’m pleased to inform you all that my chummer Lei Kung, who sent us material on what was going down with Wuxing, Inc. and some of the late Dunkelzahn’s booty, is still alive and kicking. Lei man-aged to settle matters with the Triads in Hong Kong over one of the items acquired by his team, the Sons of Thunder. Given his recent dealings with them, I figured he’d be the perfect candidate to tell us about the Triads.
Despite the fact that they’re (possibly) the biggest criminal organization in the world, no one’s talked much about the Triads until lately. Their operations are less well known to the Citizen on the Street than those of the Mafia and the Yakuza, but their influence in North America is increasing now that they’ve pretty much secured their hold on the “Golden Triangle” region of Southeast Asia. Triad operations in Seattle and California are starting to get attention, and the Chinese syndicates are becoming important players in San Francisco’s underground resistance movement. They also have a lot of pull here in the Denver area through Chinatown, and I predict that Triad interest in NA will increase once they get all their ducks in a row. So pay attention to what Lei Kung says in this file, chum-mers, ’cause you might be needing this intel real soon now.
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Captain ChaosTransmitted: 23 January 2058 at 14:56:09 (EST)
I
I knew I’d regret that Hong Kong assignment. As soon as I heard the words “great dragon,” I should’ve walked away. But what can I say? I got curious. And it wasn’t a total loss—I got paid, and I learned some things I never expected to learn. Best of all, I survived in spite of what I learned … or maybe because of it, though that thought makes me less than comfy. It suggests that the Triads let me live for some reason I can’t guess at, even though I can tell the outside world more about them than most
“foreign devils” ever get to know. Or maybe they want me to tell.
Which might suggest that the following post is selective informa-tion—not total bulldrek, because I’d spot it, but carefully chosen bits of the truth. Or maybe what I know just isn’t vital enough in their book to make silencing me worth their trouble.
I never was any good at guessing games. So here goes noth-ing—or somethnoth-ing—or everything.
The Triads are Chinese crime syndicates that control major criminal activities—smuggling and vice especially—in the so-called Golden Triangle of Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan. Over the past several decades, the Triads have started to make inroads in North America. The influence of the Tongs (the name by which the Triads are commonly called in NA) is strongest on the West Coast, but they’ve spread well beyond that region.
I’ve made a living as a runner in Hong Kong for longer than I care to admit, and I’ve learned a lot about the Triads—obviously, because I’m still here to tell you about it. If you don’t learn Triad ways and how to work within them in Hong Kong, you won’t last a week in this burg. The Corporate Council may rule the sunny parts of Hong Kong, but the Triads rule the shadows. So long as you acknowledge that and do things their way, you can get by.
HISTORY
The history of the Triads is brief and easy to find. I took this summary of it off the public datanets, cleaned it up a bit and added my own two nuyen here and there. (Don’t skim over the next few paragraphs, people; history matters when you’re dealing with tradition-steeped folks like Triad members.) Like many other criminal organizations, the Triads started out as an underground movement dedicated to overthrowing the colonial rulers of their homeland. For the Mafia, the original enemy was the French in Sicily; for the Triads, the Europeans in China. The Triads devoted themselves to deposing what they considered the corrupt Manchu dynasty (which had allowed Westerners to tromp all over the Chinese) in order to restore the Ming dynasty in its place.
Even today, some Triad societies keep a few holdovers of that goal in their oaths and rituals.
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Where does the name “Triad” come from?>
Wilby>
From the society’s emblem: a triangle, the sides of whichrepre-sent heaven, earth and man. That ties in with the names like
“Three United Association” and “Heaven and Earth Association”
that some of the Triads use.
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ChoThe Manchu came from Manchuria, a country north of China.
You can look it up on the old flat maps you sometimes find in libraries. The Manchu took Beijing by force and established their dynasty in 1674, and the Chinese people understandably saw them as foreign interlopers. Resentment hardened into the seeds of rebellion when Kiang Hsi, the second Manchu emperor, indulged in a piece of remarkable political stupidity. In the thir-teenth year of his reign, Hsi recruited a monastery of fighting monks to put down a rebellion in Fukien. As a reward, the monastery received some imperial power. But soon the emperor began to see the monks as a threat, and sent an army to suppress them. Only five monks survived the purge; they founded five monasteries and five secret societies dedicated to overthrowing the Manchu, or Ch’ing, dynasty. Once finished with that bit of unpleasantness, they intended to restore the previous Ming dynasty, whose rule they had come to recall as a golden age for China. (Spirits know whether it really was or not, but misty mem-ories of better times have no logic.) The fighting monks’ motto was “Crush the Ch’ing, establish the Ming.” Catchy, isn’t it?
The family name of the Ming emperors was Hung, and their color was red. So the secret societies adopted the name “Hung Mun” and incorporated the color red into various symbols and titles. The Hung Mun trained their people in martial arts and developed secret codes to frustrate the emperor’s spies. Many Chinese saw the Hung Mun as protectors of the people against a repressive and sometimes vicious imperial regime, much as the Yakuza in Japan provided commoners with justice-for-hire under the rule of the daimyo. And, in another Yakuza parallel, the secre-cy and fighting skills eventually lent themselves just as well to criminal purposes as political ones.
The five secret societies played roles in several rebellions against the Manchus: the White Lotus Society rebellion in the 1790s; the “Cudgels” uprising in Kwangsi province, 1847 to 1850; and Hung Hsiu Chuan’s Kwangsi-based rebellion of 1851–1865. The Boxer Rebellion, which erupted in Beijing in 1896 (yes, that’s the famous one you’ve actually heard of once or twice), involved the White Lotus Society as well as two other Triads: the Big Swords and the Red Fists. Sun Yat Sen, the founder of Republican China, allied himself with the Hsing Chung Triad society in his 1906 rebellion.
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Well, thank the Ghost in the Machine for the timely information!I can rest easier now, knowing who was buddy-buddy with whom in the 1790s. I’ll feel safer on the streets knowing that when a Triad gang gets in my way, I can escape a nasty beating or a swift death just by shouting out, “You were right to rebel in Kwangsi province—nice going, boys!” Can we get something useful here?!
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Last Chance>
Know your enemy, chumley. Ever heard that one? You shouldhave—we’ve said it here often enough. Tradition-based organiza-tions like gangs and organized crime families will find your knowl-edge of their history—especially their victories—an opening for dis-cussion, maybe even friendship. Learning their history teaches you something useful about their ways and their motives.
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The LibrarianTHE TRIADS
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Yeah, but knowing too much can get you geeked. Walk the fineline carefully, chummers.
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Stanley“I didn’t mean it ... ”
The Manchus were overthrown in 1911, but by then there were no Mings left to restore. The Nationalist government that came to power in 1927 in Nanking was headed by Chiang Kai Shek, a known killer and criminal member of the Shanghai Green Gang. The Triads took over the government of southern China and fought the Communists for total control. The Western powers often aided the Triads, apparently preferring China to be run by criminals than “commies.”
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The enemy of my enemy is my friend ... the classic modusoperandi of governments, gangs and criminal organizations.
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The LibrarianWhen the Japanese invaded major Chinese cities in World War II, the Triads offered to work for them. In Hong Kong, the Triads ran criminal enterprises for the Japanese. The Japanese unit-ed the gangs under an association callunit-ed the Hing Ah Kee Kwan (the Asia Flourishing Organization—another example of the Japanese talent for using pretty words to hide ugly realities). The Japanese lords of Hong Kong used Chinese gangsters—which is what the Triads had pretty much become, by this time—to help police local residents and to suppress anti-Japanese activity.
When Mao Tse Tung’s Communists triumphed over the Nationalist government in 1949, Triad nationalists scattered to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, Thailand, San Francisco, Vancouver and Australia. The Communists suppressed Triads on the main-land, executing and imprisoning anyone associated with them. As you might expect, the Triads proceeded to centralize their power in Hong Kong and Taiwan—hotbeds of Asian free enterprise and therefore awash in cash—as well as elsewhere in Southeast Asia and along the Pacific Rim.
The Triads first came to North America in the nineteenth cen-tury with Chinese immigrant workers who settled in California.
These insular Chinese enclaves included some Triad members, who established the first Tongs in America to serve the needs of the Chinese population. (And as a power base, but I’ll get to that later on. A real forward-thinking bunch, the Triads.) In the early twentieth century, Tong operations in Chinatowns across the old United States attracted the interest of white patrons who liked to slum in Tong-run establishments, particularly as opium, gambling and vice dens became popular recreations for the bored and well-to-do (sounds familiar, doesn’t it?).
But the Triads didn’t really make a big splash in the Sixth World until the shift of power in Hong Kong and the violent dis-solution of the Chinese government. The Triads strongly backed the Hong Kong freedom movement that led to the island’s decla-ration of independence in 2015, less than twenty years after the United Kingdom had returned its former colony to Chinese con-trol. The creation of the Hong Kong Free Enterprise Enclave gave the Triads their tightest grip ever over the island, and to this day Hong Kong remains the stronghold of the Triad powers.
The other big boost for the Triads came with the Awakening.
Even before 2011, the Triads had favored mystical traditions and rituals, some of them dating back to ancient China. When the world’s magic woke up, the Triads were the first major crime syn-dicate to have a real grasp of this unknown new force and to use it in their operations. That magical advantage gave the Triads a death grip on the action in the Golden Triangle and China, and that same magic lets them keep it. Apart from sheer numbers, magi-cal power is probably the Triad’s biggest edge over rival organi-zations. (Okay, boys, how’m I doing so far? Just in case anyone from HK is watching. … )
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The magical power of the Triads is seriously overestimated. It’sgotta be. Lei Kung and others talk like they’re the Chinese equiv-alent of the Ghost Dancers. But if they have that kind of mojo, why didn’t they just take over China instead of letting the warlords fight over the carcass?
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D. Bunker>
Who says they want to rule the country? As it is, the politicalsit-uation in China is a gold mine for the Triads; it’s made them the numero uno syndicate in the region. Sounds like things worked out just like the Triads wanted it to.
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Cho>
Not to mention that the Ghost Dancers were unified by HowlingCoyote. The Triads are nowhere near unified. Maybe they’d have Ghost-Dance-type mojo if they all got together, but that’s about as likely as me winning the next presidential election.
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WingerThe Triads were implicated in the fall of China’s Communist government in 2019, though (as usual) no one can prove any-thing. The collapse of the government in Beijing split China into warring provinces, each under the control of a local warlord, junta or splinter government that claimed to be the true and rightful ruler of China. Years of violent civil war have ground down by now to border skirmishes and bush wars between the major provinces, with an occasional new warlord breaking away from one of the larger dominions and setting himself up in the petty-dictator biz.
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I heard that the Chinese government’s fall was engineered bythe great dragon Lung. He definitely dislikes Communism and has been linked to the Triads in the past. Whether or not things worked out like the dragon planned, I have no idea, but I’d bet the answer’s yes if Lung was involved.
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ChanThe constant conflict between the provinces and central authority too weak to nail so much as a horsefly created an envi-ronment tailor-made for the Triads to move back to the mainland and set up a hugely successful black market. They made moun-tains of credit selling weapons, food, medical supplies and other scarce goods to all the different provinces and factions. In the process, many of the Triads became “patrons” of one faction or another; sometimes, these proxies play out violent conflicts
themselves by different names, such as the Octagon, the Yellow Lotus, the Eighty-Eights, to name a few of the more notorious.
They also have different names for the Triad “movement” as a whole: Hung Mun (Hung League), Sam Hop Wui (Three United Association), Tin Tei Wui (Heaven and Earth Association) and oth-ers. Chinese-speaking nonmembers sometimes call the Triads Hak Sh’e Wui (Black Society Association). If you hear any of these names, you know that the person speaking is talking about a Triad.
Of the hundred or more different Triads that exist, twenty or so have territories that cover more than one country. In North America, Triads have traditionally had the strongest footholds in New York City, San Francisco (no surprise there, with the city’s large and famous Chinatown), Denver, Los Angeles and Houston.
Since the late 2030s, however, the Triads have been slowly but surely gaining influence in Seattle.
An official police estimate from 2056 states that in Hong Kong, the stronghold of the Triads, one in six residents are Triad members. Just a little fact to keep in mind if you plan on Hong Kong as your next vacation spot.
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What? That can’t be right.>
Serwach>
Lei’s right about those figures coming from the cops in HongKong. Maybe they have a reason for exaggerating the Triad threat, but it doesn’t seem likely. I’ve been to Hong Kong—I believe that number.
Anyway, it makes sense. Even in North America the Triads go in for widespread recruiting—often by coercion, and almost exclu-sively in Chinese-speaking areas (i.e., Chinatowns). If you go into the depths of SanFran’s Chinatown, for example—into those parts where families live who’ve been in NA for half a dozen genera-tions and still speak nothing but Cantonese—don’t be too sur-prised to find a one-in-six membership rate there, too.
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China DollBY THE NUMBERS
The ranks within a Triad have names and numbers, whose mystical significance is derived from Chinese numerology of the Buddhist and Taoist traditions. The numbers are part of the elabo-rate codes the Triads use to communicate. (Why they’ve left me alive to spill this—as they must have known I would—is one of the things that keeps me up at night. But here’s the paydata any-way. And if anyone out there wants to pay me back with a few creative remedies for insomnia, I’ll take ’em.)
Within a Triad—and within each branch of a really large Triad like the Yellow Lotus—the head figure is called the Shan Chu, or Lodgemaster. His number is 489. The Shan Chu is the boss of the gang, and his word is law. Like most major organized crime boss-es, the Shan Chu tends to be isolated from day-to-day operations and is often a “humble businessman” in the local community.
Every Shan Chu appears to be wrapped in a mystical aura, and most people assume he has great magical power. (Most of them are too much in awe of him to test that belief, so the “mystic aura”
is a neat trick whether or not the Shan Chu has real magic.) between Triads that are having a … difference of opinion.
Inter-Triad wars are mostly confined to the mainland, because messing up a place that’s already gone to hell in the proverbial hand bas-ket is the least disruptive to business.
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Not always. Everything is interconnected these days, so a Triadoperation to disrupt a rival gang’s supply lines to some province in China can set off street fights as far away as San Francisco or Seattle, where some of those supplies originate. If you want to take out a weed, you pull it up at the roots.
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HandoWith a prosperous environment in China and their power in the surrounding nations mostly secured, the Triads started aggres-sively expanding operations in North America and elsewhere.
Established criminal syndicates like the Mafia and the yakuza are fighting the Triads for every inch of ground (so to speak), but so far haven’t been able to stop them from making inroads. And I very much doubt they ever will.
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Back home in New York, the Large Circle League is causingtrou-ble with the Toki-gumi. The Toki are connected with the Honjowara-gumi, which may have to back them up. A couple of the larger Seattle Triads—the Eighty-Eights and the Yellow Lotus—
are also joining forces to take over gambling operations in the Seattle ’plex from the Shotozumi-gumi. Everybody duck and cover—things could get messy.
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ReidORGANIZATION AND OPERATIONS
Whenever the trideo runs one of its so-called exposés of the
Whenever the trideo runs one of its so-called exposés of the