Word: quan
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...course it is. Corruption is endemic. It's bad in China, sure, but I still say the mainland people are like Chinese everywhere else in the world: turn 'em loose and they'll earn % trillions." A capitalist's faith expressed by a true capitalist. The speaker is Tommy Quan, 55, a millionaire Chinese American from Seattle known as the "orange king" of Guangdong's Taishan County...
Rather than send money, Tommy Quan decided to send himself. Until the Communists took over in 1949, Quan lived in a small village of 160 people not far from the Taishan County seat. Then at age 15, Quan and his family immigrated to Seattle. Eventually, Quan owned two thriving restaurants, a ski resort and "more real estate than I can keep track...
Leaving behind a wife and four children, two of whom are Seattle cops, Quan returned in 1982 to "do something for China -- and myself." But certainly not because of any romantic longing for his roots. "You know what they say about the good old days," he says. "They are the product of bad memory...
Short and powerfully built, Quan can outswear a gale of wind -- and outtalk even the most talkative Chinese. He reminds me of Robert Strauss, the former Democratic national chairman; Quan too, I am convinced, could talk a hungry dog out of a pork chop...
...back to China, Quan stopped in California to pick up some orange- tree saplings. "You know the Chinese were the first to grow orange trees," he says. "But like a good deal else that the Chinese invented first, they had forgotten how to do it." Today almost all the villages around Quan's 300-acre farm, which may be the largest private landholding in China, are growing oranges...