All of my novels have a triad theme as Cheung Pak-ho, and then his son, Joseph, of the Sung Triad Society, cast their evil shadow over my other characters.

Although the Sung’s are fictitious, they are based on the hundreds of true stories which can be found in real life for centuries. Triad gangs, mostly ethnic Chinese, are of course now found all over the world, including Europe and America, far from their Chinese origins.

My interest is the Shanghai and Hong Kong triads and I’ve also researched a little on the history of these criminal organisations and looked at how they’ve developed and still exist in China (including Hong Kong) today.

In The Shanghai Circle I include much about the Green Gang, an actual triad society, whose powerful leader, Du Yeungsheng, or Fu Sheung-lo, is covered elsewhere in this website. Here is a fascination video of this extraordinary man and the Green Gang

Just as an aside, Du’s nickname (not to his face) was ‘Big Ears’ or ‘Big Eared Du’ and I’ve found his namesake, Broken Tooth Koi, (actually Wan Kuok-koi,) leader of the 14K society who recently left a Macau prison. The above accessed article illustrates the power this fellow had. Triad activities, their leaders, and their nicknames appear to stay similar, although since China took back Hong Kong and Macau the power of the triads is less well publicised even if not really diminished.

I’m building up information about the triads on this site, and will be adding new articles as I develop my knowledge, providing, where appropriate, links for those interested in this subject.

In my stories the triad activities were mainly drug trafficking, extortion, gambling, prostitution and racketeering. Nowadays of course these still exist but new sources of revenue, like counterfeiting or copyrighted and trademarked goods is big business as is car theft, and illegal tobacco and alcohol.