When 8-year-old Du Yuesheng was completely orphaned, 28-year-old Jin Jinrong was still in the Zhengjiaqiao area of Pidgin at the junction of Shanghai's Huayang and Oceans, mixing with many street hooligans. He had no idea that he would enter the French Concession patrol house in 3 years and become a powerful detective.
When 15-year-old Du Yuesheng tearfully bid farewell to his grandmother and stepped from Gaoqiao Town in Pudong to Shanghai Beach, Jin Jinrong had lost his detective job and went to Suzhou, where he was born, to look for opportunities. At that time, Du Yuesheng also had no way of knowing that The biggest gain of Jin Rong in Suzhou was to marry Lin Guisheng, a fireworks woman from Congliang. And Lin Guisheng is not only Jin Rong's right-hand man, but also a nobleman who determines the direction of Du Yuesheng's life.
In 1921, Dai Kasa used his relationship with the Green Gang to go to Shanghai, and actually saw Jin Jinrong as soon as he arrived in Shanghai. Du Yuesheng saw that Dai Kasa was a talent. For the first time in the lives of these three tyrants who later called the wind and rain on Shanghai Beach, they came to hand over.
Liu Shaotang, publisher of Taiwan's "Biographical Literature," commented on these three people: "They are famous all over the world, have an influence on the politics of the Republic of China, and have made contributions, but they are triad figures who started their careers and made their fortunes by gambling with cigarettes, and there are many people who benefit from them, and those who suffer from them are not nothing." It can be said that there are reputations and destructions, and there are favors and grievances. ”
In 1951, the 84-year-old Jin Rong swept the road at the entrance of the big world, a famous entertainment venue on the old Shanghai Beach.
"Others save money, I save friendships," Du Yuesheng has always said.
This principle, he has been consistent, and has adhered to it to the end. In 1951, Du Yuesheng was critically ill, and in front of his family, he burned all the IOUs owed by his friends, and the specific amount involved was unknown. According to the family's recollections that have hurriedly read the IOUs, one of them is dozens of large gold bars.
In this way, when Du Yuesheng personally said in his hospital bed before his death that his money was only 100,000 US dollars, everyone present was shocked and stunned. No one could have imagined that Du Yuesheng, who had spent most of his life spending so much money, left a legacy to a huge family that was so thin. This money should be divided between 4 wives and four sons and three daughters, how many documents can one person get? No wonder Qing Gao, like Meng Xiaodong, couldn't help but blurt out on the spot: "How can you live with such a little money?" ”
In March 1946, Dai Kasa died unexpectedly, and Zheng Jiemin took over as the director of the Military Command, with Mao Renfeng as the deputy director. At the same time, under the strong pressure of public opinion from all sides, the Military Command bureau accelerated toward reorganization.
In 1937, the Japanese called, Du Yuesheng ran to Hong Kong, and Jin Jinrong stayed in Shanghai. The Japanese asked him to come out to do things, he pushed back, he injected chlorpromazine in large doses, also called hibernating spirits, so that he was no longer afraid of heat, and then covered his thick cotton coat to show the Japanese in the summer: "I am really sick, I can't do it, let me go." ”
In 1949, Du Yuesheng ran to Hong Kong again, and Jin Jinrong still stayed in Shanghai. After hiding in his own small building and smoking a cigarette, Jin Jinrong would occasionally secretly laugh at Du Yuesheng: "What is the ability to run, I was even stunned by the Japanese, what else is there to be afraid of?" ”
Before he died, Du Yuesheng said to his children: I have no hope, you have hope, China still has hope! He tore off the IOU, and the debts owed by others were written off in the world. He was a man with a knife all his life, but he hid the knife in his robe and disappeared without a trace. Being a person like Du Yuesheng is also absolutely amazing!
The new regime asked Jin Rong to write a letter of repentance, and he obediently wrote it, failed to pass it once, wrote it a second time, and then published it in the newspaper. The new regime asked him to sweep the streets in front of the big world, and he obediently swept them, and then took pictures and put them in the newspapers. Du Yuesheng saw the photo in Hong Kong and shed tears, but he did not know that Jin Rong had long since reconciled with his fate. Du Yuesheng, on the other hand, has never been able to reconcile with himself in his lifetime. Therefore, Jin Rong could live to be 86 years old, but Du only lived to be 63 years old, three years earlier than Jin Rong.
For Jin Rong and Du Yuesheng and Dai Kasa, we can at least have two ways to read: one is to hunt for strange anecdotes like idle people to kill time; the other is to sort out their relationship with the times, and find that under the general trend of society, perhaps here, we can truly understand the complex humanity of each of them and the ever-changing Republic of China society.
"Du Yuesheng's complete biography + Dai Kasa's complete biography + Golden Rong's complete biography"
(All 3 volumes)
Biography of a Shanghai tycoon gangster legend