August 22 claims a notable figure from the underworld of twentieth-century China: Du Yuesheng, the Shanghai crime lord known as "Big-Eared Du," who rose from poverty to dominate the city's opium trade, extortion networks, and labor rackets during the Republic era. His influence extended well beyond the criminal sphere — he cultivated relationships with Nationalist politicians and foreign concession authorities alike, making him as much a power broker as a gangster. His life traced the arc of modern Shanghai itself: its violent ambitions, its uneasy compromises between order and criminality, and its eventual collapse under the pressures of civil war and Communist consolidation.