Launch of Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak

Watch it on YouTube : http://youtu.be/DkTUT_imMQU            

With Michael at the launch

A year ago, I won the inaugural Saphira Prize for unpublished writing, a prize that carried with it the publication of my award-winning manuscript "Ghost Cave". I am very grateful to the Women in Publishing Society, founder of the Saphira Prize, for making a cherished dream come true.

The turnout at the book launch of Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak at the Foreign Correspondents Club in Central, Hong Kong on the night of March 28^th 2014 was really impressive. Many of my friends and associates from different arenas of my life, past and present, came out to support, not to mention members of the Women in Publishing Society whose professional contributions in various facets and stages of book production have made the publication of this novel possible. 

With Carol Dyer, my editor

The emcee and project manager of my book, Shannon Brown, gave a very gracious introduction of me, followed by a speech by Nury Vittachi, well-known Hong Kong based journalist and author, about the importance of literary prizes to writers, with special mention of the Saphira Prize in the context of the evening.  

The evening also saw the launch of the pride magazine Imprint 13 published annually by the Women in Publishing Society, and the announcement of the 2013 winners in the annual WiPS Short Story Competition for Young Writers.

Book signing at the launch party

An interview on RTHK in Hong Kong

I was interviewed on the 123 Show by Noreen Mir on RTHK in Hong Kong on March 31, 2014. It was such a pleasure to be talking to a Hong Kong audience about my new novel Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak.

Here's the link: http://programme.rthk.hk/channel/radio/programme.php?name=radio3/1_2_3_show&d=2014-03-31&p=5979&e=&m=episode

Introducing my new novel Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak

This time last year, I was announced the winner of the inaugural Saphira Prize for unpublished writing sponsored by the Women in Publishing Society in Hong Kong. Now, a year later, the Prize takes shape in my new book Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak.

Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak is the result of years of research involving long distance travel to one of the less beaten tracks of the world, Sarawak in the northern part of the equatorial island of Borneo. For my story, I, with my husband Michael, had trekked the hot and humid tropical jungles of Sarawak, combed limestone caverns where myriads of swiftlets and bats hung out, spent nights in Dayak longhouses far from my North American comfort zone, and explored outlying villages and bazaars that had deteriorated into pseudo ghost towns from their heyday of yesteryear. Through the connection of a cousin in Kuching, capital of Sarawak, I was brought to the very entrance of Ghost Cave in a currently functioning gold mine in Bau, or Mau San as it was formerly called, the nineteenth century mining town where major poignant scenes and heartrending tragedy were played out in the region’s history and in my story.

The most meaningful part of my journey to Ghost Cave had been the reconnection with my father’s birthplace and homeland, with my extended family with whom relationships had dwindled to little more than the exchange of annual Christmas cards and occasional death announcements since my father left home for a higher education in Hong Kong as a young man. It was as if an ancestor’s ghost, or two, had intervened to bridge the wide gap effected by great physical distance and prolonged elapse of time, and bring about the strengthening of weakened family ties. In this sense, my greatest reward and gratification in the writing and publication of Ghost Cave has to be the personal journey I took in making up for lost years with my paternal extended family. Unintentionally, yet amazingly, the story of Ghost Cave is a reflection of my own passage of renewal.  

On March 28^th, 2014, Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak will be launched in Hong Kong by its publisher the Women in Publishing Society.  I am very thankful to the Society for awarding me the Saphira Prize which carries with it the publication of my award-winning manuscript “Ghost Cave”. If it seems everything that has to do with the creation of this book has just landed conveniently in my lap, it is because I have been blessed in the course of writing this novel, in my creative process, research, and with all the help from my extended family in Sarawak and my immediate family close to home, especially my ever sustaining and understanding husband, and with my introduction to the Women in Publishing Society in Hong Kong soon after the publication of my first novel Hui Gui,  and my continued involvement with them over the years.  Ghost Cave is for me not only the realization of a long cherished writer’s dream, but also the completion of a self-imposed mission for myself and my father. Someone up there is looking out for me to bring to fruition this labour of love. 

With humility and gratitude, I give you Ghost Cave: a novel of Sarawak.

Currently available in ebook format from:

www.amazon.com, www.amazon.ca, and the worldwide network of Amazon online outlets; www.barnesandnoble.com, www.chapters.indigo.ca, and from your App Store as an iBook download on your Apple device.

The book will be available in print format from Hong Kong bookstores and worldwde from the network of online bookstores listed above by the launch date of March 28th, 2014. 

Chasing Aurora

A cold night in early February, Iceland just outside Reykjavik. Tonight is a clearer night, and thousands of little twinkles light up the otherwise pitch black firmament. There is Orion, with his diamond studded belt.  Here’s the Big Dipper, known to me as a child as the Great Bear, and not far from it, the North Star, the brightest of them all -- as constant as ever. Most of us are not into astronomy, nor are we stargazers in the literal sense. But for the second consecutive night, we are out there bundled up, braving the icy wind, our faces in a near-frozen state, our extremities at risk of frostbite. Heads upturned, eyes scanning the heavens for signs of activity, the slightest wisp of light in motion, we are looking for the ever evasive Aurora Borealis.

The attractions Iceland has to offer justify a trip to this otherwise barren island – hot springs and outdoor jacuzzis in the heart of winter, the deep gorges carved out of lava rocks, the waterfalls that rival Niagara, the abundance of geysers that easily match Yellowstone. Reykjavik is unique in the multi-coloured low houses that spread across town, the tallest landmark being the Lutheran cathedral whose imposing Nordic-styled steeple towers over all else in the capital. Icelandic cuisine is an indulgence, often an adventure, for the palate, the smoked whale and puffin, grilled swordfish, hot lamb soup….The glacier walk is a highlight and a challenge. Wearing crampons at my feet, with ice axe in hand, I thump my way step by step up a glacial slope so smooth and slippery that, when my hat falls off by accident, it slithers down the glacier and disappears over the edge of the slope, to be unexpectedly recovered by a guide further downhill. Reykjavik

But the main reason to be there is the Aurora Borealis, or the Northern Lights. Vidoes have shown it a continuous blaze of green light flashing across the sky, like an emerald ribbon glowing in the dark setting of night.  Occasionally, it comes in orange and purple, but those colours are rare. “We don’t go look for it,” our guide tells us. “We just see it when it shows up.”  And here we are, foolish, indulging tourists, braving the extreme, debilitating cold in the dead of night, looking frantically for the Northern Lights. But the show never comes. She’s there on our second night out, like a shy bride behind a white veil. We are told the white streak against the starlit sky is the Aurora, but there is not enough activity in the elements to create a dramatic colour phenomenon.  

Aurora never puts on a spectacular show for us the nights we go looking for her in Iceland. But who knows, some day we may stumble upon her in her full glory when we least expect it, a chance meeting in some remote far north corner of the world.

Aurora Borealis (Northern Lights): the phenomenon we could have seen 

Who was Abai?

He is beautiful and great

in his eternal yearning for the truth.

                                                -- Goethe

I came upon the name Abai the first time I walked on the street bearing his name in Almaty in 2000 on my earliest visit to this biggest city in Kazakhtan. Abai Avenue dead-ended at a square also bearing Abai’s name, dominated by – guess what – the Abai Memorial, a 13.7 metre bronze statue of a standing Abai, his left arm gripping a book, the index finger marking a slightly-opened page. He had on a small round cloth cap, and a chapan covering his jacket and trousers. His somber face expressed the intensity of his thought, his thick eyebrows knitting into a vague frown as he gazed ahead. The first time I saw the statue, a bird was ensconced on his head. Since then, I have observed many times a bird making his head its comfortable resting place, or perhaps a vantage point from where to survey city traffic and passers-by. Kazakh poet Abai (1845 - 1904)

Who then was Abai? Born in 1845, he was a Kazakh poet, thinker, philosopher, composer, social activist of his time, a literary icon of the Kazakh people, from a time when Kazakhstan was a part of the Russian Empire in the nineteenth century, to the present Republic born when the Soviet Union broke up over twenty years ago. On one of my visits to Almaty, I was given an anthology of Abai's works in English translation, Book of Words.

Born and raised in a nomadic, feudal environment in the Kazakh steppe, he was a man ahead of his time. Highly intellectual and educated, he revolutionized the oral traditions of Kazakh poetry. More importantly, he used his poetry as a medium for condemning the shackled hypocrisy and hidden ugliness of the ruling class in the Kazakh society of his day, attempting to bring his beloved Kazakh people spiritual liberation, teaching them the essential and permanent -- values of justice, loyalty, friendship, truth, and lamenting his failure to reach and change them. His later poetry breathes the disillusion and hopelessness of one with unfulfilled goals in the declining years of his life. These sentiments are poignantly expressed in Book of Words. Little did he know his works and thoughts were to illuminate the Kazakh national consciousness long after his death.

Don’t pick up the dombra,

don’t pluck the spell-binding strings.

Be still, heart, don’t beat so heavily,

tears are ready to well from the eyes.

There are sunny moments in this anthology. His profound depictions of the four seasons entitled Spring, Summer, Autumn, Winter are beautiful, unique verbal paintings of nineteenth century nomadic life in the Kazakh steppe. But my favourite is the poem of a hunter and his eagle on a fox hunt:

The hood was torn off,

its eyes were open and the golden eagle flew up.

If it flew low the fox would slip away,

so the eagle with the blood-lusting eyes shot upwards.

The fox froze when it saw the golden eagle.

It realized that it couldn’t escape by running.

Baring its teeth and gnashing them, its hackles raised,

it was ready to fight for its life.

These lines are in the first half of the poem. I was routing for the fox... but then I live in a different time, a different place from this renowned bard of Kazakhstan. 

The timelessness, and universality, of Abai’s poetry is in the fundamental relevance of his warning and mourning for humanity today:      

They don’t cherish the soul, but are polished on the outside.

Tight trousers and short cloaks—that’s all they know. 

It doesn't come to their mind to pasture the flocks,

to work honestly, get rich and be useful to the people.

They roam round the auls driving their only horse till it sweats,

not botherig to give the correct greeting,

nodding from afar with a vacant, blissful smile.