Tai-Pan is the next book in James Clavell’s “Asian Saga”; it concerns the founding of Hong Kong at the time of the Opium Wars between Great Britain and China. More particularly, it concerns Dirk Struan, the Tai-Pan, or “Supreme Leader”, or perhaps simply the “Big Shot”, of a firm of China traders called the “Noble House” because of its great wealth; indeed, Dirk Struan is not only Tai-Pan of the Noble House, but is known to one and all as The Tai-Pan, supreme among all of the traders.

Struan has big ideas; he has big enemies; he has big schemes, and so do they; he makes big fortunes and takes big losses, and he brings his Noble House through it all. That’s the plot in a nutshell.

What’s interesting about this book is the same thing that was interesting about Shogun and King Rat—the portrayal of a faraway and exotic land, with its exotic people. Like the Anjin-San and Peter Marlowe, Dirk Struan is a survivor, and does what he must to survive. Like them, he more or less goes native, changing his ways to those of the Chinese, the better to understand them, to work with them, and to make money from them. He has much more freedom than the Anjin-San or Marlowe, and his transformation is not as full as theirs, but he is every bit as trapped in his new land. And just as the Anjin-San is manipulated by Toranaga, so Struan, while thinking himself in charge, is manipulated in ways he cannot even begin to recognize by his Chinese hosts.

The book is loosely based on real history and real persons, with the names filed off and new names put on, just as Shogun is; Struan & Co is based on the firm of Jardine-Matheson, which exists to this day. One or the more interesting figures is the Chinese convert of a Lutheran missionary; he appears only once, and is mentioned only two or three times after that, but from the description he is the man who founded a rebellion called the “Tai-Ping Heavenly Kingdom” that gave the Qing emperor a run for his money.

If Tai-Pan is neither as memorable as Shogun, nor as harrowing as King Rat, it remains a fascinating book, and I enjoyed it. Cautions for sex (because, of course, Chinese sexual mores differ from European).