But seriously, there’s a documentary in the works on the Count http://thesearchforcountdante.com/

To paraphrase Stephen Colbert- “Any book is deadly if you throw it hard enough.”

Originally founded as secret organizations to fight the Qing dynasty they became the basis of many criminal enterprises in old China. In the US the Tongs were Chinese corporations whose membership was based on kinship and region of origin in China. The preferred weapon of the Tongs was the hatchet, and like a certain organization whose members’ name mostly end in vowels, their usual victims were other members of the same underworld.
Originally five there are now four Tongs in San Francisco due to the Tong Wars of the late 19th century. Tongs were tolerated by the white establishment as a way of keeping order in the Chinese community and maintaining their cultural isolation