August 22 belongs, in the historical record, largely to one figure: Du Yuesheng, the Shanghai crime lord known as "Big-Eared Du," born in 1888. Rising from poverty to command the Green Gang — one of the most powerful criminal organizations in early twentieth-century China — Du wielded influence that extended far beyond the underworld, entangling politicians, warlords, and foreign powers alike. His role in the 1927 Shanghai Massacre, in which labor organizers and Communist Party members were systematically killed with the complicity of Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist forces, secured his place not merely as a mobster but as a figure of genuine political consequence. His life traces the intersection of organized crime, nationalism, and colonial-era Shanghai at its most volatile.