"Riotous color." That was the manager's standing impression when he glanced up at the neon sign and the decorative bulbs of the restaurant.
圣日 火锅 เซิ่งยื่อ หั่วกัว
The Shèng Rì Huǒ Guō sign—a sprawl of large Chinese characters—blazed in red, orange, green, pink, and blue LED. A smaller set of Thai script was tacked above the Chinese—a necessary cheap trick, he knew, to cut the annual sign tax imposed by local statute.
He hated the local script. His customers came almost entirely from the mainland, bused straight from their hotels in organized tour groups. He seldom saw a local face in the room.
Two years and two months, or close enough, since Liu Gang (劉 刚) arrived to manage this specific branch in Thailand.
The forty-year-old man had crossed the sea, leaving his wife and kindergarten-aged son behind in Nanjing. This separation felt like a small freedom, assuming he didn't count the constant ritual of reporting the shop's operations back to the owner, Boss Deng (鄧). Yet, as manager, Liu commanded everything within the shop's four walls. He possessed his own territory and a measure of independence.
The "Shèng Rì Huǒ Guō" (Holy Day Hot Pot) was originally a famous shop operating in the suburbs of Nanjing for over forty years, passed down from one generation to the next. But ten years ago, a wealthy Hangzhou investor bought the business, immediately pivoting it into a franchise operation. The investor began selling the original recipes and operating system to others, splitting the revenue. The venture proved moderately successful.
The big boss employing Liu Gang was Deng Liangcai (鄧 良才), an obese, dark-skinned investor from Kaifeng. His physical features earned him the nickname "New Millennium Bao Zheng" or simply "Bao Zheng Deng."
Mr. Deng had purchased a license for the hot pot franchise, marketed under the brand "Héng Rì Huǒ Guō" (owned by the aforementioned Hangzhou tycoon), with the intention of opening international branches. Thailand became one of the key investment targets for the Chinese investor Deng, specifically aiming to capture the market of Chinese tourists visiting the country. Deng's plan was comprehensive—he thought complexly, managing the flow of capital from source to endpoint, all to maximize his personal profit.
First, he ran a "grey business," maintaining several legally questionable operations. He used his restaurants and various overseas ventures to funnel and launder dirty money, pocketing it clean upon its return. Second, he planned for a complete monopoly. He established a tour company and acquired old buildings across Thailand, renovating them into dedicated hotels. He then packaged entire trips, ensuring the Chinese tourists ate and lodged exclusively within his network of affiliated restaurants and hotels. Virtually no money escaped his grasp.
Every single employee was Chinese, recruited and shipped straight from the mainland by the boss. Most ingredients and flavorings were also hauled in from China. The formula was simple: Chinese serving Chinese, feeding Chinese tourists, ensuring the fat Chinese boss kept every single yuan in the circuit. This was the business model Thais called the "Zero Dollar Tour."
The operation might be grey, but the food was authentic. The hot pot offered several dipping broths: the red chili-oil spicy broth, a clear, white-pepper broth that burned clean and fragrant, a mellow golden broth, and the restaurant's basic stock, simmered chicken and meat.
The raw ingredients piled high. They offered beef, pork, lamb, chicken (even the prized yellow-skin chicken), seafood, freshwater fish, squid, shrimp, and several varieties of meatballs and clams (scallops and sweet clams included). The vegetables came green and crisp: napa cabbage, lettuce, morning glory, kale, and various mushrooms. They stocked organs meant to build stamina and pleasure: duck intestine, duck liver, pork heart, and pork lung.
The business offered two service structures. The first was the all-you-can-eat buffet (charged per head, half price for children under eight). The second was à la carte (customers paid for what they ordered). The buffet was favored, allowing diners to gorge themselves, though the elderly, who ate light and slow, typically chose à la carte.
The Thailand branch added one unique item: a vegetarian hot pot served during the local "Kin Jae" festival. This was designed to lure mainland tourists—most of whom had never heard of the festival—to sample a meatless broth.
Liu Gang often found this hilarious. Here, locals firmly believed the vegetarian festival was Chinese, but in mainland China, no such festival existed.
This particular vegetarian observance—the Kin Jae festival—was an overseas Chinese custom, entirely unknown in the mainland. It became a distinct selling point, successfully drawing mainland Chinese tourists to experience this aspect of overseas Chinese culture.
The vegetarian hot pot offered two broths: one clear, made from mushrooms and vegetables; the second thick, based on soy milk, creamy white, sweet, and mellow in flavor. This was served with mixed greens, assorted tofu, and faux meats. The dipping sauce was a black sesame recipe—sweet, salty, and fragrant—to which chili oil could be added for heat. Liu Gang conceded the flavor was excellent, despite his intense personal dislike for the head chef who created the recipe.
The Head Chef, Wang Dong (王冬), was fat and enormous, pale-skinned with squinty eyes, and known for his arrogant, loud, and bombastic manner. His culinary skill, however, was undeniable. Liu Gang easily admitted this, as he himself had previously worked as a cook at the original Shèng Rì Huǒ Guō in the suburbs of Nanjing.
Boss Deng had unexpectedly promoted Liu Gang, giving him the manager position at this Thai branch, a status superior to Chef Wang, who had arrived with him. Chef Wang found this difficult to accept. This friction meant the two men disliked each other and avoided conversation unless absolutely necessary.
The restaurant employed fourteen people in total: the manager, cashiers, servers, cooks, and dishwashers. It was a reasonably large operation. Among this staff, only one person, Chat Chai, was Thai; all others were from the Chinese mainland.
The stocky, dark-skinned 30-year-old Thai man spoke Chinese fluently. He'd been an exchange student at Tianhe University in Guangzhou, but gambling dragged him under until he dropped out. Eventually, he was sucked into Boss Deng's transnational online gambling enterprise.
At first, he was only a debtor who couldn't pay—threatened and beaten raw. But his education made him useful. He started as a shill, tasked with luring other Thais into the operation online.
Later, when Boss Deng began building his network—using legitimate businesses as fronts for money laundering and generating revenue—the Thai man was relocated. Finally, he was selected for the hot pot branch in Thailand. His new duties involved buying supplies, managing the local books, and handling communications with Thai personnel and agencies. He was effectively designated as the "Nominee" (Nominee), a necessary legal shell to smoothly establish the business in the country.
Liu Gang liked the Thai man well enough—except when money was involved. You couldn't trust an inveterate gambler. Because he was the only local staff, Liu relied on him heavily, but he had to meticulously monitor the cash flow, scrutinizing every detail repeatedly to prevent theft or loss. This vigilance exhausted Liu. Beyond financial matters, however, the Thai man was entirely dependable.
Business was decent tonight. Two large buses full of tour groups—from Wuhan and Changsha—had arrived in quick succession, bringing dozens of customers. The restaurant hummed. Six servers hustled across the floor, rushing to deliver orders, pour tea, replenish broth, and refill dipping sauce—a riot of urgent necessities
. They were exhausted, but the smiles were still fixed for the customers. This, in particular, was Liu Gang's pride.
Especially the young man, Guo Xiu (25). He had a clean, smooth face, one always fixed in a bright smile, suggesting a genuine love for service—a pleasure in chatting with the guests, and an energetic disposition. But there was a persistent rumor: Guo Xiu's real motive was to secretly push drugs on the tourists. He'd signed up for the Thailand branch to dodge a case back in Tianjin, having worked here only five or six weeks. However, it was just talk
. Unsubstantiated gossip. Liu Gang was too lazy to chase the evidence, so he let it ride.
A few employees had picked up the scent, but most played dumb, except for Hu Tingting (29, a plump server). She had a quiet crush on Guo Xiu
. If the rumors were true, she was probably running cover for him
. Some nights, after closing, the two of them disappeared together until morning, skipping the employee barracks entirely. Since couples leaving together wasn't a shop rule, Liu Gang didn't care—unless the woman in question was Lin Ling (32), the cashier. She was single, beautiful, and hailed from Shenzhen.
Liu Gang had been aggressively pursuing her, but she refused to play along, citing his marital status
. Liu Gang believed that proximity would eventually create an opportunity. But hitting on Lin Ling during business hours was tough, because Ma Shuzhen (24), another cashier, was constantly running interference at the counter. Ma Shuzhen was fresh from the mainland, looking for overseas experience. She was the single largest obstacle to Liu Gang's daytime access to Lin Ling.
As the manager, he had to keep up appearances and maintain his image. Besides, the young Ma woman wasn't bad-looking
. If Lin Ling kept up the rejection, Ma Shuzhen was a perfectly acceptable backup. Therefore, causing no friction was the best policy for now.
In Liu Gang's eyes, the most exhausted server tonight was likely Zhou Xinyi (24, "Round Face"). She was a young woman who first came to Thailand for university studies, then applied to work directly at the shop after graduating. She had often claimed she preferred staying in Thailand; she was not yet ready to return to China.
'She must be having a blast tonight,' Liu Gang thought, hiding a laugh.
The exhaustion came because she managed a single table with one demanding mother-and-son pair—they asked for this, changed that, constantly making requests. Liu Gang considered this a blessing: as manager, he avoided dealing with such chaotic customers himself. Spoiling the kid like that was disgusting. It was no shock the son was demanding, since his mother led the show. The task required Xinyi to attend to constant demands—the saying went, 'The kid asks for three; the mother demands five.' It was chaos.
Zhou was bright, cheerful, and diligent, but Liu Gang hated one habit: she was addicted to her phone. If she had a free second, she checked it. She even snuck quick taps on the screen while facing that demanding mother and son. Liu Gang considered warning her but never found the moment. He let it go because it never seemed to hurt her work; the young woman was quick-fingered, tapping and hiding the phone in a flash.
Time ticked past until nine o'clock, and then something strange happened. A single elderly man, perhaps seventy years old, walked into the restaurant alone. This was genuinely odd. Normally, the only customers were tour groups funneled in by Boss Deng's network. A customer walking in off the street was rare, bordering on the astonishing.