Traditional Chinese cuisine, jade, batik, embroidery, and horticulture.


In Soon Ai Ling's fiction, newly translated into English by Yeo Wei Wei, the lives of twentieth-century Chinese diaspora unravel in the midst of emblems and environments resplendent with cultural influences from East and Southeast Asia.


Life is strange, painful, and beautiful. In stories set across Singapore, Hong Kong and Malaysia, the characters in Diasporic struggle for freedom to love, freedom from fate.


CONTENTS: Chef Tham, Fans of the Phoenix, Jade and Fate, Clove, Batik Melody, Bai Xiangzu and Her Embroidered Peacocks, Jade Butterflies, The Song of Life, Blossoms of the Moon Season


Soon Ai Ling is a native of Huiyang, Guangdong. She holds a bachelor's degree in Chinese Language and Literature from Nanyang University, Singapore (1971), and a PhD from the University of Hong Kong (1995). Soon is an award-winning author of several novels and anthologies. Her works have been translated into Japanese, English and Malay. She was a lecturer at the Hong Kong Institute of Education (1997-2005) and the National Institute of Education at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2006-2013). At present, she is a guest lecturer at the Education University of Hong Kong and NTU Singapore.


Yeo Wei Wei is a writer and translator based in Singapore. Her short stories have been longlisted in the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2021) and Glimmer Train (2013). She holds a MA in Creative Writing (Prose Fiction) from the University of East Anglia.