Summary
The book opens in 1893 in Malacca, Malaya, where the protagonist, Li Lan, learns from her father of an offer made for her to become a ghost bride for the Lim family, who would marry Li Lan to their recently deceased son, Lim Tian Ching. Li Lan lives with her father—who is on the edge of poverty and devastated by the loss of his wife—and their servant, Amah, who is the main mother-figure for Li Lan and who becomes furious when she learns of the ghost bride offer. While Li Lan tries to forget the strange proposal, she is eventually invited by Madame Lim, the matriarch of the Lim family, to play mahjong with her.
She notices that there are several strange dynamics in the family, and meets a servant making clocks there, who she becomes infatuated with. Madame Lin discloses that she was close with Li Lan’s mother before she died, and asks for the ribbon from her hair. Li Lan remains restless, however, and has a strange dream where she is walking through the Lim household and meets Lim Tian Ching, who announces that he has come to court her.
Soon, Li Lan is invited to the Lim mansion to celebrate the Double Seventh Festival, where she meets Yan Hong, the eldest daughter of the house, and discovers that the servant making clocks is actually Lim Tian Bai. She goes to sleep that night, again meeting Lim Tian Bai, and when she wakes up, Li Lan goes downstairs to discover they have received a package from the Lim family: a length of cloth with a pocket watch concealed inside. This makes the family feel ill at ease, because Chinese tradition holds that clocks are not considered a gift of goodwill since they are thought to measure out of the days of your life.
Even more strange is the fact that it’s not a new watch, and Li Lan goes to bed that day afraid. Li Lan ends up being right to be afraid since she does nothing but dream of the strange world where she met Lim Tian Ching, although he himself does not appear. Meanwhile, she keeps the watch that she believes to be from Tian Bai close. Her father reveals to her that Tian Bai was originally supposed to be her groom, but things changed when Lim Tian Ching died and Tian Bai became the heir, which causes her to leave the room in tears. That night, she dreams of Lim Tian Ching accusing her of mooning over another man, and in the morning, she becomes very ill.
After beginning to recover, she is visited by Tian Bai, who admits to giving her the watch, expressing interest in continuing with the original betrothal, which prompts Li Lan to give him a comb. Soon after, Li Lan finally confesses to Amah that she is being haunted by Lim Tian Ching, and the two of them go to consult a medium. At first, they are skeptical of her because of her shabby appearance, but they see that she’s being consulted by a rich man.
The medium confirms Li Lan is being haunted, giving her medicine, then when Amah is not paying attention, whispers to Li Lan that she needs to burn hell banknotes for herself. Li Lan takes the medicine from some days, then finds out from her father the Lim family owns all of his debts, driving Li Lan to burn banknotes for herself like the medium advised, something which disturbs Amah.
Lim Tian Ching comes to her in her dreams that night to reveal that he had blood put on her door, that he can command demons, and that Tian Bai was the one who killed him. She wakes up screaming, only to go downstairs and hear from her father that he is declaring bankruptcy as well as that Tian Bai is betrothed to someone else. Overwhelmed, she goes upstairs and recklessly prepares an increased dose of the medium’s medicine, gulping it down and wishing for oblivion.
Analysis
The book begins in colonial Malaya of the 19th century, which already clues the reader into the fact that a lot of the book will be about the collision between British culture and Chinese and other Far Eastern cultures. Even though the characters live under heavy British influence, traditional things like the ghost bride marriage remain in practice. Li Lan is a young woman navigating these two worlds, which would already be difficult, but she is also missing a lot of the support system she needs. Because of her vulnerability, Madame Lim identifies her as a good candidate for a ghost marriage, even though to engage in one is horrible luck. Madame Lim's observation that Li Lan seems gauche and her mention of the relationship between herself and Li Lan's mother is used to make her seem more trustworthy than she actually is.
The supernatural continues to interrupt Li Lan's supposedly "modern" life as Lim Tian Ching begins to haunt her, made even worse by complicated class politics that make it easy for the Lim family to try and pressure her into marriage. In contrast to Tian Bai, who is focused on more "modern" things, Lim Tian Ching uses the spiritual and traditional to try and trap her into a ghost marriage. Li Lan shows herself to be generous and good-spirited by giving Madame Lin the ribbon, but this backfires on her, as Madame Lim uses it to help Lim Tian Ching haunt her.
The Double Seventh festival celebrates lovers that are kept apart, but ironically, Li Lan's invitation to the Lim family's party is a part of a plot to force her and Lim Tian Ching together. The unexpected happens, however, when she is finally properly introduced to Tian Bai and she becomes infatuated with him. Knowing that he is more than just a servant makes it possible for him to court Li Lan, which makes things especially complicated given that the Lim family is trying to marry her off to Lim Tian Ching.
The motif of clocks reappears again later in this section, with Tian Bai gifting Li Lan a pocket watch. Tian Bai's confidence in giving this to Li Lan despite its traditional implications shows that like Li Lan's father, he does not give much weight to what he thinks of as superstition. Nevertheless, the gift scares Li Lan and rightly so, since it appears to make the dreams worse. This is the beginning of a gulf that will grow between Tian Bai and Li Lan where Li Lan believes in the supernatural but is reluctant to share with Tian Bai because she worries he will not believe her.
However, Li Lan's supernatural suspicions are proved correct when the medium is able to name Lim Tian Ching as haunting her. The medium prophesizes her separation from her body by asking her to burn banknotes, which would only be of use to someone in the spirit world. The other moment of foreshadowing in the scene with the medium is that it is actually the first time the reader meets Er Lang, although we do not realize it yet. Over the course of the next several days, things appear to be going well but are again disrupted by Li Lan's father's revelations: the combination of learning about the debts, the bankruptcy, and the fact that she was originally betrothed to Tian Bai proves too much for Li Lan. Li Lan demonstrates her trademark impulsiveness and decides to try and take as much medicine as possible, showing that in addition to sometimes being a bit immature, she can also be somewhat self-destructive.
