The Rise of China’s Biggest Mob Boss EVER

Summary

The Underworld Podcast

Episode: The Rise of China’s Biggest Mob Boss EVER

Hosts: Sean Williams & Danny Gold
Release Date: June 30, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode kicks off a sweeping three-part series charting the rise of Shanghai’s infamous Green Gang, with a focus on Du Yue Sheng (“Big Eared Du”), arguably the most powerful mob boss in Chinese history. Through vivid storytelling, rich detail, and their trademark banter, Sean Williams and Danny Gold set the scene for early 20th-century Shanghai: a “pot of gold” boomtown wracked by lawlessness, foreign interference, and exploding vice industries. The hosts trace Du’s transformation from impoverished street orphan to criminal kingpin, exploring the origins of the Green Gang, Shanghai’s unique power dynamics, and the infamous “Lincheng outrage”—a hostage crisis that cemented Du’s legend.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Scene: Shanghai in the 1920s

[01:04 - 03:27]

• Historical Context: The episode opens with the luxury Blue Express train in 1923—full of foreign dignitaries and Shanghai elites—symbolizing a city at a crossroads.
• Shanghai’s Divided Rule:
  • International Settlement (run by Britain & US)
  • French Concession
  • Vast Chinese-administered areas, mostly poor, outside the walls
• Inequality & Vice: Shanghai is painted as both an economic powerhouse and a den of vice; massive foreign presence, no taxes to Chinese state, defanged local law enforcement, and a booming opium trade.

Quote:
“It’s a pot of gold for the continent’s biggest companies and a den of iniquity for anybody hunting down sex, drugs and free living.” – Sean Williams [01:57]

2. The Green Gang's Roots & Rituals

[03:32 - 16:00]

• Origins:
  • Started as a Buddhist religious sect among boatmen in the 18th century, morphed into an ultra-nationalist and quasi-secret society.
  • Eventually shifted from salt smuggling to dominating Shanghai’s opium, gambling, and sex trades.
• Structure & Culture:
  • Master-pupil hierarchy, elaborate initiation rites, internal codes of honor (somewhat at odds with their criminal activity).
  • Members considered themselves "men of honor and courage."
• Integration with Society:
  • Politicians and police on the payroll; the gang’s very structures blur the lines between criminal, business, and state power.

Quote:
“Green Gang members refer to this process as ‘entering the monastery’—a nod to their origin story as a Buddhist sect. A lot tamer than the triad ceremony, which involves drinking a mixture of the participants and chicken blood—but the effect is the same.” – Sean Williams [26:17]

3. Du Yue Sheng: From Destitute Orphan to Rising Gangster

[16:13 - 37:26]

• Early Life:
  • Born 1888 in Pudong (then rural), son to a failed rice shopkeeper and a mother who died when he was 3.
  • Father died when Du was 5; stepmother sold into sex slavery; left homeless by age 9.
• Education: Only four months of formal schooling; instead, learned street survival and gambling from a young age.
• Underworld Apprenticeship:
  • Took low-paying jobs, squandered wages in gambling dens.
  • Introduced to the Green Gang by the “pimp” Lot Drawer after losing job for embezzlement.
  • Quickly adopted the “duck to water” criminal group, showing a talent for gambling and a flair for violence.

Quote:
“This would be a rags to riches tale if only the Du family could afford a rag.” – Sean Williams [17:00]

• Gang Structure & Patronage:
  • Starts at the bottom (23rd out of 24 castes) but, through connections with Lot Drawer and kingpin Huang Jin Rong, rises fast.
  • Not physically imposing but memorable: “His physical appearance was striking...lean, impassive face, hard penetrating eyes, surprisingly large ears and a full, sensuous mouth.” – Brian Martin [33:52]
• Rise to Power:
  • Becomes right hand to Huang, managing gambling operations and earning reputation.
  • Known on the street for his intelligence, drive, and ability to broker alliances.

4. Shanghai as Underworld Capital

[38:42 - 42:38]

• Urban Backdrop:
  • Shanghai is the "main character": a foreign-dominated, lawless city where “a thin layer of heaven sits on a thick slice of hell.”
• Opium Economy:
  • Opium bans in 1912 supercharge profits, likened to US alcohol prohibition.
  • Green Gang becomes a criminal-behemoth, “raking in a lot of that cash” as opium reaches seven times its weight in silver by 1917.

Quote:
“They are the most powerful gangsters in a city whose lust for wealth and vice is unmatched almost anywhere else on earth.” – Sean Williams [42:08]

5. The Big Eight Mob & Underworld Consolidation

[43:16 - 49:01]

• Consolidation of Power:
  • The Big Eight Mob (a Green Gang faction) dominates opium trafficking, partnering with Japanese and Taiwanese smugglers.
  • Du carefully unites smaller gangs and merchants under his own leadership, eventually outmaneuvering the Big Eight Mob.
  • Establishes legitimate front businesses to facilitate deals and gain influence.
• By 1923:
  • Du controls the entire French Concession, has the police and politicians on his payroll, and is known as a criminal king.

6. The Lincheng Outrage: National Legend Forged

[50:03 - 52:56]

• The Blue Express Heist:
  • May 1923: Sun Miyao’s bandits stop the Blue Express, kill several passengers, and march nearly 300 hostages to a remote village.
  • High-stakes negotiations ensue as foreign diplomats and Chinese authorities race to resolve the crisis.
• Du’s Intervention:
  • With both legitimate and underworld ties, only Du can broker a solution.
  • Funds an $85,000 ransom (almost $2 million today) to end the crisis, cementing his reputation as indispensable power broker and "man of honor and courage." [52:40]

Quote:
“Who does the Chinese government turn to? Du Yue Shuang, prince of the Shanghai Green Gang...Don’t sweat it, he tells them.” – Sean Williams [52:40]

• Legacy:
  • This act vaults Du Yue Sheng to national fame and sets up his takeover of the entire Shanghai underworld, to be covered in future episodes.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Shanghai, king of the world’s unequal cities, is also home to armies of would-be kingpins...The whole of the French Concession is considered Du’s turf.” – Sean Williams [04:50, 05:50]
• “Just in case you’re listening to this and you think your life sucks...By the age of nine, Du Yue Schweng has lost both his parents...His stepmother disappeared into sex slavery. He’s in with small time gangsters, destitute. And he’s got a gambling problem.” – Sean Williams [19:19]
• “He shaves his head so his prominent ears will be even more visible. This is when he gets the nickname Big Eared. Merchants and cops fear him. Gangsters respect him and podcasters just want to get to know him.” – Sean Williams [39:20]
• “A thin layer of heaven on a thick slice of hell. I like that a lot, actually. That’s a really good quote.” – Danny Gold [38:58]

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Key Timestamps

• 01:04 – Opulent Shanghai set-piece; Blue Express train and city breakdown
• 03:32 – The Green Gang’s mythic and religious origins
• 16:13 – Du Yue Sheng’s Dickensian childhood
• 33:49 – Du’s entry to Green Gang and rise up underworld ranks
• 38:42 – The “heaven and hell” metaphor for Shanghai life
• 42:08 – The Green Gang’s opium profits and unrivaled power
• 43:16 – Rivalry with and takeover of the Big Eight Mob
• 50:03 – The Lincheng outrage (infamous hostage crisis)
• 52:40 – Du brokers ransom to end crisis, earns legendary status

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Tone, Language, & Delivery

• Signature Banter: Sean and Danny blend acerbic wit with researched detail, frequently digressing into contemporary or pop culture references (The Simpsons, Indiana Jones).
• Vivid, Cinematic Storytelling: Descriptions evoke both the glamour and squalor of historical Shanghai; gritty yet lively.
• Humor Amid Hardship: Even the bleakest passages—Du’s tragic upbringing, for example—are delivered with dry, self-deprecating humor.
• Analytical: The hosts are careful to separate fact from gangster self-mythologizing, referencing major historians and sources.

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Looking Ahead

This episode lays the groundwork for a dramatic exploration of China’s criminal underworld, setting up future installments on opium wars, political revolutions, further underworld intrigue, spycraft, and Du’s eventual rise to the very top. Stay tuned for more about the Green Gang’s global reach and how the foundations of today’s criminal empires were built in Shanghai’s roaring 1920s.

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For listeners wanting more: check out the recommended reading “Shanghai Green Gang” by Brian G. Martin and “The Peking Express” by James Zimmerman, both mentioned during the episode, as well as references to related broader histories of opium, salt, and organized crime in the region.

Transcript

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[Danny Golden]

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[Sean Williams]

It's May 5, 1923, and the blue Express train is rattling through the Chinese countryside. En route from Shanghai to Beijing. This is no ordinary rolling stock. The Blues 14 cars include sleeping quarters, electric lighting, a dining car serving Western

[Danny Golden]

style meals and an observation deck is

[Sean Williams]

China's answer to the Orient Express, an engineering marvel, a flagship of the country's emergence from imperial rule. No wonder it's packed therefore to the gills with celebs and high society. On board are an Italian mob lawyer, a French war hero, a Mexican business mogul, a top Chinese professor, a sister in law of John D. Rockefeller Jr. The U.S. ambassador to China, and playboys

[Danny Golden]

from Shanghai's Jewish merchant scene.

[Sean Williams]

Each passenger a symbol of Shanghai's status as Asia's swaggering commercial hub. A tangle of banks, docks, high rise towers and high rolling casinos. It's a pot of gold for the continent's biggest companies and a den of iniquity for anybody hunting down sex, drugs and and free living. East of India and north of Singapore, 2 million people live in Shanghai, double what it had been in 1912 when revolutionaries had toppled China's long ruling Qing dynasty. But it is also a wildly unequal place, cleaved by shotgun diplomacy into three separate divisions. There is the International Settlement, run jointly by Britain and the United States, where 30,000 foreigners live among 800,000 Chinese.

[Danny Golden]

There is the French Concession.

[Sean Williams]

No prizes for guessing who runs that home to another 200,000. And there are the vast Chinese administered

[Danny Golden]

areas outside their walls, their slums Bursting with arrivals from nearby rural hinterlands.

[Sean Williams]

No foreign residents of Shanghai are subject to Chinese law. They build their own Western homes, send their kids to Western schools and erect vast factories, none of which pay tax to a Chinese state buckling under lack of revenue. Cops and courts are defanged. And the opium trade is roaring louder

[Danny Golden]

than a Chinese dragon.

[Sean Williams]

This all helps to fuel the rise

[Danny Golden]

of a new breed of Chinese gangster.

[Sean Williams]

Some have come out of centuries old secret societies flush with ideas of folk religion and ultra nationalism. Others have risen through merchant guilds and trade unions, especially on the canals that

[Danny Golden]

serve Shanghai's lust for material wealth.

[Sean Williams]

In the case of the Green Gang, it's both formed by 18th century Buddhists. It went underground among grain boatsmen before switching to salt smuggling and more recently opium. By 1923, it commands vast swathes of Shanghai's drug, sex and gambling markets. Politicians are in its pockets and in many cases it is the city's police. No Green Gang leader has brokered more deals or sent more enemies scattering than Du Yue Sheng. Tall and thin, mid-30s, with a shaved head that accentuates the features that have

[Danny Golden]

earned him his not so subtle nickname, Big Eared Du.

[Sean Williams]

Du is a powerhouse, a one man battering ram who throws giant parties in his own honour and sends coffins to

[Danny Golden]

the doors of those who upset him.

[Sean Williams]

By 1923, the whole of the French

[Danny Golden]

Concession is considered his turf.

[Sean Williams]

The Shanghai, king of the world's unequal cities, is also home to armies of would be kingpins. Bandits desperate to win their own payday from the city's Gatsby esque foreign inhabitants. One of them is Sun Mi Yao, leader of a band of ex soldiers who roam the land between Shanghai and Beijing. He has no desire to be a robber, he says. But sun adds, in this troubled era of unreliable government, we find ourselves compelled to take risks in order to obtain redress for our grievances. On May 5, 1923, then sun is

[Danny Golden]

poised to take the biggest risk of his life.

[Sean Williams]

1200 of his men are gathered beside the railroad tracks in a village of Lincheng. It's around halfway along the Blue Express's nocturnal route. Most, if not all of its passengers

[Danny Golden]

should, sun reckons, be fast asleep.

[Sean Williams]

Or at least enough cocktails deep not

[Danny Golden]

to pose a problem.

[Sean Williams]

In the early hours of the following day, the bandits strike, rushing the engine and grabbing its driver. The great Blue Express grinds to a halt.

[Danny Golden]

Its cars derail.

[Sean Williams]

Dignitaries are hurled out of bed and pistol whipped. Several Chinese passengers are killed on the spot. The bandits shoot dead. A British national Joseph Rothman. When he refuses to hand over his valuables, everybody else, French, Italian, German, Danish American is kidnapped and sent out on a 10 day march to the bandits

[Danny Golden]

hideout in a distant village.

[Sean Williams]

News reaches media and embassies shortly after. The Lincheng outrage as it will be known, is an overnight sensation. A scandalous emblem of China's descent into gang ravaged lawlessness. It will not end quickly as diplomats and Chinese officials race to secure the lives of the hostages politicians in Shanghai and realise they really just have one option. Only one man truly straddles the city's legitimate and illegitimate worlds. A man who'd as soon be seen hobnobbing with Sun Miya Yao as he would with Generalissimo Chiang Kai Shek, China's nationalist future leader. The politicians reach inevitably for Du Yue Sheng. And as always, Shanghai's most feared gangster is all ears.

[Danny Golden]

This is the Underworld Podcast.

[Sean Williams]

Hello and welcome to another edition of

[Danny Golden]

the weekly podcast that shines an iPhone torch into the glove Composite department of Global Organized Crime.

[Sean Williams]

I am your host, Sean Williams, an

[Danny Golden]

investigative long form journalist based in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

[Sean Williams]

I am joined by investigative filmmaker Danny Golden. Hill said that we, we are not

[Danny Golden]

two guys in their basements discussing true crime.

[Sean Williams]

We are two guys in their living

[Danny Golden]

rooms discussing organized crime. And those things are incredibly different actually

[Sean Williams]

as we record this, I am going to be in Cuba for the next

[Danny Golden]

few weeks, which is quite exciting.

[Sean Williams]

Will I see a US invasion or

[Danny Golden]

will I just get mugged amid piles of burning trash? Either way, it's a great story.

I thought you were going to save that until you got back like, and not mention that just in case. I mean, either way, A, international incidents are great for podcast marketing and B, I can just pretend that I can't send you money all of a sudden because your bank accounts got closed down, whatever. And then, and then I can gamble that money, which I'm sure to win on World cup ats, double my money, and then pay you eventually later on once your banking gets resolved.

[Sean Williams]

That's how it's always gone for you, isn't it? You just get a bunch of money

[Danny Golden]

and you double it overnight. Yeah, I think that's how works. Yeah, yeah.

[Sean Williams]

Just to shift gear quickly.

[Danny Golden]

I just want to dedicate this episode to my old friend James Barker. Actually passed away a couple of weeks ago at the age of 40.

[Sean Williams]

Uh, James got me my first job

[Danny Golden]

in New York city back in 2012 and he was non stop fun to be around. So my faults with his family, friends and partner, terrible loss. So young. Um, yeah. And anyway, yeah, never really done anything like that, but yeah, it was real sad. And I've just been speaking to a lot of friends about James and how cool he was. Um, anyway, let's move on to the show.

[Sean Williams]

We. In case you don't know, we've got

[Danny Golden]

a Patreon where we post bonus shows,

[Sean Williams]

interviews, notes and reading lists.

[Danny Golden]

Yes. Patreon.com General podcast. Shout out to Bob Morley, who is a class act. Or sign up on Spotify, iTunes or YouTube.

Yeah, yeah, all of those ones.

[Sean Williams]

We are also contributing to the downfall of human attention spans on all the social media platforms.

[Danny Golden]

So follow us there.

[Sean Williams]

Check out underworldpod.com for merch if you

[Danny Golden]

want to get some envious looks at World cup watch parties.

[Sean Williams]

And if you want to tell us about your life of crime, tip us

[Danny Golden]

about some news or just tell us how damn good looking we both are. Especially me in my sort of second edition of this hostage room that I'm in. Drop us an email.

[Sean Williams]

It's going to get.

[Danny Golden]

Well, it's going to get worse, actually, potentially in the next few days.

[Sean Williams]

Drop us an email at.

[Danny Golden]

Yes, theunderworldpodcastmail.com Tell me your deepest desires, Danny. The ones that keep you up at night. The ones you've never told to your loved ones. Right, now, go.

You're segueing, like, out of control the past five minutes. I don't even know what's. What's going on here. I'm a simple man these days, Sean. All I really desire is one of those luxury apartments that have new appliances and amenities and, And a wolf dog. And that's really it.

When it comes down to it, are

[Sean Williams]

you one of those guys, I mean,

[Danny Golden]

like me, who basically just wants a bare flat with, with. With a TV and a single chair and that's it? No, because that.

No, I want, like an incredibly. I know I'm passive. I want like an incredibly fancy, fancy place where I don't have to talk to anyone and everything's new and, like, shiny and soulless. That's what I want. That's my new sort of thing.

Well, let's hope this episode is really, really banging.

[Sean Williams]

So on to the Shanghai Green Gang. It's something we've had on the schedule for what feels like forever now. But it's such a sweeping topic.

[Danny Golden]

We both steer clear until now.

Well, I steered clear because you were like, I really want to do this. And that was 2024, I think. So I'm like, sean, are you going to do it?

[Ryan Reynolds]

You're going to do it?

[Danny Golden]

And you so so congrats on that.

Thank you, thank you. I'm gonna take that and run with it because. Yeah, because of that immensity of the whole topic.

[Sean Williams]

Today's show is going to give you the lowdown on Shanghai's incredible transformation in 1910s and 20s. It's criminal scene, the rise of the Green Gang and Big ear dude, Yue Shuang, a man considered to be the

[Danny Golden]

blueprint for Asian criminal kingpins.

[Sean Williams]

Until today we're going to find out

[Danny Golden]

why politicians sought him out after the lynching outrage.

[Sean Williams]

You just heard about how he grew from some of the worst poverty imaginable.

[Danny Golden]

I mean, like, prepare yourselves. It's bad.

[Sean Williams]

To immeasurable wealth and power and how divided Shanghai was.

[Danny Golden]

The perfect petri dish to grow the Green Gang from this semi religious boating cult into a multinational criminal empire.

Yeah, Shanghai back then really sounds like it would have been a lot of fun. I honestly did not know much about it, I think until we start doing some triad stuff. I read the Monk Eastman episode, not Monkeysman, the Moshe got Moshe 2 guns cone episode. Not Monkeysman, but a real like libertine place, right? Ton of political intrigue, all sorts of shadiness going on. Casablanca in the 40s, Cuba in the 50s sort of atmosphere. Maybe, I don't know, Beirut in the 70s or 80s. Just kind of like a. It's a wild place. It sounds endlessly fascinating.

I think I have a book right here. And he is walking to the back of his room.

Old Shanghai Gangsters in Paradise. I was gonna read this for the episode.

I'd love to read that.

Yeah, it just seems like a fascinating place to be. To be. To be doing stuff. To be living.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah. I mean, there's the opening scene from

[Danny Golden]

the Temple of Dune, Indiana Jones where they're having a gunfight in a casino, I think in Shanghai.

[Sean Williams]

This actually was filmed in Maau. I think it's supposed to be 35, so we're going to get to that

[Danny Golden]

a bit later on. But you know, Tommy guns and cocktails and lots of beautiful women.

[Sean Williams]

Looks like a pretty cool place in the movie.

[Danny Golden]

And as we're going to find out, it was pretty cool in real life too.

[Sean Williams]

So, yes, this is part one. And then we're going to have two more episodes on du and the green gang. Through the 1920s and 30s, through due's

[Danny Golden]

years as China's top mob boss, Shanghai's

[Sean Williams]

showdown between Nationalists and communists, massacres, revolutions, civil war, foreign invasion, spies, a mushroom poisoning scandal. Way before that boring lady in Australia

[Danny Golden]

and way more besides. I don't think we've done a three part since the Chechnya stuff years ago. Maybe, but trust me, this is worth it. It is an epic tale of vice,

[Sean Williams]

death and treachery, and in many ways the birth of modern China. So is that where you whistle?

[Danny Golden]

All right, let's dive into it.

[Sean Williams]

And when I say dive into it,

[Danny Golden]

I mean, you know, talk about old stuff, basically.

[Sean Williams]

How old?

[Danny Golden]

1888. That's how old.

I know.

Like, Danny is breathing a sigh of relief that it's not like 1348 or something like that.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, that August, Du Yue Shuang is

[Danny Golden]

born into an extremely poor family in

[Sean Williams]

Gao Chao, Pudong County.

[Danny Golden]

I just want to head off any complaints about my Chinese pronunciations here. It can, and it's going to get a lot worse.

[Sean Williams]

Pudong actually lies on the the eastern

[Danny Golden]

side of the Huangpu river that separates it from downtown Shanghai. Today it's a full fledged metropolis of its own, right? Home to almost 6 million people.

[Sean Williams]

And you might recognize its name from Shanghai's international airport or any of the futuristic buildings of its financial district. But in 1888, it is farmland, scrub peasant country. The river may as well be a

[Danny Golden]

foreign border, which, as we'll soon learn,

[Sean Williams]

it kind of is. Du's father had once worked checking goods on Shanghai's wolves, and then he opened the rice shop.

[Danny Golden]

What's a rice shop like in China in the 1890s? Like, you walk in like it's just rice, right? Just a whole bunch of rice. There's not like any, there's not like different versions of rice. It's not like a bodega where there's like, oh, let me get this and this. It's just rice, you know, Like, I bet his pals like every day that he'd be like, play a joke, you know, like, like, hey, what's, what's the special today? What do you got? He's just rice. I, I just got rice and they just kept doing that and he like roll his eyes, but it was like a joke. They had just a whole bunch of rice.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's like the, the look that we give advertisers when

[Danny Golden]

they ask us if we do any other topics. No, it's just, it's just gangs, you

know, like when, when Borat's in the supermarket and he's like, what's this? And the guy's like, it's just cheese and this and cheese and it's like that, but just with plain rice.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, this is it.

[Danny Golden]

I think it's a Lot of burlap sacks and a sad man.

Yeah.

Despite all of this hard work and

[Sean Williams]

the big old sacks of rice, life

[Danny Golden]

in the middle class never materializes for the doos.

[Sean Williams]

The rice shop fails. Du's mother is forced to work in

[Danny Golden]

a cotton factory to make ends meet.

[Sean Williams]

Young do spends only four months at a local school before his parents can't afford that either.

[Danny Golden]

And it will remain his only experience of formal education.

[Sean Williams]

Dou's life gets even worse at age 3, when his mother dies and his father, by now eking a pittance as

[Danny Golden]

a day labourer, is so poor that he decides to sell Du's baby sister into slavery, which is a shockingly common thing in China at this time.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, this would be a rags to riches tale if only the Du

[Danny Golden]

family could afford a rag.

[Sean Williams]

Do's father then sends his son to

[Danny Golden]

serve as an apprentice carpenter under his uncle. But do hates manual labor and discovers

[Sean Williams]

a love for gambling. I should add, he is doing this

[Danny Golden]

at the age of four.

I think it took me till like 34 to realize that I love gambling and hated manual labor. So the kids growing up, he's advanced

for his age, you know, he's incredibly

[Sean Williams]

advanced and he has one hell of a tough life. According to one source, Du is a dab hand at dice fantan, which is

[Danny Golden]

a kind of Yahtzee thing, and Pajiu, which is a.

[Sean Williams]

Which is a Chinese version of Domino's.

[Danny Golden]

Basically, it's so high stakes that the people of Gao Chow call it eating dog meat.

[Sean Williams]

Truly a game for the 1%. Some of these games do plays in the streets of other kids. Some he plays in tea houses and gambling dens, home to Gao Chow's local hoodlums, writes Brian G. Martin, author of the Shanghai Green Gang.

[Danny Golden]

Quick side note, that is the book that I spent about half a year trying to read.

[Sean Williams]

I think he's still alive, so I'll

[Danny Golden]

just, I'll leave it there.

Quote, it's gonna ask endorsement or not.

I, I honestly, I spent so long finding out if that guy was dead or not, so I could talk stuff about his book, but I think he's alive anyway.

You're saying it was thorough, dense, it's granular.

Yeah, it's incredibly well researched.

[Sean Williams]

It was during these years of childhood and early adolescence that Du developed a

[Danny Golden]

taste for gambling that never left him.

[Sean Williams]

The demands of the gaming table, however, instilled him in certain self discipline that

[Danny Golden]

curbed his natural tendency to outbursts of

[Sean Williams]

violent temper and also helped develop the skills necessary to deal effectively with others.

[Danny Golden]

I mean, yeah, this guy loves an adverb.

[Sean Williams]

Just in case you're beginning to think this kid is beginning to have it too easy. At age 5, Du's father dies too, and his care is entrusted to his stepmother. But at age 8, Du's uncle boots him out of the carpentry gig for

[Danny Golden]

being lazy and stealing all his cash.

[Sean Williams]

And a year later, local triads kidnap Du's widow's stepmother and sell her to

[Danny Golden]

one of Shanghai's many brothels.

[Sean Williams]

So just in case you're listening to

[Danny Golden]

this and you think your life sucks,

[Sean Williams]

I mean, maybe you're thinking that right

[Danny Golden]

now, listening to me talk about that.

[Sean Williams]

By the age of nine, Du Yue

[Danny Golden]

Schweng has lost both his parents.

[Sean Williams]

He's been kicked out of his uncle's workshop. His stepmother has been disappeared into sex slavery. He's in with small time gangsters, destitute.

[Danny Golden]

And he's got a gambling problem.

[Sean Williams]

Du carries on with his Dickensian life until the age of 14 in 1902, when he swaps Pudong for Shanghai proper, bagging a role at a fruit company for a bookkeeper. Uncle Du spends the next few years bobbing from low paid job to low

[Danny Golden]

paid job in the fruit sector.

[Sean Williams]

I should have made a joke about

[Danny Golden]

bobbing for apples and stuff.

[Sean Williams]

Until in 1906, he moves to Da Yu Fruit Hong, a company whose stalls line the walls of old Shanghai. You think he saves his cash?

[Danny Golden]

Of course not.

[Sean Williams]

Almost every penny he earns, dude plows back into the gambling dens, spending nights and oftentimes mornings playing the kinds of ridiculous games Shanghai's gambling addicts are throwing down on dice, dominoes, sticks, stones. If there are drops of water on

[Danny Golden]

a window, do will bet on how fast they'll fall.

Now would be a great time to plug one of those incredibly shady crypto gambling exchanges that are always paying people like $8 million to gamble on them. But we just don't have our advertising. Salespeople just aren't doing their jobs and getting us involved with what are clearly illegal rackets that we would be involved

with if we could.

[Sean Williams]

Absolutely.

[Danny Golden]

Let's just see if they listen to the show like they claim they do. Definitely they don't. No.

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[Danny Golden]

Anyway, this all sounds like a fast track to ruin. That is not the tagline fast for one of those companies.

[Sean Williams]

And in 1911 Dar u fruit fires do too for stealing its funds to

[Danny Golden]

fuel his out of control gambling habit.

[Sean Williams]

But it's not all bad news. A life leading gambling dens has earned due's friends among old Shanghai's underworld figures. Not least a pimp known as Lot Drawer.

[Danny Golden]

As in somebody who draws lots.

[Sean Williams]

Lot Drawer takes du under his wing and introduces him to a group called the Green Gang. Soon afterwards, Lotdrawer sponsors do's initiation into the Green Gang.

[Danny Golden]

And doo takes to these guys like a duck to water. Which is fitting because, well, Peking duck. And because Walter is the lifeblood of the Green Gang.

[Sean Williams]

Now, if you've listened to this show

[Danny Golden]

over the years, or even just last

[Sean Williams]

week's by Danny, you'll know plenty about

[Danny Golden]

the so called triads. Criminal gangs that emerge from secret societies

[Sean Williams]

called Hongs, which continually battle for control

[Danny Golden]

of legal and illegal economies during the Qing Dynasty and were continually forced out of Mainland China by the Qing to Hong Kong, Macau and other peripheries where they have thrived to this day.

[Sean Williams]

The Green Gang has a similar origin story, albeit one rooted firmly in Shanghai. One historian admitted that the Green Gang's background is a quote blend of fact and fiction.

[Danny Golden]

Often more fiction than fact.

[Sean Williams]

Which is partly why this show has

[Danny Golden]

taken so long to put together.

[Sean Williams]

Like Danny said in last week's episode about Chinese American kingpin Shrimp Boy, one of a gangster's favorite pastimes is telling

[Danny Golden]

tall tales about himself.

[Sean Williams]

So I'm going to do my best

[Danny Golden]

to parse reality from nonsense here.

[Sean Williams]

The Green Gang arguably begins back in the 17th, perhaps even the 16th century, when a Buddhist sect called the White Lotus spawned its own subsector called Patriarch Luo. These were to Buddhism what I guess

[Danny Golden]

7th Day Adventists are to Christianity.

[Sean Williams]

They're millenarian, I. E. They believe the

[Danny Golden]

end times are just around the corner.

[Sean Williams]

And they're ultra nationalistic, believing in a pure Buddhist land cleansed of other religions, throwing in a bunch of other local

[Danny Golden]

belief systems, Confucianism, Daoism, Chinese folk religion,

[Sean Williams]

which actually, when you think about it,

[Danny Golden]

is a little bit oxymoronic.

[Sean Williams]

Besides that, this is just your common

[Danny Golden]

old garden, get off my land, Jesus is coming, watch your back kind of stuff.

[Sean Williams]

Only in the case of the Patriarch Luo Sect. It takes off in the 18th century

[Danny Golden]

among boatmen, especially in the city of

[Sean Williams]

Hangzhou, around 100 miles west of Shanghai. At the time home to a million people and therefore one of the biggest cities on earth. Little tiny monastery hostels would pop up

[Danny Golden]

along the canal routes of boatmen shifting grain. Throughout the Qing Dynasty, the boatman sleeps

[Sean Williams]

at one, gets his blessings, passes the sect onto his fellow boatmen. The sect spreads, becomes a kind of religious trade union.

[Danny Golden]

Everybody happy, Everybody happy. Everybody happy.

[Sean Williams]

That is, until the Qing Dynasty fears that the Patriarch Luo sect is getting

[Danny Golden]

too big for its boats.

[Sean Williams]

They ban it, raise its temples in Hangzhou and confiscate its land.

[Danny Golden]

This, of course, pushes the sect underground,

[Sean Williams]

and instead of temples, they designate certain

[Danny Golden]

boats to be floating, constantly moving places of worship.

[Sean Williams]

Now working in the shadows, the sect

[Danny Golden]

christens its own structure and lore. Members refer to it as the family.

[Sean Williams]

Similar to the Japanese Yakuza, there is

[Danny Golden]

a strict master pupil hierarchy, with teachers

[Sean Williams]

or shifu and disciples or tudy running the show. There is an initial ceremony.

[Danny Golden]

There is an initial ceremony, I should say. Yeah, I know, God almighty. That involves the swearing of oaths and the burning of incense.

[Sean Williams]

Green gang members refer to this process

[Danny Golden]

as, quote, entering the monastery, nodding to

[Sean Williams]

their origin story as a Buddhist sect. And this is a lot tamer than the triad ceremony, which involves drinking a

[Danny Golden]

mixture of the participants and chicken blood,

[Sean Williams]

but the effect is the same. Now, Green gang members can be official, just like the sake drinking ceremony yakuza

[Danny Golden]

go through, or making an Italian mafioso,

[Sean Williams]

which gives them a mechanism for cozying

[Danny Golden]

up to business elites, politicians, cops and so on. Think Freemasons, or way better, the stonecutters from the Simpsons, which I still Think is my favorite episode the no Homers

Club, Sean, it's the no Homers Club. I mean, I think like 25% of my brain is still Simpsons quotes from the 90s. It just. It's sad how kids these days won't know, like, the joy of syndication, you know, of just like watching the same 30 episodes of Seinfeld and the Simpsons for two hours every Monday through Friday. Because that was. That's just what you had, you know?

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, I mean, I had that.

[Danny Golden]

That series on vhs and I just watched it about a million times. It was the same one where he got the.

[Sean Williams]

Was it the gummy Venus de Milo?

[Danny Golden]

Oh, that's a good one, too.

And the. The Japan one? Around the same.

[Sean Williams]

Yes, yes.

[Danny Golden]

In Australia. One of the best.

Yeah. My God, the Simpsons, man. Maybe that should be our watch along. Screw with these organized crime films. It's just two Simpsons old episodes.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, Green Gang members often wear robes

[Danny Golden]

and adhere to their own ten commandments,

[Sean Williams]

the breaking of which could be punishable by death. Obey your teacher.

[Danny Golden]

Deal fairly with other members. Okay, fairly down the middle.

[Sean Williams]

But also adultery and theft, which if you're found in what is basically a

[Danny Golden]

giant smuggling ring with some pimping on the side, it's maybe not the most realistic rules to lay down.

[Sean Williams]

Because of all this pageantry, AKA male silliness, Green Gang members come to regard themselves as haojia.

[Danny Golden]

Told you the Chinese would get worse.

[Sean Williams]

Literally, quote, men of honour and courage. They're true patriots, heroes locked in ceaseless battle against injustice, not only for themselves,

[Danny Golden]

but on behalf of the poor and the dispossessed.

[Sean Williams]

They use the imagery of ancient warring

[Danny Golden]

horsemen, exactly like Japan's yakuza.

[Sean Williams]

I think at this point we might have to sound the Robin Hood klaxon here too, sadly. But because this isn't in China, the Green Gang does its feed the poor

[Danny Golden]

shtick in poetic fashion.

[Sean Williams]

Leaders commissioned special calligraphy promising to provide,

[Danny Golden]

quote, 1,000 years of morality and justice,

[Sean Williams]

which, of course in Chinese, as you all know, is Dao yi qian chu. Eventually, the Green Gang splits into its own subjects.

[Danny Golden]

So bad.

Do the actual. Dude, do it. You were doing it before the camera turned out.

[Sean Williams]

I might lean in even harder.

[Danny Golden]

Yeah, it's probably going to do us better on the numbers.

[Sean Williams]

There is infighting and even at one

[Danny Golden]

point, a civil war.

[Sean Williams]

But in 1848, bigger issues come to the forefront. China's grain market takes a nosedive, putting up to 50,000 boatmen out of work almost overnight. Some join anti Qing dynasty rebel groups. Others become smugglers of salt, which is officially a government monopoly. But. Well, have you eaten Chinese food demand

[Danny Golden]

drives a massive black market.

[Sean Williams]

Luo boatmen smuggle salt all the way along the Yangtze river from Shanghai at its mouth to massive cities like Nanjing, Wuhan, Chongqing. To do so, they work with existing

[Danny Golden]

salt cartels known as chingpe or, or green skins.

Yeah, people, I feel like, I mean I probably a lot of people do, but. But a lot of people don't recognize just how important salt was for so long in terms of like preserving food, taste, everything like that. I tried to read that book, actually, the one about like tracing the history of the world through salt, but kind of got bored of it. Didn't. Didn't finish it. Great idea for a book though. You know what I'm talking about?

[Sean Williams]

Very good. No, but it is quite a good idea.

[Danny Golden]

There's a book. I mean, what the hell is China of like salt? And because all the trading thousands a year, like salt was such a big facet of the economy of like how to survive, you know, salting meat, you couldn't preserve whatever. I can't. You should know these things.

So yeah, just listen to podcast.

Doesn't he tell us, you should know these things. You're a man of the world.

[Sean Williams]

Wasn't like. Wasn't, wasn't.

[Danny Golden]

Oh my God.

[Stories Hotels Announcer]

Literally.

[Fox 1 Announcer]

I was going to say

[Sean Williams]

it's so late, by the way, and I'm so jet lagged. What am I thinking? Isn't the load of the, like the Indian stuff about independence that was to

[Danny Golden]

do with salt monopolies and stuff like this? I think that the first nonviolent resistance was to do with salt.

[Car Salesperson]

But can you.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, what the hell is Chinese food before salt? I don't even get it.

[Danny Golden]

What was always before salt?

Yeah, yeah, fair point. You have to make it factual.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, these green skins, the Chingpe, Some folks believe these salt cartels, they are the origin of the name the Green Gang. Others think it's just a simple transcription error. Either way, the Qing Bang or Green Gang emerges as a true group around the 1880s, around about the time Du

[Danny Golden]

Yue Sheng is being born into poverty.

[Sean Williams]

Just as they've done with assault cartels. It's the Green Gang's ability to make deals corrupt officials and partner with other organizations that market from other forms of

[Danny Golden]

banditry along the Yangtze River.

[Sean Williams]

Because of the vast distances involved here, I mean, Shanghai to Chongqing is over a thousand miles. And this is just post the invention

[Danny Golden]

of the telegram, so no one's talking to each other.

[Sean Williams]

The Green Gang is a diffuse thing, divided up into hundreds of groups and tens, if not hundreds of thousands of men. For the first decade of the century, it maintains a kind of awkward peace with the Qing dynasty, making deals here, fighting there. But in 1911, everything changes for China and the Green Gang, but also for Duyue Shuang. This is the year he gets fired from his job on the fruit stalls, remember? And he immediately takes up the role of street bum loitering around the walls

[Danny Golden]

of old Shanghai that have become one of the most crime ridden places on the planet.

[Sean Williams]

Here's Brian Martin again. The passenger and freight traffic through the docks provided an inexhaustible source of larceny

[Danny Golden]

for the petty gangsters of the district.

[Sean Williams]

And the docks themselves were an important part of the network of trafficking in

[Danny Golden]

narcotics and human beings.

[Sean Williams]

In the warren of narrow streets and alleys running back from the docks into the Chinese city were innumerable gambling dens, opium divans and brothels where the local hoodlums and street bums hung out. So Du is taking up a role

[Danny Golden]

of the latter of these.

[Sean Williams]

And as an official Shanghai street bum, he makes his money robbing, extorting and

[Danny Golden]

running small time opium deals.

[Sean Williams]

He's also getting high off his own

[Danny Golden]

supply, very high by the way. And he's still betting piles of cash on dice.

[Sean Williams]

He's not the likeliest guy to become one of the world's most prominent gangsters, but he's still only 23 years old.

[Danny Golden]

I mean a veteran, but in real terms, quite young.

[Sean Williams]

In April 1911, do has his first public run in with Shanghai police when he's questioned over his involvement in an

[Danny Golden]

extortion ring targeting local opium merchants.

[Sean Williams]

He's hardly an auspicious looking guy. I'm going back to Brian Martin here.

[Danny Golden]

Quote.

[Sean Williams]

His physical appearance was striking, although by no means conventionally handsome. He had a lean, impassive face with hard, penetrating eyes, surprisingly large ears and

[Danny Golden]

a full, sensuous mouth. Brian, stop it.

[Sean Williams]

Yes, the rather sinister character of these features was given emphasis by a drooping

[Danny Golden]

eyelid over his left eye. Oh yeah, carry on.

[Sean Williams]

Prominent eyebrows and close cropped hair. He was above average in height with a strong wiry build that did not

[Danny Golden]

yet show the effects of abuse through opium addiction.

[Sean Williams]

There were few prospects, however, beyond the rather limited ones offered as a small

[Danny Golden]

time thug, a member of a local street gang.

When you read a description like that, can you actually picture it in your head or are you just like, what is this guy talking about? You picture the mouth, I bet there,

chief, I'm still picturing you picture in

[Sean Williams]

the mouth for days. How can you have an impassive face with penetrating eyes? You can't.

[Danny Golden]

I don't know. Aren't all, almost all eyes are penetrating, you know, you look at them, they look back at you like, you know,

they are penetrating, you know, El. Penetrating. Danny, that mouth.

Close cropped hair. Doesn't everyone, didn't everyone have close cropped hair? But I, I, I don't know, man.

[Sean Williams]

I don't know. Was this before the Boxer Rebellion where they all like the plats coming out the back? Maybe.

[Danny Golden]

Maybe that was a, like a big look back then.

I don't know. I'm just trying to make conversation.

Aren't we all? That's why we're here, just to pass the time. Really?

[Fox 1 Announcer]

Yeah.

[Sean Williams]

However, it's this exact time in 1911, that dude gets involved with a local Green Gang hoodlum named Chen Chichang, nicknamed

[Danny Golden]

Lot Draw, as in the guy who draws lots because gambling.

[Sean Williams]

And this is where Du's star really

[Danny Golden]

begins to rise in the Shanghai underworld.

[Sean Williams]

Lock Droi introduces Du to his fellow Green Gang members on the docks and soon afterwards sponsors Du as a Green Gang member himself. Now, as if it weren't already complicated enough, the Green Gang at this point is split among no fewer than 24 classes or castes. And Du, the country bumpkin that he is, belongs to the 23rd of those 24. If he'd have joined in any other fashion, Du would have been way, way

[Danny Golden]

down the Green Gang's Peking sorry pecking order.

[Sean Williams]

But because he's chosen to glom onto Lotdrawer, he quickly gets introduced to Lotdrawer's friend, who is local kingpin Huang Jin Rong. And is this meeting between Du and Hwang which sends the younger gangster, pimp and gambling addiction on the path towards

[Danny Golden]

something far, far bigger.

[Sean Williams]

Huang, seeing the hunger in dude's droopy eyes.

[Danny Golden]

Wait, hold on. Are you saying he is. He's got hungry eyes?

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, I guess I am. Yeah, he's got sensuous mouth, hungry eyes,

[Danny Golden]

and they're droopy and passive and he penetrates.

[Sean Williams]

But he's got big ears.

[Danny Golden]

But he's got little hair.

[Sean Williams]

What a guy.

[Danny Golden]

Man, I just wish I could have met him.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, seeing the hunger in Du's droopy eyes, Hwang takes him on as a standover man, somebody to call on for acts of violence or to get his hands dirty in low level robberies, extortions, or drug and human trafficking. But Hwang's partner, a woman named Ms. Gui, sees more in the young man, his years of card sharking might have made him an inveterate gambler, but there's barely a man in Shanghai who doesn't

[Danny Golden]

know the world of illegal gaming better than Du.

[Sean Williams]

Ms. Gui that Du run three of Huang's most lucrative tables at a den

[Danny Golden]

near Shanghai's famous Bund Promenade.

[Sean Williams]

Du performs well and shows Hwang he can be a lot more than a pair of fists. He thinks strategically and he can manage others effectively. Before long, Huang Jinrong reckons he's not looking just at a street thug, but a bonafide criminal mastermind. He should know Hwang is many years Due's elder, a man with a rough past too, who wears it literally on his face. Most folks know him as Poc Ma Thuang, for the small pox scars that

[Danny Golden]

crater him like the moon.

[Sean Williams]

He, like Du, had worked his way from nothing to the top and had gotten his own break in 1892 when cops in Shanghai's French Concession had hired him to work as a plainclothes detective. Even while he was a local Green Gang leader, this is not as uncommon as you might think. In fact, throughout the 1910s and 20s, the Green Gang comes to command huge cuts of Shanghai's illicit markets precisely by working with and even as police in

[Danny Golden]

the city's three divisions, the Chinese areas, the International Settlement, particularly though the French Concession.

[Sean Williams]

In many ways, Shanghai is the main

[Danny Golden]

character of this three parter, and we're

[Sean Williams]

going to get into its many peculiarities

[Danny Golden]

in the next episode because they are many and they are wildly interesting.

[Sean Williams]

According to a popular saying, the city is, quote, a thin layer of heaven

[Danny Golden]

on a thick slice of hell. I like that a lot, actually. That's a really good quote.

[Sean Williams]

And Du Yue Shuang, working beneath Huang Jinrong, is slipping between them, running gambling dens in brothels and orchestrating ever biggest

[Danny Golden]

shipments, not just of salt, but China's cash cow, opium.

[Sean Williams]

He's the Shanghai Green Gang's rising star

[Danny Golden]

and he knows it.

[Sean Williams]

He shaves his head so that his prominent ears will be even more visible. This is when he gets the nickname Big Eared.

[Danny Golden]

Do merchants and cops fear him? Gangsters respect him, and podcasters just want to get to know him.

[Sean Williams]

And what do gangsters love?

[Danny Golden]

Instability, chaos, a state on its knees.

[Sean Williams]

Lawlessness. And would you know it, Danny? That is just what the Green Gang gets. The Qing Dynasty has been spluttering for decades. Before 1911, foreigners have barged in and

[Danny Golden]

taken chunks of its territory. The British in Hong Kong, for example,

[Sean Williams]

or the Portuguese in Macau. We'll get into those coastal so called

[Danny Golden]

concessions in part two, which of course

[Sean Williams]

are felt incredibly keenly, and Shanghai. But in 1895, China loses a war with Japan and is forced to hand over Taiwan, parts of Manchuria in the north, plus its influence in Korea. A war with Russia in 1904 and 1905 then weakens the dynasty even further and calls for a new modern China. A technologically advanced industrial nation that looks beyond its borders grow louder. By the autumn of 1911, revolutionaries led by Hawaii educated Sun Yat Sen overthrow the Qing. He establishes the Republic of China on

[Danny Golden]

January 1, 1912, with its capital in the ancient city of Nanjing, some 200 miles west of Shanghai.

[Sean Williams]

But the revolution is never truly completed. The Republican government fails to unify all of China under its control and power vacuums left by the retreating Qing fuel the rise of gangsters and warlords in divided Shanghai. The result of this half Finnish revolution

[Danny Golden]

looks like a weakened state with laws

[Sean Williams]

unable to be upheld by courts, easily corruptible officials and foreign businesses being left

[Danny Golden]

to exploit Chinese labour and mineral wealth with almost no official oversight.

[Sean Williams]

Little wonder that the city is known not only as the Paris of the east, but as the hall of the

[Danny Golden]

Orient, writes the website.

[Sean Williams]

Damn interesting quote. Besides wealth, the vacuum left by the deboned Chinese legal authorities meant the city

[Danny Golden]

offered a limitless supply of sex, drugs, gambling and practically any other vice imaginable.

[Sean Williams]

With no unified immigration system, Shanghai was the only city in the world without any bothersome need for visas or official resident permits and free from anything like vigorous law enforcement outside of the well

[Danny Golden]

preened streets inhabited by the world to do.

[Sean Williams]

For the Green Gang, particularly Huang Jinrong and Du Yueheng, this is all manna from heaven. They are the most powerful gangsters in a city whose lust for wealth and

[Danny Golden]

vice is unmatched almost anywhere else on earth.

[Sean Williams]

They are also, for reasons we'll get into next week, sitting on an opium gold mine worth millions upon millions of dollars and which is supercharged by a 1912 prohibition that has a similar effect

[Danny Golden]

on Shanghai's criminal scene as alcohol prohibition does in the us.

[Sean Williams]

So huge is the leap in price of the drug that by 1917, according

[Danny Golden]

to one historian, opium is worth, quote, seven times its weight in silver.

[Sean Williams]

And the Green Gang is beginning to

[Danny Golden]

rake in a lot of that cash.

[Sean Williams]

Just to repeat, part two of this Green Gang trilogy will dive into the history of Chinese opium and the history of Shanghai itself. But to close out today's show, let's head all the way up to 1920. By this point, Huang and Du's branch of the Green Gang is playing second fiddle to a branch called the Big Eight Mob, itself a consolidation of smaller Green Gang factions. The Big Eight Mob controls the majority of opium coming in and out of Shanghai, having made its name pulling off a series of daring heists on opium

[Danny Golden]

merchants throughout the previous two decades.

[Sean Williams]

It's also arguably the first Green Gang branch to go global, pairing with traffickers in Japan and Taiwan to get hundreds of tons of opium in and out of mainland China through Shanghai.

[Fox 1 Announcer]

This episode is brought to you by Fox 1. Watch all 104 matches of the FIFA World cup live in 4K for just $19.99 a month with 3 days free. Build your own multi view, choose up to three streams and follow player spotlights. Stay on top of every moment with live stats, highlights and instant replays. The FIFA World cup streaming live on Fox One. Offers are subject to change. See fox.com for complete terms and conditions.

[Sean Williams]

Choice hotels get you more of what you value. Comfort Inn it's calling your name. Save on the stay. Oh, and free waffles are yours to claim.

[Stories Hotels Announcer]

Book [e-mail] your team just added its 67th AI tool and also your 67th security blind spot. The good news? The Vanta agent works like a GRC engineer in the background, finding every app your team uses, scoring the risk and drafting fixes for you. Vanta is the platform used by over 16,000 fast moving companies like Ramp, Cursor and Harvey who are shaping the future with AI and staying ahead of AI risk. Get started at vanta.com polls so where

[Danny Golden]

is, is any of that opium being exported? You said in and out. So is it like, is it going anywhere else in the world?

[Sean Williams]

I think from what I've read it's eventually going everywhere. I mean anywhere there's an opium demand,

[Danny Golden]

this stuff is going.

That's what I mean. Where was there, where was there like a big demand for opium? I guess I think it was a

[Sean Williams]

big deal in Europe. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean it was in the US but it was also big in like

[Danny Golden]

London, Paris, other cities all over Europe as well. And I, and I think a lot

[Sean Williams]

of it then was coming from China

[Danny Golden]

because of the illicit and illicit routes.

[Sean Williams]

I mean we're going to get into this a lot.

[Danny Golden]

But the European wars could be another like 10 episodes.

I know it could be. Did you ever smoke opium?

[Sean Williams]

I did.

[Danny Golden]

Yeah.

We used to get it in college, but I swear it wasn't because you would smoke it and be like this. Like I don't. I Don't get it. I want to be hanging out one of those basements in the 1920s and just like giving up on life. Like I want it to be that good and it just wasn't that good. So I assume it wasn't like real sort of. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah. Like wearing one of those cool outfits, lounging on your back and smoking out.

[Car Salesperson]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Danny Golden]

Just like not, not a care in the world for like, like three weeks while I just sit there and smoke Opio just. Yeah, I mean that feeling.

[Sean Williams]

I had the same thing and I

[Danny Golden]

got caught smoking it outside one of my teachers offices.

[Sean Williams]

But I, I also think it was

[Danny Golden]

just like a bit of weed. Yeah, we got a bunch of these like opium joints and smoked it outside the back of the school.

[Sean Williams]

But it, it went through the vent

[Danny Golden]

way into one of our teachers or

like woods in your, in your growing up.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, yeah. That would have been the intelligent thing

[Danny Golden]

to do, but more Sean Williams lore man. Just smoking opium in school at your teacher's office.

[Sean Williams]

I mean, well, I mean there was the stuff that we did in Myanmar

[Danny Golden]

that was actually, that was legit.

Yeah, I had that in like in Laos too. But it also wasn't the same. Like it didn't. There was no on the T, but there was no, like I wasn't wowed,

[Sean Williams]

you know, I don't know about that.

[Danny Golden]

I think back then there was a

couple of times like all drugs like anything they have like too much caffeine and they're like this is, this is insane. This is crazy.

[Sean Williams]

You know, someone's. Someone's got to send us emails telling

[Danny Golden]

Danny what drugs will get him the highest that he used to experience

[Canva Announcer]

what

[Sean Williams]

five, 10 years ago. No.

[Danny Golden]

Yeah.

[Sean Williams]

Anyway, anyway, all of this, what we talking about? What's this? Oh yeah, it's the. The Qing gang run by Huang Jinrong and Duyue Xuan is behind the Big eight mob. That don't bother Huang much. He is old school, a cool head, but he's not much of a strategic thinker. By and large he is happy with his lot. But do he's different do is different. Different do he wants the Big eight mobs opium millions to do so he piles his ill gotten gains into a series of high profile businesses.

[Danny Golden]

Jewelry stores, logistics firms and so on.

[Sean Williams]

He uses these physical locations to embed himself across the city, inviting fellow and rival gangsters in for parlays, all with

[Danny Golden]

the goal of toppling the Big 8 mobile.

[Sean Williams]

In fact, so much does he model his Green Gang branch on the Big Ape Mob that many underworld figures refer to it as the Small ape mob. By 1922, Doo's tactics are paying off.

[Danny Golden]

By the way, this is like 150 pages of that book.

[Sean Williams]

Doo has made so many alliances at his various Shanghai front stores that he uses them to reach out to opium merchants, many of whom are upset at

[Danny Golden]

the Big Eight Mob's increasingly aggressive operations.

[Sean Williams]

He gets them on board and then just like that, he pulls the rug

[Danny Golden]

from the Big Ape Mob almost overnight.

[Sean Williams]

Without access to their merchants, without the backing of gangsters who've come over to Do's side, the Big Ape Mob loses

[Danny Golden]

its status in the opium game, seeding it to do and his boss Huang.

So he basically like just unites the freelance gangsters and the dealers, like one by one, under the nose, out of these shops. Out of the nose, under the nose of the Big Eight Mob.

[Sean Williams]

Yeah, I mean, kind of the history of the Green Gang, as much as

[Danny Golden]

I can determine it is like it starts with thousands of disparate groups and it just consolidates and consolidates over time until you get these like big players like do and the Big Eight Mob and it consolidates again and they take over.

[Sean Williams]

And eventually, I mean, you know, spoiler

[Danny Golden]

alert, Du's going to be a pretty big deal.

[Sean Williams]

So yeah, like it started with all

[Danny Golden]

those boatmen going along the canals in the Yangtze river and it ends up in Shanghai and with Du Yue Shuang.

[Sean Williams]

By 1923, Du has carved out Shanghai's French Concession, has his entire turf. This is a 3.5 square mile stretch of central Shanghai, home to almost half a million people. And it belongs to Big Ear do, the country boy, the gambling addict, the orphan who rose from literally nothing to

[Danny Golden]

become a criminal king.

[Sean Williams]

He's got every cop, politician, business leader

[Danny Golden]

in his back pocket.

[Sean Williams]

His men are detectives, court inspectors. He runs hundreds of brothels, gambling and opium dens all over the city. And you know what happens next?

[Danny Golden]

Well, yeah, I mean, you know what happens next.

[Sean Williams]

Yes, Danny.

[Danny Golden]

The Lincheng outrage is what happens next.

[Sean Williams]

You know it well. From the cold open, it's the Crazy Train heist. Sun Mie Yao, remember him and his 1200 men. These ex soldiers left destitute and rudderless

[Danny Golden]

by the 1911 revolution.

[Sean Williams]

They attack the Blue Express between Shanghai and Beijing. The train derails. The bandit shoots several passengers and workers

[Danny Golden]

dead on the spot.

[Sean Williams]

The and then they forced the near 300 remaining hostages on a 10 day

[Danny Golden]

march to the gang's hideout in a village at the foot of a mountain. Today that would just be like a GoFundMe thing. For what? Men's mental health. I don't know.

[Sean Williams]

Sun then makes his demands. He wants his men reinstated into the Chinese army and the removal of Republican

[Danny Golden]

troops from his home province of Shandong.

[Sean Williams]

He explicitly demands that foreign powers, not

[Danny Golden]

just China, accept his terms.

[Sean Williams]

And he knows full well that because he's got their citizens, he's forcing the fledgling Republican Chinese government's hands. Writes James Zimmerman, author of the 2023 book the Peking Express. Quote, an attack on an express train by marauding bandits could threaten China's national sovereignty and bring the unstable Republican government to its knees. It would not only strike a blow

[Danny Golden]

to China's economically critical rail system, but

[Sean Williams]

also put the country in the crosshairs

[Danny Golden]

of the foreign powers that increasingly took the view that China couldn't govern itself.

[Sean Williams]

A month of negotiations then take place not just between sun and the Chinese state, but also an American guy named Roy Scott Anderson. Anderson is a fluent Chinese speaker and writer. Incredibly, he had served as a military general under Sun Yat Sen and had been advising several American firms in Shanghai

[Danny Golden]

when the Lincheng outrage had taken place. Anderson, it's got to be said he is the true hero of this story.

[Sean Williams]

He travels all the way to Sun's mountain lair and personally cajoles, threatens and bullies the bandits into releasing every single

[Danny Golden]

foreign prisoner they have.

[Sean Williams]

He also gets the Chinese to acquiesce to Sun's demands to get his men

[Danny Golden]

back into the army.

[Sean Williams]

But sun still has hundreds of Chinese held captive and he wants a major

[Danny Golden]

payday for their release.

[Sean Williams]

So who does the Chinese government turn to? Du Yue Shuang, prince of the Shanghai Green Gang, multi millionaire gangster. A man transforming himself from mob boss to bigness, magnate, philanthropist, political heavyweight. Does he have the cash? The officials asked Do.

[Danny Golden]

Don't sweat it, he tells them. I mean, I'm paraphrasing it. I don't know the Chinese who don't sweat it.

[Sean Williams]

And on June 12, 1923, Doo ends

[Danny Golden]

the hostage crisis with a payment of

[Sean Williams]

$85,000 to Son, which is almost $2

[Danny Golden]

million in today's money.

[Sean Williams]

And with that large S, do is now a national icon, the, quote, man of honour and courage that he promised to be when he joined the Green Gang. But his story won't end there. In fact, it's just a matter of months until do gets his next big

[Danny Golden]

leg up in the wild world of

[Sean Williams]

Shanghai crime, when his boss Huang makes a gigantic misstep, paving the way for the Gringang's big eared prince to become its king.

[Danny Golden]

And then, well, all bets are off.

[Sean Williams]

Thanks for listening. Tune in to the next part of this three part for Shanghai history, Opium wars, massacres and more revolutions, Generalissimos and Chairman coffins and mushrooms and beatings and live burials and way more. And there's even a little bit of Indiana Jones.

[Danny Golden]

Cheers.

It's great stuff, bud. Great stuff.

Sam.

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