The Ghost Bride

by Yangsze Choo

  When Yan Hong came, I was in the back courtyard raking out the chicken coop. Old Wong always kept a few chickens, which he fattened for a month before slaughter, not permitting them to leave their pen until they were plump and succulent. In a great household like the Lim’s, a daughter of the house would not be doing such a task, but Ah Chun claimed the feathers made her sneeze so Old Wong had handed me the rake that morning with a grunt. I started guiltily when I saw Yan Hong appear with Amah, as though our positions were reversed. Strangely, Amah did not press me to change my clothes. She merely looked satisfied and I suddenly understood that this was because, unlike Tian Bai’s uncle who valued pretty women, it was important to impress upon the women of the Lim household what a virtuous and hardworking daughter-in-law I would make. Amah announced she would go and serve the many-layered kuih lapis cake that I had made (a complete fabrication) and that we ladies should come in for tea.

  “I owe you,” said Yan Hong as soon as we were alone together. “For saving me.”

  Not knowing what to say, I kept quiet.

  “I didn’t mean to kill him,” she went on. “It was an accident, whether you believe it or not.” She twisted her hands together. “He was always malingering; he used it to punish us if he felt neglected. That evening I was at the end of my patience. I had some ma huang prescribed to me before. I heard a larger dose would give him a headache and make him vomit, but I didn’t think he would actually have a seizure.”

  Ma huang was the stimulant herb derived from the jointed stems of ephedra. Steeped into a tea, it gave relief to coughs and loosened phlegm from the lungs, but even I had some idea of its dangerous properties and could not quite believe that Yan Hong had been so ignorant of its side effects.

  “Are you going to tell anyone?” she asked, biting her lips. It was the same nervous gesture I had witnessed when I had wandered through the Lim mansion as a disembodied spirit.

  I shook my head. Who was I to judge her, or know exactly what had happened that evening? Yan Hong glanced away with a mingled look of shame and relief.

  “I’m glad you’re marrying Tian Bai,” she said at last. “He’s lucky to have you. Because someone has to take charge of the Lim household.”

  “Why can’t it be you?”

  “My husband has family and business interests in Singapore. I’ve told him that I’d prefer to move there.” She straightened her back, avoiding my eyes. “It will be better for you and Tian Bai without so much baggage. Take care of him, will you? It hasn’t been easy for him in our family.”

  “Does he know about Lim Tian Ching’s death?” I asked.

  “No, though he might have suspected. I almost told him at the time, I was so terrified at what happened. Sometimes I wish I had.”

  “Don’t,” I said. We both knew that Tian Bai would only try to protect her. It was better for me to bear the burden of this knowledge than him.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  We walked back to the house in silence. I couldn’t help wishing that matters had turned out differently. For despite everything she had done, I still liked her.

  Chapter 40

  And now the days are passing too quickly, one following the other. My fortnight is almost up. I can hardly sleep; my thoughts and regrets weigh so heavily on me. I laugh too much at Old Wong’s jokes and weep in secret over the slippers Amah is painstakingly embroidering for me. The easy thing to do is to marry Tian Bai and spin out my years with him and my family, hiding my strange youthfulness. And at the end of it, wait for Er Lang if he still remembers his promise. But that is the coward’s way.

  I think I already knew what I wanted a long time ago. Perhaps it began when he held my hand in the Plains of the Dead, where there were no other living creatures but the two of us. Or, if I am honest, when I first saw his face. It is possible that the seeds were set even further back, when the medium at the Sam Poh Kong temple told me to burn funeral money for myself. Did she know already that I would half-sever my thread with this world and never truly fit in again? Perhaps I really should have died then.

  For all who have seen ghosts and spirits are marked with a stain, and far more than Old Wong, I have trespassed where no living person ought to have. I have spoken with the dead, served in their houses, and eaten spirit offerings. My two worlds overlap like distorted panes of glass. Haunted, I chafe at the tight orbit of mahjong parties that I once thought so glamorous, and glance over my shoulder for wind and shadows, yearning for the forbidden.

  Tian Bai’s uncle has promised that my father, Amah, and Old Wong will be well taken care of, should I depart on a long journey. He won’t care where I go, as long as it is far away from the Lim family’s good name. I will have to bind him to such an agreement and check on them from time to time, if it is permitted, though I’m not sure where or even when I will go. Perhaps they will think that I have gone away to study, or maybe I will simply vanish one moonlit night, like those tales of ghosts and spirits. I only hope that I may return to visit them, even if it is only as a shiver on the wind. And if they should die before me, as they surely must, I will be waiting to escort them to the Plains of the Dead.

  As for Tian Bai, I don’t know how to face him. He will be disappointed in me. Though when it comes down to it, I’m afraid that I will falter and take the easy way out. It has happened before, when I stood tongue-tied in front of him and could not tell him the truth. For all his kindness, he has never really understood me, nor I him. If anyone had said that the opera I heard at the Lim mansion, so long ago, should express my feelings for him, I would have laughed, thinking that we were meant to be lovers. There is a river between us, however, like the Milky Way that separates the Cowherd and the Weaving Maid. And no matter how much I shout and call, I will never cross it. He will smile at my foibles and comfort me with gifts. His eyes are fixed on someone else, not me.

  But I want to see Er Lang. I don’t want to wait fifty years, or cheat Tian Bai out of a love that he will never have. In the darkness of a thousand withered souls, it was Er Lang’s hand that I sought, and his voice that I longed to hear. Perhaps it is selfish of me, but an uncertain future with him, in all its laughter and quarrels, is better than being left behind. Though given how much I resisted becoming Lim Tian Ching’s ghost wife, it’s not even funny that I’m willing to leave my family for a man who isn’t human. When Er Lang comes for his answer, I will tell him that I’ve always thought he was a monster. And that I want to be his bride.

  Notes

  GHOST MARRIAGES

  The folk tradition of marriages to ghosts or between ghosts usually occurred in order to placate spirits or allay a haunting. There are a number of allusions to it in Chinese literature, but its roots seem to lie in ancestor worship. Matches were sometimes made between two deceased persons, with the families on both sides recognizing the marriage as a tie between them. However, there were other cases in which a living person was married to the dead. These primarily took the form of a living person fulfilling the wish of a dying sweetheart, or to give the rank of a wife to a mistress or concubine who had produced an heir. Sometimes an impoverished girl was taken into a household as a widow to perform the ancestral rites for a man who died without a wife or descendants, which was Li Lan’s situation. In such a case, an actual marriage ceremony would be performed with a rooster standing in for the dead bridegroom.

  Occasionally the living were duped as well. If a family heard from an exorcist or a fortune-teller that a deceased member wanted to get married, they would sometimes place a red envelope (hong bao), commonly used for cash gifts, on the road. Whoever was unlucky enough to pick it up on the mistaken assumption that it contained money was desig
nated as the husband or wife of the ghost. It is interesting to note that such tales of ghost marriages seem to be mostly confined to the overseas Chinese communities, particularly those of Southeast Asia and Taiwan, and even then they are not very common. I was surprised to find that many mainland Chinese had never heard of such practices, and I could only assume that it was due to the Communist influence that discouraged superstitious behavior for decades.

  CHINESE NOTIONS OF THE AFTERLIFE

  Chinese notions of the afterlife often seem to be a mixture of Buddhism, Taoism, ancestor worship, and folk beliefs. Despite borrowing the Buddhist concept of reincarnation in which souls seek to escape the endless cycle by giving up all desires to enter a state of nothingness, they also maintain the existence of several paradises ruled over by various guardians and deities. This contradiction is further complicated by Taoist beliefs such as attaining eternal life, magic, levitation, martial arts, etc.

  There is also a Chinese literary tradition of supernatural stories that describe a bureaucratic afterlife closely modeled upon the traditional official bureaucracy. Thus, in many tales, hell is governed by corrupt and inept officials who commit crimes and take bribes. Various heavenly deities are then charged with solving the cases and dispensing justice. Er Lang is one such minor deity who appears in a number of different stories. In some cases, he is a human who became a deity because of his filial virtue. In Journey to the West, Wu Cheng En’s classic story of the Monkey King, he is the Jade Emperor’s nephew charged with restraining the reckless monkey. Er Lang is also associated with water as an engineer who defeated a dragon to prevent flooding. I took the liberty of making him a dragon himself, as they were known for their shape-changing and rainmaking abilities.

  The Plains of the Dead specifically is also my invention, although it reflects a common Chinese belief in an afterlife peopled by ghosts and their burned paper funeral offerings. It was not entirely clear how this idea connected to Buddhist concepts of reincarnation, so for the purposes of this book, I created a more substantive link between them.

  MALAYA

  Malaya is the historic name of Malaysia before independence. British Malaya was a loose set of states, including Singapore, that was under varying degrees of British control from 1771 to 1948. Malaya was extremely profitable for the British Empire as the world’s largest tin and rubber producer, and the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca, and Singapore were its principal ports of commerce.

  STRAITS-BORN CHINESE

  Early Chinese migrants to Southeast Asia from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries were overwhelmingly single men who intermarried with local women and whose descendants formed unique communities of overseas Chinese known as Peranakan Chinese. Strictly speaking, the term refers to the children of intermarriage between natives and foreigners. A Peranakan was not necessarily Chinese; there were also Peranakan Dutch, Peranakan Arab, Peranakan Indian, etc., but the largest community in Malaya was the Peranakan Chinese. They incorporated a number of Malay cultural practices, such as speaking creolized Malay, dressing in Malay clothing, and eating the local cuisine. Sons born of such unions were often sent back to China to receive a Chinese upbringing, whereas daughters remained in Malaya but were only allowed to marry Chinese men. In this manner, the community retained a strong Chinese character.

  From the 1800s onward, there was a sharp rise in the number of Chinese women emigrating, and the communities became almost wholly Chinese, although they retained a great deal of local culture and later Chinese who emigrated also adopted these customs. Li Lan’s family would be an example of this, having come from China more recently but assimilating local customs such as dress and food. Within the community, there were finer distinctions between those who had older roots and those more-recent arrivals. Still, if they were born in the Straits Settlements of Penang, Malacca, or Singapore, they were British subjects who self-identified as Straits-born Chinese.

  In Malacca in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, they emerged as the dominant business elite who were quick to learn English and were anglicized in many respects. Quite a few young men, like Tian Bai, studied in Britain or the Crown Colony of Hong Kong.

  MALAY SPELLING

  This book uses colonial spellings of Malay words to reflect the time period and to make it easier to pronounce for people unfamiliar with the romanized Malay spelling reforms of 1972. Thus Melaka has retained its historic spelling of Malacca, as have other words such as Bukit China and chendana, which, despite no change in pronunciation, would be written as Bukit Cina and cendana today.

  CHINESE DIALECTS

  A broad variety of Chinese dialects was and still is spoken in Malaysia, though the majority of them were from southern China, which saw the greatest number of immigrants to Southeast Asia. Overseas Chinese had strong ties to their ancestral clans and villages, and distinguished between themselves even after settling in Malaya for several generations. The most common dialects include Cantonese, Hokkien, Teochew, Hakka, and Hainanese. The wide variation in spoken dialect meant that many Chinese could not understand one another, although the written language, for those who were literate, remained the same.

  Many professions often followed clan lines, as people tended to bring relatives into the same industry. For example, there were a number of Cantonese amahs, as well as Hainanese cooks, which is what I had in mind for the characters of Amah and Old Wong.

  CHINESE NAMES

  For the purposes of this book, I debated standardizing the names to Pinyin but chose not to do so in order to reflect the diversity of the time. The pronunciation of a particular name would have varied depending on the dialect and clan of the person. For example, the surname “Lin” in Mandarin can be pronounced as “Lim” in Hokkien or “Lum” in Cantonese. Even within a dialect, odd and arbitrary spellings were applied, depending on who was recording the name and how they decided to spell it. There are many examples of Chinese names that were butchered by a recording clerk to end up with inadvertently peculiar meanings.

  Traditionally the family name is given first, such as in Lim Tian Ching’s case. I’ve referred to him by his full name throughout the book to make it easier to differentiate between Tian Bai and him. Tian Bai and Tian Ching have similar names because they are both males from the same generation. Typically, there is a generational name dictated by the family poem. Each generation takes one successive character from the poem as part of their name, so that by reciting the poem, you can immediately tell whether someone is from an older or younger generation of the family.

  Meanings of Names

  Li Lan—Beautiful Orchid

  Tian Bai—Bright Sky

  Lim—A family name meaning “a grove of trees”

  Lim Tian Ching—Eternal Sky

  Fan—Fragrance

  Yan Hong—Red Swallow

  Lim Teck Kiong—Strong Morals

  Er Lang—Second Son. As can be guessed, this is probably not his true name. The Chinese have a tradition of taking many different names to correspond with various stages in life. For example, a scholar might have a childhood name, an official name, and later a literary name if he became famous. In his old age he might choose another name to signify his retirement from the world.

  Acknowledgments

  It would have been impossible to write this book without the many wonderful people who supported me in this. I’m deeply indebted to:

  Jenny Bent, my amazing agent, whose vision for this novel has guided and inspire
d me. Rachel Kahan, my editor, whose discerning eye and enthusiasm for this book spurred me on to richer depths. Trish Daly, Lynn Grady, Mumtaz Mustafa, Doug Jones, Camille Collins, Kimberly Chocolaad, and the HarperCollins sales force. It’s been a pleasure and an honor to work with all of you.

  My wonderful and long-suffering family, including: my parents, S. K. Choo and Lilee Woo, whose love instilled in me a great wonder and curiosity about the world; Chuin Ru Choo; Kuok Ming Lee; and Jennifer and Spencer Cham, for their love and support over the years.

  Sue and Danny Yee, Li Lian Tan, Abigail Hing Wen, and Kathy and Larry Kwan, dear friends who championed this book from the start, encouraged me to submit it, and remained enthusiastic despite having to read endless drafts and analyze imaginary characters. Without you this book would never have been published.

  Readers Carmen Cham, Suelika Chial, Beti Cung, Christine Folch, Paul Griffiths, Diane Levitan, and Rebecca Tulsi, who provided fearless and invaluable feedback from the first page to the many alternate endings.

  Dr. Teow See Heng, my resident Hainanese expert; Alison Klein, my Dutch adviser; and Mr. and Mrs. Tham Siew Inn, who so kindly showed me around their hometown of Malacca and helped me find a site for the fictional Lim mansion near Klebang.

  Most of all, my husband, James, whose patience, love, and wise discernment make my world anew every day, and my children, Colin and Mika, who are my joy.

  And to the one who has led me through the valley of the shadow of death. (Psalm 23:4)