It's not hard to spot Hong Kong's ubiquitous gang members -- they're the rough-looking men hanging around the backstreets of Tsimshatsui, the ones the unsuspecting tourist passes by on the way to and from Shopping centres and hotels.
This week, the police swept down and arrested over 20 of them -- suspected members of the Sun Yee On gang -- a move that cleared the gangs off their familiar turf, for a while at least.
The Year of the Rooster looks like a troublesome one for the Territory's gangs whose incursions into all forms of business in Hong Kong, especially the high-profile film industry, have become infamous. Nonetheless, in spite of the blood-letting and violence of 1992, the signs are that this year will be a little more peaceful for the film community.
But as Nanson Shi, producer wife of director Tsui Hark (Once Upon a Time in China) says, the present ``peace'' may well be deceptive: ``It's the Chinese New Year holidays and traditionally all the hiring and firing has already been done. I'm not complaining -- it's far better when no one is being gunned down or intimidated.''
The scene only months before, however, was quite different. Then, in a sudden spiral of violence, there were two contract killings, an armed robbery, countless extortion attempts and a demonstration march attended by the likes of Jackie Chan, Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung.
The events of the past year have turned the Cantonese film industry into frontline troops as the traids push their way further into the industry while the threat of ``1997'' looms ever closer. There is an underlying feeling that whatever Governor Chris Patten might do or say will not affect the nature of the eventual handover.
As one newspaper man remarked: ``Hong Kong is in a state of flux -- everything is changing: nothing will remain the same. The British are on the retreat and the government doesn't have the will or the confidence to enforce the rule of law -- the airport project in Chep Lap Kok is more important than the traids. The mainlanders know this and so do the traids: they're both moving into new areas of business more often than not with one another -- like the film world.''
The contract killings, the triad ``faceoffs'', the extortion and pay-offs have escalated to an unheard of level. At one point, Anita Mui (Rouge Mr Canton & Lady Rose) was forced into hiding. There is a strong pull between the worlds of organised crime and films: as if the glamour, glitter and the lights of one redeem the shadowy lives and evil of the other.
And in Hong Kong, a city propelled by the allure and power of money, the two worlds seem to offer the only escape from the concrete brutality of the New Territories' apartment blocks -- what someone chillingly called ``the Badlands''. The film world, for many, is the only outlet. As Philip Chan, the present president of the Film Director's Guild, said: ``Showbiz has always survived on money, glamour and scandal.''
The Oriental Daily, Hong Kong's largest circulation Chinese paper, devotes four pages every day to the industry and its stars -- and among the luminaries non one stands out higher than Anita Mui, Jackie Chan, Leslie Cheung or Chow Yuen Fatt.
A film with one of these stars can open in Hong Kong and do guaranteed business, selling tens of thousands of tickets, and that doesn't include Taiwan, Korea and South-east Asia, each of which are just as large. There are film distributors all over Asia clamouring to run the latest Alan Tam movie -- sight unseen.
The gangs, like all sharp businessmen, have been quick to identify the key to success at the box office: stars, stars and more stars. They have used their one undoubted advantage to secure the services of the great and the good -- their willingness to use violence. The newspapers have been full of reports, all of them unattributed and anonymous to protect the identity of the stars, of cases where actors and actresses have been intimidated and then beaten up if they failed to knuckle under.
One actress told the South China Morning Post how she refused to act in a ``silly and ridiculous production'' which had been ``offered'' to her by triad producers. She paid for her stubbornness. A few days later, when on a location shoot in the New Territories, she was attacked by five men in front of the entire crew. As she described in her own words: ``They came over and without saying a word, they began punching and kicking me. I was screaming and crying with pain but people who witnessed it did not dare to give me a hand until the men left.'' She ended up working for the triad production.
Among the most successful newcomers to the industry have been the Heung brothers whose father founded the Sun Yee On Triad. It is not an understatement to say that Tsimshatsui is their ``turf'' and Chatham Square their base camp.
One ex-policeman estimated that the Sun Yee On have nearly 45,000 members -- a figure which gives some idea of the size and pervasiveness of its membership. The Heung brothers, Wah Sing and Wah Keung, entered the film business only four years ago. Hsueng Wah Sing masterminded the move. One film-maker grudgingly described him as being ``not an unintelligent man''. He uses the biggest stars like Chow Yuen Fatt, the hottest stories, and makes what a film critic said were ``preeminently forgettable films but pure box office''.
The film critic went on to add that Heung Wah Sing used to resort to force: ``Of course he used force; otherwise the stars would never have acted for him.'' But he had to admit that Wah Sing had cleaned up his act, saying: ``They act like real businessmen now. He makes 12 movies a year and they're always successful. He's proved his credentials and realised that you get better work if you don't use violence and pay people properly.''
Though the Heungs have now gone ``legitimate'', the recent trail of killings, intimidation and violence has affected them as well despite their well-known triad affiliations. In May last year, the two brothers gave a press conference to launch their planned hundred million dollar ``Film City'' in Shenzhen, a prelude to what the financial community hoped to be the stock market flotation of their film interests. In Hong Kong, memories are very short.
This followed the contract killing of the neophyte film-producer Choi Chin Ming in April. ``Jimmy'' Choi was known to have been a drug dealer. When he was killed, the film fraternity was quick to deny a film connection to the shooting. Nanson Shi was quoted as saying that she thought the killing was related to ``Mr Choi's other businesses'', alluding to his heroin dealing in Amsterdam.
As if this wasn't enough, another gangster-turned-movie producer, Wong Long Wai, was knifed up in Wanchai, hospitalised and later murdered in his hospital bed in the dead of night. Two nights before he had been involved in an incident at a karaoke bar in Kowloong Tong with the Queen of them all, Anita Mui, slapping her across the face when she refused to acknowledge him.
The two killings spawned a wave of rumours that linked the players in various conspiracy theories -- the Taiwanese triads, the Mainland Chinese gangs, the Black Circle, the all-powerful Chinese Ministry of Defence and the Hunanese clique, a head-spinning combination of names, motives and arguments that made Hollywood look like a kindergarten.
And it's not just the upper echelons of the film world that have been infiltrated by the triads. One assistant director, ``Sit'' (not his real name) said that every location shoot had to be negotiated beforehand with the local triad boss. ``There was a time when you could placate them with a couple of dollars and a lot of grovelling.'' That has changed now. A 12-hour shoot might cost you anything up to HK$20,000.
As film director Philip Chan wrote in a comment to the South China Morning Post at the time of the demonstration march: ``99.9 percent of the time, unless you are shooting in your home, you have to pay some amount of money.'' Sit added that it wouldn't matter so much if the triads could guarantee the peace, but they couldn't: ``You pay one set of fellows off and another gang or faction turns up and demands a tribute.''
As Nanson Shi commented: ``The film industry is all about talking to people, negotiating with them and arranging things -- if the guy is dead or so scared to work I'll never get my films made: killing just doesn't make any sense in this industry.''
Nonetheless, the level of violence and underlying intimidation has not abated and one gossip columnist laughed when asked if the worst of the troubles were over: ``No way,'' she replied, ``the triads are too busy fighting it out -- fighting over the stars and the studios. The stars may complain to the police but they would never actually testify. How can it get any better?''
Early lat year the long acquiescent film industry retaliated by organising a march to show its disapproval of the triad presence in the film industry. The demonstration was organised in response to spiralling violence and the lawlessness of the new players.
The circle has now turned fully and the loose cannons, men like Jimmy Choi and Chan Chi Meng, have been silenced; the first by a bullet, and the second by incarceration in a Shenzhen prison.
This doesn't mean that others haven't entered the industry. Among the most disturbing entrants has been the Taiwanese ex-gangster Wu Tuan, who was convicted of the murder of historian and biographer Chan Nan in the US. To date, Wu Tuan has played by the rules and not resorted to the kind of violence that nearly brought down the whole house of cards in 1992. But with men of such violent pasts involved in such a volatile industry, it can only be a matter of time before the guns are out and the intimidation returns.