In 1950s Hong Kong, walking down the street, you would always encounter glamorous women known as "flirtatious women." Some wore beautiful qipaos with sheer stockings and brightly colored high-heeled leather shoes; others wore homemade, floral-patterned jackets with fitted waists and narrow sleeves, paired with traditional Chinese trousers whose legs were as wide as skirts. Bare feet slipped into red-lacquered, gold-painted wooden clogs, they would brush past you, brimming with charm. Perhaps they would leave a faint scent of Kwong Sang Hong floral water at the tip of your nose, their worldly beauty lingering in your heart like the fragrance.
In 1950s Hong Kong, countless tycoons and magnates had yet to make their fortunes, and countless beauties and gifted people had yet to reach their twilight years.
In 1950s Hong Kong, the underworld and the law colluded, order was in chaos, and no one had yet laid down the rules between black and white.
In 1950s Hong Kong, a man named Song Tianyao transmigrated.
And this story began in 1951, when his application to the Royal Hong Kong Police School was rejected at the age of eighteen...
Chapter 1: Application Rejected
Song Tianyao stood outside the registration room at the Wong Chuk Hang Police Training School with a Ho Choi cigarette between his lips. Although it was only early May, daytime temperatures were already approaching thirty degrees, and being surrounded by people queuing for interviews made the heat feel even more stifling and oppressive. Before long, the undershirt and trousers he wore were soaked through with sweat, clinging stickily to his body.
Although Song Tianyao's body had only just turned eighteen, he was actually a thirty-five-year-old middle-aged man at heart. For some unknown reason, Song Tianyao, the owner of an industrial company who had been executed by firing squad in 2015, had transmigrated to 1951 Hong Kong, into the body of this young man who shared his name.
In his previous life, Song Tianyao had been immensely rich and powerful. In this life, however, he had been born into a squatter family, all four of them struggling to get by in a wooden shack of less than twenty square meters. His father, Song Chunliang, was a cobbler who made a living repairing shoes at a street stall every day. His mother, Zhao Meizhen, did odd jobs at a teahouse. Song Tianyao also had a fifteen-year-old sister, Song Wenwen, who sold tea and snacks at a women's teahouse.
Like more than four hundred thousand other impoverished households in Hong Kong, Song Tianyao's family lived at the very bottom of the city.
Recently, however, the family had glimpsed a ray of hope: Song Tianyao had turned eighteen and could apply to the Police Training School. After graduating five months later, he could become a Uniformed Branch officer.
In 1951, a newly recruited Uniformed Branch officer earned a monthly salary of 120 Hong Kong dollars. With income from unofficial sources, he could take home as much as 300 Hong Kong dollars a month. For a poor family like the Songs, a monthly income of 300 Hong Kong dollars was already an astronomical sum.
Song Chunliang left early and returned late every day, repairing shoes on the street, while Zhao Meizhen toiled away washing dishes and sweeping floors at the teahouse. Their combined monthly income was still less than 200 dollars.
But getting into the Police Training School was no simple matter. Besides being healthy and having regular features, applicants had to be literate and able to read a Chinese newspaper. Those two requirements could be overlooked; the most important thing was having money for the Chinese interviewer. Only after the interviewer had received enough in bribes could you enter the Police Training School and put on the tiger skin that marked you as a member of the Royal Hong Kong Police.
At that moment, Song Tianyao had the enormous sum of 3,000 Hong Kong dollars in his pocket, scraped together by his parents, as he waited for someone in the registration room to call his name.
In truth, Song Tianyao had little interest in becoming a police officer. Although police work was unquestionably the first choice for ordinary Hong Kong families' children in this era, who only sought another livelihood after failing to get in, Song Tianyao knew that even if he worked his way up like the movie character Lui Lok, became chief Chinese detective inspector, and embezzled a full 500 million, wouldn't he still have to obediently flee once the Independent Commission Against Corruption was established in the seventies? Was a full-grown man going to transmigrate just once, only to become a corrupt policeman, his whole life worth no more than 500 million? Only to die of old age far from home, unable to return?
By contrast, postwar Hong Kong was full of things waiting to be rebuilt. The Hong Kong financial titans who would become renowned in later years all seized their opportunities in this era and soared to the heavens. If Song Tianyao really had a choice, he would rather skip police school and fight for wealth and status in the business world.
Besides, being a uniformed police officer in 1951 Hong Kong was a thoroughly dangerous occupation. Many defeated Kuomintang soldiers had fled to Hong Kong, and quite a few of them had hidden firearms. Stranded in Hong Kong without a friend or a penny to their names, and with combat experience to boot, they inevitably turned to ventures that required no capital. From 1949 to 1951, more than ten uniformed officers had been shot dead in the street, and over thirty more had been wounded and had their service pistols stolen. It had gotten to the point where officers patrolled in teams of three, not daring to act alone. Shootings and kidnappings happened every day, yet the cases kept piling up, with no solution in sight. Police inaction was one reason; another was a severe shortage of manpower. Hong Kong's population had already passed the 1.5 million mark, but the Hong Kong Police Force had only a little over 9,000 police personnel in total.
Moreover, this was not yet the brazen era of the sixties, when the police force brought all the gangs to heel and divided up their territories. This was a time when the various gangs were at the height of their power, seizing docks for smuggling and fighting until their eyes ran red, so overbearing that they even dared to beat and chase police officers with blades in public. Any gang picked at random had thousands of members, and the larger gangs easily had more than ten thousand members across the various docks. Sometimes, when police investigated cases, they even needed the British Forces in Hong Kong to deploy in support.
"Song Tianyao!" A voice inside the registration room called his name.
Song Tianyao hurriedly spat out his cigarette butt and strode into the registration room. A young man who had just finished his interview brushed past him, his face alight with joy. Judging by his expression, he had clearly been accepted into police school.
"Are you Song Tianyao?" A dark-skinned, fat uniformed sub-inspector sat behind the interview desk, an old-fashioned fan whirring beside him.
Song Tianyao snapped to attention before the fat inspector. "Yes, sir."
The fat inspector impatiently tossed the newspaper on the desk in front of Song Tianyao. "Pick it up and read one of the news stories."
Song Tianyao picked up the Sing Tao Daily and read one of its stories straight from the page, without stumbling or hesitating once from beginning to end.
When he finished, Song Tianyao placed 2,000 Hong Kong dollars from his pocket on top of the newspaper and set it back before the fat inspector with the utmost respect. The fat inspector, whose expression had been shifting between moods, suddenly relaxed at the sight of the stack of banknotes in assorted denominations. He looked Song Tianyao up and down for more than ten seconds, shook the money off the newspaper and onto the floor, and said sternly and righteously: