User Reviews
Rating: really liked it
***MOVIE ADDENDUM ADDED SEPT 13th, 2014***
”’Joss’ was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the devil combined.” 
Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages when the English traders arrived in 1841. The port quickly proved a safe haven to ships even impervious to Typhoons.Dirk Lochlin Struan is a Scotsman who has spent a good part of his adult life in the orient amassing a fleet of clipper ships and a great fortune. He is called the Tai-Pan. He has made his own joss by being smarter, more ruthless, accumulating more wealth, and being stronger than his opponents. He calls his company The Noble House. The company is built along clan lines with loyalty being first among the most weighted characteristics for joining his empire, and by association, those selected, will also benefiting from his protection. Before anyone has a chance to show loyalty they have to prove something more than just competence. They have to be really good at something that is useful, something that will strengthen “the clan”. Struan is tough on people, but that comes from the struggles he experienced reaching the top of the mountain. He knows how merciless life can be and his primary goal every day is to protect what is his and the people he cares about.
He has a nemesis, Tyler Brock, who is as tough and unyielding as Struan. A man who has been equally successful, but always seems to come up second best. He simply isn’t as smart as the Tai-Pan, but he covets the honorary title. They hate and despise each other, but more than once as the plot unfolds they find themselves allied in a common cause. They are certainly nay gentlemen, but they do honor their own version of a gentlemanly code.
Dirk’s son Cullum comes out from London and is appalled to discover the man his father has become. He is rather harsh on Struan, long before he understands the circumstances that have shaped his father. Whatever rules Cullum may believe exist in England dinna necessarily translate to the rough and ready wilds of empire building.
”You used to be God to me. But in the thirty days I’ve been here I’ve come to know you for what you are. Killer. Murderer. Pirate. Opium smuggler. Adulterer. You buy and sell people. You’ve sired bastards and you’re proud of them and your name stinks in the nostrils of decent people.”Well, Cullum, *sigh*, you have very set opinions for someone who hasn’t even walked a mile beside him yet, and certainly not a step in the very boots that built this empire . Struam is undeterred by Cullum’s assessment and plans to have him take over as the Tai-Pan when he decides to return to England to run for parliament. He will mold the lad whether the lad knows it or not.
Run for parliament you say? With a Chinese mistress and a slew of bastards in tow?
There are better options, half a dozen at least of the women/girls he knows who would help to open more doors for him, but there is just one damn problem...HE...LOVES...May-May. He will marry her and let them be damned if they dinna like it. He has never met a problem that a cascade of silver won’t fix, by God!
Joan Chen plays May-May in the 1986 film version.May-May is breathtakingly lovely, descended from an honorable and rich family who made the decision to sell her to the Tai-Pan to have someone they trust close to the source of English power. This is 1841 and the first Opium War is in full flower. Concessions to the barbarians will have to be made (Hong Kong) and Struan, the devil man, has the ear of the English politician Longstaff or as the Chinese refer to him
Odious Penis.
There is the rather odd, but refreshing character of Aristotle Quance, a man almost completely depended on the traders, mostly Struan, for his support. He is a painter, preferably of beautiful young women. He is graced with a silver tongue capable of talking them out of more clothes than they are...at first...willing to part with. He has a wife who hounds him from one whorehouse to the next as he tries to stay one step ahead of her iron grip. He might be the happiest person in this new world that is about to be carved out of the coast of China.
”And he realized he was witnessing the end of an era, he was also part of a new one. Now he had new history to eyewitness and record. New faces to draw. New ships to paint. A new city to perpetuate. And new girls to flirt with and new bottoms to pinch.”Well if he can keep one step ahead of the wife, by God!James Clavell explores the politics of the time. He brings to light the manipulations that occur behind locked doors over a glass or two of good port or brandy with results that benefit the few over the many. Profits are king and certainly the opium and tea trade were important to the British economy. The insistence of the Chinese in receiving only silver bullion for tea actually destabilizes the British economy as silver becomes scarce and afternoon tea became jeopardized. There have been grain riots, tax riots, draft riots, religious riots, but no one wants to see a British TEA riot, by God!
We see the rise of the Triads during this time as well, and in this story, Gordon Chen, a bastard of Struan with his head for intrigue, is the head of the movement. He is a man trapped between cultures, not fully accepted or rejected by either one. Chen is torn between his loyalty to his people and his loyalty to Struan. He plans for any contingencies and shows resilience in the face of a series of setbacks beyond his control.
This is an epic tale, with Shakespearean romance, typhoons, love and malaria, incest, discord between fathers and sons, the building of a city of trade, lust, complicated characters with tangled relationships, and an exploration of the power of possession. These larger than life figures are battling on a small and large scale for what is theirs, but also for what will be their childrens and their children’s children. I was very impressed with the depth of the plot, the deftness with which Clavell pulled me into the story, and the breadth and scope he was willing to manfully shoulder to bring these characters to life.
James Clavell based Dirk Struan on William Jardine who built the "Princely House" of Jardine, Matheson & Co of Hong Kong.Dirk Struan peers at the world through jaded eyes, but clearly and astutely. He sometimes knows the intentions of a person before they even know it themselves. He is harsh, but capable of great tenderness. He is unpredictable, but only seemingly so, because he gauges every situation by much more than just what is before him. His projections become truths adding a mystical quality to his persona. He devours information and knows how to use it. While others sleep he studies. He fixes what is broke before it snaps. As unearthly as it seems to those who know him it is no mystery to me why he is:
the Tai-Pan.
”Man is born to die, Father. I just try to protect mysel’ and mine as best I know how and to choose the time of my dying, that’s all.”A very interesting link that explains the history of this time period. It was so kindly supplied by Margitte. http://www.china-mike.com/china-touri...
ADDENDUM: I watched the movie. There is so much missing from the plot of the book that I'm not really sure how anyone can watch the movie and understand what is going on. At different points Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Steve McQueen were attached to the project, but negotiations fell through each time. Bryan Brown was cast to play Dirk Struan and actually plays the part well. Joan Chen is absolutely stunning as May-May, but despite the efforts of the two main actors the movie proves unsatisfactory. This story really should have been a mini-series like Shogun and Noble House. Anybody who may have had thoughts of watching the movie instead of reading the book (unlikely on GR) would be incredibly short changed from the epic experience that only the book can provide.
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Rating: really liked it
A masterful work from an extremely talented storyteller.
Truth be told, I think this was better written than Shōgun even though I actually liked the 1975 book set in Japan better. Tai-Pan is more streamlined, more focused on its subject and narrative.
Tai-Pan was Clavell’s second book, first published in 1966, and is coincidentally also the second chronological book in his Asian saga of books. (Shogun was his third published book but first in chronological order). It was an immediate best-seller and fan favorite.
Set in the budding village of Hong Kong in 1841 this is a historical fiction about that time and place, and its place in the socio-economic world of that time, as much as it is a character study about the Tai-Pan – Dirk Struan.
Tai-Pan is a title - the leader, strong man, big man on campus – of the richest trading company on Hong Kong. Struan is shown to be a master manipulator of men and a bold and clever strategist. And he was also a pirate, opium smuggler, adulterer, strong arm and all around badass. Clavell reveals our central protagonist to be an alpha male’s male that would make Ted Nugent look like Wallace Shawn.
Clavell’s narrative describes international intrigue, romance, violence and a keen eye for the historically relevant for this period piece. Like all of the Asian saga stories in his canon, the dominant element is the contrast between western and eastern cultures, with a sympathetic tone towards the oriental, and ultimately about how the synergistic combination of cultures creates a prosperous result.
Highly entertaining and recommended.
Rating: really liked it
Having begun with
King Rat, I proceeded to work my way through most of James Clavell's
Asian Saga before running out of steam - and interest - with the overly-long and rather lacklustre
Whirlwind; and of them all,
Tai-Pan was my favorite.
Shogun was fantastic, mysterious, complex, cruel, violent, erotic, dressed with elaborate manners and rituals, alien thought patterns, ironclad honor, smelly Europeans, the whole works - but it didn't have the
Struans versus the
Brocks, which crackling, bloody, rollicking, cutthroat competitive maneuverings grabbed me by the collar and yanked me into this Southwest Pacific tale, hanging me on the yardarm so that I could marvel at the entirety of the colorful, frantic pageant unfolding before my young and excited eyes.
From the very opening, with a virgin Hong Kong awaiting its annexation by the British, recently victorious in the First Opium War, and the first taste of the rough-and-ready, brutal-on-a-dime sensibilities of the coarse and cunning Brock, the somewhat more subdued and disciplined Yanks of Cooper-Tillman, and then the magnificent entrance of the swashbuckling-but-practical hero himself, Dirk
fucking Struan, the
Tai-Pan of the commercial empires, and his half-brother Robb - who so dearly
wished to be like Dirk, but just wasn't - all of these heads of Western trading houses and the differing-in-details, but similar-in-spirit dreams of the almost endless potential for Hong Kong - serving as a leverage point for the commercial crowbar they wished to wield to crack open the unimaginable riches of the mysterious and vast Orient - everything is laid out to give the reader a taste of the excitement, the
possibility that lay heavy in the humid air.
And then fate and chance work their inevitable twists and unforeseen disasters into the mix, and we are plunged into a complex, interrelated web of schemes, ploys, conspiracies, violence, lusts, and desperation, as the House of Struan strives to recover from happenstance misfortune without selling the British portion of Hong Kong's soul, whilst the House of Brock, under the glint-eyed, heavy-handed leadership of Brock and the brutal energies of his hulking son, Gorth, do everything in their power to ensure that Struan and Company flounder and sink, thus enabling Brock to assume to title of
Tai-Pan that he holds by right should be his. Into this mix the talented Clavell tosses wizened Chinese bigwig merchants and secret societies, four mysterious halved coins, stiff-lipped British naval officers, conniving Russian Grand Dukes, corrupt and incompetent English plenipotentiaries,
Aye, matey pirates and lice-infested British rogue mercenaries, typhoons, storms, crazy oceanic currents and, topping it all, the heady and blossoming love between Dirk and his Chinese mistress May-May, an interesting microcosm of the tentative-but-burgeoning relationship between Western and Oriental civilizations, each with their own conceptions of pride, honor, barbarism, and justice; perhaps only in
love do they operate on jointly familiar ground.
I have since come across plenty of criticisms of Clavell, about how much he got wrong, or mangled irredeemably in the process of crafting his complicated thrillers featuring clashing, pre-modern cultures. Whatever. The man could
tell a tale, and one with enough recognizable features enmeshed within the exotic and the historic to propel his literary vessel across roiling, tempestuous seas. It is a magnificent and vastly entertaining book, one I've read several times, never failing to tense up when Struan is ghosting across the water, nursing his fortune-saving
forty lacs of silver from a hungry Brock; or dearly wish Gorth would, at any point, receive a desperately deserved thrashing; or marvel at the long-range thinking of the wise Jing-Qua; or cringe when May-May, bedecked in all of the gaudy accoutrements of a European lady, earns an unexpected and humiliating look of horrified shock from her surprised lover; or feel a melancholy heaviness when the typhoon smashes the island towards the end of the book, dealing harshly with Dirk and May-May, but opening up new vistas of opportunity for Culum to emerge from his father's formidable shadow. It's been a long time since I last cracked it open, but do I harbor any doubts that it would still prove to be a first-rate page turner? Ha!
Rating: really liked it
I've read this before & really liked it, but it is even better as an audio book. Incredible, really. John Lee has great accents & intonations & really makes the book come alive.
Clavell is most famous for Shōgun, the first of his Asian series, which was made into a mini series starring Richard Chamberlain. It was excellent & takes place about 2.5 centuries earlier in Japan. Tai-Pan is about the founding of Hong Kong about 1840 & takes place over a period of 6 months. It was made into a movie in the mid 80's, but wasn't nearly as good. Too much was left out & a movie just can't capture Dirk Struan.
Dirk Struan is quite possibly my favorite heroic figure in fiction. He comes from the early Victorian culture & Clavell does an excellent job contrasting attitudes. Where the rest of the British believe their culture is far superior to the 'heathen Chinese', Struan has adopted many of the Chinese customs that make sense to him. He rejects others to the dismay of his mistress & the resulting dialog is often hilarious, especially with John Lee's fantastic reading. Through it all, Dirk Struan strides like a giant. He's just a man, but he dominates those around him, disparate cultures, cut-throat business, & murky politics through sheer nerve, will & intelligence. He's open handed with those less fortunate & the devil himself to those who wrong him or his.
The historical aspect of all Clavell's books is also really interesting. The broad strokes are accurate such as why the opium trade exists, Hong Kong is so important, & more. The people & events are mostly fictional, though. I'm not sure how accurate his portrayal of the culture is, but don't really care. It certainly came alive & immersed me. Best of all was the way he managed to compare & contrast the cultures. For instance, people are basically bought & sold by the Chinese, Americans, & British, yet they each think the others are awful in the way they do it. The differences in medicine, politics, business, religion, sex, & every day life are extraordinary. He does a great job of bringing alive alien concepts such as 'face'(similar to reputation) & 'joss', a sort of luck/karma/fate mix.
John Lee narrates Gai-Jin & Noble House, too. I'll be listening to both soon since they're continuations of this story. David Case narrates Shōgun & King Rat, neither of which is tied closely to the Noble House, although all are part of Clavell's Asian Saga. Whirlwind, the last of the series & another of the Noble House novels, isn't owned by my library, unfortunately. I'm going to try to find it else where.
Here is the Wikipedia entry for Clavell's Asian Saga (contains spoilers):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Asia...
Tai-Pan novel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_...
Film:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tai-Pan_...
I can't recommend this book highly enough, especially read by Lee. I think it's 25 hours long, so would be perfect for a long trip. Beware, you might just keep driving so you can finish it!
Rating: really liked it
Wanted to get a nice concise history of Hong Kong, ended up with James Clavell's Tai Pan. I read Shogun when I was 14, and remember liking it enough to read through the 1000+ pages (and that sex scene with the anal beads? Blew my 14 year old mind. And my DAD had read the book. Yikes.)
Maybe my taste is different now but Tai Pan is pretty dissapointing. Lots of cool historical details, but they feel a bit shoe-horned in, and the main character is, well, basically perfect. At least in James Clavell's mind. Big lusty Scottish pirate with a crazy dream to unite the traditions of China and Europe. I dunno, still weird to have an unambiguously good character who is basically a wealthy drug dealer that started a war with China to protect his opium trade. I gave up on this 200 pages in.
Rating: really liked it
Big, chewy, lip smacking, gut busting fiction. How appropriate that I should have finished it on Thanksgiving - a day given to gastronomical excess.Whew.
This is not a historical tome. It is a fictionalized account of the first year of the British colony of Hong Kong (1841). The characters are all
loosely based on actual people - as are their trading companies. That is what Clavell did in his novels and it's important that one understand that.
Clavell was also an ardent supporter of Free Trade, an avowed opponent of Communism and Fascism and an admirer of certain aspects of both Asian and Western culture. Much has also been written about Clavell's fondness of blending those aspects that he believed were the best of both worlds to make a new culture. I would have to agree with those folks. All these aspects of Clavell come out strongly in his novels and will either drive you crazy or have you nodding in agreement. Whatever route you take it might be helpful to be prepared.
Finally, and this is something that many seem to never take into account, James Clavell made his career for many years as a Hollywood screenwriter and movie director. He wrote
popular entertainment (
The Great Escape, The Fly and
To Sir, with Love) and they were mainstream, big budget (mostly) affairs. Clavell brought this aspect to all of his novels as well.
Being aware of the before mentioned details are important. They all play a major part in Clavell's writing.
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. They were fantastic stories about marvel-filled adventures, often of a knight errant portrayed as having heroic qualities, who goes on a quest) only in this case Dirk Straun's quest is the never ending struggle to ensure that his company continue to thrive. As has been pointed out by others there is no grand battle to fight in this story, no Uber Villain to be brought down, no single event at all. The journey is the story. As a result there is a never ending series of "mini-adventures" within the story. Schemes are enacted, others are discovered, moves and counter-moves, friends are enemies and enemies are friends, and sailing ships race across the South China Sea. Grand adventure - not academia.
It's entertaining. It's not historical scholarship. Are there problems? Of course there are. At times Dirk Straun does become tiresome. He's too perfect - a paragon of male virtue. Or at least what James Clavell considered to be male virtue. He's lucky (too lucky at times), smarter than most, better looking, wiser, etc. etc. I would be willing to bet that Dirk Straun is probably the idealized version of James Clavell. Not unheard of for authors to do that - especially in this type of fiction. However styles and tastes change over the years and this novel was written in the mid-1960's. For many younger readers Dirk Straun might grow tiresome and that's understandable.
The role of women in the story will be jarring to younger readers as well. They are important and capable, but only to a point. Then the men have to take over. There are things that are just best when handled by the men. Ultimately women are about bearing children and taking care of the home. Their occasional forays into intrigue are ultimately motivated by their desire to protect their families and help their men. To a 1960's reader this wouldn't have been unacceptable, but in 2012 I have to agree that it might be difficult to swallow. Just keep reminding yourself when the book was written and that it was written by an adult male who had made his living writing for Hollywood.
But despite these aspects (and a few others that I just don't want to get into right now - such as the pidgeon English conversations - ugh)
Tai-Pan is entertaining. It grabs you and keeps you interested. Though it took me a month to get through it (it was a very busy month and novel reading had to take a back seat) when I did sit down with it I would often go through fifty and sixty pages with no effort. In other words it's a "page turner" and that's okay as well. As I noted at the beginning this isn't a work of historical research. It's a big thick piece of
popular entertainment. So dig in and enjoy.......or not depending on your tastes.
Ironically enough this is one book that I classify as a Beach Read that I actually finished
at the beach (Lincoln City, Oregon). It's appropriate.
Rating: really liked it
One absolutely brilliant book, but I didn't expect this ending, something similar yes, but the way it ended - NO!! It broke my heart a little bit and I cried, usually this would ruin the book for me, but this one was a masterpiece and I can't say even one bad thing about it.
There were so many great characters especially Dirk and his Mei Mei, they were so well suited,yin and yang.
Some books and characters fade with time, but I'm not sure I will ever forget those two.
This is a book I will be rereading a lot in the future.
Rating: really liked it
Tai-Pan is an excellent historical fiction about the early days of Hong Kong and British-Chinese trade. Technically taking place in the same (slightly) alt-timeline of Shogun, Tai-Pan easily on its own merits and, truth be told, has little to no direct linkages to the events in
Shogun. It is a wide ranging story about Western trade interests in China and the establishment of Hong Kong as a British colony.
The story is told through a wide array of POV characters, giving the reader a well rounded view of their motivations, passions, agendas, and blind spots that would otherwise be absent if told in a different manner. There aren't really good guys and bad guys (except, you know, Imperialism), just competing interests and agendas. We see things from both British perspectives as well as a Chinese ones, each with their own unique view on the matters at hand and a diverse range of opinion within each respective camp. 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.
I found the story itself gripping and the plot turns both compelling and unexpected. I was engrossed the entire time and sad to see the journey come to an end. Like
Shogun the characters were so vividly portrayed ending the book was like saying good bye to real people. If you enjoy historical fictions and morally ambiguous characters acting during a pivotal moment in history you could do much worse than
Tai-Pan.
Rating: really liked it
I meant to start with Shogun and this book was available at the library so I started here first. It was a great story of how Hong Kong was under British rule. It was a great read and James Clavell is a talented author. I plan on reading more of these Asian Saga's.
Rating: really liked it
You know that feeling where you just wanna dedicate a slow jam to a book? You ever get that? 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.youtube.com/watch?v=AR8D2...
This shit is that good. It covers a very tempestuous 1841 as lived by a host of characters ranging from traders to pirates to admirals to slaves. We concern ourselves most primarily with Dirk Struan, Tai-Pan (Supreme Leader or Big Shot) of Struan and Company. Dirk has been involved in the complicated and profitable world of opium trading for several years and, as the book starts, sees his plan to win the first opium war with China succeed. As a result of this victory, the British take Hong Kong for themselves and Dirk seems poised to rise to even further heights of success. Unfortunately, not everyone is cool with this whole thing, chiefly his rival of decades Tyler Brock of Brock and Sons.
The first thing to know about this book is that it’s not an immersive look into 19th century China in the manner of something like
Shogun. This story is primarily about the foreigners living and scheming in Canton and Hong Kong. This works for the most part because, according to Clavell, foreigners were pretty much strictly forbidden from going anywhere other than those two places. We get a little bit of history about the Manchu invasion and the Qing dynasty but other than it’s pretty much epic (melo)drama about the British, Scots, Welsh, Americans etc. trying to get what they want out of China (this is usually purely financial gain but, as we come to discover, not always.) 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.
So while there is obviously massive historical context here, Clavell relies on his huge cast of fictional characters to churn up the plot and propel the story for themselves. Thankfully for the most part they’re at least interesting, if not captivating. Struan is the manly adventurer-businessman supreme, obviously. He’s tall, good-looking, brilliant, loyal to his woman, a master of grand strategy and manipulation, generous to his friends and ruthless to his enemies and all that good stuff. You really could write an essay about what an awesome character he is for this type of book but I’ll avoid doing that here. I also loved his clever, funny, ultra-sweetheart mistress May-May and loved hating cruelly violent psycho nemesis Brock. There were a ton of others worth mentioning but I also enjoyed Culum, Quance, Mary, Gordon and their stories.
This makes Clavell two for two with me for megabooks. I mean megabooks in the sense that this is a pretty long one at around 7-800 pages but it’s also unashamedly full of pure entertainment. Clavell obviously enjoyed writing these and wanted people to have fun reading them, so he takes the time to fill the book with The Good Shit; sex, violence, piracy, ruthless capitalism, war, constant intrigue and plotting, forbidden love, and cool 19th-century fashion like frock coats, cravats, and top hats. I usually will get kinda bored with most romances but there was a lot of that stuff in this one and I somehow got into it, which was surprising. Struan and May-may’s relationship was certainly full of shit that made me a little uncomfortable as a 21st-century dude (which is really probably a good thing with historical fiction) but there was also a warmth and sweetness to it that was nice.
So I guess I’m reading these in chronological order instead of publication date. Next up is
Gai-Jin, kind of oddly his last book and one that a lot of people seem to think was kinda boring. I did already kinda peek at the beginning and was certainly not bored with his version of the Namamugi attack. I was gonna go with
Noble House but that one seems like it has a lot of shit having to do with finance, which I pretty much don’t understand a lot about. There was finance stuff in this one but it was pretty much limited to Struan and others going back and forth between financial ruin and stunning wealth, with like, bullion and actual gold and stuff. I basically can understand finance when it’s in the form of a giant fucking pile of gold.
Rating: really liked it
When it comes to books, I'm much more sentiment than reason. I think that's why a person can give a five star to a book like say, The Alchemist, and a four or maybe even a three star, to a Dostoyevsky. If not by the heart, we would only rate five stars to the great classics, perhaps. Because of the sentiment, more than the literary aspects of the work, I give five stars to most books I really love - and Taipan falls into that category. I read Taipan when I was about eighteen or so. To this day it remains the book with the strongest, most impressive lead character I've ever read. Over all, it's a great book. It takes you to the far exotic East, a place that has always enchanted me, with its deeper philosophies, like chinese Taoism, so very different from anything western, or Zen-buddhism, which the samurais embraced as a means to prepare themselves for the eminence of death in combat. The book's got great ambience, impressive characters - villains and good guys - and a fine plot, but what really have stuck with me through all these years is the larger-than-life persona of Dirk Struan, the "Taipan", or "supreme leader." Like James Bond, he is what a lot of young male kids dream to be: physically stronger than anyone around, handsome, extremely successful and charming; Someone who's capable of beating any and every odd; someone who's as invincible as a man can be.
If you're familiar with Clavell's work, I must say, for example, that Xogum is undeniably a better book, but no other work from Clavell has a more amazing character than Dirk Struan. The Taipan is Clavell's greatest character, at least by the parameters I’ve listed, which, if you know the author, says a lot. He alone is worth the reading.
Rating: really liked it
I thought Shogun was his best book when I read it, but found I liked Tai-Pan even more. There's more action & suspense with a twisty plot & far reaching consequences. If you plan on reading any other books by Clavell, you HAVE to read Tai-Pan. Without its history, you'll miss out on a lot.
Dirk Straun, the hero, is probably my favorite character in all fiction. He is a tough, smart man that isn't afraid to unlearn his old ways & adapt. He has a wonderful enemy in Brock & intelligently fights his way through the convoluted founding of Taiwan as one of the preeminent heads of a trading house. His decendents carry on through out most of the rest of Clavell's books.
Rating: really liked it
What can I say about ‘Tai-Pan’? Is it really a Historical novel? Is it a Alternative History? These are the two questions I keep asking myself while working my way through the late James Clavell’s Asian saga, which for your consideration are the following:
‘Shogun’ (1600)
‘Tai-Pan’ (1841)
‘Gai-Jin’ (1862)
‘King Rat’(1945)
‘Noble House’(1963)
‘Whirlwind’(1979)
Before joining Goodreads, I had already read ‘Shogun’, so you, my friendly reader, do not have the luxury of a review of that as comparison, but I believe that what I say about ‘Tai-Pan’, set in Hong Kong, can easily be said of it’s predecessor.
First off, let’s talk about historical content. Clavell has said himself in interviews that the reason his characters are based on historical figures, the changes of names from historical to fictional ones are due to the fact that he wanted them to do something and say something outside their historical content (an interesting text ‘What we can learn from ‘Shogun: Japanese History and Western Fantasy’ :Editor Henry Smith/The Program for Asian Studies, University of California, Santa Barbra), is available online as a searchable text: (http://www.columbia.edu/~hds2/learning/) is an interesting group of essays both praising and criticizing certain aspects of Clavell’s novel, but he makes clear that as a novelist, he was not so interested in historical accuracy as he was in storytelling. This puts him somewhat apart from the likes of John Jakes, who attempts to portray the American epochs in his long Kent family chronicles and shorter Civil War epic as true as can possibly be. But Clavell goes farther, for while there is a George Washington and an Abraham Lincoln who resemble who they generally were in history in Jakes‘ series, Clavell actually invents names to stand in to the company of historical figures. So, with ‘Shogun‘, instead of William Adams, we have John Blackthorne and in place of Tokugawa we have Toranaga. In the case of ’Tai-Pan’ and the case of William Jardine, we have the Scotsman, Dirk Struan.
Why am I making such a big deal with names? Nothing, except that what Clavell is doing rather than telling a historical story, is to make commentary on the times, not by addressing what a given period does that can be seen and addressed like many pieces of literature can and does do (note that I’m not criticizing Clavell’s desire to make commentary here), but by allowing the historical characters to think and do things which may not be historically accurate, yet can ultimately serve Clavell’s point on the subject, especially of East/West cultural and political issues, and one with an Anglo-centric slant.
I have read many commentaries about Clavell being balanced in his view of the far East and the West, for example, unlike Blackthorne, who by the end of the novel practically swallows Japanese culture whole, Dirk Struan’s character in ‘Tai-Pan’ wants to strike a balance between Eastern and Western sensibilities. But while trying to see their point on two novels so far, I find something rather interesting. It seems that there is a circular argument, at least in ‘Tai-Pan’ that while Struan appreciates Chinese/Cantonese culture, it is because he is not only a merchant, and one waging a personal vendetta/war against the other merchant rival, Tyler Brock, former, somewhat sadistic shipmaster, but because he’s from Great Britain proper, that his perspective carries more weight, and not necessarily that China has truly (e.g. “spiritually“), opened his eyes, and certainly not to the degree of Blackthorne’s love affair with Japan. So, in the end, rather than being a balance between Eastern and Western cultures, as an Asian saga might imply, it is more Asia as seen through Anglo-Saxon eyes.
Another point in the novel that brings this home and actually puts ‘Shogun’ ahead of ’Tai-Pan’ is the fact that scenes in ’Tai-Pan’ are almost entirely set up in the British settlements around Hong Kong. We don’t see an equal representation with the Asian side of things as we do with ‘Shogun’ and the interplay with Toranaga (Historical name: Tokugawa) and other Japanese in dealing with the “foreign issue” What we get are snippets, then brought back to the British side of things, for example, we get Struan’s mistress, May-May and himself in conversations, or there are dealings with her bastard son through Struan, the secret Triad member, Gordon Chen, the only two “major” Chinese/Cantonese characters in the book. There are other more minor scenes and references, but the story is always planted more firmly in British soil. Around this time, there was an ever growing xenophobia in China that could have been more fully examined, but never reaches that point, only touched upon. This could have allowed more characters from the Asian side to participate in the drama. As it is, the main center of the story revolves around the one-upmanship between Struan and his company, Noble House which is based on the real Jardine Mattheson Holdings Limited company, and Tyler Brock, with British politics, both domestically and abroad, occurring intermittently.
Once again my question. Just what type of novel is this? Is it historical fiction, or historical commentary wrapped around an Anglo-centric bias? Why, if this is an Historical fiction, are there not major, or even minor fictional characters finding themselves in the time period, experiencing things for themselves, and addressing what they see are the main issues? Even the word “Tai-Pan” is used somewhat incorrectly, as it implies in the novel that the Tai-Pans (Definition: The head or owner of a business establishment), have great political power, maybe even more impressive power than the British Government itself, certainly something that Struan leaves an impression on from time to time, but not an emphasis which the word lends itself to.
The most irritating thing about the book is Clavell’s Chinese character’s sense of diction, accent, and manner of speech. Most of the Chinese dialog in this novel is dominated by May-May, semi-main characters, like her and Gordon Chen. In any given pages she comes out sounding cartoonish. Dialect, accent, and diction are very hard things to do. In fact, to take Clavell off the hook , there are only a few great authors who can pull these things off without a hitch, so I sympathize. But reading May-May’s lines I grimace, as they sound so clunky. For a few lines, May-May sounds proficient, adding to her vocabulary Struan’s Scottish nuances, like “You dina…” (‘Tai-Pan’ 194), or “Na so loud! The sea god may hear you.”, as she attempts to appease the Chinese god’s to help their listing boat to safety, by pretending to offer the god gold, but “cheating” in the end, and promising Struan that the god would never know that she tricked the god out of her end of the bargain by not dropping some gold into the sea (195). As she is Struan’s mistress, picking up on Struan’s Scottish dialectical and phonetic nuances are understandable. We are never really given an approximation as to how long she had been with Struan, but it seems to be a significant time. Long enough to pick up the habits of the user of the second language she is learning from. But like many other Chinese characters in the book, she reverts at times from perfect sounding English to becoming the stereotypical Asian woman, speaking cute, quaint, but gibbering English (and I won’t repeat the sexual innuendo associated with Asian women trying to speak English, but I assume you get the idea!).
What gives this book a plus, aside from the historical problems is that it is a decent drama and adventure. It has all the passion of ambition, love, and danger one can expect from a story with an “exotic“ setting and an adventure behind it. For this, I gave it three stars. 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. There is a Hong Kong hidden somewhere between two formable and foreign entities rivaling each other. But it is mostly a shadowed figure sandwiched between an Anglo-centric storyline, no matter how much Dirk Struan asserts his admiration and assimilation to some, and in the pages of the book, very little, Chinese culture.
I still have four more novels in this series to go. I wonder how much further along Clavell will get in addressing things from both sides of the world?
Rating: really liked it
I did not find it quite as gripping as the 1st time round, but it's still a good adventure book nevertheless, blending history with fiction quite well.
Rating: really liked it
Currently watching a re-run of Shogun which has spurred me to finally pick up this novel which has been on my list for sometime now.
Oh Dear! DNF at page 115 & in truth been struggling to get to grips with this for a while, actually from the get-go. For why? Its jus an endless narrative with very little to no description of events or actions, let alone much (Zero) historical fiction context. It’s really only the C19th dialogue that places it as a historical fiction & I found myself drifting virtually from the get-go as I jus couldn’t identify with the characters that were all so leaden.
Sorry but that’s it for me, I can't be doing 700+ pages so 1 star as I mostly give those I DNF
I'll probably watch the film at 1 stage & see if that works.....
