Status Updates From Tai-Pan

When May-may awoke the sun was up. The land beside the river was low and ran back to misted horizons. An abundant land, patterned with numberless paddy fields, green and waving with winter rice. Clouded hills afar off. The Marble Pagoda was just ahead. Beneath it was China Cloud. Four days later she was at anchor in Deepwater Bay, by Hong Kong Island. It was a cold morning with a sky cloud-locked, the sea gray.

“Good sweet Christ! If I were you, Hong Kong, I'd hate me too. You hate the plan! Well, I tell you, the plan's good, by God. Good, you hear? China needs the world and the world needs China. And you're the key to unlock the gates of China, and you know it and I know it, and that's what I'm going to do, and you're going to help!"

Stop it, he said to himself. You're acting like a madman.

1841 🇭🇰

Perhaps there was truth in the tales whispered by sailormen, tales that Tai-Pan Dirk Struan worshiped the Devil and that in return the Devil had given him power on earth. How else could a man his age look so young and be so strong, with white teeth and all his hair and the reflexes of a youth, when most men would be infirm and used up and near death? The Chinese were terrified of the Old Green-eyed Rat Devil.