Showing results by narrator "Ewan Chung" in All Categories

Cai Chongda spent his childhood in a rural fishing village in Fujian province. When his father - a former communist gang leader turned gas station owner - has a stroke that partially paralyzes him, his responsibilities fall to Cai, his only son. Assuming his new role as head of the family, Cai toils alongside his mother and older sister to pay the medical bills that have become a part of a rapidly changing Chinese society.

Victor Li is devastated by his father’s murder and shocked by a confessional letter he finds among his father’s things. In it, his father admits he was never just a restaurateur - he was part of a vast international crime syndicate that formed during China’s leanest communist years. Victor travels to Beijing, where he navigates his father’s secret criminal life, confronting decades-old grudges, violent spats, and a shocking new enterprise that the organization wants to undertake. Standing up against it is likely what got his father killed, but Victor remains undeterred.

California owes its origins and sunny prosperity to slavery. Spanish invaders captured Indigenous people to build the chain of Catholic missions. Russian otter hunters shipped Alaska Natives—the first slaves transported into California—and launched a Pacific slave triangle to China. Plantation slaves were marched across the plains for the Gold Rush. San Quentin Prison incubated California's carceral state. Kidnapped Chinese girls were sold in caged brothels in early San Francisco. Indian boarding schools supplied new farms and hotels with unfree child workers.

When Hongyang is found dead after a night of debauched drinking, it looks as if his reign of terror has finally come to an end. Few in this insular community have much reason to mourn his passing: Hongyang is an infamous mob boss, a man with plenty of enemies. But now it seems that his years of crime have also earned him some very dangerous friends. As his funeral draws near, those who knew him come together to look back on a life characterised by corruption, deceit and a flair for violence. Their recollections will keep Hongyang's legacy alive, with terrifying consequences.