Murray’s Reviews > Tai-Pan > Status Update
Murray
is 85% done
To the bishop, Struan represented the materialistic, evil, fanatic Protestant English who had broken the laws of God, who - to their everlasting damnation - had denied the Pope as the Jews had denied Christ; the man who was their leader, and the one who had, almost singlehanded, destroyed Macao, and with Macao, Catholic domination of the Asian heathen.
— 16 hours, 22 min ago
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Murray’s Previous Updates
Murray
is 80% done
He had gone to sea to cleanse himself.
He went to the bosom of the ocean as a lover who had been gone for an eternity, and the ocean welcomed him with squall and with storm, never endangering the ship or him.
She sent her wealth sparingly, making him strong again, giving him life, giving him dig-nity, and blessing him as only the sea can bless a man, cleansing him as only the ocean can cleanse a man.
🌊
— Jul 07, 2026 01:22PM
He went to the bosom of the ocean as a lover who had been gone for an eternity, and the ocean welcomed him with squall and with storm, never endangering the ship or him.
She sent her wealth sparingly, making him strong again, giving him life, giving him dig-nity, and blessing him as only the sea can bless a man, cleansing him as only the ocean can cleanse a man.
🌊
Murray
is 75% done
The solution is so delightfully simple, she told herself gleefully. Assassinate Gorth. Have him assassinated in such a way that no one suspects that the assassins are anything other than robbers or pirates. If it's done clandestinely in this fashion, one danger to my Tai-Pan is removed.
What is the best way?
May-may lay awake.
With the coming of dawn she had decided on the best procedure. Then she slept sweetly.
— Jul 05, 2026 09:30PM
What is the best way?
May-may lay awake.
With the coming of dawn she had decided on the best procedure. Then she slept sweetly.
Murray
is 60% done
Maureen Quance was standing there, her eyes grinding him to dust. She was a tall, big-boned Irishwoman with a face like a piece of leather and a large nose and legs planted like oaks. She was of an age with Mr. Quance but strong as an ox, her iron-gray hair in an untidy bun. When she was young she had been attractive, but now with the girth created by potatoes and beer she was overpowering. “Top of the evening!”
— Jul 03, 2026 05:56PM
Murray
is 40% done
"Let's talk about you, Tai-Pan. You can't
flaunt your Chinese mistress here."
"She and the children'll be safe aboard ship and that's all that counts."
"Not in our society, by God, and you know it. They'll break you, Tai-Pan, even you, if you go against their godrotting code. They have to. She's Chinese."
"The pox on them!"
“If May-may's kept private, she's no threat to them. What’s not seen does not exist.
— Jun 29, 2026 10:59PM
flaunt your Chinese mistress here."
"She and the children'll be safe aboard ship and that's all that counts."
"Not in our society, by God, and you know it. They'll break you, Tai-Pan, even you, if you go against their godrotting code. They have to. She's Chinese."
"The pox on them!"
“If May-may's kept private, she's no threat to them. What’s not seen does not exist.
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
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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To Struan, the bishop represented all that he despised in the Catholics—the dogmatic fanaticism of self-castrated, power-seeking men who sucked riches from the poor in the name of a Catholic God, drop by bloody drop, and from the drops built mighty cathedrals to the glory of their version of Divinity, who had idolatrously set up a man in Rome as Pope and made the man an infallible arbiter of other men.
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Struan to the bishop: "If cinchona can cure our malaria, then I'm ready to pay. If you want money you can have that. Power? I'll give you that. If you want my soul you can have that—I dinna subscribe to your views, so that would be a safe exchange. I'll even gladly go through the form of becoming a Catholic, but it would be meaningless, as you know and I know.”
Then, alone once more, the bishop split himself into the three persons that all generals of the Church must simultaneously be. First, the anointed Peter, first Bishop of Christ, with all that that spiritually implied. Second, the militant guardian of the Church temporal with all that that implied. And last, just a simple man who believed the teachings of a simple man who was the Son of God. He settled back in his chair and let these facets of himself argue one with another. And he listened to them.
“Oh God, thank you for life.”
