Visiting Hong Kong in a few weeks and wanted a bit of historical fiction to set my bearings straight. Tai-Pan was not the best choice- the 'fiction' heavily outweighed the 'historical'. There was a bit of swashbuckling adventure that made me push on to the end (quite a long winded feat, let me tell you) but there was so much about the novel that I didn't enjoy. The stereotyping, the meaningless violence and vapid sex scenes, the big lusty white men taking over Hong Kong and painted by Clavell's brush into heroes, (despite being drug-smuggling colonizing idiots), the giggly silky-skinned insatiable Chinese mistresses. Not a redeemable character in the whole bunch. But then again, I knew that was what this would be when I signed on to read it. It's my own fault for expecting more, hence the 2.5 stars.