Lend Me the Spring Breeze to Cross the Huangpu

At the age of twelve, Yang Dang, a descendant of a Guizhou tusi, drifted to Shanghai. From an exiled boy huddled on the docks, to a postal worker sorting letters, to a waiter at the neon-lit Paramount Ballroom, he struggled to survive in the mud at the bottom of Shanghai's bustling foreign concessions, honing his ability to read people and adapt to any situation. A French letter containing the Green Gang's secrets, a young police chief who stood up for him on a rainy night, a crisis he resolved in a dance hall... The gears of fate began to turn. He swore brotherhood with the police chief and the head of the No. 76 intelligence agency, and navigated among foreign powers in the concessions, Japanese agents, and underground organizations, rising from a penniless young man to a senior official in the British and French concessions. Amid dazzling nightlife and flashing blades, he held on to a shred of goodness in his heart, navigating relationships with a flower girl, a star singer, a rich heiress, and a revolutionary partner. In the end, he devoted his legendary life to the clandestine revolutionary cause, leaving his own mark of loyalty amid the upheavals of a nation. This is a portrait of life at the bottom of society, and an ode to the heroes of an age of covert warfare.