No. IX
SOME TALK WITH A TAIPAN AND A GENERAL; PROVES IN WHAT MANNER A SEA PICNIC MAY BE A SUCCESS.
"I should like to rise and go
Where the golden apples grow,
Where beneath another sky
Parrot-islands anchored lie."
—R. L. Stevenson.
Hong-Kong was so much alive, so built, so lighted, and so bloatedly rich to all outward appearance that I wanted to know how these things came about. You can't lavish granite by the cubic ton for nothing, or rivet your cliffs with Portland cement, or build a five-mile bund, or establish a club like a small palace. I sought a Taipan, which means the head of an English trading firm. He was the biggest Taipan on the island, and quite the nicest. He owned ships and wharves and houses and mines and a hundred other things. To him said I:—
"O Taipan, I am a poor person from Calcutta, and the liveliness of your place astounds me. How is it that every one smells of money; whence come your municipal improvements; and why are the White Men so restless?"
Said the Taipan: "It is because the island is going ahead mightily. Because everything pays. Observe this share-list."
He took me down a list of thirty or less companies—steam-launch companies, mining, rope-weaving, dock, trading, agency and general companies—and with five exceptions all the shares were at premium—some a hundred, some five hundred, and others only fifty.
"It is not a boom," said the Taipan. "It is genuine. Nearly every man you meet in these parts is a broker, and he floats companies."
I looked out of the window and beheld how companies were floated. Three men with their hats on the back of their heads converse for ten minutes. To these enters a fourth with a pocket-book. Then all four dive into the Hong-Kong Hotel for material wherewith to float themselves and—there is your company!