I don’t know if Lee trafficked in opium or its modern versions, okay? I don’t know if he transported arms. He might have. There was a lot of political unrest in those days, a lot to be gained and lost through acts of war. It’s just as likely though that he carried cargoes of tungsten, kerosene, rayon, salt, and sugar—all materials that were heavily taxed if imported the way the Nationalist government wanted them imported. But Lee’s networks were the other networks. The networks that didn’t pay tax. The networks that made money. Having lived all his life on a boat, having survived a storm that killed all the other men in his family, and having the protection of Our Lady of Grace made him both lucky and skilled. Up and down the coast he went for several years, ferrying bolts of cloth and sacks of salt in one direction, and crates of tea and silk in the other. He made a stinking fortune. I’m telling you, a lot of money. The kind of fortune that every Hong Konger, Sui Seung Yan or otherwise, dreams of. He bought a flat in Kadoorie Hill. He bought a nice suit. He bought a closet full of nice suits. He invested in real estate, shipping, and casinos. He proved good at investment, and it became his main line of business. He didn’t need to smuggle anymore.

Well, rich people in Hong Kong are kind of like celebrities, you know? In making investments, he made name for himself, though he was strategically quiet about his smuggling history. It didn’t matter anymore that he was Tanka, because he was so rich. He kept the tang tsai because it was his original home, and he docked it among the yachts at Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club to show he was proud of his humble beginnings. This was a good thing because, as it turned out, he would need it later on.

He sent a go-between straight to Chek Keng to inquire about a young woman there, none other than Kwan Siu-Wai.

Well, as you can imagine, the rest is history. Her father, Old Kwan, was only too happy for his daughter to marry such a wealthy man. And as for Siu-Wai herself, she knew who he was. She had seen him scurry under the green awning whenever she approached his boat to buy fish from his mother. I think she truly loved him for the clever, humble man he was.

But the sad thing is, they had trouble conceiving children, and trouble being a proper married couple. Captain Lee could not sleep at the house in Chek Keng that he’d inherited through his wife. He could not sleep in his flat at Kadoorie Hill either.