Republic of China, 1928: Starting from a Wonton Shop

Hu Chou Chou was helped in, reeking of alcohol. He had lost everything at the gambling den and was seething with anger.

"So you're the ones who want to inspect the goods?" He shook off the soldiers who were helping him, strode up to Old Wu, and looked him up and down. "From Fengtian? Your accent doesn't match."

Old Wu remained calm and cupped his hands in greeting, saying, "Commander Hu, my ancestral home is in Shanxi. When I was young, I ventured to Northeast China and opened a leather goods shop in Fengtian. This accent... I can't change it."

"Shanxi people?" Hu sneered. "Shanxi merchants are shrewd; don't try to play tricks on me."

"I wouldn't dare." Old Wu pulled a small cloth bag from his pocket and dumped it onto the box next to him with a clatter. "This is the deposit. If the goods are good, I'll add another thirty. Commander Hu, let's not beat around the bush. Those boxes outside," he pointed to the canvas compartment, "aren't they filled with leather, are they?"

Hu stared at the silver dollars, his lips twitching again. After a while, he suddenly laughed: "Old man, you have a good eye. They're definitely not leather."

"What is that?"

"You don't need to know what it is." Hu Chou Chou leaned closer and lowered his voice. "Anyway, it's a hot commodity. Once it leaves this warehouse, the price will more than triple. If you dare to take it, sixty silver dollars for all thirty boxes."

Old Wu shook his head: "Commander Hu, we are fur dealers. We don't need hard goods of dubious origin. We can't do this business."

He made a move to put away the silver dollar, but Hu Tiao grabbed his hand and said, "Wait!"

Their eyes met, and a struggle flashed in Hu's trembling eyes. He desperately needed money; gambling debts were pressing him hard.

Old Wu, on the other hand, looked completely at ease, even with a hint of regret.

"Alright," Hu said through gritted teeth, "let's take a gamble."

Old Wu raised an eyebrow: "A bet?"

"Pai Gow, one round to decide the winner." Hu Chou Chou pulled out a shiny deck of cards from his pocket. "If you win, I'll give you thirty boxes of goods for free, and I'll send people to help you transport them out of this area. If I win, the twenty yuan deposit is mine, plus an extra fifty yuan, and you can all get lost."

Old Wu was silent for a moment, then slowly nodded: "Commander Hu is straightforward. A bet is fine, but I have one condition."

"explain."

"If I win, I'll take the goods for free," Old Wu said seriously. "You can still accept the twenty yuan deposit as a token of appreciation for the brothers' hard work. In addition, you have to give me a note stating that these goods are to pay off your debt to me, so that no one will accuse me of stealing military supplies later."

Hu Chou Chou was taken aback for a moment, then burst into laughter: "Old man, you've thought of everything! Alright, we'll do it your way!"

The card table was quickly set up; it was just a broken wooden crate in the warehouse. The soldiers surrounded it, and Xiao Wu stood behind Lao Wu, his palms sweating profusely.

Hu Chou Chou shuffled the cards skillfully, the dominoes clattering in his hands, while Old Wu watched quietly.

After the cards were dealt, Hu Chou Chou revealed his cards first: a Heaven card paired with a Human card, which was a considerable sum. He smiled and looked at Lao Wu.

Old Wu remained calm and slowly revealed his cards.

One tile representing the ground, and one tile representing the club.

"The floor tile," Old Wu said softly.

Hu Chou Chou's smile froze. He stared intently at the two cards, his lips twitching violently as he pressed down on the Heavenly Card, a rare and decisive move in Pai Gow.

There was silence all around.

"Good workmanship," Hu uttered through gritted teeth, grabbing the silver dollars from the table and yelling at the soldiers, "What are you all standing there for? Load them! Thirty boxes, not a single one missing!"

"Commander, this..." a soldier hesitated.

"I can afford to lose!" Hu Chou Chou kicked over a stool. "Do as he says, write a receipt! Say this shipment is to pay off my gambling debts, and let him take it away!"

Old Wu stood up, cupped his hands in greeting, and said, "Commander Hu, you flatter me."

At the beginning of the Yin hour, three mule carts quietly drove out of the warehouse in the southern suburbs.

As expected, Hu Chou Chou kept his word and sent five soldiers to escort the carriage out of the South City checkpoint. The Jin soldiers guarding the checkpoint saw that they were Hu's men and let them pass without even checking them.

The mule cart did not enter the city, but instead went west along the city wall, circling around to an abandoned brick kiln on the west side. There, another group of people were already waiting. They were comrades arranged by Zhou Zhengnan, disguised as shop assistants of merchants.

The handover proceeded in silence. The thirty wooden crates were transferred to three covered wagons, covered with straw mats, and the soldiers escorting the wagons happily returned home after receiving two extra silver dollars from Xiao Wu.

Xiao Wu finally breathed a sigh of relief after the last box was loaded, only to find that his cotton-padded coat was soaked with cold sweat.

Old Wu, however, remained tense. He walked to one of the carriages, lifted a corner of the tarpaulin, and carefully checked the seals on the wooden crates, which were intact.

"Uncle Wu, is everything alright?" the comrade who was there to meet him asked in a low voice.

"The seal is original, it hasn't been tampered with." Old Wu put down the tarpaulin. "But whether the box contains what we want, we'll have to open it and check."

"It's not safe here, let's move first." The comrade in charge of the rendezvous glanced at the sky. "We must disperse and enter the warehouse before seven o'clock."

Old Wu nodded, then turned to Xiao Wu and said, "You go with the first car, I'll go with the second! Remember, in case of any problems, the goods are guaranteed, not the people!"

Xiao Wu nodded emphatically: "Understood."

About twenty minutes later, in a dilapidated brick kiln, Old Wu, ignoring the stinging pain in his left arm, pulled out a dagger from his pocket, held his breath, and pried open the wooden box marked "Number One".

With a few soft cracking sounds, the smell of hay wafted over.

Peeling back the thick, mottled old sheepskin, one could see dark iron boxes wrapped in oiled paper. Old Wu opened one of them, and in the dim yellow light of the flashlight, rows of boxes with German labels lay quietly in the cotton.

"It's morphine."

Xiao Wu also came over. He pried open another long box, which contained not medicine, but radio components.

"Uncle Wu, it should be right!" Xiao Wu said excitedly.

"Cover it up quickly!" Old Wu decisively pressed the tarpaulin back down.

As per Zhou Zhengnan's previous plan, the thirty boxes of supplies were quickly divided into three groups and stored in different locations, though even Lao Wu didn't know the exact locations.

After settling everything, Lao Wu and Xiao Wu took off their old cotton-padded coats, threw them into the river, washed their faces with the cold water, changed into the blue cloth long gowns and gray cotton-padded coats from Li Ji Restaurant, and quietly returned to Zhou Zhengnan's courtyard house.

Hu slumped to the ground where thirty boxes of supplies had been piled up, his mouth twitching wildly as if he had been electrocuted. The soldiers around him all lowered their heads, not daring to even breathe.

Hu Chou Chou possesses an almost absurd stubbornness: he accepts what he loses at the gambling table!

But if the higher-ups find out about this, he'll lose his head.

"Commander, how do we explain this to our superiors?" the adjutant asked cautiously as he approached.

Hu Chou Chou suddenly stopped convulsing and slapped him hard across the face: "What are you going to confess?!"

He stood up, glanced at his men, and pointed to the empty space, shouting, "Remember this! Last night, in the middle of the night, a group of at least a hundred masked bandits came! Each one was armed with a Mauser. Taking advantage of the heavy snow blocking the roads, they attacked our warehouse. Brothers fought valiantly and managed to hold the gate, but these thirty chests of furs! They stole them!"

The adjutant was stunned: "Commander, did you issue that ticket?"

"A police report? I was forced to write it!" Hu kicked his adjutant aside. "That was written by ruthless thugs with a gun to my head! Go, send a report to the police department and your superiors, saying that a large-scale armed robbery has occurred in the southern suburbs, and thirty boxes of goods have been stolen. Request a city-wide manhunt!"

Beiping Police Department.

Fatty Liu was facing a basin of glowing red charcoal fire, peeling a roasted sweet potato in his hand. The money Li Chunsheng had given him made him feel that winter in Beiping wasn't so unbearable after all.

"Captain, it's urgent!" Dogskin Old Six burst in, his forehead covered in sweat. "Something's happened at the South Suburb warehouse! Hu Chou Chou reported that thirty boxes of top-quality mink pelts from beyond the Great Wall have been stolen by bandits! The higher-ups are furious and have ordered a citywide lockdown to search for those pelts."

Fatty Liu didn't even lift his eyelids. He peeled the sweet potato clean, stuffed a small piece into his mouth, and said, "Mink fur? With Hu Chou Chou's attitude, he probably lost all his goods at the gambling table again and is trying to take our place."

"But they're really pushing us hard," said Old Six, rubbing his hands together.

"What's the rush?" Fatty Liu sneered, patting the envelope in his pocket. "A lot of things go missing in Beiping every day. You believe that Hu Chou-chou said there were two hundred bandits? Two hundred people entering the city, are the city gate sentries blind? This uproar will only last three to five days. We'll just make a show of it, go visit a few outsiders, and in a couple of days, who will even remember these few pieces of leather?"

In the eyes of these local government officials, everyone tacitly regarded this as a farce.

"Alright, take the brothers for a spin, make a big fuss, and catch a few unlucky guys to make up the numbers."