Murray’s Reviews > Tai-Pan > Status Update

Maureen Quance was standing there, her eyes grinding him to dust. She was a tall, big-boned Irishwoman with a face like a piece of leather and a large nose and legs planted like oaks. She was of an age with Mr. Quance but strong as an ox, her iron-gray hair in an untidy bun. When she was young she had been attractive, but now with the girth created by potatoes and beer she was overpowering. “Top of the evening!”

"Let's talk about you, Tai-Pan. You can't
flaunt your Chinese mistress here."

"She and the children'll be safe aboard ship and that's all that counts."

"Not in our society, by God, and you know it. They'll break you, Tai-Pan, even you, if you go against their godrotting code. They have to. She's Chinese."

"The pox on them!"

“If May-may's kept private, she's no threat to them. What’s not seen does not exist.

When May-may awoke the sun was up. The land beside the river was low and ran back to misted horizons. An abundant land, patterned with numberless paddy fields, green and waving with winter rice. Clouded hills afar off. The Marble Pagoda was just ahead. Beneath it was China Cloud. Four days later she was at anchor in Deepwater Bay, by Hong Kong Island. It was a cold morning with a sky cloud-locked, the sea gray.

“Good sweet Christ! If I were you, Hong Kong, I'd hate me too. You hate the plan! Well, I tell you, the plan's good, by God. Good, you hear? China needs the world and the world needs China. And you're the key to unlock the gates of China, and you know it and I know it, and that's what I'm going to do, and you're going to help!"

Stop it, he said to himself. You're acting like a madman.

1841 🇭🇰

Perhaps there was truth in the tales whispered by sailormen, tales that Tai-Pan Dirk Struan worshiped the Devil and that in return the Devil had given him power on earth. How else could a man his age look so young and be so strong, with white teeth and all his hair and the reflexes of a youth, when most men would be infirm and used up and near death? The Chinese were terrified of the Old Green-eyed Rat Devil.

The island was Hong Kong on the north lip of the huge Pearl River in South China. Inhospitable. Unfertile. Uninhabited except for a tiny fishing village. Squarely in the path of the monstrous storms that yearly exploded from the Pacific. Bordered on the east and on the west by dangerous shoals and reefs. Useless to the Chinese Emperor. But Hong Kong contained the greatest harbor on earth.