A former gangland enforcer has described how the Triads established a foothold in Manchester before spreading "like a disease around the country". Richard Musa said his one-time boss, Wo Shing Wo kingpin Georgie Pai, set up a powerbase in Manchester's Chinatown in the 1980s and then expanded the operation to every major city in the UK.
"They started in Manchester and they spread," Musa told the Tie Your Camel podcast. "It's like a disease that spread all around the country. And he [Pai] was the first one who actually introduced Wo Shing Wo into the UK."
The rise of 'The Duck'
Fedora-wearing Pai, nicknamed The Duck because he walked with a limp due to a long-standing hip defect, was Britain's most powerful Triad godfather in the 80s and 90s. Born in Hong Kong, Pai - whose real name was Chan Yee Yau - is said to have been recruited by the Wo Shing Wo as a teenager and built a name for himself by collecting protection monies and running illegal gambling dens.
He arrived in Britain in 1975 on a tourist visa and started work at his parents' Chinese takeaway in Glastonbury, Somerset. But the restaurant job was just a front for his underworld ambitions. Behind the scenes he was quickly establishing Wo Shing Wo's UK operation while battling fierce rivals The 14K for control of the lucrative Chinatowns in Manchester, Liverpool, Glasgow and London.
An empire built on 'money and violence'
Musa, 48, said Pai was the first person in the UK to 'chop' someone with a machete as he built an empire based on 'money and violence'. Under Pai's leadership the gang made fortunes from protection rackets, prostitution, human trafficking and counterfeiting, almost exclusively within the Chinese community, said Musa.
"They will smash up the restaurant," he said. "Throw paint on it. Excuse me for saying it, but they will throw s** and p***, human s*** and p***, on customers. That's what they do."
From his office above a restaurant, Pai kept a close eye on his Manchester empire through an extensive network of CCTV cameras, look-outs and informers. "[In] Manchester, the Triad operation got the cameras all around the whole Chinatown," said Musa. "They can see the whole Chinatown. So there's no one can come in and come out without them seeing you. That's how they got it locked like that."
Brush with the law
Musa said the first time he met Pai he was called to Manchester from his then London home to help out with a 'beef' against what he described as 'freshies', recently arrived Chinese people. Musa said he spent an uneventful night in a restaurant in Chinatown before returning home. But the next day the feud exploded in violence, said Musa.
"The same night that I went back to London, it kicked off," he said. "There was a big machete attack in the restaurant. They start chopping up everyone inside the restaurant right downstairs to where I was staying."
But Pai wasn't completely above the law. In November 1977 he was arrested by police in London after not renewing his visa. Then, after serving a prison sentence for extortion over a protection racket in Winchester, he was deported back to Hong Kong. Throughout the 80s, Pai, who was also known as Crippled George and the Limping One, nicknames he's said to have hated, repeatedly slipped back into the UK using forged documents.
He was deported for a second time in 1983 and again three years later after being spotted by undercover officers driving a BMW in Bristol. But by 1991 he was back in the UK - and had firmly cemented his Manchester power base.
Exposure and downfall
Then living in a £100,000 mansion in Altrincham, Pai was enjoying the fruits of his illegal labour. But he was also increasingly coming under the spotlight. 'Terror of the Duck', read the front page headline of the Manchester Evening News on November 28 that year as the paper reported how the crime lord's operation was behind a terrifying surge in violence and extortion in Chinatown.
"People just do not know the extent of our problems because the trouble is kept inside our community," one businessman said as he described the practice of paying so-called 'lucky money' to the Wo Shing Wo. "Businesses are being asked to pay £10,000 to the Triads if they want to continue trouble-free trading. Employees are asked to pay £10 per week if they want to continue working. We are all just trying to earn a living, but what can we do?"
With the authorities under pressure to deport him for a fourth time, Pai also came to the attention of the broadcaster Roger Cook. During a year-long investigation Cook's flagship show The Cook Report set up a fake video rental store in Chinatown called Flying Dragon Video, and filmed Pai's mobsters attempting to extort the business before attacking its owner, a Hong Kong police officer who had agreed to front the undercover operation.
On the night the documentary was set to be broadcast, the M.E.N. broke its own exclusive on Pai. The paper reported how, despite the allegations against him, The Duck was about to win an appeal against deportation and be allowed to stay in the country. But the publicity meant Pai's reign of terror was over. He left Manchester and moved to Cheltenham, where he is said to have worked in a Chinese restaurant. According to the BBC, he died during the Covid pandemic and was buried in Bristol.
Triads remain active
But while Pai may no longer have been on the scene, the Triads definitely still were. In 1996 four Triad gangsters from Greater Manchester were jailed for life for the cold-blooded execution of Chinese student Eddie Hui, 28, who was gunned down while working in his uncle's chip shop in Glossop.
In October 2004 a young man was found dead in Chinatown, in a killing later dubbed the 'DVD murder'. It was said the victim was a Triad member who had travelled to Manchester for a pre-arranged fight, before being ambushed by another gang. And in 2010 a feud between the Wo Shing Wo and long-term rivals 14K exploded on the streets of Chinatown. The ferocious 30-man battle, which left six men seriously injured, with two fighting for their lives in intensive care, was sparked by a stand-off in the K2 karaoke bar on George Street.
A trial at Manchester Crown Court later heard that as the brawl spilled out onto the road outside the karaoke bar, the alleged leader of the Wo Shing Wo shouted 'I've run the streets of Manchester for over 10 years – who do you think you are?'
"Anywhere there's a Chinatown in the whole world they [Triads] exist," said Richard Musa, who says he left the Wo Shing Wo about two and a half years ago after converting to Islam. "This is serious organisation and it's worldwide."
