That behavior instead stirred a trace of interest in the mature young woman holding the pipa. At the table, this guest had spoken of nothing but wine, women, and pleasure, like a sex-starved ghost. Yet after such a generous tip, he had not even touched her hand or asked her name. He had simply put down the money and walked away?
Was this a pleasure quarter trick of letting her go to reel her in?
Watching Song Tianyao disappear up the stairs, the long-legged woman sank into thought, clutching the two hundred Hong Kong dollars.
In truth, Song Tianyao was not as complicated as she imagined. Though he could hardly be said to have spent money like water in his previous life, he had never been stingy. As he saw it, a beauty had sat in a drafty corner and worked hard playing the pipa for two hours, so of course he should give her a larger tip. That was all. As for the game of letting her go to reel her in that she had imagined, Song Tianyao had no interest in it. Rather than spend his time figuring out how to get a woman, he would be better off thinking about how to make some money and move his family out of the Squatter Area.
The tips had a tremendous effect. As the three men left the boat, each of the two songstresses seemed more reluctant than the other to see them go, as if they wished they could grab the men by their sleeves and keep them from leaving. They murmured sweet words, telling the three to visit often, but neither took a single step forward, letting the men take a small boat back to the pier.
"A-Yao just treated me to a meal, so I must be the one to pay for drinks at the nightclub next," Chu Xiaoxin said to Song Tianyao as he stepped onto the pier.
Beside them, Wu Jinliang was about to hail three rickshaws when, unexpectedly, a black two-door, four-seat Ford 49 came slowly down the road.
"I just bought it last month and hired a driver too. It's more convenient than a rickshaw."
Looking at the vintage car before him, which would surely be a collector's prize in later years, Song Tianyao's lips curled upward. The car sold for 2,700 US dollars in Hong Kong, nearly 13,000 Hong Kong dollars. On the monthly wages most people earned now, they would have to go without food or drink for nearly ten years to afford one. Yet Chu Xiaoxin spoke of buying a car as casually as if he had bought a pack of cigarettes.
Song Tianyao liked seeing his boss spend money freely. If his boss pinched pennies, how could he ever make ends fail to meet? He had to be generous and care about his face. Only then would he find himself short of money, and only when he was short would he think of making a quick buck.
Chapter 8: The Legend of the Ritz
Song Tianyao knew the legend of the North Point Dance Hall Nightclub inside and out, but he had never had the chance to set foot in that Hong Kong entertainment mecca himself.
The North Point Dance Hall Nightclub was originally called the Ritz Garden Nightclub. Before 1949, it had been known as one of Hong Kong's three great nightclubs, alongside the Canton Restaurant in Hong Kong and the Paramount in Central.
Though the Canton Restaurant had "restaurant" in its name, it was actually run as a dance hall. It was the first establishment in Hong Kong that could truly be called a nightclub. The year was 1935. Hong Kong banned prostitution, and large numbers of prostitutes were brought into nightclubs, where they transformed themselves into dance hostesses. It was also the Canton Restaurant that coined the term "buying time out on the street": after singing and dancing, customers could pay to take a dance hostess out of the nightclub.
For a full decade, from 1935 to 1945, the Canton Restaurant stood alone in Hong Kong's pleasure scene, its might swallowing mountains and rivers, until the Paramount nightclub opened in 1945.
The Paramount nightclub was opened by a British Foreign Devil named Charlie. Unlike the Canton Restaurant's old-fashioned, traditional decor, the Paramount took its name from the Paramount on the Shanghai Bund and adopted a modern Western style. Everything from the building to the staff had a British air. The style immediately attracted all the senior British officials in Hong Kong and gave British businessmen working there an entertainment mecca to their taste. From the colonial governor down to ordinary British businessmen, almost all British people arranged their entertainment and social engagements at the Paramount. This drew many wealthy Chinese who wanted to bribe senior Foreign Devil officials or do business with British merchants. In just half a year, the Paramount snatched the crown of the pleasure world from the Canton Restaurant and took its place. Alas, the good times did not last.
In 1946, Li Caifa, a prominent Hong Kong figure from Shanghai, a Green Gang Big Brother, and the man known as the "Du Yuesheng of Hong Kong," opened the Ritz Garden Nightclub by Seven Sisters Bay in North Point. If the British-owned Paramount had merely borrowed the name of the Shanghai Bund's Paramount, Li Caifa's Ritz Garden Nightclub could be said to have brought all the Shanghai Bund's luxury to Hong Kong.
The name Lichi Garden did not sound as grand as Paramount, but it contained a swimming pool, a golf course, a nightclub, a restaurant, a card and chess parlor, and other entertainment venues. The entire nightclub was like a luxurious resort. As soon as it opened, it appeared in that month's issue of the American magazine Life, which called it the largest entertainment venue in the Far East. The magazine also dubbed its owner, Li Caifa, the "Emperor of Hong Kong Nightclubs."
Moreover, Li Caifa used his Green Gang connections to organize the first major strike by dance hostesses since Hong Kong opened as a port. Its target was the Paramount nightclub. That night, dance hostesses across Hong Kong went on strike, and every dance hall and nightclub shut down. The hostesses joined forces to denounce the Paramount for passing tax deductions on to them and docking their pay.
The Paramount nightclub knew full well that Li Caifa had orchestrated the strike from behind the scenes, but it could do nothing. Both public opinion and labor law were against it. Moreover, almost all the nightclub's mamasans, senior hostesses, and managers had gang affiliations, and every gang would give face to Green Gang elder Li Caifa. During the strike, three of the Paramount's four leading mamasans defected to Lichi Garden. Though the Paramount eventually made concessions to its dance hostesses, raising their pay and settling the matter peacefully, Lichi Garden had gained a good reputation among the hostesses. Before planning and launching the strike, it had already raised its own nightclub hostesses' pay far above the Hong Kong average.
If Hong Kong had three great nightclubs before 1949, after 1949 its pleasure scene became the sole domain of Li Caifa's Lichi. That year, the Kuomintang was defeated and Du Yuesheng came to Hong Kong. Countless wealthy Shanghai residents arrived with him; indeed, eighty percent of Shanghai's wealthy merchants and magnates gathered in Hong Kong. Li Caifa seized the opportunity, sending people to charter a boat to Shanghai and invite a group of well-known figures from the Shanghai Bund's service industry. He hired them all at high salaries for Lichi Garden, transforming it in one stroke into a high-end establishment and decisively pulling ahead of the other two.