danny Gold]

It's probably just like five dashes on a piece of paper as well.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Green Gang leaders, following Du's previous philanthropic lead, provide aid to Chinese refugees

[Danny Gold]

fleeing Manchuria, which is getting quickly overrun by the Japanese. And if you thought that organization name was good, try three more do founds.

[Sean Williams]

Number one, the secret investigation group for National Salvation and Resistance against Japan, the Blood and Soul group for the extermination of traitors and the National Salvation Assassination Society.

[Host 1]

Okay, those are. Those are kind of tight, those last two.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, the last two are fantastic, actually. Yeah, just get rid of the first one, mate.

[Sean Williams]

Now, some of these great organizations, some of what they do is genuine resistance

[Danny Gold]

against the Japanese invasion. The last one, for example, the Salvation Assassination Society.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, that does actually employ gangland snipers

[Danny Gold]

to shoot Japanese troops landing near Shanghai.

[Sean Williams]

But in reality, Green Gang members have had a back channel to the Japanese consulate in Shanghai for months, discussing the

[Danny Gold]

possibility of creating a Japanese concession in the city ruled over by their mobsters. Cheeky guys.

[Sean Williams]

And to police in the French Concession, the Green Gang stronghold. These apparently patriotic groups serve merely to

[Danny Gold]

extort cash out of Shanghai's business community.

[Ryan Reynolds]

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[Narrator]

Welcome to the I Can't Wait I Can't Sleep podcast with Benjamin Boster. If you're tired of sleepless nights, you'll love the I Can't Sleep podcast. I help quiet your mind by reading random articles from across the web to bore you to sleep with my soothing voice. Each episode provides enough interesting content to hold your attention and then your mind lets you drift off. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. That's I Can't Sleep with Benjamin Boster.

[Sean Williams]

By the end of February 1932, Japan has taken over Manchuria and installed its

[Danny Gold]

puppet state of Manchukuo.

[Sean Williams]

It's at this point that its own

[Danny Gold]

nationalist gangsters, the Yakuza, get to work on Tokyo's behalf.

[Sean Williams]

Right back in one of our first

[Danny Gold]

ever episodes, we discussed, for example, how

[Sean Williams]

Yakuza boss Yosho Kodama himself, having come

[Danny Gold]

out of a hyper right wing secret group called the Dark Ocean Society, makes a fortune selling opium to Chinese in Manchukuo.

[Sean Williams]

Kodama also mints a band of gangster spies for Japan and trades Chinese minerals on behalf of the emperor, writes the Yakuza historian David Kaplan, quote, kadama operated as a sort of Imperial Japanese version

[Danny Gold]

of Catch 22's Milo Mindabinda, buying Tunsten

[Sean Williams]

here, guns there, reselling them and peddling

[Danny Gold]

vast stores of radium, cobalt, nickel and copper.

[Sean Williams]

He obtained the materials in China and Manchuria, forcing the Chinese at gunpoint to sell at pitifully low prices. It was an incredibly lucrative effort, one

[Danny Gold]

that might easily be termed looting. And if you just type Yakuza into the search for this show, you're going to find like half a dozen historical episodes about that exact thing, which is

[Sean Williams]

really fascinating and one of the reasons

[Danny Gold]

that the Yakuza became so rich after the war.

[Sean Williams]

Doom, meanwhile, focuses on spreading the Green Gang's opium business outside the French Concession and Shanghai. In 1932, he secures an opium poppy farm way outside the city. And with the Embassy KMT increasingly desperate for for his cash and manpower, DO grows even more powerful than he'd been

[Danny Gold]

before the Japanese invasion.

[Sean Williams]

As he'd done previously, uniting fellow and rival Green Gang leaders. Now do goes several steps further, uniting the Green Gang with corporate fat cats and even rival triad groups under something

[Danny Gold]

he calls the Endurance Club, another good name.

[Sean Williams]

This move curries do even more favor

[Danny Gold]

with his buddy Chiang Kai Shek, who

[Sean Williams]

is trying to head off the Japanese and Chinese Communists.

[Danny Gold]

Remember, he is still slaughtering Reds as part of that White Terror by integrating corporations into the state, something Mussolini, one of Chang's heroes, is doing at that moment in Italy, writes Brian Martin, quote,

[Sean Williams]

By the end of the year, therefore, DO has succeeded in reaching an agreement with the Kuomintang authorities that not only allowed the transfer of his narcotics operation from the French Concession to Chinese territory, but that also gave them a semi official status. He was the only Green Gang boss to respond successfully to the new political realities in Shanghai.

[Danny Gold]

And he was able, as a result,

[Sean Williams]

to achieve a position of dominance over the various Green Gang groups, as well as to play an important role in

[Danny Gold]

the politics of the city.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, I don't think another gangster

[Danny Gold]

has run a city as sort of wholesale as this guy has.

[Sean Williams]

At this point, the only powerful enemy

[Danny Gold]

Du has are the French.

[Sean Williams]

They have only now realised the Green

[Danny Gold]

Gang's power in their Shanghai enclave.

[Sean Williams]

Despite him being a famous gangster who owns banks, cozies up to the Chinese

[Danny Gold]

president and wears robes with monkey heads on them.

[Sean Williams]

Maybe they're on a wine break or something.

[Danny Gold]

Either way, in 1932 they move to shut down opium and gambling dens across the French Concession.

[Sean Williams]

Du responds by organizing a strike at the French Tramways union he controls. Remember, those are the ones who also

[Danny Gold]

control the water and the concession's electrical grid. But he follows it up with something even more sinister.

[Sean Williams]

One night, three French officials are holding

[Danny Gold]

a banquet, one of whose dishes contains mushrooms.

[Sean Williams]

Within a few days, all three men are dead.

[Danny Gold]

Poisoned, it's assumed, by Doux mobsters.

[Sean Williams]

Shortly afterwards, a French journalist had been boasting about imminently publishing a scandalous story.

[Danny Gold]

Most likely the mushroom poisoning hops aboard

[Sean Williams]

a boat bound for Europe. But it catches fire shortly after setting

[Danny Gold]

sail and sinks in the Indian Ocean.

[Sean Williams]

Bad publicity dealt with. Dew carries on expanding the Green Gang. And despite the French police setting up

[Danny Gold]

an anti gambling squad in 1934, they are too late. And big ears do is too big to fail.

[Host 1]

Wait, so. So hold on. He kills them by slipping them poisonous mushrooms. Which like, seems complicated. Like same thing with burning an ocean line. Why not just kill the guys in a dark alley and dump the bodies? There's no CCTV during this time.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, have you seen or met French people?

[Danny Gold]

I mean, just sort of putting poison in butter is probably enough to kill half the country. And another day I'll tell you all about my thoughts on French cuisine.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, in the course of the 1930s,

[Danny Gold]

writes Brian Martin, old friend Do Yue

[Sean Williams]

Sheng had successfully remade himself.

[Danny Gold]

Look, I'm just saying, you can't just

[Sean Williams]

say that you're the best people at

[Danny Gold]

cooking in the world if you just drown everything in butter. That's not.

[Sean Williams]

That's not cooking.

[Danny Gold]

That's just butter. That's just. Shut up, man.

[Sean Williams]

Oh, God. No, no, no.

[Host 1]

You don't like a steak. Fruits. That's a top tier. That's a top five meal.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, it's great. But did the French invent that or did the.

[Host 1]

I thought it was a French thing though.

[Sean Williams]

It's just French for fried steak a

[Host 1]

lot and you kind of. No steak.

[Advertiser 2]

I don't know.

[Sean Williams]

What does the poivre.

[Danny Gold]

What does the poivre mean?

[Sean Williams]

Is that the same pepper?

[Host 1]

Pepper sauce.

[Danny Gold]

Oh my God. Well done. To the French. Well done. Pepper and cream together.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, yeah.

[Danny Gold]

Moving back to Chinese organized crime, probably on sort of a more sound ground there.

[Sean Williams]

Do you a Sheng, I'm quoting Brian Martin here had successfully remade himself. Although he remained the head of the most powerful organized criminal syndicate in Shanghai. This was no longer the only or

[Danny Gold]

increasingly the most important element that defined his power in the city.

[Sean Williams]

It was the creation of his own

[Danny Gold]

political networks and his involvement with the politics of the city and indeed the Chinese nation that enhanced and consolidated his influence in Shanghai. He had become, in other words, a leading political figure in his own right and a powerful ally of the Kuomintang state. But Shanghai's party is coming to an end.

[Sean Williams]

In August 1937, Japanese and Chinese Nationalist troops showdown in Shanghai, fighting a three month battle that ends with the Japanese

[Danny Gold]

capture of the city.

[Sean Williams]

Adds for I might quote. As Japanese forces poured into the city in early November, do knew that it was only a matter of time before

[Danny Gold]

stiff necked officers would come calling to either persuade him to join them or or to snatch away his properties.

[Sean Williams]

Do quietly took inventory, calculating which opium dens, gambling venues and brothels were likely

[Danny Gold]

to be seized by the occupiers, assigning trusted lieutenants to the remainder to keep his cash flowing.

[Sean Williams]

Then, with one of his wives in

[Danny Gold]

tow, he left town. God, that must have been an awkward afternoon. Choosing which wife to go with.

[Sean Williams]

Do swaps Shanghai for the British colony of Hong Kong. There he supports the Chinese war effort, providing relief for refugees through the Chinese Red Cross and quarterbacking spy and resistance

[Danny Gold]

networks through the gring gang.

[Sean Williams]

By 1943, with war raging across the world, Germany occupies France and installs its

[Danny Gold]

puppet regime centred on the town of Vichy.

[Sean Williams]

These quislings then hand over the French Concession to the Japanese puppet state, ending

[Danny Gold]

almost a century of French rule in Shanghai. Japan loses the war, in case you didn't know already.

[Sean Williams]

But China quickly descends into civil war

[Danny Gold]

between the KMT and the Chinese Communist Party.

[Sean Williams]

Du decamps again, this time to the Chinese mainland city of Chongqing, which I think is now the biggest city in the world, where in 1948 he meets

[Danny Gold]

personally with Chiang, whose Nationalists are getting battered by Mao Zedong's ccp.

[Sean Williams]

Whatever happens during that meeting between Du and Chiang, Du's downfall begins later that year when his son Wei Ping, the stockbroker on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, is arrested on Shang's orders, accused of stock manipulation and paraded about in handcuffs over 20 years earlier. A moment exactly like this has sealed

[Danny Gold]

Huang Jingrong's position at the top of

[Sean Williams]

the Green Gang, handing the Baton to Du Yue Sheng. Now Du is going through the exact same thing, bearing the shame of seeing his son branded a criminal in newspapers

[Danny Gold]

up and down China.

[Host 1]

Did he do something to piss off Jankai Shack? Like why?

[Danny Gold]

What?

[Host 1]

What he just wanted power was a power struggle. Like what are we talking about here?

[Sean Williams]

Well, I mean, I guess like Chang could have just found out that he was chatting to the China, the Japanese

[Danny Gold]

behind his back for like 10 years. Maybe that sort of swayed it.

[Sean Williams]

That would have definitely done it.

[Danny Gold]

Or maybe they just like, you know,

[Sean Williams]

just fell out, just like old friends

[Danny Gold]

do, just like we never have. But you know, people do over the years.

[Host 1]

We do every day pretty much. But we always come back.

[Danny Gold]

We always somehow, somehow come back.

[Host 1]

Make it work.

[Sean Williams]

The CCP declared victory over the KMT the following year.

[Danny Gold]

So that is in 1949, establishing what we all now know and love as the People's Republic of China.

[Sean Williams]

Writes a New York Times reporter, quote, the few remaining foreigners left the country, closed off from the outside world with which it had become so comfortable, Shanghai fell into a deep sleep. Fashion, music and romance gave way to

[Danny Gold]

uniformity and the stark reality of communism. That's the kind of lion that you just do not get away with these days. Chiang Kai Shek retreats to Taiwan in December 1949.

[Sean Williams]

Du declines an offer to join him there, heading instead back to Hong Kong, where he lives in relative obscurity with

[Danny Gold]

his fifth wife, a Beijing Opera star.

[Sean Williams]

On August 16, 1951, at age 62,

[Danny Gold]

dude dies, reportedly of chronic asthma, a result of his decades of opium abuse.

[Host 1]

Do we know what he was doing? Like where he was?

[Danny Gold]

Do we know what Du was doing at the do? No, not really.

[Sean Williams]

Again, like, his last few years are pretty murky.

[Danny Gold]

I think he's like living in pretty awful health. By all accounts. He's been smoking opium since he was like 4 years old or something. So I think that is quite bad for your health two years after he dies. So in 1953, those remains are brought to Taiwan and interred in a private cemetery just outside Taipei, the capital of Chiang Kai Shek's New Republic of China.

[Sean Williams]

An inscription above his tomb speaks to

[Danny Gold]

the man's honour and loyalty.

[Sean Williams]

But Mao's CCP clearly don't agree. Still angered by his allyship with Chiang and the death he'd wrought in the Shanghai massacre, they make it a criminal

[Danny Gold]

offence to publish books or newspaper articles about dou at all.

[Sean Williams]

When the country opens up economically in the late 1970s, however, this edict is relaxed. And that is when a mountain of

[Danny Gold]

literature about the so called Emperor of Shanghai rebuilds the legend of Du Yue Sheng.

[Sean Williams]

His Green Gang, meanwhile, sputters gamely on. But leaderless, rudderless in array amid the

[Danny Gold]

Communist takeover of China, they're swallowed up

[Sean Williams]

by a variety of smaller local gangs in Shanghai. Their command of the opium trade, however, means that many Green Gang members are coveted by organized criminals as drug manufacturing experts.

[Dale]

Drugs.

[Sean Williams]

And there are rumors that Green Gang narco labs may have been used by

[Danny Gold]

Chinese mobsters all the way up to the 1990s 90s is crazy, dude. It is crazy.

[Sean Williams]

And I'm wondering if there's a link between these guys and the Taiwanese like

[Danny Gold]

chemists that are commonly used by all of the sort of meth cartels in the Burmese jungles. Because that that was what I was told when I was there. That they are all Taiwanese.

[Sean Williams]

Which would make sense with the kmt, I don't know. And that more or less is where our mammoth tale of Du Yue Sheng and the Green Gang comes to an end. Despite wishing him harm for the best part of the last few months, I'll

[Danny Gold]

give the final words to Brian Martin

[Sean Williams]

because despite writing 10 sentences where one

[Danny Gold]

will do, his book really does go deep on all of this and it's

[Sean Williams]

incredible bit of historical digging. This is him comparing DO and the

[Danny Gold]

Green Gang to other major organized criminal groups of the time. Quote the Mafia, far from being a

[Sean Williams]

single, centralized, organized and unified system, was in fact a loose network of small

[Danny Gold]

groups of no more than a dozen or so individuals known as koska artichoke leaves, organized around one leading mafioso.

[Sean Williams]

In this, it was reminiscent of the Green Gang, which itself was not a centralized but rather a loosely structured network of groups which organized around powerful individuals. In the case of the Green Gang,

[Danny Gold]

however, this structure was reinforced by a

[Sean Williams]

formal generational hierarchy and a system of branch or bang organizations which provided it with a relatively greater degree of organizational

[Danny Gold]

coherence than that enjoyed by the Mafia of southern Italy. And Martin goes on Quote the Origins

[Sean Williams]

of the American the origins of the American criminal gangs or syndicates are to be found in the ethnic youth gangs

[Danny Gold]

that proliferate among the immigrant communities in cities such as New York.

[Sean Williams]

Although these syndicates were later commonly described as the Mafia, they were not exclusively Italian, but included a mix of ethnic

[Danny Gold]

groups including Jews, Irish and Poles as well as Italians.

[Sean Williams]

The gangs themselves were loose networks of

[Danny Gold]

alliances rather than a highly structured organization.

[Sean Williams]

This eclecticism of the American gang or syndicate was also shared by the Green

[Danny Gold]

Gang system, as the careers of Du

[Sean Williams]

Yue Sheng and other Green Gang bosses indicate. The Green Gang organization was able to

[Danny Gold]

draw on a vast pool of young street hoodlums for its recruits.

[Sean Williams]

It also successfully absorbed into its system

[Danny Gold]

other well established petty gangster groups.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, I actually think that the closest equivalent to the Green Gang is

[Danny Gold]

Japan's Yakuza, which came out of ultra

[Sean Williams]

nationalist secret societies to become a worldwide mafia alongside the Japanese state rather than against it.

[Danny Gold]

If you're interested again, head back into our archives. We've done a lot of episodes on them over the years, including a recent two parter on my trip to Japan

[Sean Williams]

in what, October last year? But yeah, slightly short episode today, but one I hope you enjoy. Don't Instagram your crimes and we are

[Danny Gold]

going to see you next week.

[Host 1]

Triple parter on Chinese History. Well done bud. Hopefully you guys all made it here.

[Danny Gold]

Yeah, I'm gonna forget every word of it in a week.

[Host 1]

Give it two weeks maybe.

[Danny Gold]

All right guys, cool.

[Host 1]

Take.

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