Book Title: Blue Sky Mansion
ISBN: 978-981-4901-82-6
Author: HY Yeang
Publisher: Epigram Books
Publication Year: 2021
Price: RM49.90
“The patience of perseverance is enduring to the end.”
– Lailah Gifty Akita, author
Blue Sky Mansion, a book by HY Yeang, tells the story of Tang Mei Choon, a young girl from Chungking, China, who was sold by her own family due to poverty.
Her life is turned upside down from there, and she is nearly entombed alive.
The story begins when her mother was recently widowed and unable to feed the family. Her mother decided to hand over Mei Choon to the P’an family, but she was saved by a man on the run named Chen Tong and his wife Ming Lan.
Mei Choon, as a young girl, simply followed the couple to Harbin shortly before the 1911 Revolution, and then to Penang in 1921.
It was not a good day for Mei Choon as she embarked on a journey to avoid one disaster after another.
A mysterious epidemic is said to have broken out in Harbin, and people are dying everywhere.
Due to the epidemic, an overseas Chinese doctor, Western-trained Dr Wu Lien-teh, from Malaya travelled to this north-eastern city to oversee mitigation efforts.
Dr Wu, contrary to traditional Chinese medicine, taught other doctors in Harbin about how this respiratory disease is transmitted.
What makes this story interesting is that, thanks to Dr Wu’s efforts, this was the first time masks and hazmat suits were used, similar to what we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic that hit the world two years ago.
Unfortunately, Ming Lan died from tuberculosis she had contracted in Chungking. Dr Wu then encouraged Chen Tong to move to Malaya.
Chen Tong, also known as Uncle Tong, took Mei Choon with him to Penang and provided her with the best education.
Chen Tong died when Mei Choon was sixteen and started school, but before he died, he asked a relative in Malaya to take care of Mei Choon, but that woman sold Mei Choon to a triad.
Soon, Mei Choon is living at the Blue Sky Mansion in Penang, and the adventures begin, which include a run-in with the triads and a stint on a rubber plantation, but Yeang, the author, also nicely weaves in the history of China just before the 1911 Revolution and the years leading up to the Japanese invasion of Malaya in 1941, the latter of which is significant in the Pacific Theatre of World War II timeline.
Meanwhile, what I like about this book is that it tells the story of a young girl’s life from the time she is a child until she is an adult, and how she escapes from one hardship to the next, demonstrating that there is no such thing as an easy life in this world.
The book also covers history, so you can learn about how Japan attacked Malaya and how the British dealt with it, and it’s never boring because you get excited about it.
Readers, especially history buffs, should read this book. Not to mention that some scenes in the story make you have the urge to fight, such as when Mei Choon met with gangsters in the brothel.
According to the last three paragraphs of the story, the world is full of the unexpected; nothing lasts forever, Mei Choon reflected. Not even the British Empire. Who would have imagined that the empire of the red-haired, upon which the sun never sets, could be blinded by the dazzle of that Asian upstart, the Empire of the Rising Sun?
Life was full of surprises, but Mei Choon resolved that nothing would come as a surprise or a challenge in the future. Whatever adversity fate threw at her, she would overcome it as well. She’d been entombed; she’d survived the plague; she’d been sold to a brothel; and her husband had been taken from her in his prime. What was there to be afraid of?
True, the white banner had been raised, though that was but an interim proclamation. Before long, a different flag would be hoisted on the same flagstaff. This was no more than another new beginning, like the many Mei Choon had known before.
