page_title: Du Yuesheng
section_title: Rise to power
hierarchical_section_title: Du Yuesheng / Rise to power
caption_attribution_description: English: The Former Residence of Du Yuesheng (1888 - 1951) — Hangzhou (formerly transliterated as Hangchow). A protected Hang Zhou Historic House — in the city of Hangzhou, in Eastern China. A Chinese gangster who spent much of his life in Shanghai. He was a key supporter of the Kuomintang (KMT; aka Nationalists) and Chiang Kai-shek in their battle against the Communists during the 1920s. After the Chinese Civil War and the KMT's retreat to Taiwan, Du went into exile in Hong Kong.
context_page_description: Du Yuesheng, also known by Dou Yu-Seng or Tu Yueh-sheng or Du Yueh-sheng, nicknamed "Big-Eared Du", was a Chinese mob boss who spent much of his life in Shanghai. He was a key supporter of Chiang Kai-shek and the Kuomintang in their battle against the Communists in the 1920s, and was a figure of some importance during the Second Sino-Japanese War. After the Chinese Civil War and the Kuomintang's retreat to Taiwan, Du went into exile in Hong Kong and remained there until his death in 1951.
context_section_description: Du was soon introduced by a friend to Huang Jinrong, the highest-ranked Chinese detective in the French Concession Police (FCP) and one of Shanghai's most notorious gangsters. Huang's wife Lin Guisheng was a notable criminal in her own right, and she favoured the young Du. Even though Huang was not a member of the Green Gang, Du became Huang's gambling and opium enforcer. A stickler for fine clothing and women, Du was now cemented; he wore only Chinese silks, surrounded himself with White Russian bodyguards, and frequented the city's best nightclubs and sing-song houses. Du was also known for having a superstitious streak — he had three small monkey heads, specially imported from Hong Kong, sewn to his clothes at the small of his back.
  Du's prestige led him to purchase a four-storey, Western-style mansion in the French Concession and have dozens of concubines, four legal wives and six sons, but his meteoric rise as Shanghai's best known mobster only came after Huang Jinrong's arrest in 1924 by the Shanghai Garrison police  for his public beating of Lu Xiaojia, son of the then Shanghai-ruling warlord Lu Yongxiang. It required Du's diplomacy and finances to save his mentor, who after the release stood down almost immediately, turning his criminal empire over to Du. Now known as the "zongshi" (宗師) or "grandmaster" of the criminal underworld, Du controlled gambling dens, prostitution and protection rackets, as well as setting up a number of legitimate companies — including Shanghai's largest shipping corporation and two banks. With the tacit support of the police and colonial government, he also now ran the French Concession's opium trade, and became heavily addicted to his own drug.
caption: Former residence of Du Yuesheng, a historic house in Hangzhou, Zhejiang.
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "96", "Image YResolution": "96", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2006:02:09 17:23:09", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "174", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF SubSecTime": "125", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "950", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "640", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "240"}