
Li, the Chinese character for the world's most common surname.
Olo Lee the father of Miss Lee organised the Three Islands pirates into a protection racket. He said that they were not to attack each other, and were not to take English prisoners to avoid visits by (presumably British) gunboats.
As a little boy Lee served on a Foochow junk, and was captured by the Old Taicoon of Dragon Island. He hit the Taicoon, so one of the men went to throw him overboard, but the Taicoon said he was a good boy, and kept him to see if he would be ransomed. But he had lost his family when the junk went down; he remembered only that his father was a mandarin with a peacock feather and gold button.
As the Taicoon had no sons Lee grew up in his house. When he died the Dragon Island men made Lee their Taicoon. He organised a meeting with the Taicoons of Tiger and Turtle Islands; they met on the small Temple island as they did not want to meet on someone else’s junk or island. Thus they stopped the “worst tlouble” which was fighting between the islands, and also avoided trouble with gunboats by never taking English prisoners. This was a long time ago” before the Revolution, when there was the old Empress in Pekin(ML13).
Before Lee died he called his daughter Miss Lee home, and at a meeting of the Three Islands Council they all agreed to obey Miss Lee as they had obeyed her father. He was buried on the small Temple Island (ML13).
Friends just call me Olo?[]
Olo is the English word old pronounced with a heavy Chinese accent; it is not Lee's first name. It is probably used as translation of the Chinese honorific Lao, "old", used by Chinese people as a mark of respect rather like the English word senior. Taicoon Wu uses the word olo occasionallyref req .