Tai-Pan: The Second Novel of the Asian Saga

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She was secretly assigned the task of teaching "the green-eyed devil" Struan "civilised" (Chinese) ways. If you're lucky, you can start dreaming about a book, and if you're very lucky, you want to wake up. The story's burden is will Struan's legitimate son prove worthy of becoming Tai-Pan, or will his much brighter natural Chinese son, the leader of Hong Kong's anarchist movement?

Tai-Pan book by James Clavell - ThriftBooks Tai-Pan book by James Clavell - ThriftBooks

He is set to inherit the title of compradore from his father, but plans to sell out by giving confidential information to Bartlett.Throughout the novel, both men seek to destroy each other in matters of business and personal affairs. In the late 1970s Georges-Alain Vuille obtained the rights and George MacDonald Fraser was hired to adapt the novel. Although the island is largely uninhabited and the terrain unfriendly, it has a large port that both the British government and various trading companies believe will be useful for the import of merchandise to be traded on mainland China, a highly lucrative market.

Tai-Pan (novel) - Wikipedia

Horatio Sinclair – clerk to William Longstaff, church fanatic and harbours incestuous desires for his sister Mary. Struan struggles to combine the best traits of the British democratic system and the wisdom of China, of which he notes, "the Chinese are a wise smart people, even if they don't build good cannons like Europeans. Struan must fight to save his company and his family, or risk seeing everything he has created destroyed at the hands of his sworn enemy. Set in the turbulent days of the founding of Hong Kong in the 1840s, Tai-Pan is the story of Dirk Struan, the ruler - the Tai-Pan - of the most powerful trading company in the Far East. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. In 1805, at the age of seven, Dirk Struan began his nautical adventures as a powder monkey on a king's ship at the Battle of Trafalgar and he remains bound to the sea for life. But the whole last third of the novel is compacted of obligatory scenes that hook the reader who will be drawn into this fantasy world like white fumes into a joss pipe. This is a magnificent saga of the founding of Hong Kong by powerful British trading interests, which manipulate the British government towards establishing Hong Kong as Britain's trading outpost in the Far East. While not living by an expressed written philosophy, Tai Pan Dirk Struan is a man who stands for reason, individualism, science, objective ethics and free trade.

Tai-Pan - James Clavell - Google Books Tai-Pan - James Clavell - Google Books

To this end, he seeks partnership with American millionaire Lincoln Bartlett, while trying to ward off his arch-rival Quillan Gornt, who seeks to destroy Struan's once and for all. The "Noble House" in the title is the nickname of Struan's, the trading company first introduced in Clavell's Tai-Pan. Because of his skill and intelligence, he was promoted to Special Intelligence, a branch concerned with counter-espionage. Though the prologue is set on June 8, 1960 against the backdrop of the real Typhoon Mary, the story opens on Sunday, August 18, 1963, and runs through the days immediately preceding the assassination of US President John F.Anyone who presented a half-coin to the Tai-pan of the Noble House must be granted whatever he asked, whether legal or illegal. Treaty of Chuenpi, year 1841 – Peace for twenty-six years and no major war imminent “ unheard of for hundreds of years. Though one of many characters in the novel, Dunross is the only one involved with all the main plot lines. The film was directed by Daryl Duke and starred Bryan Brown, who had worked together on The Thorn Birds. Eight years ago Russia had compelled Turkey to sign a treaty which gave Russia joint suzerainty over the Dardanelles, and international tension had been acute ever since.

Tai-Pan: The Second Novel of the Asian Saga (The - WHSmith

Brock, owner of the second largest of the trading companies, constantly vies to destroy Struan's company and reputation in an attempt to both exact revenge on Struan and become the new "Tai-Pan" of Chinese trade. The novel retroactively connects an obscure western movie Clavell wrote and directed to the Asian Saga.Ian Dunross, the current tai-pan of Struan's, continues to cultivate this relationship, though he encourages Wu to avoid narcotics trafficking as being too dangerous. Alvin Rabushka of the Hoover Institution said that the novel so well depicted Hong Kong that non-experts would not notice its accuracy. The popularity of the novel and TV series of Shogun made Tai Pan continually attractive to filmmakers. The novel is over a thousand pages long, and contains dozens of characters and numerous intermingling plot lines.