incompetently parked cars and piles of bricks, stones and other building materials. There were little gaps in the piles where people had helped themselves to a tile or five.
The alley tightened up even more, leaving barely enough room for me to walk my moped. Corrugated aluminum was used piecemeal to patch walls on either side of me, and algae-stained ridged-plastic strips that jutted out overhead served as rain gutters. It was like walking through a forest of trees with leaves made of crinkle-cut potato chips.
There were fewer prostitutes on the street than there used to be, so in that sense the neighborhood was improving. Commercial sex now happens at the all-night barbershops and the upscale karaoke joints, abbreviated around here as “KTVs.”
The alley opened up into a concrete parking lot, and I walked by a group of guys in their twenties and thirties,
jiaotous
, leaning against a BMW with smoked windows. In LA you wouldn’t think much of men in flowery shirts and flip-flops, but in Taipei they are the local enforcers. Everybody has their own “corner leaders” to protect the neighborhood against
jiaotous
from other areas.
It wouldn’t be right to call
jiaotous
“gangsters.” They are more hyper-local outfits. They don’t own more than a few blocks. Most of their money comes from running the local temple—a major source of tax-free income—and bars and nightclubs. They’relaid-back guys, happy to collect protection money and keep the temples looking good for festivals.
Full-on Taiwanese gangs are much different. They’re run like businesses, and their members are disciplined and professional. It’s in the genes. The nationwide criminal organizations of today were founded by army brats whose fathers lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949. They grew up training to “retake the mainland,” as the slogan went, and transferred that focus to “taking the money.”
The heads of Black Sea, for example, all hold engineering degrees (which come in handy for those rigged construction bids and contracts), and many graduated with honors from American schools. It seems fitting that gangsters on an island that values overachievement are also scholarship material.
Black Sea has politicians in its pockets, and some regional leaders cut out the middleman altogether and run for local offices. Once elected, they make sure to get on the commissions overseeing crime and fire police captains who are too clean or too greedy.
M Y FAMILY HAD NEVER been seriously bothered by
jiaotous
. We paid the late-night parking fee and other fees. When I was born, the local leader, German Tsai, had presented my parents with a congratulatory basket of fruit and a lucky money tree. My parents paid German for his trouble. After all, he had a bunch of little brothers to look after, and he wanted to get them something to eat, he had said.
That old gambling debt of my grandfather’s, the one that sat inside me like an abscess, was once owed to German’s father, who’d had the foresight to have a lawyer draw up the loan as a promissory note. Now the debt was what I owed to German.
I looked over at the men, looking for German’s distinctive mole on his upper lip, which looked like a Hitler mustache. He wasn’t here, but the guys on the sidewalk were his boys.
They looked nothing like the young, pop-star-pretty boys who had portrayed local gangsters in the hit film
Monga
, which was shot in the Wanhua District and had turned some neighborhood locations into tourist destinations. Suck down a bubble tea in thealley where Mosquito stabbed Monk in the side. Instagram the warehouse where Dog Boy was murdered by having his mouth and nose sealed shut with glue.
I could have been an extra in
Monga
. I was approached in the street by a production assistant who told me that I was a good-looking guy and asked if I minded taking a light kick in the neck. I shouldn’t have turned down the offer. I never say yes to the right
The alley tightened up even more, leaving barely enough room for me to walk my moped. Corrugated aluminum was used piecemeal to patch walls on either side of me, and algae-stained ridged-plastic strips that jutted out overhead served as rain gutters. It was like walking through a forest of trees with leaves made of crinkle-cut potato chips.
There were fewer prostitutes on the street than there used to be, so in that sense the neighborhood was improving. Commercial sex now happens at the all-night barbershops and the upscale karaoke joints, abbreviated around here as “KTVs.”
The alley opened up into a concrete parking lot, and I walked by a group of guys in their twenties and thirties,
jiaotous
, leaning against a BMW with smoked windows. In LA you wouldn’t think much of men in flowery shirts and flip-flops, but in Taipei they are the local enforcers. Everybody has their own “corner leaders” to protect the neighborhood against
jiaotous
from other areas.
It wouldn’t be right to call
jiaotous
“gangsters.” They are more hyper-local outfits. They don’t own more than a few blocks. Most of their money comes from running the local temple—a major source of tax-free income—and bars and nightclubs. They’relaid-back guys, happy to collect protection money and keep the temples looking good for festivals.
Full-on Taiwanese gangs are much different. They’re run like businesses, and their members are disciplined and professional. It’s in the genes. The nationwide criminal organizations of today were founded by army brats whose fathers lost the Chinese Civil War to the Communists in 1949. They grew up training to “retake the mainland,” as the slogan went, and transferred that focus to “taking the money.”
The heads of Black Sea, for example, all hold engineering degrees (which come in handy for those rigged construction bids and contracts), and many graduated with honors from American schools. It seems fitting that gangsters on an island that values overachievement are also scholarship material.
Black Sea has politicians in its pockets, and some regional leaders cut out the middleman altogether and run for local offices. Once elected, they make sure to get on the commissions overseeing crime and fire police captains who are too clean or too greedy.
M Y FAMILY HAD NEVER been seriously bothered by
jiaotous
. We paid the late-night parking fee and other fees. When I was born, the local leader, German Tsai, had presented my parents with a congratulatory basket of fruit and a lucky money tree. My parents paid German for his trouble. After all, he had a bunch of little brothers to look after, and he wanted to get them something to eat, he had said.
That old gambling debt of my grandfather’s, the one that sat inside me like an abscess, was once owed to German’s father, who’d had the foresight to have a lawyer draw up the loan as a promissory note. Now the debt was what I owed to German.
I looked over at the men, looking for German’s distinctive mole on his upper lip, which looked like a Hitler mustache. He wasn’t here, but the guys on the sidewalk were his boys.
They looked nothing like the young, pop-star-pretty boys who had portrayed local gangsters in the hit film
Monga
, which was shot in the Wanhua District and had turned some neighborhood locations into tourist destinations. Suck down a bubble tea in thealley where Mosquito stabbed Monk in the side. Instagram the warehouse where Dog Boy was murdered by having his mouth and nose sealed shut with glue.
I could have been an extra in
Monga
. I was approached in the street by a production assistant who told me that I was a good-looking guy and asked if I minded taking a light kick in the neck. I shouldn’t have turned down the offer. I never say yes to the right
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