New Beginnings

Chan Ling Yap’s third novel has all the assurance of her first two successes and more. A strong story line, deftly rendered in brief and readable instalments, takes us from the turbulence of a China unmercifully exploited with opium by the western powers in Victorian times, to the race and clan rivalries of an emerging Singapore and Malaya. The beautiful and tragic figure of Hua might serve as a metaphor for the suffering sub-continent; and that of her husband Ngao for the resilience of the Chinese themselves.

The refinement and the thuggery of China alike, the bustle of Singapore and the tropical potential of Malaya in those days are all made to feel familiar rather than foreign, the high emotions to be shared rather than differentiate us. The characters are entirely believable, the degree of background colour is perfectly judged, and the pace seductive: don’t be surprised if you find you read this book at a sitting. –Bill Jackson, Editor, The Corporal and the Celestials, Ulster Historical Foundation

Born in Kuala Lumpur, Chan Ling Yap was educated in Malaysia and the UK. She has a PhD in economics and was Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Malaya and then Senior Economist and Secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Rice in the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. She now lives in the UK.

Her novels New Beginnings and Where the Sunrise is Red won The Star Readers’ Popular Choice Award in 2014 and 2019 respectively, while both Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest were shortlisted for the award.

Chan Ling is fourth generation Malaysian Chinese and a descendent of Yap Kwan Seng, who arrived in Malaya as a labourer to later become the fifth and last ‘Kapitan China” of Kuala Lumpur. He was appointed by the British during the Colonial times in Malaya to oversee the Chinese community including labourers brought into the country to work the tin mines. His story and those of others have influenced her tales.

In New Beginnings, Chan Ling takes you back to China in the mid-1800s, the period of the Opium Wars, where we follow one man’s journey to a new promised land Malaya. The man, Ngao, is the forefather of the Ong family in Sweet Offerings and Bitter-Sweet Harvest