I can't die

The Shanghai Concession in the 60s was mainly composed of the British Concession, the French Concession and the Public Concession.These three concessions are the best ones close to the Huangpu River, among which the British Concession has the best location and the largest area, almost occupying the entire Bund.

At five or six o'clock in the morning, the Bund is still shrouded in a thick morning fog. At this time, the ships coming and going on the Huangpu River have begun to roar, and the British warships are still guarding the most important river mouth in Shanghai. The Mi Zi flag on the top is fluttering in the wind, as if to announce the supreme power of the most powerful country in the world.

Of course, the premise is to ignore the inexplicable stench on the Bund pier.I don't know what's going on, but there is a smoky stench hanging over the Bund today. This stench is like the smell of rice fields accompanied by corpse water. It spreads everywhere with the wind in the river. But when anyone smells it, almost everyone can smell it. Hold your nose and pass out.Those businessmen who originally planned to do some small business in the concession area in the morning also dared to take a step towards the Bund when they smelled the stench, and dragged their stalls out in fright, in case they dared not stay for a long time.

"Hey, Sammy Dao? Let's talk about it. (Shanghai dialect, what kind of smell. It stinks.)" Shopkeeper Wang, who opened a photo studio on Nanjing Road, was suffocated by the pungent smell as soon as he opened the door. Almost fainted, he hurriedly took out the champagne that the concubine was coming to from yesterday and covered his nose.

Two or three drivers leaning on the rickshaw, resisting the stench and having breakfast, frowned and said after listening to the shopkeeper Wang: "No, it used to be able to get several businesses at this point in the morning. Because of this smell, I am afraid that those big shots are willing to come to work. The business has also been reduced by half."

Listening to what the coachman said, shopkeeper Wang waved to the coachman, then threw two pennies out of his sleeve, and asked, "Nong Nong will come to meet Si Tifa?" (Shanghai dialect, do you know what's going on? )”

When it comes to inquiring about news, the most powerful people in Shanghai are the drivers running around, so there is also a private rule in Shanghai. When the driver asks for news, a piece of information costs two pennies. The driver is also happy to earn tips, which is a strange phenomenon.

The coachman took the tip, smiled cheerfully, and ate the solid steamed buns in two strokes: "You don't know, there are tens of thousands of chamber pots on the Bund overnight, and they are almost piled up into mountains. I don’t know where it came from, it’s not good for smelly people.”

"Chamfer?" Thinking of this stuff, Shopkeeper Wang felt even more sick to his stomach. He glanced at the driver who was still swallowing in disgust, and stepped back: "You can still eat this? Where did so many chamber pots come from? No one cares?"

"Hey." The driver snickered, leaned forward and said mysteriously, "Who else do you think has such great strength? Only the Green Gang."

Green Gang?Shopkeeper Wang trembled subconsciously when he heard the name, stretched his neck to look in the direction of the Bund, and then walked back to the photo studio, muttering in his heart as he walked: "I can't afford to provoke you, I can't afford to provoke you!" It's nothing to do with yourself." After finishing speaking, he closed the door and hung a signboard saying "Closed today".

A boss like Shopkeeper Wang, who is responsible for his own profits and losses, naturally rests when he says he should take a break, but the big banks on the Bund, HSBC, Citigroup, and Standard Chartered, are all international companies, how can they do this?Those who could ask for leave did so, while those who couldn't ask for leave could only bear with it.Brand Zi, the chairman of the British Concession and the chairman of HSBC Daqing Bank, was stink up on the HSBC building.He didn't even dare to open the window, and sprayed the room upside down with perfume. Unexpectedly, the smell of the perfume was muddy and foul, and the smell was even more unpleasant, almost making him suffocate.

"Come on! Come on! What's going on?" Brand shouted, but he didn't dare to open his mouth wide, for fear that the stench would blow into his nose along the wind.

Brand's assistant secretary soon heard Brand's yelling and ran in with a mask on. "Sir, what's the matter?"

"You still ask me what's wrong? What's the matter with this smell?"

Brand's personal assistant seemed to have known that Brand would ask about this matter, and immediately replied: "I don't know why, there were tens of thousands of toilets on the Bund overnight, and it was caused by this thing." The little secretary breathed a sigh of relief After finishing speaking, he immediately closed his mouth, as if he felt that the smell in the room was even weirder, and the smell of perfume mixed with it made people want to vomit even more.

"How is it possible?! What do the people guarding the port do? Don't you know how to watch such a big commotion?" Brand felt it was unbelievable, and picked up the perfume in his hand and sprayed it wildly.

"This..." Obviously, the little secretary couldn't take it anymore, and he wasn't a god, so how could he know it would happen?Brand heard the hesitation in the little secretary's words, and his temper became even more violent: "If you don't know, why don't you hurry up and investigate?! By the way, hurry up and find the cleaners!"

The little secretary saw Brand go crazy, so he ran out of the office in disgrace, and then hurriedly went to find the people under him to find the city cleaner.Here, I have to mention the profession of city cleaners again.Chinese city cleaners, including sweeping streets, connecting sewers, etc., have existed since the Song Dynasty and even earlier in the Tang Dynasty.Compared with many western countries in the Middle Ages, it can be said to be far ahead.These cleaners are uniformly dispatched by the government, managed by county magistrates in various places, and get paid by the government. They can be regarded as civil servants within the system.

But the concession is different from other Chinese territories.Although the concession did not say that the people of the Qing Dynasty were not allowed to enter, it can be called a country within a country in terms of management, taxation, security, etc., and it is independently managed by the big powers.Naturally, the cleaning work in the concession is also handled by the managers of the concession themselves, that is, foreigners.

In Shanghai in the 60s, there were already over a thousand foreigners living in Shanghai, but certainly none of them would do urban cleaning work, and the cleaning of the concessions was also done by the outsourcing system, that is, the employment system.

This kind of employment system of "not in China, not in foreign countries" is very unsound.That is to say, foreigners find the foreman of the Qing Dynasty, and the foreman then goes to the workers below to clean up and settle the bill on a monthly basis.The foreman will sign a certain contract with the foreigner, but it is not long-term. On the contrary, it is similar to the kind of receipt where one pays the money and gets the goods. Naturally, the foreigner can change the foreman if he wants to, and the foreman can work wherever he wants.It's just that because foreigners paid a lot of money in the past, it was basically the foreman who begged for foreigners.

From the above, we can see how important the foreman is.Almost amounts to an important business tie.But what a coincidence. . .Almost 90.00% of the foremen in Shanghai are the children of the Green Gang, so when the little secretary approached the foremen and asked them to clean up the Bund, all the foremen said NO uniformly.

Ha ha.