For the character in Grand Theft Auto Online, see Huang.
Huang Lee (李皇, Lǐ Huáng) is a character appearing as the protagonist of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars.
Prior to his physical debut, he was briefly mentioned in Grand Theft Auto IV.
History[]
Background[]
Huang is the spoiled son of a Triad leader who, for most his life, never had to solve any problem himself, his fortune always getting him out of trouble. However, when his father is murdered for mysterious reasons, Huang travels to Liberty City to deliver the Yu Jian Sword, a family heirloom, to the family's new patriarch, Huang's uncle Wu "Kenny" Lee. Upon arrival, Huang is attacked by unknown assailants who steal Yu Jian and leave him for dead. Thus begins Huang's quest to find those responsible for Yu Jian's theft and his father's murder, which leads him to become heavily involved with the Liberty City underworld as he works for various prominent crime figures in exchange for answers.
Huang Lee was born in Hong Kong, China in 1983. He owes his status as a Triad member to his father, a Triad boss from China, though Huang himself had very little interest in this type of life prior to his arrival in America. Instead, he was more focused on spending his father's money and getting into other types of trouble, never having to work a day in his life due to his family's fortune and reputation. As such, Huang quickly earned a reputation as a spoiled, rich kid.
However, Huang's life completely changed after his father was murdered in 2009. Before he could even fully digest the reality of the situation, Huang was invited by his uncle, Wu "Kenny" Lee, to Liberty City, to help deliver a family 'heirloom', the Yu Jian Sword, and secure the family's claim to the leadership of the Liberty City Triads.
According to Huang, he has in fact, visited Liberty City at least once before 2009, but during his previous visit, he caught crabs after an encounter with a Swiss tourist. This likely happened in 2002 or 2005, as Huang's LCPD Database record in Grand Theft Auto IV states that he has been arrested in these two years.
Events of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars[]
Main article: War in Chinatown
The story of GTA Chinatown Wars begins with Huang's arrival in Liberty City to complete his assignment from Kenny. However, what was supposed to be a simple delivery job turns into a dangerous adventure after Huang's escort is killed and he is shot by assailants waiting for them at Francis International Airport. The assailants steal Yu Jian and, believing Huang to be dead, dump his body in the water. Huang manages to survive and finds his way to Kenny's restaurant. Kenny explains he wanted to give Yu Jian to Hsin Jaoming, the aging leader of the Liberty City Triads, but has been dishonored by the sword's loss, leaving Huang and Kenny to work to keep their business afloat.
Huang begins to make several criminal contacts in Liberty City, such as Ling Shan, one of Kenny's employees, who is tragically killed by a rival gang; Zhou Ming, a high-ranking Triad boss also eyeing the position of Hsin's successor; and Chan Jaoming, Hsin's incompetent son and the first in the line of succession. Huang begins working for both Zhou and Chan, but during a job for the latter, he is intercepted by Wade Heston, a corrupt LCPD Detective under pressure from internal affairs. Heston proposes an alliance, since he needs a 'big bust' to get internal affairs off his tail, and he and Huang begin working together to find Yu Jian's thief. Heston suspects the Koreans to be behind the theft and has Huang investigate them. Eventually, Huang creates a distraction to allow Heston to bug the Koreans' headquarters, whereupon the pair learn of a splinter group within the gang called Wonsu Nodong. They conclude that the Wonsu leader is behind Yu Jian's theft and has also been causing problems for the Triads with the help of a police informant.
Meanwhile, Hsin contacts Huang, concerned about the news of a traitor within his syndicate, and has him investigate this mole. However, Hsin soon grows frustrated with Huang's slow progress and eventually comes to suspect that Huang himself is the traitor. He then tries to kill Huang, but Kenny comes to his nephew's rescue and convinces Hsin to give Huang more time to find the real traitor. Hsin then orders Huang to follow two leads: the Koreans and the Angels of Death. Huang contacts Lester Leroc, an informant among the Angels, and continues his own investigation of the Koreans. During his search, Huang is thrown off course by Rudy D'Avanzo, a Triad-hating mobster who lies to him that the mole works for the Messina Crime Family. Hsin exposes his lies, and Huang kills D'Avanzo as a result.
When the Koreans and the Angels of Death are both proven innocent, Huang takes a new course in the investigation and helps Heston with several jobs for his FIB contact, who offered to help them identify the informant. After most of their work proves fruitless, Huang decides to hack into the FIB servers while Heston is forced to back down due to pressure from internal affairs. The data Huang recovers from the FIB servers names both Zhou Ming and Chan Jaoming as police informants and traitors to the Triad cause. After talking with Kenny about what to do with this information, Huang presents it to Hsin, who is disgraced by the possibility of his son being betraying the Triads and steps down as leader, appointing Kenny as his successor. Kenny then orders Huang to kill Zhou and Chan, which he accomplishes, despite both denying their guilt.
Heston later calls Huang and says that the information Huang uncovered was fake, and that the Wonsu leader is having a meeting with his allies, which they infiltrate. Huang is shocked to find Kenny, who confesses to being the Wonsu leader and the mole, but before he can reveal more, the police bust the meeting. Kenny tries to make an escape but Huang and Heston chase him across town, eventually cornering him at Hsin's penthouse. There, Kenny admits that he killed Huang's father, his own brother, in order to secure Yu Jian for Hsin, who promised to give him a position right under Chan in return. However, Kenny later realized that Hsin would have never kept his promise and, wanting to become the next Triad boss, arranged Yu Jian's theft to disgrace Hsin and subsequently worked from the shadows to undermine him, all the while framing Chan and Zhou to cover his tracks.
After a final confrontation between Hsin and Kenny, Hsin demands that he hand over Yu Jian. Kenny ironically responds by stabbing Hsin with the sword, right before Huang kills him, avenging his father at last. The police then arrive at the penthouse and attempt to arrest everyone, but Heston claims he was in deep undercover the entire time and orders that Huang be left alone since he is a 'good kid'. Before going to the hospital, Hsin praises Huang for his loyalty and offers to name him his true successor as the Triad boss, to which Huang has no immediate answer.
Huang is later contacted by one of Kenny's associates, Xin, who instructs Huang to steal a Rhino to distract the police from a planned robbery. However, the cops ambush Xin; Huang attempts to take him to safety, but he succumbs to his injuries. Before his death, he makes the revelation that he is the brother of Ling Shan, the girl he met shortly after arriving in the city. Huang mourns for both of them.
Character[]
Personality[]
Throughout the course of the game, Huang appears to be very cocky and quick-witted. He is portrayed to be much more intelligent than other characters in the game who seem to be oblivious to Huang's constant mocking and sarcastic remarks.
Huang does not value honor and tradition in the same vein as his Uncle, claiming that "this is 2009 and not 1403". However, he is very loyal to his family and his gang, following their orders with little hesitation, even to the point he'd murder other Triads. Huang acknowledges that he is a "pampered little snot" in the opening cutscene, and he reveals that he has visited Liberty City before where he "caught crabs off a Swiss tourist".
He seems to dislike most of the characters he gets missions from, but he shows the occasional respect for his Uncle Wu "Kenny" Lee (before finding out that Wu killed his father). Even after Chan and Zhou are revealed to have not been traitors, Huang never shows any remorse for killing them (especially given the fact that Chan often annoyed Huang).
Appearance[]
Huang is a young adult of visible Asian heritage. He has a somewhat lighter than average skin-tone, and short, medium-brown hair. He has facial hair in the form of some hard-to-spot chin stubble and a soul patch beneath his lower lip. He almost always carries an expression of bored indifference, only showing significant emotion during very few cutscenes in the game, as well as a harsher, angrier expression in the game's official artworks.
His attire remains consistent throughout the game, likely due to the top-down view making character customization rather pointless. He wears a green overcoat overtop of a red button-up tee, which is worn over top of a plain white tee-shirt. His red shirt is always open in-game, and he wears his collar up, leading to the misconception that the red shirt is actually the inner lining of the overcoat. It is seen buttoned up only in the official artworks. Additionally, Huang wears blue jeans, which aren't significantly visible, if at all, in any of the game's cutscenes, and lastly, artworks depict him as wearing two different kinds of shoes: a pair of green-and-white high-top sneakers, and a pair of brown boots, which may simply be an unintentional inconsistency on the artist's part.
Another noteworthy physical characteristic about Huang is his athleticism. He is adept in martial arts and other athletic maneuvers, such as rolling, and can vault over ledges much quicker than other HD Universe protagonists. Huang can outrun virtually every vehicle in the game, and he is also capable of knocking down street poles and destroying cars with punches alone; all three of these are things none of the other HD Universe protagonists can do.
Name[]
The correct pronunciation for the name Huang is Hoo-ang. People mistakenly pronounce the name Hoo-ong, which is incorrect. Huang translates to yellow if written 黃, but can be translated to anything that uses the same pronunciation.
Another area of confusion is the mixed use of Mandarin and Cantonese spellings in his name. Huang Lee hails from Hong Kong, where the Cantonese dialect is more commonly used, but "Huáng" (黃) is written in a Romanized Mandarin spelling when "Wong" should be used. This also happens with his surname as "Lee", and in extension the more commonly in pinyin spelling, "Lǐ", are pronunciations in Mandarin, whereas the correct Romanized writing should be "Lei". This means Huang Lee's name may also been purely referred -in Chinese name order- to as "Lei Wong" in Cantonese and "Lǐ Huáng" in Mandarin. His early background in Hong Kong remains largely unexplained. In some Chinese-language websites Huang Lee's given name is written 皇, which has the same Mandarin pronunciation as 黃 (huáng), but here it means "royal", "regal", "emperor" and commonly used in ways associated with royalty.
Murders Committed by Huang Lee[]
| Victim | Mission Killed | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Minigun Wonsu Assassin | Street of Rage | Murdered in order to save Wade Heston. |
| Rudy D'Avanzo | A Rude Awakening | Murdered for lying to him and using him for his own goals. |
| Chan Jaoming | Clear the Pier | Murdered on Wu Lee's orders for supposedly betraying the Triads. |
| Zhou Ming | Hit from the Tong | Murdered on Wu Lee's orders for supposedly betraying the Triads. |
| Wu "Kenny" Lee | Salt in the Wound | Murdered for killing his father, stealing the Yu Jian Sword, betraying the Triads, and attempting to kill him. |
Optional Murders[]
| Victim | Mission | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Cherie | Random encounter | Can be killed during her random encounter. |
| Tommy | Random encounter | Can be killed during his second random encounter. |
| Selma | Random encounter | Can be killed during her second random encounter. |
| Giorgio | N/A | Can be killed after his second random encounter. |
| Phyllis | N/A | Can be killed after Giorgio's second random encounter. |
| Alonso | N/A | Can be killed after his random encounter. |
LCPD Database Record[]
Huang has a record on the LCPD Database in Grand Theft Auto IV.
2005 - Grand Theft Auto
- Believed to be working freelance for other organizations in addition to his uncle's.
Mission Appearances[]
Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars[]
- As the protagonist, he appears in all missions.
Gallery[]
Trivia[]
- "SHIT!" is Huang Lee's only quote where his voice can be heard when drowning inside a car. This quote can be heard from a random Triad pedestrian, present in Grand Theft Auto IV. He can be also heard coughing violently upon finding a moldy burger/hot-dog in a green dumpster.
- Upon closer inspection, the player can notice that he reuses Niko Bellic's grunts when climbing over a ledge.
- In the screenshots and trailers, Huang wears a white T-shirt, a red shirt, a light green jacket and blue jeans. However, in the Nintendo DS version, due to hardware limitations, his sprites are rendered in much simpler colors, with his jacket and shirt appearing darker, and his red button-up is missing entirely. In the PSP version, the portraits are rendered in full color, with no compromises.