They are certainly nay gentlemen, but they do honor their own version of a gentlemanly code.ĭirk’s son Cullum comes out from London and is appalled to discover the man his father has become.
They hate and despise each other, but more than once as the plot unfolds they find themselves allied in a common cause. He simply isn’t as smart as the Tai-Pan, but he covets the honorary title. A man who has been equally successful, but always seems to come up second best. He has a nemesis, Tyler Brock, who is as tough and unyielding as Struan. 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. Struan is tough on people, but that comes from the struggles he experienced reaching the top of the mountain. They have to be really good at something that is useful, something that will strengthen “the clan”. Before anyone has a chance to show loyalty they have to prove something more than just competence. 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.
He has made his own joss by being smarter, more ruthless, accumulating more wealth, and being stronger than his opponents. The port quickly proved a safe haven to ships even impervious to Typhoons.ĭirk 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. Hong Kong was just a cluster of fishing villages when the English traders arrived in 1841. ”’Joss’ was a Chinese word that meant Luck and Fate and God and the devil combined.” ***MOVIE ADDENDUM ADDED SEPT 13th, 2014*** Tai-Pan established James Clavell as one of the top writers in fiction in the world, a best-selling author in every European language. it is a masterful re-creation of a momentous epoch and provides an insight into the Chinese temperament wgucg us unique in contemporary fiction. In this turbulent, panoramic novel, James Clavell narrates the saga of how Struan with majestic vision, ruthless will and ingenious grasp of command, guides the development of a colony destined to influence the course of history. And Hong Kong is the stepping stone to China, the enigma which Struan intends to bring into the family of nations as a great power. It's harbour, the finest in the world is indispensable to the further expansion of the British trad in the Far East. When Hong Kong is ceded to England by China in the wake of the first Opium War, Struan alone understands the island's potential. For twenty years Struan has been obsessed by a grand design - the conversion of a barren island called Hong Kong into a jewl of the British Empire. Tai-Pan is Chinese for 'Supreme leader: he who weilds the power.'ĭirk Struan is Tai-Pan of The Noble House, the most powerful and most feared trading company in the Orient.
0 kommentar(er)
