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Chiew-Siah Tei is on a mission to tell the story of the Chinese Diaspora, writes Clare Morin

It was the summer of 1999 when Chiew-Siah Tei stood by the banks of the Yellow River and felt the story surge out of her. It was her first trip to China, and the writer was struck by the mystery of her origins. “I realised I was different from the Chinese people around me,” explains Tei. “When I was on the plateau of the Yellow River, I realised it was the origins of my culture and … I began to question: Why as a Chinese I live in Malaysia and not China? It was then the idea of Little Hut of Leaping Fishes came about.”

We are on the phone in the midst of Tei’s hectic book tour to promote her novel.Set in nineteenth-century China, it reveals the country’s state in the aftermath of the Opium Wars. The exquisitely written tale follows Mingzhi, a young scholar who is born into the household of Master Chai, a corrupt landlord and opium farmer. As Mingzhi grows up within the oppressive family household, he applies himself to learning, becoming a young Mandarin in the process, and eventually moving to the Imperial City, becoming whipped up in the politics of the time.

After seeing the seed of her story in the waters of the Yellow River, often referred to as ‘the cradle of Chinese civilisation’, Tei delved into the past and discovered that it was this period of western aggression that spurred the mass emigration of millions of Chinese. “When I write I usually start with a concept; with this book, the concept is home, or rather homelessness,” she explains. “I wanted to write about a character who feels homeless in his own family. In this book the family equates to the country.”

To craft the story, Tei moved to Scotland in 2002, to undertake a PhD in Creating Writing and Film Studies at Glasgow University under the tutelage of acclaimed Scottish writer Alasdair Gray. She was already an established writer in Malaysia, yet felt the need to expand her voice.

In the 1980s, Tei had built a reputation for herself in the Malaysian-Chinese media, for her columns about film, the arts and social issues. She had also drawn praise for her prose, winning the Hua Zong International Chinese Fiction Award and the National Prose Writing Competition. While in Glasgow, she dabbled in film to equally successful results. Her screenplay Night Swimmer was transferred to celluloid, earning Best Short Firm at France’s Vendome International Film Festival in 2000. After that, her play Three Thousand Troubled Threads, about the difficulties that face first and second generation British Chinese, was commissioned by the Edinburgh International Festival in 2005

Tei feels that by writing in English, she is better able to reach the Chinese Diaspora – and argues that the story of Little Hut of Leaping Fishes is their story. “This is a piece of history that is lost,” she argues. “Not only Westerners know little about this history, even people from Asia … do not really look into this period. I feel that it’s important for us to understand what happened in the past. Because this mass migration of Chinese people at the turn of the twentieth-century caused the formation of the multi-ethnic, multi-cultural society of South East Asia. It changed the whole cultural and political landscape of this area.”

Tei herself is fourth generation Malaysian Chinese, born and raised in the town of Tampin, situated in the state of Negeri Sembilan in Peninsular Malaysia. She was the child of a butcher, living in a chaotic home environment with six siblings and uncles and aunts and grandparents all sharing the small family dwelling. She found her refuge in books and her imagination. “I began to create my own stories. At night, when all activities ceased, silence wrapped over me like a soothing blanket, and I would invent the perfect world I longed to inhabit.”

Her childhood years also filled her with rich tales of how her family came to Malaysia. She remembers when aged eight, she spent time with her Grandfather after he lost his eyesight due to a cataracts operation. He needed a guide to take him to teahouses, and she would listen to his stories of leaving China. “They seemed unreal, the descriptions of the young Emperor and the Dragon Lady, of the Boxers who fought the white men, of famine, people digging out roots, scraping off bark … to fill their stomachs, of his parents’ turbulent journey on a fishing boat to Malaya.”

She drew upon this personal history in creating Little Hut of Leaping Fishes. Despite critical acclaim (the book was nominated for the 2007 Asia, Tei does not want to stop here. This is the first novel in a trilogy that explores the concept of home and homelessness. In the second book she will follow Mingzhi’s journey to Malaysia in the 1930s. “Mingzhi wants to set up a home in this new life of his, but what exactly is home? He will have a conflict within himself. This is true of migrants, new immigrants; they have conflict, physically and psychologically.” The final book will then leap forward to a tale in the 1990s, set between Malaysia and Scotland. “In the modern day, travel has become so easy from one place to another. You can go quickly and freely, everything moves so fast. There are people who have a few homes in different places. How can you define home in this modern society?”

In our city of immigrants, it’s a question many of us can relate to. Such a universal edge makes Tei a rising talent to watch out for. While she may have initially been inspired by the waters of the Chinese civilisation, her journey is now a global one.