The door of the Shanghai Building is not very large, it is just the size of two standard rooms. The fixed awning extends from the door blocks the entire sidewalk, looking like the high-end hotels in Chicago and New York.

A circle of light boards is installed on the outer edge of the canopy, with a festive red background. The SHANGHAI LOW sign is painted with white letters. The bulbs that outline the side lines are yellow, and the letters are made of white light bulbs. The side part of the sidewalk is also decorated with a Chinese dragon that seems to be looking back and watching.

This is an apartment building rebuilt after the earthquake. It has a standard three-story single-family concrete brick structure. The exterior wall on the street is painted into beige that was popular in the United States at that time. An advertising light sign that is two stories high extends out on the wall. The white letters on the red background are written with eight English letters CHOP SUEY.

This conspicuous sign has been an iconic landscape in San Francisco Chinatown for half a century. It often appears on tourist postcards along with the Panlong street lights on Duban Street and the pagoda-shaped corner tower of Shengchang Building.

You may not understand what the sign says. In fact, it is a "Chinese dish" that is only popular in the United States, the legendary "Li Hongzhang Miscellaneous".

Just like SHANGHAI LOW, CHOP SUEY is the transliteration of "broken" Taishan dialect, using the popular Vitoma pinyin at that time. In Chinatown in the early 20th century, there were such "English" shop names that Americans could not understand at all.

The "mixed" here is not the internal organs of the animal that we remember, but a dish made by cutting various meats and vegetables into shreds and stir-frying them together.

It is no longer possible to find out when and where this dish originated, but it can be believed to be a product of the California Gold Rush era. The chefs who cooked for the coolies at that time did not require very high-quality craftsmanship, and the "miscellaneous" also reflects the professional level of these chefs.

As for how he got involved with Li Hongzhang, it was because of the visit of Mr. Li in 1869 that he was sought after by the American press, so some Chinese hotels changed their dishes to gain popularity. The "Li Hongzhang Miscellaneous" sold in Shanghai Building in the early 20th century can be said to be famous throughout San Francisco Chinatown.

Welbey opened the store with a briefcase, and a front desk wearing a Western-style waiter suit came forward.

"Good morning, sir, do you need help?" The front desk waiter bowed slightly.

"Good morning, I've made an appointment to meet here." Verbey looked around the lobby, then whispered: "The Triad is super awesome."

"Wait a minute, sir, what did you say just now?" The waiter was stunned and looked at the foreigner in front of him with a puzzled look on his face.

"The Triad is super... great?" Welbe was a little embarrassed. Could it be that there was something wrong with his pronunciation?

"Ah, sorry, the triad is super great. I thought I had heard it wrongly, please follow me, sir, Mr. Zhang has arrived long ago." After saying that, the waiter turned around and shouted a few Cantonese dialects to the other two companions standing by the front desk, and then diligently led Welbe towards the stairs on one side.

The overall decoration style of the hotel is close to the United States, but it reveals a Chinese style in all details. To put it bluntly, it is a combination of Chinese and Western style. The entire front building on the second floor has been opened, leaving only a few load-bearing columns in the middle, and the rear of the floor has been separated into several private rooms. At this time, the morning tea time has ended and lunch time has not yet begun, so there is no guest on the entire second floor.

There were more than ten dining tables in the hall, with small table lamps with painted glass lampshades on the table, and small glass bottles containing various seasonings. The ceiling was divided into small squares with wooden strips, and some painted patterns were drawn with paint. Before Welbe could tell what was actually painting, he was taken to the door of one of the private rooms by the waiter.

"Mr. Zhang is waiting for you inside." After saying that, the waiter raised his hand and knocked on the door of the private room with a special rhythm.

The door was opened immediately. The one who opened the door was a strong Chinese man in a black suit. He was definitely over 1.8 meters tall, almost half a head taller than Verbe.

The strong man looked at Welbe first, then winked at the waiter, who nodded understandingly.

"You are late, Mr. Spear." The strong man took a step back and gave way out of the door.

Welbe did not answer, but looked up at the Asian man with a strong aura all over his body. He believed that this was just a thug or bodyguard, a small character who was bluffing.

The private room is not large in area, and it is about ten or twenty square meters. There is a round table in the middle, with white linen tablecloths on it. There are several Taishi chairs and wooden frames with colorful porcelain vases around the room. There are several Chinese landscape paintings hanging on the board walls with light blue wallpaper. The white porcelain chandeliers hanging from the ceiling sprinkled with orange and yellow light in the room.

In addition to the abnormally developed bodyguard, there were three Chinese men in the room.

One was a young man in his twenties who looked the second bodyguard. He was wearing a black Chinese jacket with buckles, with a moon-white shirt open and a black belt around his waist that was as wide as an adult's palm. The young man stood behind his back, standing erect like a javelin in the corner of the room.

The other two were sitting at the round table, both in their thirties and forties. Welbe could only tell the status of the two people from their clothes.

The one on the right hand should be the subordinate. His thin face was wearing a pair of round-frame glasses, his hair was covered with wax, and he was wearing a blue-gray long gown, which was the Tang suit mentioned by the Chinese.

The man on the left side looked much more grand. His appearance was not outstanding in Welbe. He also had an ordinary round face, but the shrewdness and strength revealed from those not-so-big eyes will naturally make people feel a special majesty.

He also had a fashionable split head, but was not waxed. He was wearing a three-piece gray suit. Although the style was a bit outdated, the materials and handicrafts were definitely not ordinary. The front was open, and the golden bracelet at the vest pocket of the suit was extremely conspicuous under the orange and yellow light.

It can be seen that before Verbe arrived, people in the room were drinking tea and chatting, and two square Chinese teapots and colored porcelain tea cups were placed on the table.

Seeing Welbe walking towards the round table, the two men also stood up.

"Sorry, I'm late. I'm in a traffic jam on the way. I'm Spear. I don't know which of you is Mr. Zhang." Spear put his briefcase by the table, took off his top hat and asked, with a warm smile on his face.

"It's okay, lucky, I'm Zhang Weixin." The man in the suit smiled heartily and stretched out his right hand to Verbe.

"Happy, Mr. Zhang." Welbe held the other party's hand and shook it hard.

"This is my secretary, Chen Donglai."

"Happy, Mr. Spear." Chen Donglai picked up a folding fan from the table with one hand and reached out to Verbe with the other hand.

"Good luck, Mr. Chen." Welbe also smiled and shook hands with the other party.

"Please sit, Mr. Spear." Zhang Weixin motioned to Welbe to sit next to him.

"Do you like tea or coffee?" Zhang Weixin asked.

"Coffee, thank you." Weirbet placed his hat by the table.

"Ask them to bring a pot of coffee and then ask them to prepare some snacks." Zhang Weixin instructed the strong man at the door in Chinese.

"Okay, big guy." The strong man agreed and turned around and opened the door.

"San Francisco is a good place. Everyone wants to get rich here. With more people, there will be more cars." Zhang Weixin opened the silver cigarette box with ivory inlaid and handed it to Verbe.

"Thank you, this is my first time in San Francisco. I thought that only New York would be blocked like that, but I didn't expect it..." Welbe took out a cigarette from the cigarette box, then put it on Zhang Weixin's lighter and lit the cigarette.

"If you get used to some things, you won't feel anything." Zhang Weixin lit the cigarette roll on his mouth, and then closed the lighter's buckle cover in a fancy way.

"What you said makes sense, Mr. Zhang."

"You can call me Vincent, this is my English name." Zhang Weixin said with a smile.

"Okay Vincent, you can call me Tony, relative." Welbe showed the other party a standard commercial smile.

"I like you very much, Tony, we are friends now." Zhang Weixin patted Welbe's arm.

"Of course, we are already friends." Verbe replied happily.

The two of them smiled at each other for a long time. Zhang Weixin suddenly put away his smile and asked with a serious look on his face: "Okay, friend, please tell me now, what do you want from me."
Chapter completed!