The Night Tiger

by Yangsze Choo

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I was so thrilled and honoured that THE NIGHT TIGER has been nominated for one of Goodreads Choice Awards for historical fiction and has made it to the semi-finals! My heartfelt thanks to the amazing Goodreads community who have read, shared, and reviewed this book. In response to some of the most highlighted passages in the book, I've written some personal notes and behind-the-scenes anecdotes—I hope you find them a fun addition. And if you happened to enjoy the book, please do consider voting for THE NIGHT TIGER, as well checking out the many other wonderful nominees, in the Goodreads Choice Awards!

“The body must be made whole again when you die. Anything added must be removed, and anything missing replaced—otherwise your soul won’t rest in peace.”

The Chinese have a tradition of exhuming a grave, and washing and cleaning the bones (see the beginning of chapter 33, where it’s described in more detail). It was seen as respect for the departed, and naturally, great care was taken to ensure that nothing was lost. When my father was a child, he told me that he participated in such a ceremony for one of his family members, and how small the bones were when they were unearthed. It must have been both strange and solemn, to handle the actual remains of people. This respect for the body is probably true across all cultures. As a child, I remember reading an English tale about a little old lady who picked up a bone and was later bothered by a tiny voice who followed her home, saying repeatedly “Give me back my BONE!” (for some reason, I found this utterly terrifying and resolved never to pick up any bones found on the road).

It was the character for zhi, or knowledge, one of the five Confucian Virtues. The others were benevolence, righteousness, order, and integrity.

Many years ago as an undergraduate, I took a class in Confucianism. Little did I know how useful and interesting it would be later! At the time, I had some vague idea of finding out more about this mysterious Confucius, whom everyone seemed to quote without particularly understanding. We were lucky enough to have as our professor Tu Weiming, one of the foremost scholars of neo-Confucianism, and in addition to the main lecture, he personally led a small tutorial conducted in Chinese for those of us who could read Chinese. Sitting in that small tutorial room with Professor Tu and a few other students, a fascinating world view unfolded: one in which your own personal morality (and responsibility for it) reflected outwards and even shaped society, including the balanced relationships between people. I’ve never forgotten that class, and years later when it came to naming the characters in THE NIGHT TIGER, I quickly wrote down the five Confucian virtues. I wasn’t really sure where it was going but I was excited that I finally got to use some of that classroom knowledge! Then I came back a few days later and thought about it some more. I didn’t have any particular plans in mind, just that these five people might be connected in some way, and that together they could either be better or worse. Also, that five was a very satisfying number for some reason. Of course, there is far more to Confucianism than just this aspect, and if it happens to intrigue you, I encourage you to read more about it.

Virtues: Ren, for humanity, and Yi, for righteousness. Ren always thought it was odd that she’d stopped at two of the Five Virtues. What about the others: Li, which was ritual, Zhi, for knowledge, and Xin, for integrity?

Yes, Chinese people don’t like missing or partial sets. In fact, you see this in mahjong, where the whole point of the game is to accumulate whole sets of things!

A keramat animal is a sacred beast, a creature with the ability to come and go like a phantom, trampling sugarcane or raiding livestock with impunity. It’s always distinguished by some peculiarity, such as a missing tusk or a rare albino color. But the most common indicator is a withered or maimed foot.

Stories of ghostly or sacred animals are common in Malaysia. In fact, the elephant referred to as Gajah Kramat that Ren mentions in the book was actually a real elephant who was famous for eluding hunters and committing all sorts of mischief as he wandered around. I was actually doing research about rogue elephants for the first book I tried to write about an elephant detective, which was how I came across this information (for more about spending 8 years on terrible first novels, read my blog post here: https://yschoo.com/2014/02/26/my-ill-fated-elephant-novel/). There are also tales of keramat tigers, the most famous being the white tiger of Putri Gunung Ledang (Princess of Mount Ledang), who behaved more like a familiar guardian spirit. When you live close to the jungle, which is both dense from the outside yet can be surprisingly clear of undergrowth within, as the large trees block out sunlight, you can easily imagine all sorts of mysterious animals carrying on their own secret lives within.

“No, the dream-eater is a ghost animal. If you have nightmares, you can call it three times to eat the bad dreams. But you have to be careful. If you call it too often it will also gobble up your hopes and ambitions.”

The tapir appears in both ancient Chinese and Japanese mythology as a dream eater; a creature that will take away your bad dreams. Interestingly, there are fossil records of a giant tapir that roamed East Asia up till a few thousand years ago, which makes one wonder if these tales of dream eaters are based on some dim cultural recollection. I find the notion of a dream eater intriguing; unlike the western Night Mare, a horse which romps violently and uncontrollably through your dreams, the Baku or Mo (dream eater) allows you a little agency because you can call it at will. But like many things, there is a price for its services.

The worst part about death is forgetting the image of the beloved. It’s the final robbery, the last betrayal.

Before the advent of photography, I think this was very true. People had no way to exactly recollect the faces, unless you had an unusually good visual memory. In fact, I suspect that nowadays most people’s visual memories are actually of photographs; that is to say, you remember X because you can bring up in your mind the photo of X that always hung in the hallway (or you took on your phone!). In the absence of photographs, portraits were treasured. The walls of museums are lined with paintings of people who wished to be remembered. Even poor people tried to preserve their memories through charcoal sketches, or by employing itinerant artists to make a likeness. If you think about it, the word “likeness” implies a substitute. It must have been terribly sad to realise that you had nothing left, not even a very clear image of what a person looked like.

We were a chocolate-box family, I thought. Brightly wrapped on the outside and oozing sticky darkness within.

When I was a child, once in a while when guests came to visit, we got a box of assorted chocolates. I remember how absolutely thrilling this was, especially those boxes with pictures of the different types and fancy descriptions, such as “a soft whisper of nougat wrapped in the finest Belgian chocolate”. Often, the descriptions were almost better than eating them. I also spent a lot of time when I was a kid eavesdropping on older people. Part of it was because I’ve always been interested in history and stories, and partly because my parents came from a small town in the Kinta Valley, close to Ipoh, and whenever we went to visit, there were lots of neighbors and my grandparents’ friends who had stories to share, or were just very chatty. All one had to do was sit around, eating quietly, and listening to stories about so-and-so’s nephew. Some of those stories were really surprising. Perfectly ordinary people turned out to have second wives, hidden hobbies, and secret children. Which goes to say that you never can tell from the outside whether you’re really going to get a chocolate cherry, or just a sticky mess.

Malaya, with its mix of Malays, Chinese, and Indians, is full of spirits: a looking-glass world governed by unsettling rules.

While I was writing this book, I found myself exploring this whole idea of parallel or mirror worlds, and twins. Duplicates that are similar but also opposite. THE NIGHT TIGER itself can be read as a straight-forward mystery or a ghost story—or both at the same time. Within it are also the dual realities of servants and masters, men and women, natives and foreigners, the dead and the living, humans and beasts. Even the narrative structure is split between Ji Lin and Ren’s viewpoints. I didn’t exactly plan it all this way, but it emerged as I was writing, growing like two trees entwining in a jungle, or two paths criss-crossing each other in a dark wood. What is real and what is unreal? Or does it only matter if you care?... I hope you enjoy the journey.

But that’s the way people are, I think. We forget all the bad things in favor of what’s normal, what feels safe.

I’ve found this to be true in both good and bad ways. Yes, we do forget (perhaps we want to). There's a study that indicates people tend to forget their own transgressions, as apparently it’s no fun to recall the ways in which we’ve fallen short or have committed wrongs. But is forgetting a traumatic event that happens to you sometimes a mercy? Perhaps it depends on what we want to forget.

“Ren is benevolence isn’t it? Yi is righteousness, Li is ritual or order. Zhi is wisdom and Xin is faithfulness.” Rawling counts them off on his fingers as he recites, “Without Li, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?”

This whole notion of what makes us truly human is an ongoing question, probably as old as humanity. What does, in fact, distinguish us from other animals? And should we in fact think of ourselves as better? When I was a kid, I often wondered what animals thought of us. Cats, for example, might decide that humans are really just here to serve them (“they feed me when I meow, open the door for me, pat my head when I climb on the table…”)

I think you’ll like it there.”

Like my first novel, The Ghost Bride, The Night Tiger also had two alternate endings. In fact the ending you see is the second one that I wrote, and not the original. I thought they were both very satisfying, and really couldn’t decide which way to go. In the end I asked my wonderful literary agent for her thoughts, and she said that she liked this one, because it would be great if Ren could go off with Dr. Rawlings to a brighter future. I also had it in mind to write a follow up book to this one, and actually had the first few chapters sketched out in my mind, picking up almost immediately after The Night Tiger finished. To that end, I went poking around the historic King Edward VII hospital in Singapore, not realizing it is the current headquarters of the Ministry of Health! I wandered in and started taking photographs of the architecture, only to be stopped by security. When asked "Didn't you know this is a government building?" I had to sheepishly admit that I'd been busy looking at a historic map and had assumed it was a national monument open to the public... I’m now currently working on a different novel, but I really enjoyed Ren, Ji Lin, and all the others and one day, I want to find out what happens in the next chapter of their lives. Thank you again for reading The Night Tiger. I am so grateful for all the readers who have come along with me on this journey, and I wish you many more happy hours of reading and discovering new books that you love!