Word: tongs
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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This vivid expose of gambling dens and brothels, with their picaresque inmates, falls short of melodrama without losing excitement. The faithful account of all the greatest gang leaders sometimes runs to a monotony of horrors, but is soon varied with naive tong wars, and prosperous "fences"-fat women who bought and sold the loot of robbers...
...spine-chilling if The Spider (TIME, April 4) had not arrived first in Manhattan with much the same formula. A horde of unnamed actors are planted in the audience to be yanked from their seats, shoot from the balcony and participate generally in what looks like an impromptu actors' tong...
When, in the ordinary course of events, several Chinese are murdered during a short space of time, a tong war automatically comes into being, under the auspices of news-hungry editors...
...midnight, Li Poy, 45, dishwasher, Hip Sing, was stooping over his sink in King's Tea Garden, finishing cleaning the scum from around the rim of the water. Occasionally from the dining-room came the sparkle of white men's women, such as many a wealthy tong leader keeps in his saffron incensed chambers. In and out pattered the waiters. Then a strange Chinaman swung through the door. He fired two shots into Li Poy's bent back. Poy pitched forward and his face sank like a yellow teacup into the brown dishwater. A scream drowned...
Police authorities in the above named cities, under the able direction of city editors, herded droves of the inscrutable Orientals into local station-house bull pens for questioning. All declared they knew nothing, their leaders asking in reply, "What tong war? There is no war!" Disgusted lieutenants turned the droves loose. Flags with Chinese characters, denoting peace, after three days' absence, perhaps because of the inclement weather, were seen flying over all Chinese headquarters buildings. The TONG WAR FLARES disappeared from the headlines. The war, if any, therefore ended...