Father Jun (died 1878) was a Chinese-American crime boss and the leader of the Hop Wei Tong until 1878, preceding Young Jun.
Biography[]
Father Jun was born in Qing China, and he served in the Qing army during the First Opium War; at the Battle of Shanghai in 1842, he was said to have boarded a British Royal Navy vessel and dashed its crew to pieces with a sword. He later crossed the "salt" (the Pacific) to America as a young man, as did Long Zii, and he became the head of the Hop Wei Tong in San Francisco's Chinatown. He personally skinned his son Young Jun into his tong, and he also recruited the prize fighter Bolo into his organization. In 1878, he recruited the disrespectful new arrival Ah Sahm into the tong, and he had Ah Sahm paddled as punishment for his arrest by the SFPD for fighting off two belligerent Irishmen. That same year, Father Jun was nearly assassinated in a Fung Hai Tong bombing, resulting in a war with Fung Hai and the Long Zii Tong. Ah Sahm secretly thwarted Bolo's mission to kill his (unbeknownst to the tong) sister Mai Ling, but Long Zii was killed. Father Jun continued the war with the Long Zii Tong after Mai Ling took over, as she refused to continue their opium treaty. After Ah Sahm was defeated in a duel with Long Zii's Li Yong, Father Jun was forced to allow the Long Zii into the molasses trade. Father Jun gave Mai Ling a zone for opium dealing but warned her against taking even a single step out of line.Father Jun was intent on keeping the peace, bringing in new shipments of recruits; however, he distrusted his son for his association with Ah Sahm, and he later decided to expel both of them from the tong for engaging in illicit dealings behind his back. Young Jun responded by rallying the Hop Wei hatchet men against his father, arguing that his old ways would be the end of the tong, and Father Jun was forced to retire. After the Workingmen devastated Chinatown in a race riot, Father Jun decided to return to China while asking Wang Chao to keep an eye on Young Jun.
Father Jun instead came across Chinese ranchers in northern California and decided to stay a bit, only to see a white mob destroy their homes; he was then taken back to San Francisco in a wagon. Father Jun was interned at a deportation center, where he reunited with his son and lamented that the Chinese had no power outside Chinatown. He and his son were later released from prison when Clyde Nichols presented the authorities with a release order, and Father Jun became an advisor to his son, helping him rob a German gang and being wounded in the process. While recovering in Chinatown, he began to have flashbacks about the Opium Wars and deliriously wandered into Long Zii turf, looking for a fight; however, the Long Zii hatchet-men instead laughed the sickly old man down. Father Jun later nearly killed his son in his bed after deliriously viewing him as a threat, and it was eventually determined by a doctor that Father Jun was suffering from blood poisoning. Father Jun asked his son to put him out of his misery, and Young Jun reluctantly stabbed his father in the neck with a knife.
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