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The Mouse Deer Kingdom
The year is 1905 and Chai Mingzhi, an immigrant newly arrived in the port-town of Malacca, takes Engi, an indigenous boy from the tropical forest, to live with him. Trapped in a realm he doesn’t recognize and finding himself caught up in Chai Mingzhi’s bitter personal affairs, Engi quickly learns to take on the shape of the legendary mouse deer in order to survive in the outside world. Twenty years later, Engi sets out to unravel the mystery surrounding Chai’s past, his tireless quest for the land where the grand Minang Villa is built, and the tragedy that destroyed him.
The Mouse Deer Kingdom is a tale of love and betrayal against the backdrop of a troubled time when hundreds of thousands of Chinese fled poverty and the Qing Empire for Southeast Asia, where their arrival unsettled native life in their new home.
Reviews:
‘Chiew-Siah Tei is a master storyteller, and a rare talent, with that magical ability of being able to weave a spell over her readers, with riveting plots and prose that glows with life’ Time Out
'Tei excels in a series of wonderfully vivid setpieces, including an account of a typhoon that reaches a Conradian pitch of intensity' Independent
'This is a beautiful little book, to be sure; a tragic family saga along the lines of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life about outsiders in a land that seems set on smiting them' Tor.com
'[A] skillful tale of love, betrayal, and making a fresh start . . . a story full of complexity and intelligence . . . [a] rewarding and important novel' Scotsman
The Mouse Deer Kingdom is a tale of love and betrayal against the backdrop of a troubled time when hundreds of thousands of Chinese fled poverty and the Qing Empire for Southeast Asia, where their arrival unsettled native life in their new home.
Reviews:
‘Chiew-Siah Tei is a master storyteller, and a rare talent, with that magical ability of being able to weave a spell over her readers, with riveting plots and prose that glows with life’ Time Out
'Tei excels in a series of wonderfully vivid setpieces, including an account of a typhoon that reaches a Conradian pitch of intensity' Independent
'This is a beautiful little book, to be sure; a tragic family saga along the lines of Kate Atkinson’s Life After Life about outsiders in a land that seems set on smiting them' Tor.com
'[A] skillful tale of love, betrayal, and making a fresh start . . . a story full of complexity and intelligence . . . [a] rewarding and important novel' Scotsman
366 pages, Paperback
First published October 10, 2013
611 people want to read
About the author
Chiew-Siah Tei
7 books16 followersChiew-Siah Tei was born and raised in Tampin, a small town in southern Malaysia.
She has been widely published in Malaysian Chinese media since the 1980s. In the 1990s she wrote literary prose, as well as columns on social issues, film, arts and literature for a variety of publications including Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao.
Her first collection of prose, It’s Snowing (Chinese) – an account of her observation as an outsider in Scotland – was published in 1998. This was followed by a collection of arts and film reviews in 2000, Secrets and Lies (Chinese). She has since the late 1990s won awards for her Chinese prose, including the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award and the National Prose Writing Competition. In 2002, Tei was nominated the Best Prose Writer of the year
Tei went to Scotland in 1994 to read for an M.Phil. in Media Culture, majoring in film studies, at Glasgow University. A chance participation in BBC’s Migration Screenwriting programme led to the writing of her screenplay, Night Swimmer. The completed film later won Best Short Film at France’s Vendome International Film Festival 2000.
Returning to Malaysia in 1998, Tei worked as a freelance translator and lecturer of media studies at a local college. In 2002, she left for Scotland again to pursue a PhD in Creative Writing and Film Studies at Glasgow University, where she began working on her first novel. In between studies and writing, she penned Three Thousand Troubled Threads, which was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005.
Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008), was long-listed for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007 and short-listed for the 2008 Best Scottish Fiction Prize. In 2010, Tei was first awarded the inaugural Jessie Kesson Residency at the Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre, and later, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship.
She has been widely published in Malaysian Chinese media since the 1980s. In the 1990s she wrote literary prose, as well as columns on social issues, film, arts and literature for a variety of publications including Sin Chew Jit Poh and Nanyang Siang Pao.
Her first collection of prose, It’s Snowing (Chinese) – an account of her observation as an outsider in Scotland – was published in 1998. This was followed by a collection of arts and film reviews in 2000, Secrets and Lies (Chinese). She has since the late 1990s won awards for her Chinese prose, including the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award and the National Prose Writing Competition. In 2002, Tei was nominated the Best Prose Writer of the year
Tei went to Scotland in 1994 to read for an M.Phil. in Media Culture, majoring in film studies, at Glasgow University. A chance participation in BBC’s Migration Screenwriting programme led to the writing of her screenplay, Night Swimmer. The completed film later won Best Short Film at France’s Vendome International Film Festival 2000.
Returning to Malaysia in 1998, Tei worked as a freelance translator and lecturer of media studies at a local college. In 2002, she left for Scotland again to pursue a PhD in Creative Writing and Film Studies at Glasgow University, where she began working on her first novel. In between studies and writing, she penned Three Thousand Troubled Threads, which was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005.
Her first novel, Little Hut of Leaping Fishes (Picador, 2008), was long-listed for the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007 and short-listed for the 2008 Best Scottish Fiction Prize. In 2010, Tei was first awarded the inaugural Jessie Kesson Residency at the Moniack Mhor Creative Writing Centre, and later, the Hawthornden International Writers' Fellowship.
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Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 22, 2018
I started this book with no expectation, purely to fulfil my reading goal of reading something from a local author. I’m glad I picked this book. I loved the prose and how the story and thoughts of the various character was woven together along with all the local histories. This book reminded me on why I loved the subject of History in my high school days once again.
November 16, 2013
I received a copy of this book via a competition on Goodreads.com
While many of us may be familiar with the history of Asia, the nuances of the cultures that come from that area of the planet are easily lost on us. We may know bits of a philosophy or be aware of a style of artwork in which that area gave the world but the understanding of how the people thought or interacted is foreign to us. But in The Mouse Deer Kingdom, Chiew-Siah Tei brilliantly opens up life in early 20th-century Malaya to us.
Page 315
The past was a century-old porcelain vase, displayed prominently on a tall cabinet, too high to be reached. Because it was unreachable, because it was too sacred to be profaned, one could only crane his neck, tilt his head and stare up at it; his eyes filled with admiration, his mind swollen with longing. Day in, day out, the details painted on it were magnified in the memory: the delicate patterns became more elaborate, hues that were faint as watercolour somehow intensified, lines deepened and ran in places where they shouldn't be.
The blank spaces of truncated memories were stuffed with inventions, glorious, colourful, abundant.
The book centres around Chai Mingzhi. In 1905 he is forced from a life of relative comfort from China and settles in the Malayan city of Malacca. His life is a constant ride of successes and failures, as he tries to settle in his new home.
my complete review
While many of us may be familiar with the history of Asia, the nuances of the cultures that come from that area of the planet are easily lost on us. We may know bits of a philosophy or be aware of a style of artwork in which that area gave the world but the understanding of how the people thought or interacted is foreign to us. But in The Mouse Deer Kingdom, Chiew-Siah Tei brilliantly opens up life in early 20th-century Malaya to us.
Page 315
The past was a century-old porcelain vase, displayed prominently on a tall cabinet, too high to be reached. Because it was unreachable, because it was too sacred to be profaned, one could only crane his neck, tilt his head and stare up at it; his eyes filled with admiration, his mind swollen with longing. Day in, day out, the details painted on it were magnified in the memory: the delicate patterns became more elaborate, hues that were faint as watercolour somehow intensified, lines deepened and ran in places where they shouldn't be.
The blank spaces of truncated memories were stuffed with inventions, glorious, colourful, abundant.
The book centres around Chai Mingzhi. In 1905 he is forced from a life of relative comfort from China and settles in the Malayan city of Malacca. His life is a constant ride of successes and failures, as he tries to settle in his new home.
my complete review
October 24, 2013
An excellent follow up to Little Hut of Leaping Fishes. A tragic and touching portrayal of shattered dreams, and a sympathetic examination of migration.
January 12, 2016
I was really excited to buy this book - the title alone had won me over. Last year I ended up spending a few weeks doing research into Malayan folklore and was treated to delightful tales about the shrewd and tough mouse-deer, the silly tigers (and their tiger village in the jungle), the mischievous monkey and so many others. When you have so much fun doing research that you don't ever want to stop...that stays with you.
The other thing that attracted me to the novel was the setting - 1905. Most novels written about Malaya/Malaysia take place during the Japanese occupation or just before. The only exception I've found so far is 'The Ghost Bride' by Yangtze Choo (which was amazing). So I was also excited to see this author's take on this earlier period. When I opened the acknowledgments and saw the amount of research that went into orang asli beliefs and lifestyles, I thought I would finally be reading a story about Malaya that was more inclusive than the usual (some Chinese protagonist(s), [or Indian, if the writer is Indian] the token Westerner, the token Japanese, some guest appearance by a Malay or Indian [usually one each]...). And last but not least...I was hoping I would finally pick up a book about immigrants becoming citizens of a new country that wasn't so starkly defined by stereotypes - a far hope for a novel set in the early 1900s, but there's only so much one can take of the successful but mentally-ill Chinese (I'm pretty sure they're all depressed, at least based on what I've been able to read of the characters), the mysterious Japanese, the head-in-the-clouds Western explorer, the meek Malay and the almost forgettable Indian character (unless again, the writer is Indian, then you’re dealing with the forgettable Chinese character).
As the above alludes, with all these hopes and expectations, I was sure to be disappointed. So I will put this out here first, my low rating for this book is entirely based on my own unreasonable expectations that asks for Malaysians to start writing the narrative that they say they want - inclusive, collaborative and diverse. It's not impossible, yes, different communities would come to blows in the beginning, but write about a common cause that made them unite given time, or grudgingly start to see that this person with a slightly different skin color is a neighbor, not an invader.
So this desire probably isn't shared with most readers. This was not a bad book by any means, it was simply less than I was hoping for. From now on, I’m going to have a rant, but since you’ll probably want to skip that rant, just ignore the next two paragraphs.
Firstly it seems, there is no way for a novel set in Malaysia about Malaysians to be written inclusively in the time periods that are the most popular. The country is more than 50 years old and is still starkly divided by racial lines. Any writer from Malaysia, writing about Malaysia, is going to be held to the unfortunate reality of that background, and it will show up in their writing. Secondly, it's too much to ask for considering the historical time periods these novels take place in - under both British and Japanese rule, the different racial groups made to live apart to prevent any kind of collective nationalist uprising. While on one hand, common sense may dictate that it would be really strange to have united communities under those banners during a time when the concept of a Malaysian identity as understood today didn't really exist yet (sure, the orang asli have been here much longer, the Malays arrived before the Chinese and the Indians, but during colonial times, the latter two were probably considered citizens of Qing China and British India [even if they were born in Malaya]).
But on the other hand...how about this? Write about the days right after the end of the war, banding together to rebuild the country, the first Cabinet, the Malay policemen who volunteered to learn Chinese, the Chinese policemen who volunteered to learn Malay, the Chinese boys who lived near the rubber plantations and learned to sing Hindi songs and speak Hindi, the Indians boys who sang Chinese New Year melodies, the Malays who learned Japanese and worried that they would be seen as collaborators after the war but actually found out that all that language and cultural knowledge made them much better at understanding and working with their Chinese neighbors, the Chinese in Penang who became Hindu, heck, why on earth hasn’t the Jewish community in Penang made an appearance in any one of these novels?! These are all amazing stories and sure, maybe you can’t publish some of them in Malaysia but most of these books are published out of the UK anyway so that doesn’t make much of a difference. And I’m not making any of these stories up, everything I have mentioned has happened (and more besides that). None of it ever makes it into a book.
Okay, rant over, now I'm actually going to review this book. The first third of the book was very difficult to get through. It's meant to feel grueling - the tough journey by ship to Southeast Asia (a journey that sadly, for all our years of effort is still repeated today across the Mediterranean and the Malacca Straits), the arrival in Malacca, the difficulties that many immigrants faced to start anew. I'll give this book credit vis-à-vis my rant above - the party begins with four Chinese immigrants and one Englishman who is engaged to the Chinese woman in the party. Racially the group isn't all that diverse, but socially they are - a mandarin of the Qing Court, a street kid, a formerly married woman cast out of her husband's family simply because she was believed to have been bad luck, her whiny but tough teenage daughter and a middle-class man with a taste for adventure from England, whose parents were schoolteachers. So there we have it, the highest, the middle, the poorest, and women (who of course, despite being considered high class are socially less respectable than even the male street kid).
Adding to the mix is our narrator, the orang asli boy Engi, who is more invested in telling us a story about a couple of immigrants rather than his own heritage because of his connection to the mandarin. (So yes, in this aspect the novel did not disappoint - the author didn't forget about the orang asli entirely).
What's particularly difficult about the first third of the book is that none of the immigrants are sympathetic characters. I really couldn't like any of them...I could bring myself to feel sympathetic to Mingxi, but that was it. I couldn't even bring myself to care about his niece, the teenage daughter, which I get the feeling I should have been able to most relate to, being a young woman and quite displaced at that. Nope.
Parallel to this initial story is the tale of Parameswara's founding of his Kingdom in Malacca...which was interesting, and it was nice to have that draw a parallel to the numerous future journeys of migrants to this land. One of the themes that this story really wants to pound into your head is that other than the Negritos (and they've just been the ones who have lived in Malaysia the longest)...none of us actually come from the country. Which is something I thought anyone who would be reading this would know, seeing as how there's a distinctive lack of countries in the world that is actually run by its original people (perhaps there can be exception made for some of the countries on the African continent? It's hard to tell because prior to the colonial days there were hundreds of tribal kingdoms there and now they're all just lumped together with other rival nations or split by a line on a map...not unlike some Malaysians, hey how about that).
The Parameswara story ends with his marriage to the Chinese princess Hang Li Po. It's nice to see that Parameswara was a Malay Prince who was a Hindu (who later converted to Islam) and married to a Chinese princess (one of many many many wives). Of course his story is now part history and part legend. His identity is still very much the identity of the country he helped found even till today, as dictated by the geography of the region.
Finally the book gets easier to read in the second two-thirds - mostly thanks to Engi. Engi observes the land his forefathers have lived on with foreigners eyes simply because he has been taken out of the jungle. He goes on adventures, he's a little Sherlock Holmes, he adapts, he learns and survives...not unlike the cunning, cute and strong mouse deer.
Then the story ends. A race riot, failed nationalism, loneliness and an afterlife in hell. For a book that is dedicated 'to the sons and daughters of Malaysia, the land that has bred and nourished us, to which we all belong'....it's a pretty dismal end. I can see how the attempted point is that divided we fail, since the group we start off with in the book can’t stay together (a commentary about how easily people like to divide themselves by social, racial and economic lines?). Mingxi leaves the Qing court because he refuses to take part in a corrupt system only to become very comfortable with lies (hypocrite), Tian is a crook who is the one who best flourishes in his new home but he’s too proud, too arrogant and too much of a crook to be liked. Jiaxi is a thief, a coward and a liar and never really learns how to stop whining...though she’s decisive, I’ll grant her that. My whole point is that if this group represents the people of Malaysia...there’s really nothing to be proud about. The orang asli, whom the book acknowledges as the older settlers of the land (not the eldest) don’t actually show up all that much, even though they’re a pretty cool bunch and we have to learn about how they suffered with the coming of all these new people (like many indigenous, or mostly indigenous, groups do). The Chinese are whiny and thieving or hooked on opium (or all of the above). The Malays pop up again in the end just to start a riot and the Indians are forgotten unless its mentioned that they’re just around to tap rubber and beat their wives.
Again...for a book dedicated to the sons and daughters of Malaysia...it kind of makes you wish that you had never heard of a place called Malaysia, much less had to be associated with it - a nation of liars, cowards, thieves, racists and wife beaters. I mean...really? It’s a wonder the land doesn’t spit all these people out. Was this story realistic? Yeah, without a doubt, it was a story about average people. People aren’t great, but with any story you can focus on negatives or the positives. Generally they’re balanced so that a moral or theme/point is put across. There wasn’t really a point to this story, other than the fact that most of us living on Malaysia are not from here originally...well I didn’t need a novel this long to tell me that.
The only positive aspect of this story is that for all of poor Engi’s suffering, being manipulated, used as an emotional crutch, raised to adore a lonely old man (and having no choice in the matter), his life already decided for him, he can teach his people some awareness of the outside world so they can (hopefully) stop getting kidnapped by these crazy immigrants and people living outside! So maybe the whole point of this novel was to tell the sons and daughters of Malaysia that we’re literally just crazy and messed up.
I don’t know, maybe most Malaysian readers would pick up this book and find a tale of several people that they can admire - tenacious survivors who staked a claim of a new life in a new world. I think you can be a tenacious survivor in a book without being so bereft of redeeming qualities that a reader can’t wait for you to disappear from its pages. I could have done without the only line about the Indian community being ‘Indian wives thinking of ways not to get beaten by their husbands and their husbands thinking of ways to beat their wives’ (not directly quoted but its close to that). I really would have welcomed more along the smaller theme that the mistake is allowing a division. In a way, the group broke up for one simple reason - they never actually talked to each other. It’s pretty crazy how much they just don't communicate. If this novel was intentionally meant to be a message about the main problem that exists in Malaysian culture today, well that’s pretty clever, but if such an issue is going to be highlighted, it’s usually closed by the novel showing one opinion of how that issue can be resolved.
Anyway, despite what must sound like a scathing review (it’s not, if I hated the book I would have thrown it away and marked it as ‘gave up on’), it’s still a book to have on the shelf. Malaysian literature in English is still a developing genre, so it’s important to have the growing diversity of choices slowly becoming available. It does make me happy to see more Malaysian-written books about Malaysia that are not in the non-fiction genre (the country appears more fond of non-fiction books in English than fiction, something that I hope will change). Finally as I said, this is just my opinion, other people may have loved it and found these characters incredibly complex. In fact, it’s a fairly well-rated novel, so you'd probably enjoy it, I expected too much.
The other thing that attracted me to the novel was the setting - 1905. Most novels written about Malaya/Malaysia take place during the Japanese occupation or just before. The only exception I've found so far is 'The Ghost Bride' by Yangtze Choo (which was amazing). So I was also excited to see this author's take on this earlier period. When I opened the acknowledgments and saw the amount of research that went into orang asli beliefs and lifestyles, I thought I would finally be reading a story about Malaya that was more inclusive than the usual (some Chinese protagonist(s), [or Indian, if the writer is Indian] the token Westerner, the token Japanese, some guest appearance by a Malay or Indian [usually one each]...). And last but not least...I was hoping I would finally pick up a book about immigrants becoming citizens of a new country that wasn't so starkly defined by stereotypes - a far hope for a novel set in the early 1900s, but there's only so much one can take of the successful but mentally-ill Chinese (I'm pretty sure they're all depressed, at least based on what I've been able to read of the characters), the mysterious Japanese, the head-in-the-clouds Western explorer, the meek Malay and the almost forgettable Indian character (unless again, the writer is Indian, then you’re dealing with the forgettable Chinese character).
As the above alludes, with all these hopes and expectations, I was sure to be disappointed. So I will put this out here first, my low rating for this book is entirely based on my own unreasonable expectations that asks for Malaysians to start writing the narrative that they say they want - inclusive, collaborative and diverse. It's not impossible, yes, different communities would come to blows in the beginning, but write about a common cause that made them unite given time, or grudgingly start to see that this person with a slightly different skin color is a neighbor, not an invader.
So this desire probably isn't shared with most readers. This was not a bad book by any means, it was simply less than I was hoping for. From now on, I’m going to have a rant, but since you’ll probably want to skip that rant, just ignore the next two paragraphs.
Firstly it seems, there is no way for a novel set in Malaysia about Malaysians to be written inclusively in the time periods that are the most popular. The country is more than 50 years old and is still starkly divided by racial lines. Any writer from Malaysia, writing about Malaysia, is going to be held to the unfortunate reality of that background, and it will show up in their writing. Secondly, it's too much to ask for considering the historical time periods these novels take place in - under both British and Japanese rule, the different racial groups made to live apart to prevent any kind of collective nationalist uprising. While on one hand, common sense may dictate that it would be really strange to have united communities under those banners during a time when the concept of a Malaysian identity as understood today didn't really exist yet (sure, the orang asli have been here much longer, the Malays arrived before the Chinese and the Indians, but during colonial times, the latter two were probably considered citizens of Qing China and British India [even if they were born in Malaya]).
But on the other hand...how about this? Write about the days right after the end of the war, banding together to rebuild the country, the first Cabinet, the Malay policemen who volunteered to learn Chinese, the Chinese policemen who volunteered to learn Malay, the Chinese boys who lived near the rubber plantations and learned to sing Hindi songs and speak Hindi, the Indians boys who sang Chinese New Year melodies, the Malays who learned Japanese and worried that they would be seen as collaborators after the war but actually found out that all that language and cultural knowledge made them much better at understanding and working with their Chinese neighbors, the Chinese in Penang who became Hindu, heck, why on earth hasn’t the Jewish community in Penang made an appearance in any one of these novels?! These are all amazing stories and sure, maybe you can’t publish some of them in Malaysia but most of these books are published out of the UK anyway so that doesn’t make much of a difference. And I’m not making any of these stories up, everything I have mentioned has happened (and more besides that). None of it ever makes it into a book.
Okay, rant over, now I'm actually going to review this book. The first third of the book was very difficult to get through. It's meant to feel grueling - the tough journey by ship to Southeast Asia (a journey that sadly, for all our years of effort is still repeated today across the Mediterranean and the Malacca Straits), the arrival in Malacca, the difficulties that many immigrants faced to start anew. I'll give this book credit vis-à-vis my rant above - the party begins with four Chinese immigrants and one Englishman who is engaged to the Chinese woman in the party. Racially the group isn't all that diverse, but socially they are - a mandarin of the Qing Court, a street kid, a formerly married woman cast out of her husband's family simply because she was believed to have been bad luck, her whiny but tough teenage daughter and a middle-class man with a taste for adventure from England, whose parents were schoolteachers. So there we have it, the highest, the middle, the poorest, and women (who of course, despite being considered high class are socially less respectable than even the male street kid).
Adding to the mix is our narrator, the orang asli boy Engi, who is more invested in telling us a story about a couple of immigrants rather than his own heritage because of his connection to the mandarin. (So yes, in this aspect the novel did not disappoint - the author didn't forget about the orang asli entirely).
What's particularly difficult about the first third of the book is that none of the immigrants are sympathetic characters. I really couldn't like any of them...I could bring myself to feel sympathetic to Mingxi, but that was it. I couldn't even bring myself to care about his niece, the teenage daughter, which I get the feeling I should have been able to most relate to, being a young woman and quite displaced at that. Nope.
Parallel to this initial story is the tale of Parameswara's founding of his Kingdom in Malacca...which was interesting, and it was nice to have that draw a parallel to the numerous future journeys of migrants to this land. One of the themes that this story really wants to pound into your head is that other than the Negritos (and they've just been the ones who have lived in Malaysia the longest)...none of us actually come from the country. Which is something I thought anyone who would be reading this would know, seeing as how there's a distinctive lack of countries in the world that is actually run by its original people (perhaps there can be exception made for some of the countries on the African continent? It's hard to tell because prior to the colonial days there were hundreds of tribal kingdoms there and now they're all just lumped together with other rival nations or split by a line on a map...not unlike some Malaysians, hey how about that).
The Parameswara story ends with his marriage to the Chinese princess Hang Li Po. It's nice to see that Parameswara was a Malay Prince who was a Hindu (who later converted to Islam) and married to a Chinese princess (one of many many many wives). Of course his story is now part history and part legend. His identity is still very much the identity of the country he helped found even till today, as dictated by the geography of the region.
Finally the book gets easier to read in the second two-thirds - mostly thanks to Engi. Engi observes the land his forefathers have lived on with foreigners eyes simply because he has been taken out of the jungle. He goes on adventures, he's a little Sherlock Holmes, he adapts, he learns and survives...not unlike the cunning, cute and strong mouse deer.
Then the story ends. A race riot, failed nationalism, loneliness and an afterlife in hell. For a book that is dedicated 'to the sons and daughters of Malaysia, the land that has bred and nourished us, to which we all belong'....it's a pretty dismal end. I can see how the attempted point is that divided we fail, since the group we start off with in the book can’t stay together (a commentary about how easily people like to divide themselves by social, racial and economic lines?). Mingxi leaves the Qing court because he refuses to take part in a corrupt system only to become very comfortable with lies (hypocrite), Tian is a crook who is the one who best flourishes in his new home but he’s too proud, too arrogant and too much of a crook to be liked. Jiaxi is a thief, a coward and a liar and never really learns how to stop whining...though she’s decisive, I’ll grant her that. My whole point is that if this group represents the people of Malaysia...there’s really nothing to be proud about. The orang asli, whom the book acknowledges as the older settlers of the land (not the eldest) don’t actually show up all that much, even though they’re a pretty cool bunch and we have to learn about how they suffered with the coming of all these new people (like many indigenous, or mostly indigenous, groups do). The Chinese are whiny and thieving or hooked on opium (or all of the above). The Malays pop up again in the end just to start a riot and the Indians are forgotten unless its mentioned that they’re just around to tap rubber and beat their wives.
Again...for a book dedicated to the sons and daughters of Malaysia...it kind of makes you wish that you had never heard of a place called Malaysia, much less had to be associated with it - a nation of liars, cowards, thieves, racists and wife beaters. I mean...really? It’s a wonder the land doesn’t spit all these people out. Was this story realistic? Yeah, without a doubt, it was a story about average people. People aren’t great, but with any story you can focus on negatives or the positives. Generally they’re balanced so that a moral or theme/point is put across. There wasn’t really a point to this story, other than the fact that most of us living on Malaysia are not from here originally...well I didn’t need a novel this long to tell me that.
The only positive aspect of this story is that for all of poor Engi’s suffering, being manipulated, used as an emotional crutch, raised to adore a lonely old man (and having no choice in the matter), his life already decided for him, he can teach his people some awareness of the outside world so they can (hopefully) stop getting kidnapped by these crazy immigrants and people living outside! So maybe the whole point of this novel was to tell the sons and daughters of Malaysia that we’re literally just crazy and messed up.
I don’t know, maybe most Malaysian readers would pick up this book and find a tale of several people that they can admire - tenacious survivors who staked a claim of a new life in a new world. I think you can be a tenacious survivor in a book without being so bereft of redeeming qualities that a reader can’t wait for you to disappear from its pages. I could have done without the only line about the Indian community being ‘Indian wives thinking of ways not to get beaten by their husbands and their husbands thinking of ways to beat their wives’ (not directly quoted but its close to that). I really would have welcomed more along the smaller theme that the mistake is allowing a division. In a way, the group broke up for one simple reason - they never actually talked to each other. It’s pretty crazy how much they just don't communicate. If this novel was intentionally meant to be a message about the main problem that exists in Malaysian culture today, well that’s pretty clever, but if such an issue is going to be highlighted, it’s usually closed by the novel showing one opinion of how that issue can be resolved.
Anyway, despite what must sound like a scathing review (it’s not, if I hated the book I would have thrown it away and marked it as ‘gave up on’), it’s still a book to have on the shelf. Malaysian literature in English is still a developing genre, so it’s important to have the growing diversity of choices slowly becoming available. It does make me happy to see more Malaysian-written books about Malaysia that are not in the non-fiction genre (the country appears more fond of non-fiction books in English than fiction, something that I hope will change). Finally as I said, this is just my opinion, other people may have loved it and found these characters incredibly complex. In fact, it’s a fairly well-rated novel, so you'd probably enjoy it, I expected too much.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 16, 2020
As a Malaysian Chinese myself I identified a lot with the themes of cultural dislocation and identity displacement throughout the book. Although fifth (or sixth?) generation Chinese in Malaysia, we are still constantly reminded that we’re ‘outsiders’ and told to ‘go back to China’. If you come across Malaysian news within these few years, the topics don’t stray far from racial unrest and discrimination. But hey, looks like we’re not the only ones facing these issues now!
The frustration and anger Mingzhi feels from still being unaccepted and rejected by the land and the people of colonial Malaya despite his many contributions and efforts, are felt very strongly if not many times over by us now, in the 21st century. Coupled also with the fact that much of our culture and lifestyle now still heavily revolves around Chinese culture our forefathers imported from China, we are in that uncomfortable and confusing wedge between old roots and adopted home.
The book depicts Mingzhi’s journey from China to then Malaya and the struggles he faced as he tries to make this land his new home. Somehow along the way, he adopts Engi, a boy from one of the indigenous tribes, as his charge. The conflicts Mingzhi struggles with identity and assimilation are later faced by Engi, by plucking Engi out of the forest, Mingzhi has unknowingly subject the young boy’s identity to a state of limbo. As he hangs on tenuously to his roots, he cannot deny the knowledge and habits he acquired from life beyond the jungle. The author very deftly and skilfully mirrors the identity struggles faced by Mingzhi and Engi. And sometimes also, Parameswara, the ancient Srivijayan warrior prince who fled his home to the Malayan Peninsula and founded Melaka. Although the author attempts to mirror Mingzhi’s journey and Parameswara’s, this line of thought was abruptly abandoned. I can’t really the blame the author because much of what we know of Parameswara is obscure folklore and she didn’t have much material to go on with on his later part in the story after establishing Melaka. It was nice to have a brief traipse through our history/literature lessons in school though.
I thought the title and the synopsis of the book was a tad bit misleading as it hardly mentioned the titular creature, the mouse-deer, save during a short trip through time to the 13th century on Melaka’s namesake, nor did Engi transform into one during his nightly adventures. But the sang kancil is a staple to Malay legends and folklore and deeply stamped into our minds with anything related to Melaka or, ancient Malay (oops, no, Sumatran, originally) kings, so we can let this one go I guess.
Regardless, the book was very enjoyable and I was quite moved by the immigration diaspora story because, well, we obviously haven’t got over it despite two centuries. And that’s also the book’s message, time may have gone on in a hurry but people still managed to make things difficult for people and tell them to sod off back to their ‘home country’ but where is our home country? Not here, not there. Possibly everywhere.
The frustration and anger Mingzhi feels from still being unaccepted and rejected by the land and the people of colonial Malaya despite his many contributions and efforts, are felt very strongly if not many times over by us now, in the 21st century. Coupled also with the fact that much of our culture and lifestyle now still heavily revolves around Chinese culture our forefathers imported from China, we are in that uncomfortable and confusing wedge between old roots and adopted home.
The book depicts Mingzhi’s journey from China to then Malaya and the struggles he faced as he tries to make this land his new home. Somehow along the way, he adopts Engi, a boy from one of the indigenous tribes, as his charge. The conflicts Mingzhi struggles with identity and assimilation are later faced by Engi, by plucking Engi out of the forest, Mingzhi has unknowingly subject the young boy’s identity to a state of limbo. As he hangs on tenuously to his roots, he cannot deny the knowledge and habits he acquired from life beyond the jungle. The author very deftly and skilfully mirrors the identity struggles faced by Mingzhi and Engi. And sometimes also, Parameswara, the ancient Srivijayan warrior prince who fled his home to the Malayan Peninsula and founded Melaka. Although the author attempts to mirror Mingzhi’s journey and Parameswara’s, this line of thought was abruptly abandoned. I can’t really the blame the author because much of what we know of Parameswara is obscure folklore and she didn’t have much material to go on with on his later part in the story after establishing Melaka. It was nice to have a brief traipse through our history/literature lessons in school though.
I thought the title and the synopsis of the book was a tad bit misleading as it hardly mentioned the titular creature, the mouse-deer, save during a short trip through time to the 13th century on Melaka’s namesake, nor did Engi transform into one during his nightly adventures. But the sang kancil is a staple to Malay legends and folklore and deeply stamped into our minds with anything related to Melaka or, ancient Malay (oops, no, Sumatran, originally) kings, so we can let this one go I guess.
Regardless, the book was very enjoyable and I was quite moved by the immigration diaspora story because, well, we obviously haven’t got over it despite two centuries. And that’s also the book’s message, time may have gone on in a hurry but people still managed to make things difficult for people and tell them to sod off back to their ‘home country’ but where is our home country? Not here, not there. Possibly everywhere.
November 11, 2021
Disappointing. The author has abilities; she writes beautifully poetic and descriptive prose but the rambling and muddled structure did not work. The characters were unsympathetic and poorly drawn; their actions were contrived and unlikely. Too many random characters entering and disappearing with no apparent purpose other than being a device at the moment. Rather than a coherent novel, this would have worked better as a collection of short stories such was the random nature of the opposing parts of the book that seemed uneasily stitched together. It is a short book but took me a long time to plough through!
March 18, 2022
3.5 stars. The idea was so much better than the execution. The writing was actually quite good, but structurally this was all over the place. It started out so well with the Parameshwara parallel story, but that totally disappeared partway through. Then we get caught up with the side characters for a hundred pages and then they disappear. By the time the narrator shows back up in the story, we're most of the way through and it still feels jumpy. I love a good non-chronological story, but this one just didn't work.
Really liked the questing for 'home' and identity bits, especially as tied to multiple people migrations and cultural assimilation. So much potential just not quite realized.
Really liked the questing for 'home' and identity bits, especially as tied to multiple people migrations and cultural assimilation. So much potential just not quite realized.
August 31, 2022
Disappointing that historical fiction set in my own region, so rare to come by, was so badly written. With the exception of the daughter, the other characters were shallow and forgettable, while the plot was so incoherent I had to force myself to the end of the book. A few short chapters on the history of Malacca's founding by the Sumatran prince was about the only parts that I liked, albeit not an original story by the author. Perhaps the author's forte remains publications in the Chinese language, which I see was where her background was. Either that or the 'creative writing' was too high flown and completely eluded me.
December 18, 2017
this is a direct continuation from the first book titled little hut of leaping fishes. i was displeased with the first book which. and am also displeased by the second book. still feel that the narrative is choppy and there are quite a number of abrupt endings for the characters. just meh for me. i was actually looking forward to this book as it was set in malaysia in its earlier days but i took a long time to finish it because there are many more things to do/read that i found more compelling than to continue reading this. this book is not for me i guess.
May 9, 2020
An interesting story with an interesting structure - moving between times and narrators, but not too many that it becomes difficult to follow. A lot about social structures (including colonialism and racism) and about family structures; the balance between the people you are given and the people you choose.
September 5, 2017
Aside from narrative of Engi by the author, i really enjoy the book. To be honest ,the writing somehow felt like indirect confrontation towards the Malays. I could be wrong though. I agreed that Orang Asli existed way before Parameswara came and established Melaka. Anyway, 4 stars from me.
September 27, 2021
The first book wasn't my cup of tea. This book though...
October 4, 2025
Felt that I discovered some aspects of Asian history and culture that I was unaware of, and the story was pretty good too.
September 30, 2015
I picked this up in Malaysia because I wanted to read some local literature. My partner is Malaysian-Chinese from Malacca. I was really excited to find something so connected to that heritage!
I was not disappointed – the descriptions of turn of the century Malacca are wonderful, and the life and heritage of the city is captured beautifully.
That said, if you are expecting the kind of romantic Orientalism of Memoirs of a Geisha or Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, this is not that. Tei confronts the grit and hardship of life in colonial Malaya, as well as the labyrinthine social structures of imperial China, with a strong sense of realism. This is an extraordinary, evocative novel.
I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in historical literary fiction. Like Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, I felt this gave a deep, meaningful sense of place to its story. Anyone with a particular interest in Malaysia or Asian fiction generally will love this, but it resonates far beyond as well. Highly recommended.
I was not disappointed – the descriptions of turn of the century Malacca are wonderful, and the life and heritage of the city is captured beautifully.
That said, if you are expecting the kind of romantic Orientalism of Memoirs of a Geisha or Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, this is not that. Tei confronts the grit and hardship of life in colonial Malaya, as well as the labyrinthine social structures of imperial China, with a strong sense of realism. This is an extraordinary, evocative novel.
I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in historical literary fiction. Like Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible, Kate Grenville's The Secret River and Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, I felt this gave a deep, meaningful sense of place to its story. Anyone with a particular interest in Malaysia or Asian fiction generally will love this, but it resonates far beyond as well. Highly recommended.
March 24, 2016
The premise for the book was great. Malaysia 1900 to the start of WWII. Indigenous people, Malays who have been there for 400 years, Chinese exiled by the Boxer Rebellion and the British Empire all are seen through the eyes of Engi and Mingzhi.
Engi is a young forest dweller. His father sees the times are a changing and when he finds a Chinese business man lost in the jungle he sees a chance for Engi to make a better life.
The Chinese business man, is one-time mandarin, Chai Mingzhi who has also seen the times a changing and has escaped China during the boxer rebellion. He enters a world where the Malays and English compete for control but within the Chinese community and friendship with the English he is able to rebuild his wealth.
Well written and worth the read, to me it just did not pull all the threads together.
Engi is a young forest dweller. His father sees the times are a changing and when he finds a Chinese business man lost in the jungle he sees a chance for Engi to make a better life.
The Chinese business man, is one-time mandarin, Chai Mingzhi who has also seen the times a changing and has escaped China during the boxer rebellion. He enters a world where the Malays and English compete for control but within the Chinese community and friendship with the English he is able to rebuild his wealth.
Well written and worth the read, to me it just did not pull all the threads together.
May 18, 2014
This is like reading George Orwell;s "Burmese Days" but written from the point of view of the victims not the colonisers. It is an extraordinary account of how a young boy from the forest dwellers of Malaya, the Orang Asli, is dragged into a world that he does not understand, the world of the Malays, the Chinese immigrants and the British colonial masters, at the setting up of the rubber industry. Chiew-Siah tei writes with an extraordinary compassion, depth of understanding, imagination and wit about the way in which young Engi struggles and adapts, like the mouse deer, to survive in a world that is not his own and really never becomes his world. This book is extraordinary.
July 29, 2018
This book is an interesting and intriguing tale. It was a book of 2 parts for me though. One part I loved the writing was lovely and the story flowed with ease. The other part was a bit hard work and I found it a bit of a chore to get through at times. So the second part spoilt the overall reading experience for me which is why I gave it 3 Stars.
December 12, 2013
Loved the subtle prose and exotic setting. Malaysia is one of my favorite places so to learn something of its history was fascinating. I wish I had read the prequel before reading this and look forward to the sequel.
December 28, 2015
This book makes me feel like I am back in history. The author tells the reader about the setting intricately that you can imagine the situation easily. Kudos for a well researched setting and narration.
June 3, 2015
I did really enjoy this books. I did however get a bit lost around the end with the time jumps. It is again a book written by the Chinese and about Chinese immigrants to Malaysia, which does usually make for a great story. I need to find a Malaysian novel about Malays :P
December 2, 2015
Intersting storyline, but I felt the end dragged on a bit
March 23, 2017
Set at the start of the twentieth century, we follow a group of characters through a world that is changing rapidly under the influence of colonial powers and technological advancements. Much of the focus is on a group of Chinese exiles and their white British associate as they try to escape political upheaval, find a new home in what is now Malaysia and restore themselves to their previous high social standings.
The story is told by Engi, plucked as a child from his indigenous tribe in the forest to be educated in the modern world of business. It's told in a somewhat haphazard fashion - not always in chronological sequence and it can be difficult to keep up with where things are in the timeline. On one hand, that does mimic how the human brain works sometimes - we don't always remember things in sequence - but at times it does make the book a little confusing as we jump suddenly back or forwards in time.
Some of the supporting characters also seem to disappear from the book without much of an explanation. Jiaxi is an example of this: we're just getting to know her character as she grows up - and then she's left behind and we get no further information. Perhaps that is intended to reflect the fact that we are being told only what Engi knows about her, but a small note in the Epilogue would have been nice just to clear up her plot-line.
The depictions of the locations and era are very vivid - you can really see the places and people in your mind. It is also an area of history that I am not especially familiar with, but may now try to read more about so that I can put the novel into more context.
The story is told by Engi, plucked as a child from his indigenous tribe in the forest to be educated in the modern world of business. It's told in a somewhat haphazard fashion - not always in chronological sequence and it can be difficult to keep up with where things are in the timeline. On one hand, that does mimic how the human brain works sometimes - we don't always remember things in sequence - but at times it does make the book a little confusing as we jump suddenly back or forwards in time.
Some of the supporting characters also seem to disappear from the book without much of an explanation. Jiaxi is an example of this: we're just getting to know her character as she grows up - and then she's left behind and we get no further information. Perhaps that is intended to reflect the fact that we are being told only what Engi knows about her, but a small note in the Epilogue would have been nice just to clear up her plot-line.
The depictions of the locations and era are very vivid - you can really see the places and people in your mind. It is also an area of history that I am not especially familiar with, but may now try to read more about so that I can put the novel into more context.
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