Spaceman

what u sayin damjan lad

Ha ha go on lads yeah nice one

Role-played with Nicholas Pagano and it was next level. Keep up the good work! ?

The Big Circle Boys got their start in 1967 as a tight band of PLA soldiers stationed in and around Guangzhou on bases that were identified on army maps by big circles; hence their English name. Involved in Sgt. Bilko-style corruption schemes, they were purged from the army and handed over to the fanatical cadres of the Cultural Revolution. Like millions of others with “capitalist tendencies” during that era, they were thrown into re-education camps where they were put to punishing hard labor. A group of them escaped to Hong Kong, semi-legitimately claiming refugee status, and quickly got back in the rackets, with some joining the wave of Asian refugees that came to North America after 1975.These were the vanguard of many Big Circle Boys to follow, a fair proportion of whom had never endured the Cultural Revolution at all and were flat-out bogus refugees who would form a loose affiliation of businesslike criminal cells around the world. Like their companions in the Chinese criminal underworld, they spoke Cantonese and would prove to fit right into Chinatown’s crime scene—extortion, smuggling, murder, and the armed robbery of new immigrants. The Big Circle Boys are a loosely affiliated group of gangs rather than a unified criminal group. Members often operate in autonomous mini-pyramids with small cells, engaging in illegal activities independently and co-operating only when necessary.In a way, the Chinese gangs of Los Angeles are the lowest tier of a much larger eminence, a junior form of organized crime, with a clearly defined hierarchy, headed by a dai lo or “Big Brother,” and with wartime alliances, ententes, and secret treaties that divide the city’s rackets of gambling, loansharking, extortion, prostitution and drugs.The Hing Heung Ching is one of these “autonomous mini-pyramids” that make up the Big Circle Boys. The group whose name literally translates to “the Hing Heung Youth” is essentially the Los Angeles-based extension of the Big Circle Boys in Canada. With the support of the aforementioned Big Circle Boys, the group is active in gambling, loansharking, extortion, prostitution, drugs, murder for hire, and car theft.In his study of Chinatown gangs, Dr. Ko-lin Chin, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and esteemed criminologist, gave examples of Chinese gangs and their ongoing participation in illegal gambling dens through the eyes of Chinese merchants: There are at least 15 major gambling dens in Chinatown. Each den pays at least $30,000 a week in pai peng [literally, distributing cakes]. The money is offered to the gangsters who watch the place, to the police who look the other way, and to powerful community leaders who demand that “face” be given. These gambling places each month gross 2 million dollars. The money is the income and savings of law-abiding workers. If these are used constructively, like improving the standard of living for Chinatown residents, the community would have been highly developed a long time ago. While statistics and information is scarce about the prevalence of gambling among the Chinese in America, it is assumed that many working-class Chinese like to gamble. Furthermore, it is no secret that the majority of these shadowy gambling dens are sponsored or even affected by members of Chinese organized crime gangs like the Hing Heung Ching who operate gambling dens outside of Chinatown.More recently, the California Department of Justice published a report on Asian Organized Crime that explains the involvement of Chinese organized crime gangs in prostitution. Prostitution and smuggling are two of the mainstays of Asian organized crime pursuits. Women are enticed to the United States with promises of jobs; but, after arriving, many are forced into prostitution as a means of paying for their smuggling fees that can range from $35,000 to $50,000. Smuggling conditions can be very brutal; and, once here, the women are coerced into prostitution with threats and intimidation to themselves and to their families back home. The report explains that Chinese organized crime gangs achieve these goals by working hand in hand with other organized crime groups such as the Japanese Yakuza, Koreans pas, and the Russian mafiya. Non-traditional Chinese organized crime involvement is also present, with street gangs like the Wah Ching (a street gang whose many “sets” bare more resemblance to the color gangs of Los Angeles such as the Bloods and Crips than the Chinese mafia) aiding groups like the Hing Heung Ching in drug distribution and car theft. OOC Information For the thread, we give credit to Dr. Ko-lin Chin (Chinatown Gangs: Extortion, Enterprise and Ethnicity and Selling Sex Overseas: Chinese Women and the Realities of Prostitution and Global Sex Trafficking), Terry Gould (Paper Fan: the Hunt for Triad Gangster Steven Wong), and the CADOJ for its annual report to the legislature on organized crime in California.