THE TRIADS AND THE SEA-HORSES
The past year the police in the Guangdong Province have more or less effectively - at least according to their own testimony - cracked down on the gangs habituating in the area. These gangs are normally referred to as "triads", "clans" or "secret societies". Some of them have been built up in generations – some are more or less opportunistic usually made up by some immigrants that have arrived to the area from other provinces. There are plenty of immigrants coming to Guangzhou with the image that in Guangzhou most people can pick money growing on trees, however only a few of them succeed in actually making any real money. Indeed the salary in Guangdong Province is higher than in other Chinese provinces – but so is the cost of living too – probably with the only exception of clothes. Even people that graduate from the Provincial Universities have problems finding a job that is equivalent with their education, now how could possibly some young uneducated person from, say, Guizhou Province – who don't even speak sufficient Mandarin not to mention Cantonese – possibly start picking money from trees in Guangzhou? Well usually he or she can't. Some of the younger guys infiltrate to some gangs, some pick up some basic slave-job - same goes for the females - some start as prostitutes and some try the hard life as waitresses. Some of them – in some cases - return to the less miserable family-life back to the countryside to raise pigs or similar. The neon lights, the restaurants, the big city life was not the heaven it was supposed to be in the first place.
The historical gangs have always existed in Guangdong Province and some of them have huge societal power - they are even protected by local officials. Last year when the Guangdong Public Security Bureau was making up strategies on how to crack down on the more powerful gangs, they came to the conclusion that they must first start by cracking down on the officials that are protecting the gangs. Successful or not, according to the state media a lot of gangs have recently been broken apart, however the accuracy of this information is difficult to judge. Nevertheless in one of the most prominent recent cases the former vice director of the provincial public security department of east China's Jiangxi province was sentenced to life imprisonment for graft and illegal possession of guns. According to the local media, the security official received bribes - including cash bribes of 850,000 Yuan and 10,000 U.S. dollars and two jade bracelets worth 82,000 Yuan - from a local gang that operated a series of business scams, ran underground casinos and possessed a big stock of guns. The head of the gang, was sentenced to death earlier this year. The information may speak for itself - even people as high as vice directors in public security departments have been involved in protecting the local triads.
The smaller gangs are different. They do the dirty jobs and other smaller scam. These are the guys who want to be the real gangsters but are more or less opportunists. These are the same people harassing people in say London, New York or Paris, where they don't care much whether they stick a knife in the buss-driver or kick some by-passer in the head just for the fun of it. They run on adrenaline, idiocy and occasionally some drugs too – they too need money just as everybody else - they are dangerous people indeed even as 14-year old kids. These smaller gangs have been in a rapid rise in the Guangdong Province for the last years, and even if their leaders are normally being executed, it has not successfully cut the roots of these smaller gangs to come up on the scene. Earlier this year a famous Guangzhou journalist – who was writing about the triads - got his two fingers chopped off as a gesture that he had written the wrong things so to say. More or less unsurprisingly it was finally found out that the crime was committed by some smaller gang of Guangxi immigrants - on the other hand - by the order of some more notorious bigger gang. This incident crossed the border to the Western media – even Associated Press reported it.
So how do I know some triads then? First of all I am not doing any business with them or have any other black-market things going on with them. I have no real idea what they are doing whatsoever, all I know is that they don't fry burgers at Mc Donald's, work in offices or sell pineapples to Dongbei Province. By accident a friend of mine who was living in Guangzhou earlier knew some friend of some friend of some friend of the triads. During my stay there earlier, the mother of this triad-head died – she was a Canadian immigrant – and her ashes were sent to Hainan Island from Canada where the funeral was going to take place. Now, she happened to be a Christian, and apparently some persons of the society had been wondering whether they could find a foreign priest or something similar to attend the funeral – more or less for a symbolical function. My friend on the other hand knew I had both interest in religions – more or less from a basic philosophical approach so to say – and he knew I had also done some studies on different religions in University, so apparently he more or less came up with the story that he "knows a Western priest". So I ended up to Hainan Island to this triad funeral – representing Western Christianity. At the scene itself, I tried to do my best there, at some point even went on knees in front of the tomb – it was part of the ritual. It was a tragic funeral but during the whole stay there I got to know these people.
Each time I visit Guangzhou now I have "their protection" so to say. This time I was given a personal assistant to assist me in finding different things in Guangzhou, say, cigars for example. In the daytime things mostly evolve around money but in the evening it's all about partying. Unfortunately I cannot write here about these parties, for more or less obvious reasons, however they normally take place in KTV-parlors at the floor above the VIP-floor. Imagine a B-class Mexican gangster movie, and how things look when the hanster have a party, that is the first analogy that comes to my mind. One thing that strikes me is how naturally these people react to these scenes going on at these parties. Have seen their kids running around there too. Last Christmas while feeling a bit uneasy drinking beer there among all their kids running around, it didn't take too long to realize though, I was probably the nicest guy there after all. Whether this is some normal Guangzhou mentality or is it some kind of a social performance is beyond my ability to figure out. How can these people look and act so naturally on this scene - just like having a glass of milk in the morning - have they been born and raised at some local KTV?
This time however we didn't go with Brother Ge to the KTV. The reason was simple - he had a heart-ache. Well, indeed it doesn't surprise he had a heart-ache, having seen these people party - going on with that energy and the booming noise - even someone 20-year old would rapidly develop a heart ache. Many of these people are around 50-years old by now. They still seem to hear well though, after a visit to the KTV in Hainan my ears were more or less permanently damaged. There must be some different structure in the ears of the Cantonese people, well some Inuit-people can tolerate cold more than other people, some Indians don't have fear of heights, so maybe naturally Cantonese people don't take damage from KTV as the normal people do?
So up at Brother Ge and while having barbecue there came this question about his time in prison whether he had been beaten or not. The answer was "yes" – probably not surprisingly as he had escaped from prison too – however the tone in the way he pronounced "yes" was indeed not with too much pleasure there put on the vowels. Indeed one could hear the scars still being pronounced within this short word. Apparently, during his time in prison there was not enough food available either - these days it's supposed to be different.
Later we shared a glass of medicine rice wine. The bottle was filled with sea-horses, egg yolk of some special bird and goji-berries in a strong alcohol. This was supposedly a good cure for many things according to local practice. Good or not, it certainly raised my heart-beat and there was plenty of sweat to be released during the night too. Sea-horses are supposed to be a good remedy for treating muscle-ache and rheumatism, however I wouldn't recommend this drink for someone with a fast heart-beating rate in the first place. If your heart rate is too slow - go for the drink with the sea-horses.
[BTW. If anyone knows how to paste pictures in the writings, I would be pleased to know, thank you.]
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