Murray’s Reviews > Tai-Pan > Status Update
Murray
is 28% done
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.
— Jun 27, 2026 09:34PM
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Murray’s Previous Updates
Murray
is 10% done
“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 🇭🇰
— Jun 24, 2026 09:15PM
Stop it, he said to himself. You're acting like a madman.
1841 🇭🇰
Murray
is 5% done
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.
— Jun 23, 2026 06:41PM
Murray
is 7% done
The island was Hong Kong on the north lip of the huge Pearl River in South China. Inhospitable. Unfertile. Uninhabited except for a tiny fishing village. Squarely in the path of the monstrous storms that yearly exploded from the Pacific. Bordered on the east and on the west by dangerous shoals and reefs. Useless to the Chinese Emperor. But Hong Kong contained the greatest harbor on earth.
— Apr 21, 2026 10:22AM
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Jun 27, 2026 10:28PM
🇭🇰 Struan poured a cup of rum and gave it to May-may. He offered each of the crew a tot in turn, expecting no thanks and receiving none. Strange, he told himself, but Chinese. Why should they thank me for saving their lives? It was joss that we did not sink. Thank you, God, for my joss. Thank you.
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🇭🇰 Her peculiar swaying gait never failed to move Struan. May-may had bound feet. They were only three inches long. When Struan had bought her five years ago he had cut off the bandages and been horrified at the deformity that ancient customs had decreed was a girl's essential sign of beauty—tiny feet. Only a girl with bound feet-lotus feet— could be a wife or concubine. Those with normal feet were peasants, servants, low-class prostitutes, amahs or workers, and despised.
🇭🇰 “The Chinese have had civilization for five thousand years. Books, printing presses, art, poets, government, silk, tea, gunpowder and a thousand other things. For thousands of years. We've been civilized in England for five hundred years. If you can call it that."
