Chasing the Dragon!

***Chasing the Dragon!*** is a Chinese-American newspaper founded and edited by Chandu Pen-Yen, a drug lord based on the Chinatown of Manhattan. Originally founded as a money laundering scheme, *Chasing the Dragon!* began to publish news with the intent of generating wide circulation after another Chinese-American newspaper based in Manhattan, *Kicking the Gong!*, wrote a piece mocking Pen-Yen, who took personal offense to the article and attempted to build *Chasing the Dragon!* up to be a serious competitor as retaliation, with the intention of driving *Kicking the Gong!* out of business. This has yet been unsuccessful, and the two papers remain rivals to this day, still managed by their original owners, who are now both in their 100s.

## Foundation

*Chasing the Dragon!* was founded on the 6th of November in 1939, 7 years after *Kicking the Gong!* had set up just across the street. The paper was created by Chandu Pen-Yen, a prospective opium dealer who had fled to the United States after the widespread crackdown on opiods in China spearheaded by Minister of the Interior Zhang Fen-rong in 1938. Left with only a portion of his wealth after being smuggled to the U.S., Pen-Yen quickly learned the inner-workings of drug dealing in New York, eventually once more being able to take up his opium trade in Manhattan, using a fake newspaper press as a front for money laundering.

## Rivalry with *Kicking the Gong!*

By December, just a month after Chandu's papers had entered circulation and were being used to trade money for opium that would be hidden within the wrappings the print arrived in, another Chinese-American newspaper press by the name of *Kicking the Gong!* took notice of their neighbor, and consequentially, printed an article titled, "*Chandu Tintin: New Boy on Block*", which consisted entirely of *Kicking the Gong!* founder Gi-Chi Xo mocking Chandu by comparing him to the Belgian comic character *Tintin* from *The Adventures of Tintin*.

Chandu was deeply offended, and against the advice of his partners-in-crime, he struck back with an piece titled "*Gi-Chi Xo-schmo"* (which would be pronounced "Gi-Chi Joe-Schmo"), which accused his rival of being "Big pig head", "Several gay", and "Inexpressibly". But Gi-Chi Xo, excited that someone had fallen for one of his provocations, quickly responded with "*Chandu Attitude*", which claimed Chandu Pen-Yen had contracted measles and was intentionally spreading them through the streets of New York. The article generated so much controversy that police actually intervened, quarantining Chandu's press for three days in order to prevent the fictional disease from spreading any further. Gi-Chi then launched a strategic preemptive strike by taking photographs of police guarding Chandu's closed press, then posting them in the article "*Pen-Yen's Pen-Yen*" ("pen-yen" being a slang term for opium), where he claimed Chandu's press had been busted for being an opium laundering scheme. The article not only convinced hundreds of New York citizens, but even Chandu himself, who read the paper while eating porridge at a bus stop. Chandu, thinking his opium stash had been uncovered, rushed to his printing press and upon finding no police nearby, he dumped his drugs into the Hudson River, effectively eliminating himself from the opium trade and relegating his business to the world of journalism for the next two years until he could raise enough funds to once more enter the realm of illegal drugs.