Hung Hing was founded in the 1930s, emerging from the Chaozhou gang and carrying on a branch of Hung Mun's lineage.
As a Hung Hing elder who had been among the earliest followers of its first Dragon Head, Chiang Tin, Usury Shing had witnessed the tides of Hong Kong Island's changing times.
It was no exaggeration to say that even the volatile international situation over those decades had not prevented Usury Shing from making a safe landing.
After all, from the 1930s onward, Hong Kong Island had weathered the turmoil of rule by the foreigners, then Japan, then the foreigners again.
There was even less need to mention the Four Great Families and I Corrupt All Cops of recent decades, or Hong Kong Island's return to the Motherland's embrace.
From the successive foreign governors and the scum of the Japanese military command above,
to figures of the underworld and legitimate society such as Po Ho, Lee Rock, and Chiang Tin below,
which of them had not enjoyed a heyday, only to be crushed to pieces by the tides of the times?
Only Usury Shing, now Hung Hing's elder Uncle Guixing, had entered Hong Kong Island's new era unscathed.
With a bowl of delicious dessert every day, his little life was wonderfully comfortable and satisfying.
How could Usury Shing have landed safely if he were only as simple as he appeared?
He seemed to have stopped concerning himself with underworld affairs, but in reality, he saw the continuing succession of his own lineage with perfect clarity.
It was just as he often said himself.
He was already a full eighty years old. How could he still have the ambition to concern himself with the disputes of those below him?
Life and death were ordained; wealth and rank were in heaven's hands!