"Do you think he's handsome? When it comes to business, A-Yao must be very shrewd." Chu Xiaoxin wrapped his arm around Lu Peiying's slender waist, pulled her close, and looked at Song Tianyao with Lu Peiying: "But as for his looks, he's obviously quite ordinary. He'd have a hard time picking up girls by throwing money at them."
"I'm nothing special?" Song Tianyao said to Chu Xiaoxin, "It's obvious you're jealous of me."
Chu Xiaoxin tossed a bunch of keys from his pocket and threw them in front of Song Tianyao: "Don't say I didn't look out for you. I know you're plain-looking and have trouble finding a wife, so besides inviting you to visit the new house and the Pharmaceutical Factory, I also have this bunch of keys for you."
"What the hell? That Golden-Tooth Lei thing, finding a tenement building and stuffing a dozen women in there for me to seduce?" Song Tianyao picked up the keys and asked Chu Xiaoxin, puzzled.
Chu Xiaoxin stretched his shoulders and neck, and said nonchalantly, "My mom had saved up some money before, which she originally intended to leave to A-Zhi when he grew up, but now it's unnecessary. Likang has a 20% stake in A-Zhi, and you quietly gave A-Zhi a wig factory. I heard that you still live in the factory, and your parents live in a tenement building. So my mom took out the Hong Kong dollars 500,000 she had saved for A-Zhi and asked me to help you buy a property. There happened to be a property next door that Foreign Devil had put up with a real estate company for sale. I thought about it and decided to make you my neighbor. So I added another HK$250,000 and bought a smaller villa next door. This is villa number one, and the key you have is for villa number four. It will be very convenient to see you in the future."
Song Tianyao stared blankly at the bunch of keys in his hand. Who said having a big spender who squanders money like water as Big Brother was a bad thing?
Under the watchful eyes of Chu Xiaoxin and Lu Peiying, Song Tianyao hesitated for a moment, clutching the key, before finally smiling nonchalantly, "Thanks, Big Brother."
With a carefree smile on his face, Song Tianyao was thinking about the way the two men were looking at him. He, the boss, had indeed made some progress.
Chapter 303 I Still Have Six Homes
"Brother Xiu, you're the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, how could you get involved in such a violent fight on the street?" Song Tianyao, who had rushed over, sat in the pharmacy, watching the doctor apply medicinal wine to the bruises and swelling around Kang Hong Lai-sau's eyes. Hong Lai-sau's girlfriend, Xu Minjun, looked at her boyfriend with a mixture of heartache and anger.
Song Tianyao originally planned to return to the Dulles Hotel to give the busy Foreign Girl a break and have her accompany him to see the house Chu Xiaoxin had given him. However, Lou Fengyun called Song Tianyao from the factory to the hotel and received news that Hong Lai-sau had been injured. Song Tianyao then rushed to the bone and bruise clinic near Sai Ying Pun with Huang Liu. Upon entering, he saw Hong Lai-sau, with a bruised and swollen face, being accompanied by Xu Minjun, allowing the doctor to treat his injuries.
As the doctor touched his wound, Hong Lai-sau hissed in pain. After the doctor finished, he said indignantly, "I saw some scoundrels bullying a newsboy selling the * the Correct Newspaper * newspaper, stealing his paper. The boy was only eleven or twelve years old, and they cornered him and beat him. I couldn't stand it, so of course I had to intervene. If the Kuomintang has the ability, they should counterattack the mainland, or go to the Korean War with the Communist Party. Bullying a newsboy in Hong Kong, they'll be nothing but scoundrels for life!"
Song Tianyao sighed, "Just call the police, you don't even know how to fight."
"It's not about whether I understand fighting or not. I can't beat them, but I'm tougher than them." Hong Lai-sau a bruised and swollen face, but he had a triumphant expression on his face.
Xu Minjun frowned beside her. "Didn't the Correct Newspaper cease publication a long time ago?"
"Indeed, because of the war in North Korea, the Communist Party no longer had the money or energy to subsidize the newspaper, so the newspaper stopped publishing and closed down a long time ago. Now, people in Hong Kong's cultural circles each contribute some money every month to publish one issue per week. It's just a counterfeit, but even as a counterfeit, it still sold up to 20,000 copies in one issue, all of which went to Nanyang," Hong Lai-sau his arms.
Xu Minjun glanced at Song Tianyao, and finally couldn't hold back, saying to Hong Lai-sau, "You tell me you spend half of your monthly newspaper salary on drinking, is that...?"
"Yes, I also contributed money. I may not be a very respectable editor of this newspaper, but I am still a cultured person. The Britain don't care about running a newspaper. Are we just going to stand by and watch the Kuomintang interfere and make decisions in the newspaper industry?" Hong Lai-sau sighed and gently rubbed his shoulder with his fingers.
"Why do you want to raise money to start a newspaper that has already ceased publication? Especially a newspaper that the Communist Party used to run?" Song Tianyao looked at Hong Lai-sau, handed him a cigarette, and asked.
Hong Lai-sau a cigarette. "At first, I just followed the trend, thinking that those well-known executives and editors-in-chief of the newspaper industry were just patriots or Communist Party. But after getting to know them better, I realized that it wasn't just about patriotism. They also had a sense of gratitude. When the Japan attacked Hong Kong, the Britain fled and surrendered. The Kuomintang didn't care about Hong Kong. Before that, twenty or thirty newspapers in Hong Kong reported on the atrocities committed by the Japanese army against China. Some newspapers even cried out on the eve of the fall, 'When the country is in peril, how dare we die last?' You can already imagine that after the fall of Hong Kong, these chief writers, editors-in-chief, and editors-in-chief would either be imprisoned in concentration camps or shot."
After a pause, Hong Lai-sau continued, "The Britain didn't care about these China intellectuals, and neither did the Kuomintang. Intellectuals, you kill a batch, and new ones will appear. They couldn't even hold Hong Kong; why would they care about the lives of these people? In the end, it was the Communist Party, during the more than one month of Hong Kong's occupation, at the cost of dozens of Communist Party' sacrifices, rescued almost all of Hong Kong's cultural figures who used their pens as weapons to criticize Japan atrocities—more than eight hundred people in total, including their families. Many of these people are now the heads and editors of Hong Kong newspapers. When the North Korea War broke out, we were all intellectuals and couldn't help much, but we could still afford to contribute to a newspaper each month. What's most infuriating is the Kuomintang. They were nowhere to be seen when people were being rescued. When our newspaper colleagues, out of gratitude for the Communist Party, produced the Correct Newspaper, Zheng Bao, to report on the North Korea War and current affairs on the mainland, the Kuomintang jumped out to sabotage it. We painstakingly raised money to print newspapers, and there were always scoundrels who took bribes from the Kuomintang who jumped out to beat up newspaper boys and burn newspapers. Next time I run into them, I will definitely beat them again."
After saying that, Hong Lai-sau looked at Song Tianyao and added with a smile, "I only donate a portion of my salary each month; I haven't taken advantage of the newspaper. You wouldn't want to replace the editor-in-chief, would you?"