Chapter 667
Respect Adam
After everyone was seated, the conductor blew the whistle to control the accelerator, and the bus slowly moved forward.
Very slow, the maximum speed is twenty-five.
After the bus was running smoothly, the conductor came over to collect the fare. Xian Yaowen looked at her a few more times and found that she was pretty and had a decent temperament. He didn't know if it was a special case or if there was a certain threshold for being a conductor.
"Joan, are you happy working here?"
"Not bad." Joan adjusted her glasses. "You can call me Ivy."
"IVY?"
"uh-huh."
"I know where your name comes from."
"Have you been to Charlotte Gardens?"
“Yes, the ivy in the garden is special.”
"I planted the first one when I was three years old." Joan took off her glasses, letting them dangle from her chest, and turned to look out the window. "Adam, how many lovers do you have?"
"Do you remember the proprietress of the hotel?"
"uh-huh."
"She is my lover." Xian Yaowen spread his hands, "I have a way with women."
Joan was silent for a long time, "My family asked me to marry you."
"What are you going to do?"
"I once had a lover who was a Navy man and died at Pearl Harbor."
"Wow, does your lover know that he is your lover?"
Qiong turned around and glared at Xian Yaowen, "Is it ridiculous?"
"No." Xian Yaowen said solemnly, "I also have a lover who is about the same age."
"What about her?"
"She died. I buried her together with Xian Yaowen."
"Does your lover know that he is your lover?"
"Her lover may know that he is her lover."
Qiong's eyes left Xian Yaowen's face and looked out the window, "I have never been in love."
"I haven't been in love yet today."
"I am prepared to follow the arrangements of my family."
"I'll talk to Mr. Charlotte."
"Thank you, no need."
"No need to say thank you, it's not for you."
"Hmm?" Joan turned her head sharply.
"My relationship with the Charlotte family does not require a marriage to stabilize it." Xian Yaowen looked at Qiong's face and said in a flat tone: "The alliance needs a marriage that can bring other benefits."
"you?"
"uh-huh."
There was a trace of panic in Joan's eyes, "What should I do?"
“Maybe you’ll meet your love.”
"No, I don't have that kind of luck." Joan shook her head. "Adam, I don't hate you."
"Thank you. Actually you can fight it."
"My grandfather's grandfather was able to reach the United States at the cost of the lives of other members of the Charlotte family. Every member of the Charlotte family must make sacrifices for the continuation of the family. Adam, I have enjoyed the benefits given by the family."
Joan didn't finish her words, but her meaning was self-evident.
"It can also demonstrate value, greater value than marriage."
"How to do it?"
"I'll answer you later. The atmosphere is good now and I don't want to ruin your mood." Xian Yaowen gently bumped Qiong with his shoulder, "Girl, enjoy this wonderful night."
"uh-huh."
Although the car was slow, the distance was not far. The bus stopped at Minsheng West Road, and after a short walk, we arrived at the Boli Road Western Restaurant.
The storefront is not big, but there are several luxury cars parked at the door.
After being welcomed by the doorman, I entered the store and saw that the interior area was not very large. It was in a rectangular shape with two long rows of dining tables extending inward. There seemed to be a staircase in the depths, so it should be two floors.
The environment on the first floor was not very good. Xian Yaowen and Qiong walked deeper in tacit understanding. When they were almost approaching the bar on the left, the stairs on the right were in full view. Two big men in Zhongshan suits were standing at the stairs. Needless to say, the upstairs was reserved by a big shot.
Without giving the waitress at the bar a chance to speak up and remind them, Xian Yaowen took Qiong deeper into the restaurant. When they came to the innermost part of the first floor, they saw two tables filled with foreigners, one of whom also saw the two of them.
"Hi, Joan."
"Hi, William."
As he greeted her, another foreigner turned around and said, "Hi, Joan."
"Hi, Robert."
The foreigner named Robert looked at Xian Yaowen and asked Qiong, "Boyfriend?"
"Yeah!" Joan glanced at Xian Yaowen and said, "Adam, my boyfriend."
"Hi, Adam."
No matter what Joan thought, since she said so, Xian Yaowen had to go along with it. He shook hands with Robert and William respectively, "I'm Adam, doing business in Taiwan."
"Robert, Joan's colleague."
"Same, William."
After taking his hand back, Xian Yaowen smiled faintly and said, "Robert, are you a fertilizer engineer?"
Hearing this, Robert subconsciously raised his hand and sniffed his sleeve, "Do I smell?"
William, who was sitting opposite him, laughed and said, “Robert, you smell like urine every day.”
Robert spread his hands and said, "Correction, this is the smell of synthetic ammonia."
"Huh, is there a difference?"
While the two were laughing and joking, Xian Yaowen pointed to the empty table next to them and sat down with Qiong.
After a while, the waiter brought the menu. Xian Yaowen opened it and took a look, and he knew that this was an authentic "Taiwanese French cuisine". It was even worse than the Sichuan beef noodles he had eaten a few days ago. At least the beef noodles were made by Sichuan people. The owner and chef here may not have been to France, and their cooking skills may not have been learned from French chefs.
Well, the prices are quite similar to those of a century-old restaurant in Paris, not cheap.
He asked Joan, "French food?"
Joan understood the meaning and said, "The only French food in Taipei. There is no other choice."
"You order some food." Xian Yaowen closed the menu. "Are there any other Western restaurants in Taipei?"
"The Star Cafe is run by Russians and you can eat Russian pastries."
Xian Yaowen nodded. He knew that there were Russians in Taiwan. Their composition was quite complex. There were former White Russian nobles and their descendants who came from Shanghai, Chinese-Russian mixed-race employees and Russians who had served in the Middle East Railway, and Soviet anti-Soviet people who were resettled by the CIA.
No matter who they were originally, after arriving in Taiwan, only those with technical skills such as engineers lived a decent life. The lives of others were quite difficult. Firstly, no one was willing to hire them and it was difficult for them to find jobs. Secondly, not only did they have no privileges in Taiwan, they also had to pay an additional special tax for foreigners. Many of them relied on the church for support to get by.
The information flashed through his mind, and he thought back and recalled the conductor, recalling her blue and white uniform and the boat-shaped hat on her head. The fabric and workmanship were both good, so there should be a certain threshold for wearing them.
"threshold……"
After a brief thought, Xian Yaowen caught a glimpse of inspiration. The first show of Friendship Pictures' Taiwan branch "Youtai" should not be limited to filming. It would be better to hold a beauty pageant first. The name can be Miss China or Miss Taiwan. It is nominally a selection of movie actors, but in fact it is a selection of concubines.
One of them becomes the daughter-in-law of a senior official, and the other becomes the lover of a senior official. In this way, most of the obstacles to Taiwan's friendly forces gaining a foothold in Taiwan will disappear, and only ideology will remain untouchable.
After Joan took her order, she said, "How's your business going?"
"So far, it's going pretty smoothly." Xian Yaowen picked up his water cup to hide his distraction, "but the real difficulties haven't come yet."
"What's the difficulty?"
“For example, I rent a piece of land from you and pay you $5 as rent for ten years. We agree that all the output of the land will belong to me within ten years. The day after we reach the agreement, I put a pipe in the ground and oil gushed out of the pipe.
Yes, this is an oil field with a total reserve of 18.245 million barrels and a daily production of 5000 barrels. When you hear this news, how will you react? "
Joan chuckled and said, "Does it need to be so precise?"
Xian Yaowen shrugged, "It means you can't get any other benefits besides rent."
"Okay." Qiong thought for a moment and said, "I might be jealous, but I will still abide by the agreement."
“Both the reserves and daily output have increased a hundredfold.”
"I'll talk to you."
"What? More money?"
"uh-huh."
"This is the difficulty I will encounter." Xian Yaowen spread his hands.
"Your business is very profitable?"
"Yes."
“How can you be sure of profitability if it hasn’t happened yet?”
Xian Yaowen smiled faintly and said, "If I didn't have the confidence to make a profit, I wouldn't come to Taiwan to do business."
"Ok."
"Love is just an ordinary thing, not at all unusual. Men are just a pastime, what's the big deal. Love is just an ordinary thing, not at all unusual. Men are just a pastime, what's the big deal."
At Jinhai Bar, Wang Xiamin danced playfully and hummed "Carmen" which slipped through her fingertips.
This is a playful song. At first, my husband and Teacher Li felt that it was not suitable for her and gave the song to Ge Lan to sing. However, she liked it very much. Whenever she performed on stage outside and felt excited, she would sing it.
"What is love, what is intention, isn't it just everyone deceiving themselves? What is infatuation, what is obsession, it's just a show between men and women. I like all men, regardless of whether they are rich or poor, high or low. I will abandon all men, and I am not afraid of your magic power anymore."
At the end of the performance, the audience in the bar gave thunderous applause.
It lasted for five seconds, and then the applause died down.
Sophia picked up the wine glass, picked up a spoon from the table, and slowly walked onto the stage.
The spoon hits the wine glass to attract everyone's attention.
When everyone's eyes were fixed on her, she leaned over to the microphone and said, "Ladies, today is the shareholders' day of Jinji Commercial Bank. It is our festival and our carnival day. Compared with last year, Jinji Commercial Bank...
Sorry, I am not the one to announce this good news. Please invite Ms. Fang, Adam’s representative, to come on stage.”
Amidst applause, Wang Xiamin, who had already gone backstage to change out of her performance clothes and was now wearing an elegant cheongsam, walked onto the stage and came to Sophia's side.
Sophia shook her hand and gave up the microphone.
Wang Xiamin leaned over to the microphone and said with a relaxed look, "Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Wang asked me to express his apologies to you all. At the last shareholders' meeting, a certain lady expressed her love to him, and he was frightened and did not dare to attend today's shareholders' day."
Before she finished her words, all kinds of laughter broke out from the audience, including belly-laughing, subtle, and knowing.
The shareholders/shareholder representatives of Jinji Trading Company include wives of naval officers, wives of police officers, wives of civil servants, and a few wives of air force officers and wives of British businessmen. They are mainly between 30 and 50 years old, and their dignified appearance hides restless hearts.
Since the start of the Korean War, Hong Kong has become a strategic hub, with the number of British troops stationed there increasing from 1.2 to 1.8, excluding those on rest and leave.
Since the military personnel are mainly bachelors and most of them have had sex, even among married men, only a very few can bring their wives to Hong Kong. Therefore, how to solve physiological problems has become a topic that must be faced but cannot be discussed in public.
The bar girls and dancers in Wan Chai are the main force in solving the problem. There are both buying and selling and short-term keeping. The current market price is HK$100 to HK$200 per month. The bar girls call this short-term keeping "Holiday". During this period, they only need to deal with one person, which is a good time to recuperate and wait for the generous American nouveau riche.
Of course, there are also those who are willing to violate the agreement and secretly take on other business. However, there are fewer such people recently, because there were two or three tragic cases some time ago - some people were killed or beaten to disability after being discovered by the financiers.
Senior military officers would find long-term mistresses and place them in apartments in Mid-Levels.
A very strange phenomenon is that long-term mistresses are mainly middle-class, educated women with a history of marriage, either divorced or away from home, most of whom have children with them. The conditions for exchange are mainly real estate and funding for children's education.
The soldiers who were confined in the barracks and had little leave would find a place nearby to deal with the problem, exchanging canned food, stockings and other items with widows and refugees in the squatter areas.
This has resulted in many men in the squatter areas near military camps abandoning their wives and children to find other partners once they are able to leave the squatter areas. As the saying goes, the first thing they do when they get ashore is to kill the person they love. How shameless!
There were also some unscrupulous parents who would push their daughters to make friends with the British Army in order to improve their livelihoods or to save up dowry for their beloved sons.
There is a Clandestine Coffee House in the Murray House in Stanley, which provides a place for British officers to meet their lovers and have trysts.
Every Wednesday and Friday from 2pm to 5pm, which is the British army's routine vacation time, officers would go into the cafe and show the waiter a coin with a secret code engraved with the Queen's portrait, and they would be led into the "Victoria Box" by the waiter.
There is a secret door in the box, leading to the "warehouse" where the lovers are. If you like a lover, you can ask the waiter for a cup of specially made milk tea (two hours of box usage rights) and spend a few intimate moments with your lover in the box.
If you want to stay together forever, you can give a gift to the cafe with your lover's consent and take the person away.
In order to avoid the tracing of Hong Kong dollar transactions, Clandestine Cafe forced settlement in British pounds. However, they did not know that many lovers had been bribed by intelligence dealers and many British military secrets had been leaked.
The situation of the waiters is even more exaggerated. Eighty percent of them are agents of various intelligence agencies, and 20% are bribed. Right now, the cafe has not been noticed by the British intelligence agencies. Once it is raided, I don't know how many officers will be brought to the military court.
In North Point, there is a gang called Fok Yi Hing, whose sphere of influence stretches from Java Road to Shuju Street, including 3 docks, 12 restaurants and 7 pawnshops. The gang leader is Lam Cheng Chi, who is years old this year and is known as Uncle Seven in the underworld. After Li Caifa disappeared, some people called him the Emperor of North Point.
Lin Chengqi was originally a coolie at the Shantou docks. In the early 1930s, he had a certain amount of capital and started smuggling cigarettes. Due to business relationships, he got to know people from Fu Yixing and joined Fu Yixing in the late 1930s.
In 1946, he took advantage of the British army's reconstruction of Hong Kong to monopolize the transportation of building materials in North Point, quickly rose to power in Fook Yi Hing and became the head of the hall, competing with Li Caifa who arrived in Hong Kong the following year.
Last year, he heard the gossip that Li Caifa was hacked to death and was planning to take over Regent Garden and then swallow up the entire North Point. But who knew that Xian Yaowen would suddenly show up and curse Xian Yaowen's ancestors for eighteen generations. He had to give up in anger.
He didn't dare to touch this half-Tang Fan's evil nature.
After a period of silence, he watched the Ritz Garden make more money than during Li Caifa's time, and he was so jealous. Just when he wanted to imitate the Ritz Garden and open a nightclub, a woman from MI6 code-named "Miss Thompson" found him and gave him an idea - a modified version of the Clandestine Café.
About two months ago, a new restaurant, Ligong Restaurant, opened at the junction of Java Road and Shuju Street. It serves morning tea to normal customers. Every Wednesday and Friday from 2pm to 5pm, it serves British military officers, and in the evening it receives military suppliers and intelligence brokers.
It has to be said that Lin Chengqi took too big a step and walked too far in a short time.
In just two months, Ligong Restaurant had two mainstays, one named White Rose and the other named Chaozhou Aying. These two women were very unusual.
In Hong Kong, there are too many places for the British troops to entertain themselves. Faced with so many temptations, the morals of the British troops and even all the British are certainly not good. The dignified ladies in the Jinhai Bar may not be happy at home. Many people, like Sophia, have long-term lovers or passionate affairs outside.
After the laughter died down, Wang Xiamin continued, "Sophia has just revealed some good news. Now I will announce it to you all. As of yesterday, the business development of Jinji Commercial Bank has been going smoothly. The amount of dividends that can be distributed this year has accumulated to 5 pounds. Congratulations to everyone."
As soon as she finished speaking, Sofia raised her glass and shouted to the audience: "Ladies, let's toast to Adam!"
"To Adam!" (End of this chapter)