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Ghost Cave
A tale of tragedy, rebellion and romance unfolds in the jungles and gold mining country of Borneo.
Ah Min, a young Chinese immigrant, follows his best friend to seek his fortune in Sarawak in the mid-19th century. They labour in the mines alongside fellow Hakka and some native Dayak. Ah Min explores a humid land of beguiling women, of fragrant spices and of ghosts. But the oppression of the English White Rajah draws the men into a rebellion that will have catastrophic consequences.
Over 100 years later, Ah Min’s descendant Ka Ming joins communist guerrillas in the jungles of Sarawak. Facing danger at every turn, he and his friends must fight for their ideologies against British and Malaysian troops. The stories of Ah Min and Ka Ming are told through the eyes of a modern young woman, Therese. A tattered journal, a mysterious stranger and the voice of Ka Ming ultimately reveal that the two men are connected by more than blood.
Ah Min, a young Chinese immigrant, follows his best friend to seek his fortune in Sarawak in the mid-19th century. They labour in the mines alongside fellow Hakka and some native Dayak. Ah Min explores a humid land of beguiling women, of fragrant spices and of ghosts. But the oppression of the English White Rajah draws the men into a rebellion that will have catastrophic consequences.
Over 100 years later, Ah Min’s descendant Ka Ming joins communist guerrillas in the jungles of Sarawak. Facing danger at every turn, he and his friends must fight for their ideologies against British and Malaysian troops. The stories of Ah Min and Ka Ming are told through the eyes of a modern young woman, Therese. A tattered journal, a mysterious stranger and the voice of Ka Ming ultimately reveal that the two men are connected by more than blood.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
248 pages, Kindle Edition
First published February 26, 2014
17 people want to read
About the author
Elsie Sze
5 books13 followersElsie Sze grew up in Hong Kong, and currently lives in Toronto with her husband Michael. They have three sons, Benjamin, Samuel and Timothy. On March 28, 2009, she became a first-time grandmother when Michael (Misha) was born to Ben and his wife Inessa. A former teacher and librarian, she is an avid traveler, often to remote places which form the settings for her stories. Her first novel, Hui Gui: a Chinese story, was nominated for Foreword Magazine's Fiction Book of the Year Award, 2006. Her second novel, The Heart of the Buddha, was published in October, 2009.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
March 23, 2021
Elsie Sze is a Canadian writer based in Toronto. I have always been fascinated (and ignorant)about Borneo. It has been a goal of mine to visit and learn about this corner of SE Asia - this novel further peaked my curiosity.
This is a historical fiction with a plot line focused on geneology. The protagonist Therese is from Toronto. She embarks on a trip to Sarawak to uncover her grandfather's role within the Communist regime, only to stumble upon parallels with her great-great grandfather's journey as a Hakka Chinese, working as a miner in Mau San.
I learned quite a bit of history on the role of the Twelve Kongsi mining company in Bau and the rebellion against the White Rajah James Brooke. Additionally unsurprised by how Brooke the colonial used a divisive tactic to pit Indigenous groups against each other for his own gains.
It was fantastic learning about the Bidayuh tribes and their customs. Unlike the recent book I read which glossed native identities, Sze gave strong voices to the Bidayuh characters - they came out alive and assertive in the novel. Especially the matriarch Udet, who was not a main character but was equally respected and feared (or misunderstood).
Although the ending felt rushed and too coincidental, I did appreciate that the novel touched on complex topics of identity, history, and migration. Most importantly, it gave voice to the Indigenous lives of Sarawak.
This is a historical fiction with a plot line focused on geneology. The protagonist Therese is from Toronto. She embarks on a trip to Sarawak to uncover her grandfather's role within the Communist regime, only to stumble upon parallels with her great-great grandfather's journey as a Hakka Chinese, working as a miner in Mau San.
I learned quite a bit of history on the role of the Twelve Kongsi mining company in Bau and the rebellion against the White Rajah James Brooke. Additionally unsurprised by how Brooke the colonial used a divisive tactic to pit Indigenous groups against each other for his own gains.
It was fantastic learning about the Bidayuh tribes and their customs. Unlike the recent book I read which glossed native identities, Sze gave strong voices to the Bidayuh characters - they came out alive and assertive in the novel. Especially the matriarch Udet, who was not a main character but was equally respected and feared (or misunderstood).
Although the ending felt rushed and too coincidental, I did appreciate that the novel touched on complex topics of identity, history, and migration. Most importantly, it gave voice to the Indigenous lives of Sarawak.
March 9, 2020
This is the first non-fiction book I found at the library. The only thing I learn about Sarawak history was through the hardly-any-detail history book back at school. This book brings me back to my homeland in the 1800s when the chinese rebel against the white rajah written from the survivor perspective. A very well researched story that triggers me to make a trip to "Mau San", retracing the places in the book the next day. Highly recommend!
April 24, 2014
Ghost Cave tells the story of the Chinese experience in Sarawak, Borneo. Spanning more than a century and a half from the mid-19th century to the present day, the novel takes in violent power struggles with colonial and government forces and the ebb and flow of generational ties within an neatly-arranged plot.
Therese is a budding young Canadian journalist who has traveled to her paternal homeland of Sarawak to meet her grandfather, Liu Ka Min. His exploits as a communist guerrilla fighting the post-colonial government forces in the mid-1960s appear to be the perfect material for her University Master’s degree thesis.
But her grandfather unexpectedly hands Therese a handwritten manuscript entitled The Life and Times of Liu Hon Min, by Mary Ann Warrick, as told to her by Liu Nan San. Liu Hon Min (affectionately known as Ah Min) is Grandpa’s great-grandfather, a mid-19th century Chinese immigrant to Borneo from Guangdong. The document is dated 1920 and comes to us third-hand, told by Ah Min’s son, Liu Nan Sun, to a Chinese-speaking English teacher and writer.
Therese’s reading of her great-great-grandfather’s journal comprises the majority of the Elsie Sze’s new novel.
In 1849, Ah Min and his close friend Loi Tai join their native Hakka-speaking gold miners in the town of Mau San. Lo Tai’s gambling problem apart, things go relatively to plan as the men make their fortune so they can return home rich and successful.
But in 1857 James Brooke—the “White Rajah”, as the local ruler of Sarawak was known—starts to impose taxes, ban wine and opium trading and otherwise restrict Mau San’s erstwhile freedom. The miners’ leader, Lui Shan Bang decides an armed uprising is the only way to restore their economic autonomy and the friends make the fateful decision to join his forces and fight.
The pivotal moment in the novel is the attack by hundreds of armed miners on the main town of Kuching, home of Brooke’s administration. This provokes a brutal response. The Ghost Cave in the title refers to place where the Hakka combatants and their supporters fled during the White Rajah’s reprisals, during which Lo Tai is shot dead. Afraid of being killed if they tried to storm the cave, the colonial forces set fire to the entrance to smoke out the terrified inhabitants, which included women and children. They instead succeeded in killing them all of asphyxiation.
Sze gives this historical event a fictional twist—one person did survive: Ah Min, led to safety by Jinot, the sister of his friend Joto, a “Bidayuh” or indigenous tribesman. Later he marries the “angel” Jinot and she gives birth to their son after they settle in her jungle kampong.
But tragedies unfold as the couple struggle to make a good life in Borneo amidst the aftermath of the armed struggle and the pressures of tribal longhouse living. Ah Min eventually travels back to China twelve years after having arrived, a changed man in many respects.
Interspersed with Therese’s reading of the journal is Grandpa Liu Ka Min’s tale of how he became a Sarawak Communist Organisation guerrilla fighter and, crucially, how he ended up in the ghost cave after seeing his best friend, Bong, killed fleeing the government troops. Starving and injured by a bullet in his thigh, someone appears in a dream and he escapes certain death through a secret exit.
From there, various events and surprising discoveries intertwine both Ah Min and Grandpa’s stories, including a mysterious stranger, gold coins and old portraits. The coincidences and plot twists do not feel contrived and the “history repeating itself” connections between the past and the present are nicely drawn, while all the loose ends skillfully tied up—giving a real sense of hope and redemption despite the tragedies.
* * *
The forgotten manuscript is a familiar literary device and is used to good effect in bringing to life the story of the saintly Ah Min and his feckless friend, Lo Tai.
Along the way, we learn much about the clash of cultures created by the 19th century Chinese diasporas into Southeast Asia (includinginter-Chinese rivalries), the battle for control of the gold trade and many aspects of life in the Borneo jungle.
The author has made good use of her extensive historical research, resulting in numerous evocative passages; for example, the harbor scene as the wide-eyed fortune seekers land in an exotic foreign land, daily life and mealtimes in a Bayak longhouse and the hungry existence of a jungle-based guerrilla warrior.
However, Sze uses dialogue to convey the rather large amount of information, historical and otherwise, she evidently considers necessary background. She rarely lets the words speak for themselves; most dialogue is tagged with a modification to let the reader understand the tone or mood of the speaker, such as “looking on questioningly”.
But Ghost Cave touches on important themes—such as Chinese emigration to the exotic lands they called Nanyang and the fight against colonial control—that illuminate Asian political and cultural history. And lovers of intense, tragic family sagas will also enjoy many aspects of this book.
Therese is a budding young Canadian journalist who has traveled to her paternal homeland of Sarawak to meet her grandfather, Liu Ka Min. His exploits as a communist guerrilla fighting the post-colonial government forces in the mid-1960s appear to be the perfect material for her University Master’s degree thesis.
But her grandfather unexpectedly hands Therese a handwritten manuscript entitled The Life and Times of Liu Hon Min, by Mary Ann Warrick, as told to her by Liu Nan San. Liu Hon Min (affectionately known as Ah Min) is Grandpa’s great-grandfather, a mid-19th century Chinese immigrant to Borneo from Guangdong. The document is dated 1920 and comes to us third-hand, told by Ah Min’s son, Liu Nan Sun, to a Chinese-speaking English teacher and writer.
Therese’s reading of her great-great-grandfather’s journal comprises the majority of the Elsie Sze’s new novel.
In 1849, Ah Min and his close friend Loi Tai join their native Hakka-speaking gold miners in the town of Mau San. Lo Tai’s gambling problem apart, things go relatively to plan as the men make their fortune so they can return home rich and successful.
But in 1857 James Brooke—the “White Rajah”, as the local ruler of Sarawak was known—starts to impose taxes, ban wine and opium trading and otherwise restrict Mau San’s erstwhile freedom. The miners’ leader, Lui Shan Bang decides an armed uprising is the only way to restore their economic autonomy and the friends make the fateful decision to join his forces and fight.
The pivotal moment in the novel is the attack by hundreds of armed miners on the main town of Kuching, home of Brooke’s administration. This provokes a brutal response. The Ghost Cave in the title refers to place where the Hakka combatants and their supporters fled during the White Rajah’s reprisals, during which Lo Tai is shot dead. Afraid of being killed if they tried to storm the cave, the colonial forces set fire to the entrance to smoke out the terrified inhabitants, which included women and children. They instead succeeded in killing them all of asphyxiation.
Sze gives this historical event a fictional twist—one person did survive: Ah Min, led to safety by Jinot, the sister of his friend Joto, a “Bidayuh” or indigenous tribesman. Later he marries the “angel” Jinot and she gives birth to their son after they settle in her jungle kampong.
But tragedies unfold as the couple struggle to make a good life in Borneo amidst the aftermath of the armed struggle and the pressures of tribal longhouse living. Ah Min eventually travels back to China twelve years after having arrived, a changed man in many respects.
Interspersed with Therese’s reading of the journal is Grandpa Liu Ka Min’s tale of how he became a Sarawak Communist Organisation guerrilla fighter and, crucially, how he ended up in the ghost cave after seeing his best friend, Bong, killed fleeing the government troops. Starving and injured by a bullet in his thigh, someone appears in a dream and he escapes certain death through a secret exit.
From there, various events and surprising discoveries intertwine both Ah Min and Grandpa’s stories, including a mysterious stranger, gold coins and old portraits. The coincidences and plot twists do not feel contrived and the “history repeating itself” connections between the past and the present are nicely drawn, while all the loose ends skillfully tied up—giving a real sense of hope and redemption despite the tragedies.
* * *
The forgotten manuscript is a familiar literary device and is used to good effect in bringing to life the story of the saintly Ah Min and his feckless friend, Lo Tai.
Along the way, we learn much about the clash of cultures created by the 19th century Chinese diasporas into Southeast Asia (includinginter-Chinese rivalries), the battle for control of the gold trade and many aspects of life in the Borneo jungle.
The author has made good use of her extensive historical research, resulting in numerous evocative passages; for example, the harbor scene as the wide-eyed fortune seekers land in an exotic foreign land, daily life and mealtimes in a Bayak longhouse and the hungry existence of a jungle-based guerrilla warrior.
However, Sze uses dialogue to convey the rather large amount of information, historical and otherwise, she evidently considers necessary background. She rarely lets the words speak for themselves; most dialogue is tagged with a modification to let the reader understand the tone or mood of the speaker, such as “looking on questioningly”.
But Ghost Cave touches on important themes—such as Chinese emigration to the exotic lands they called Nanyang and the fight against colonial control—that illuminate Asian political and cultural history. And lovers of intense, tragic family sagas will also enjoy many aspects of this book.
April 30, 2014
I was very interested in reading this book as I enjoy books about people, places and cultures. Living in Hong Kong I know a little about Chinese culture, but previous to reading this book knew nothing about the area in which this book is set (Sarawak, Borneo) or its history. Spanning roughly 150 years, this novel, through three different perspectives, gives a good overall picture of what it was like living in Sarawak from mid-19th century until the present.
There are three different stories in this novel: Ah Min, a Chinese immigrant who moves to Sarawak temporarily to earn money to provide for his family; Ka Ming, a communist guerrilla and Therese, a young woman interested in her family history. Therese, who we learn very little about, has Ah Min's journal and she talks to Ka Ming to get his story. I think I would have preferred to have Ah Min's story in journal format. This would have made the different voices more distinguishable and added variety to the different perspectives.
Overall this was an informative and interesting novel and I feel that I learned a lot about the setting and the time in which it took place. I would recommend this to people interesting in reading historical fiction.
There are three different stories in this novel: Ah Min, a Chinese immigrant who moves to Sarawak temporarily to earn money to provide for his family; Ka Ming, a communist guerrilla and Therese, a young woman interested in her family history. Therese, who we learn very little about, has Ah Min's journal and she talks to Ka Ming to get his story. I think I would have preferred to have Ah Min's story in journal format. This would have made the different voices more distinguishable and added variety to the different perspectives.
Overall this was an informative and interesting novel and I feel that I learned a lot about the setting and the time in which it took place. I would recommend this to people interesting in reading historical fiction.
March 23, 2014
Borneo: The island of many cultures and much history.
This is an historical drama portraying the background of Sarawak on the island of Borneo consisting of about five ethnic groups: The Bidayuh, original tribes who were also headhunters; Chinese who spoke Hakka; Malaysians, those from India, especially Gurkhas hired by the British. The vehicle that carries this history is Therese, whose father is Chinese; she knows he once lived in Sarawak and the story unfolds beginning with two young Chinese men leaving their homes because there is no work and they go to Sarawak to work in the gold mines for five years. By then they feel they would have earned enough to come home and help their families financially. But events didn’t develop as they first planned. This is a very solid story of the culture and life styles of these people, in much the same manner as Pearl Buck. It is not a page turner, but deep drama is interwoven throughout. For readers who like to learn the history and background of other countries in the more interesting manner of a novel, you will enjoy this story.
This is an historical drama portraying the background of Sarawak on the island of Borneo consisting of about five ethnic groups: The Bidayuh, original tribes who were also headhunters; Chinese who spoke Hakka; Malaysians, those from India, especially Gurkhas hired by the British. The vehicle that carries this history is Therese, whose father is Chinese; she knows he once lived in Sarawak and the story unfolds beginning with two young Chinese men leaving their homes because there is no work and they go to Sarawak to work in the gold mines for five years. By then they feel they would have earned enough to come home and help their families financially. But events didn’t develop as they first planned. This is a very solid story of the culture and life styles of these people, in much the same manner as Pearl Buck. It is not a page turner, but deep drama is interwoven throughout. For readers who like to learn the history and background of other countries in the more interesting manner of a novel, you will enjoy this story.
March 27, 2014
Ghost cave is a book about the collision of diverse cultures. Taking place in different time periods during the turbulent history of Sarawak on the island of Borneo, it chronicles three generations of one family. Theresa, a Western born Chinese child of immigrants returns to her family's home to chronicle her grandfather's days as a guerrilla fighter. A mysterious man approaches her revealing family secrets that has torn the family apart in the past and she discovers that her ancestry is not all that it seems. A well written account of the many trials that stressed and fractured various generations, Theresa learns that the struggles of her ancestors created the strengths and weakness of the descendants. Do the ghosts of yesterday protect their progeny, no matter what the circumstances? Like James Michener's Hawaii, Ghost Cave is a picture window into a melting pot of a society that westerners can enjoy a rare glimpse.
April 7, 2014
This is a magical story that spans generations in China and Sarawak, Borneo. Elsie Sze is a master storyteller and kept me engaged from start to finish!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews