The profits from timber trafficking were meager, and Lin Xizhen felt he wasn't earning enough. So, like his father, he started the opium trade in Myanmar. At the time, Myanmar was another major opium-producing base in Asia besides India. Smuggling opium by sea required not only dealing with pirates who specialized in robbing opium merchants, but also preventing the opium merchants from cheating each other. It was his experience smuggling opium between Myanmar and Hong Kong that not only honed Lin Xizhen's marksmanship but also forged a group of capable subordinates who would share life and death with him through the turbulent seas.
Within a few years, without relying on his father's reputation, but solely on his own abilities, Lin Xizhen had already risen to become one of the top five Chinese opium dealers in Hong Kong at the time, rivaling even his father's opium business.
Moreover, he discovered that only the Britain had the legal right to operate the opium trade in Hong Kong. No matter how big he became, he would only be picking up scraps from the Britain. So he simply went to Macau the Portugal. This caused a sensation in Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau and was published in various newspapers in Chinese, English and Portuguese. He was called the opium tycoon of Hong Kong and Macau. At that time, he was thirty-five years old and his illegitimate daughter, Lin Yujing, was born.
When Lin Yujing was born, the Lin Family's opium business was booming. Although she was born of a concubine, her expenses were more luxurious than those of the legitimate daughters of wealthy families. However, her mother was weak-willed and did not like to compete for favor with other women. Therefore, Lin Yujing, who was raised by her side, was quiet and uncompetitive, but her heart was quite strong, just like her father's.
In 1928, Lin Xizhen was assassinated by a hired hitman in a dispute over the opium monopoly. The Lin Family suffered a major upheaval, becoming leaderless. The illegitimate children were dismissed by the legal wife. In 1929, Lin Yujing was hastily married off to Feng Youhua, the illegitimate son of a Hong Kong pharmaceutical merchant Feng Family. Feng Youhua was also illegitimate and was naturally not valued. Therefore, he did not have much money in the Feng Family. The couple ran a small pharmacy to barely make ends meet. Unfortunately, Feng Youhua suffered from opium addiction and died young, leaving behind Lin Yujing and a daughter, Feng Guainiang. After Feng Youhua's death, the pharmacy was taken back by the Feng Family. Lin Yujing had nowhere to go and could only barely make ends meet by pawning jewelry and other belongings and doing laundry and sewing work to raise her daughter.
In 1935, Lin Yujing was harassed while taking her daughter to a pharmacy. She encountered Song Chunren, the third uncle of Song Tianyao, who had recently lost his wife and was there to have his wounds bandaged. Song Chunren was a small-time foreman of some dockworkers at the time and had some martial arts skills. He fought off the thugs and took Lin Yujing home. Feeling that they were in the same boat, Lin Yujing officially married Song Chunren in 1937 and became Song Tianyao's third aunt. Feng Guainiang, who had never had a formal name, was Yunzhi the name Yunzhi by Song Chengqi, who also agreed to let her inherit her father's surname, Feng.
In 1941, Kowloon fell to the Japanese. On the night Song Chunren died, Lin Yujing fled on a boat with her daughter. She cried until her eyes were dry and blood flowed from her eyes, but she did not follow Song Chunren. Instead, she made a vow that she would wait until Song Chengqi passed away, and only after she had fulfilled her filial duty to Song Chunren would she go down to see Song Chunren again.
In 1945, Hong Kong was liberated. After the war, Lin Xizhen's eldest son Lin Xiaoze, returned to Hong Kong to take charge of the Lin Family. Seeing the tragic fate of many of his brothers and sisters who had left or married, he allowed his half-brothers and unmarried or widowed sisters to return to the Lin Family home. The family would provide them with a monthly allowance and arrange for their children to attend school. However, the Lin Family would have no say in the marriages and employment of their children. If these brothers and sisters returned home wanted to remarry or leave the Lin Family, they would have to pay off all the rent, allowance, tuition fees, and other expenses accumulated over the years and sever all ties.
In order to give her daughter the opportunity to study, Lin Yujing brought her daughter back to the Lin Family despite the scorn of many people in the Lin Family. Because of her status as the mother of two husbands, she was considered unlucky in the Lin Family. They did not even take her and her daughter into the Lin Family. Instead, they were sent to this lonely little building on Ngau Tau Shan, where they have been living ever since.
Song Tianyao felt that if it weren't for Feng Yunzhi and Song Chengqi being the ties and concerns in her heart, Lin Yujing would probably have already fallen in Kowloon and passed away with her third uncle on the night he died.
"Actually, Third Aunt, you don't owe the Lin Family anything; the Lin Family owes you. Once I'm back from my trip to United States, I'll help you get back what the Lin Family owes you." Song Tianyao let out a heavy sigh, "I mean what I say."
Chapter 203 Tang Boqi
When Song Tianyao stepped out of San Francisco International Airport, he adjusted his watch to the United States time provided by the airport. After a nearly 20-hour flight, he had boarded the plane in Hong Kong in the evening, but now that he was out of the airport, San Francisco was still shrouded in darkness, which made Song Tianyao feel somewhat uncomfortable.
Following the flow of disembarking passengers out of the airport exit, under the bright streetlights and colorful neon lights, people waiting to pick up their loved ones stood on tiptoe or held up makeshift signs with the names of the people they were picking up written on them.
There weren't many Chinese passengers on this direct flight from Hong Kong to San Francisco, so Song Tianyao didn't have to exert too much effort to spot Tang Boqi, a cousin of Tang Weiyuan, a member of Chu Xiaoxin's Young Masters' Club, who was standing among several white women holding a sign with his name on it.
"Are you Brother Qi?" Song Tianyao walked up to the young man holding the welcome sign and asked politely.
The young man opposite him was very handsome and dressed very fashionably. At least in Song Tianyao's opinion, he was the most handsome man he had ever seen since his rebirth. Chu Xiaoxin, Chu Xiaozhong, Zhang Yuliang, Zhang Yuqi, and even Song Tianyao himself, if you put aside their temperament or background and just compare them by appearance, they might all be inferior to him.
Tang Boqi was wearing a denim jacket made of blue hard canvas, with sunglasses perched on his forehead and a small silver earring hanging from his left earlobe. He held up a sign with the three large characters "Song Tianyao" on it, but instead of looking towards the airport passage to search for Song Tianyao, he kept stealing glances at the deep cleavage of a white woman next to him, which was exposed by her low-cut T-shirt.
Only when Song Tianyao spoke to him did he look up, meet Song Tianyao who had walked up to him, and give him a friendly smile. Unlike Song Tianyao, who spoke to him in Chinese, he spoke directly in English: "Hi, are you A-Yao? I'm Tang Boqi. My cousin called and asked me to pick you up. You can call me Billy, Billy Zai. You understand my English, right?"