She describes the struggles of the Malay government against communist insurgencies, and how she sought out Aritomo Nakamura, a former Imperial gardener in Yugiri in the mountains of Malaysia, with the intent of commissioning him to create a traditional Japanese garden in memory of her sister, Yun Hong. Desperate to remember her past before her strange illness takes over her brain and renders her unable to do so, Yun Ling forces herself to return to her painful past and put on paper everything, and everyone in her life worth remembering.Īs the present Yun Ling returns to the highlands of Malay to Yugiri, or Evening Mists, she recalls the first time she visited the place and met the Japanese gardener who would change her life.Īs Yun Ling’s story slowly unfolds, we learn of her life after the Japanese labor camps, and how she became a lawyer, and later public prosecutor. It begins in the late ’80’s, with a 60 year old Yun Ling, now a hardened, retired judge who has endured much in one lifetime. The Garden of Evening Mists is a complex, multi-layered story that moves back and forth through time through the narratives of Yun Ling and other characters. Made to suffer indescribable atrocities at the hands of the Japanese, Yun Ling, then only in her teens, miraculously survives the camp after the war, and goes on to become a successful lawyer, public prosecutor, and later, a well-known judge. Because of Yun Ling’s father’s strong anti-Japanese sentiments, Yun Ling and her sister, Yun Hong were captured by the Japanese and sent to work in a slave labor camp of an unknown location. Growing up in Malaysia in the 1930’s, Yun Ling Teoh and her family lived a privileged life that was nearly destroyed during the onset of the Japanese Occupation during World War II. The Garden of Evening Mists(2012) by Tan Twan Eng is a beautifully written story about a woman’s lifelong struggle against anger, guilt, and the memories of her tragic past.
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