Tai-Pan: The Second Novel of the Asian Saga

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Of course Clavell doesn’t hesitate to push the idea that Europeans of this time were fucking disgusting hygiene-wise compared to most Asian cultures, so you get to learn that for like the 200th time with him. Next up is Gai-Jin, kind of oddly his last book and one that a lot of people seem to think was kinda boring.

You’ve sired bastards and you’re proud of them and your name stinks in the nostrils of decent people. A friend on Twitter said that they’d always imagined this book was about an enormous snake, given the title. Under the command of Tyler Brock, third mate and future nemesis, Dirk Struan was whipped mercilessly. Set in 1840s China (Canton), Macao and most importantly, the brand-new English colony of Hong Kong (which Dirk negotiated away from the Emperor through the oh-so-pliable governor), the story is set around Dirk Stuan, a larger than life English “China trader” pitted against Brock, his dark and brutish arch enemy, in a nonstop race to be the best, make the most and outsmart all the rest as tai-pans of The Noble House and the Second Noble House. When you get right down to it Tai-Pan is a historical romance in the older sense (a literary genre of high culture, romance or chivalric romance is a style of heroic prose and verse narrative that was popular in the aristocratic circles of High Medieval and Early Modern Europe.Anyone who presented a half-coin to the Tai-pan of the Noble House must be granted whatever he asked, whether legal or illegal.

Years passed and I tried Gai-jin - I only finished that because I constantly hoped that even turn of the page would somehow bring about the book's miraculous redemption.

The seemingly dozens of characters are well developed and fit together perfectly into an epic tale about one man’s indomitable positive attitude, even in the face of impossibly long odds. Its jus an endless narrative with very little to no description of events or actions, let alone much (Zero) historical fiction context. By the end of this year, he found service on the East India Company merchant ship Vagrant Star to China.

But it doesn’t get more, because it doesn’t significantly deliver on its promise on the cover to be part of an ASIAN SAGA; one in which two cultures encounter one another, and the political and cultural consequences that follow. But mostly, he’s presented as a more international bloke than the sort you’d picture given the time: he has a Chinese mistress, and – albeit in cringe-to-read-now pidgin English – communicates with locals more effectively than his competition in the import/export trade. Like in Shogan, Clavell allows all sides to have good reason to pursue the agendas they do and he avoids any cliched portrayal of characters, Western or Asian.Having inhaled Shōgun (and the excellently terrible miniseries adaptation) on a trip through Japan, I was well prepared for the way this novel would go.

If Queen Victoria was the biggest drug dealer in the history of the world, then Dirk Struan, the 'Tai-pan' is her Main Dealer in Hong Kong. But if you’re looking for propulsive swashbuckling bullshit set in a hyperreal version of the past, then you could do far worse. It might not be something you’ll come back to, but the time taken to read will be well, if guiltily, spent. It is a wide ranging story about Western trade interests in China and the establishment of Hong Kong as a British colony.If I ever had to have something playing while I clutched a totally fucked up and battered paperback to my chest, I would want this to be that song: https://www.