My Ranch Chapter 55

Chapter 55: Chinatown

Translated by me, edited by Kai.

“*Sighh”, finally full!” Jiang Hai smiled as he patted his bloated stomach. Having thrown the garbage in his hands into the roadside trash cans, he finally stopped and checked out his surroundings.

There are lots of Chinese people in America. Especially so for Boston; which is home to some of America’s highest educational establishments. After all, education is pretty much everything to most Chinese people. Compared to the flouris.h.i.+ng but chaotic New York, the university city of Boston is highly favoured amongst most Chinese people. Here, no matter if it’s schools, streets, restaurants, malls, parks, supermarkets, subways and so on, you can find traces of Chinese residency. Furthermore, the gathering spots of Chinese people in foreign cities are all called chinatown.

Statistics say, the cleanest and most organized chinatown in America is in Boston. This chinatown also incorporates many chinese influences. For example, the entrance of Boston’s chinatown is marked with the large sign “Land under heaven for all” (天下为公).

Chinese immigrants can be mainly separated into 2 groups, the mainlanders and everyone else. In particular, people from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. While most mainlanders prefer the west coast, the early settlers of the east coast were immigrants from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Hence the rich Hong Kong influences here. Just from one glance, almost everyone here are chinese and all the signs here use traditional chinese characters.

Compared to the rumored Chinatown in New York or elsewhere, the Chinatown here is conspicuously more peaceful. Occasionally, you can also find foreigners around, but most of them are all white. Of course this isn’t always true, but it’s close to it.

In this world, there is no way to tell whether someone is good or evil. You also can’t say a particular race as a whole is evil from the time they are born to the time they die. Since this is impossible. In this world, there isn’t many strictly black and white situations. Most of the time, it’s stuck in the middle, all grayed out.

As Jiang Hai roamed the streets, his eyes wandered. The first impression that China gives people is they have food, lots of good food. Hence, in Chinatown restaurants are everywhere. There are those that specialize in seafood, fast food, tea shops, and those that specialize in Hong Kong specialties. Apart from these, there are also cuisine from other provinces as well. For example, hot pot shops and all kinds of stir-fried dishes are a common sight here.

All in all, this is heaven for the gluttonous.

Apart from restaurants, the second most common store here clearly defied Jiang Hai’s expectations. According to Jiang Hai’s train of thoughts, Chinatown is most famous for their food, so there must be lots of markets and such to support the restaurants. But nope; although there are lots of supermarkets around, but there is another kind of shop that outnumbers them. These shops are nearly non-existent in China, but are all over the place here. These kinds of shops are called martial arts studios.

Yup, teaching others martial arts. Although it isn’t clear how much of an interest Americans have for asian martial arts, but from the sight on the streets alone, it’s a lot. Taichi, Bachi, Bagua, Hongquan, Yixing, Tantui, ……

All those that Jiang Hai has heard of, those that he hasn’t heard off, are pretty much all here. If we’re talking about the oldest martial arts studio established here, then it has to be Jeet Kun Do. This is the style of martial arts pa.s.sed down by Bruce Lee. He used Wing Chun as the base and combined all kinds of other types of martial arts to create his own style. Obviously, this is very popular in America, although it can’t compare to the fully developed Taekwondo, Judo, Aikido and other foreign styles, but it’s reaches are still far and wide. Jiang Hai personally saw many kids practising intensely in these studios. This not only raised his curiosity, but also made him remember the fight yesterday.

Currently Jiang Hai’s body is, simply put, overpowered. Yesterday, in the 1 VS 11 brawl, he only suffered minor injuries. But those guys clearly suffered some grave injuries. From what he heard today, although none of those guys died, but they at least need to lie down for several months before they can move again. With conclusive evidence, their sentences are pretty much set. All there is to do now is figure out what kind of crimes can be placed on them. According to Moses, murder is impossible, but looting and deliberate kidnapping is definitely set in stone. Just from these two alone, their sentencing will at least be 5 years.

Towards this sentencing, Jiang Hai is unhappy about how light it is, but there isn’t much he can do about it. However, when thinking about the rumors of the American prison system, these guys can pretty much say goodbye to their b.u.t.ts. Thinking up to here Jiang Hai’s att.i.tude lighted, but when he took a look at these studios again, he is again reminded of the brawl yesterday.

Although his body is extremely strong, but he has no combat experience or sequences of movements to follow. From the looks of things, he really needed to take a few lessons. Of course, Jiang Hai won’t be learning from here because these are pretty much all just for show, no real combat use. He may as well learn at home.

Don’t forget, he has an ex-Delta team operative, Bell Lester, as one of his workers. Although he specializes in sniper rifles, basic hand to hand combat skills should’ve been drilled into him from the very start. Having thought up to here, Jiang Hai put this at the back of his mind and continued on with his exploration of chinatown.

Traveling is pretty much like this. Stopping everywhere to take pictures of the surroundings, having a taste of the street foods around and so on. Although Jiang Hai is alone, but the stroll still made him happy. Not knowingly, he has already exited this not so big of a region. At this moment, he got a call from Edward saying the boats are almost ready. When they are done water testing and it pa.s.ses, then they can haul them home.

Having answered the call, Jiang Hai’s first trip in Boston comes to an end. Following the directions in memory, he pa.s.sed Little Italy, pa.s.sed the harbour and entered the s.h.i.+pyard. Sure enough, when he arrived, the 3 boats are already in the waters all being tested. Seeing the sword like boats cutting through the waves, Jiang Hai is anxious to give it a try. Boats are pretty easy to operate. If you can drive a car then you pretty much can operate a boat. The only thing you need to pay attention to is that you need a special boating license to operate them in open seas. However, Jiang Hai is only using them in his estate, so no one really cares. After all, that stretch of sea is privately owned by him. Even if he drove a tank around in the estate, no one can say anything about it.

“Boss, wanna give her a spin?” Edward happily asked as he piloted the boat back.

“Yes!” Jiang Hai answered. Then with a hop, jumped onto the boat. This jump nearly scared everyone s.h.i.+tless, this even included Edward. Originally he wanted to dock the boat first before having Jiang Hai board, but who would’ve thought that he would directly jump on board.

“Errr, boss, that was just too dangerous.” Feeling the shake subside, Edward stared speechlessly at Jiang Hai. Because what he just did, is truly dangerous.

“Oh, got it, I’ll be slower next time. Hehe alright, let’s go for a spin. I want to see how fast these beauties can go.” Having centered his center of gravity, Jiang Hai lightly stated. He was really careless back there because this boat is on water, so it isn’t as steady as it looks. Having heard Edward’s retort, Jiang Hai brushed it off and quickly changed the question. Since he really wanted to know how fast they can go.

Having received the command for full throttle ahead, Edward happily complied. With the engines on full throttle, the boat shot off like a bullet towards the sea. Feeling the sea breeze, Jiang Hai can’t help but let out a yell. This is just simply amazing!

Having played around for more than an hour, and having personally tested all three boats, Jiang Hai is finally satisfied. Then Having rented a couple trailers from the s.h.i.+pyard, Jiang Hai and Edward drove their car and hauled them back to the estate.

To be fair, the 3 boats together didn’t really weigh much, as the F750 can still pull them. But since Jiang Hai didn’t prepare his own trailers when he came so he only had a back hook. Hence he can only have the s.h.i.+pyard help him transfer the boats. In the face of Jiang Hai’s million dollar order, Dalton happily wavered the fees, but the service fees for the drive would’ve been whatever to Jiang Hai.

Having hauled the boats back, Jiang Hai and everyone busied themselves again. The cow shed side is left to Burke and Philemon, while everyone else helped out with the getting the boats into the water. The original dock here has already been in service for a decade, but it’s still very stable, at least there is no need worry about it for the next couple of years.

While docking the boats in the already built dock, the sun had started to set. Jiang Hai then gave each driver a $200 tip and waved them out. At this point, Jiang Hai is hungry to point of collapsing. Fortunately, Mrs.Turner has already prepared tonight’s dinner. So Jiang Hai went to Philemon’s house to get he share of goodies and went back to that giant bed of his.

Opening the notebook on the bedside cabinet, it records mainly two things. One of them is the development strategy he and Robins iron out at the very beginning. Hiring workers, buying cars, cows, horses, boats, …… these major expenses has already been checked off, marking them as completed. The only thing left now is to buy fish. However, according to Edward, it’s already too late to release them. So this can only be left for next year. Furthermore, Jiang Hai also doesn’t have much money left to buy them. The other part of this notebook keeps track of all his expenses. Seeing the line upon line of numbers, Jiang Hai can’t help but feel his head hurting.