The World of Tai Tai

This is a novel of love,  sacrifice,  loss and acceptance. It starts with the writer’s encounter with a woman clad in Tibetan costume, who told her to write a book about her life. In early 1950s,  as the story unveils,  the woman, Shu Wen, went to Tibet with a group of army, leaving behind her family in Suzhou, searching for her husband, who was rumoured to have been dead in the out-of-the-way country.  On the way, she made friends with Zhouma, a Tibetan girl. Then, due to some unexpected turn of events, they became s...

On my way to a Form One class, I walked past a crowd of ex-students who were crammed against a notice board, checking their examination results. I stopped in my tracks when a swift figure dashed out through a door in front of me, running and jumping along the corridor as he yelled, “I made it! I finally made it!” in a paroxysm of ecstasy. The jubilant boy was Cornelian, a prefect who had left our school after sitting the Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia (SPM) examination the previous year. Like many other ex-students, he had returned to school at ten this morning to collect his result slip. It must have been the fulfilment of his target—or, rather, the surprise of having achieved the unexpected feat of good results—that had launched him into a fit of celebration.  March 3, 2016 was a day of mixed emotions at SMK St. Joseph Miri. Upon receiving their results, some students reacted as wildly as Cornelian had, while some, such as Sharon Hii, were an oasis of calm. Sharon had m...