Moon Tears
Neon cast into the metro wagon as I traveled through the East Ord district of San Delfina Chinatown. It was past midnight and you had kids posting up along the sidewalks sleeping on vents where heat permeated to warm them in the cold of the night. “Moon tears” they called them. Green bags with a crescent moon printed on the bag. They called it that because of the “logo” used for it and the fact it had an almost fluorescent blue color they gave it for marketing purposes.
The new type of ketamine went for $45 a dose. That was up almost 30% from the normal street price. Last month I went to visit a rehab center in Lower Manilla. Dozens of teenagers not older than my own. They should be at the onset of their lives, discovering what they are enthusiastic about and finding their purpose. But instead, they were just a scapegoat for local drug runners.
Chinese organized crime was never this big around here since the ‘80s. But now, instead of off-the-boaters settling ethnic differences in the Chinatown alleys, you had mainland Chinese drug dealers transport party drugs to the West Coast from British Columbia. A friend of mine from the force who emigrated to Canada told me that they moved their business here because there was a huge crackdown going on in Vancouver.
Sometimes it feels like my work is to no avail. For every Chinese guy I arrest two more pop from the ground. The strenuous bureaucratic legal process is strangulating me and stops me from doing what is necessary to stop this menace. But what is going on here will become a black page in the books of this city.
Super Wok Explosion is a unique animated web-series about Chinese organized crime. The project is funded entirely by its audience. On this website, animator Tony Cheuk likes to share information about Asian organized crime—and world-building of the universe of the series, Chinese tongs and triads. If you're interested in learning more about the project, you can click here.