Chapter 8: Plausible Parallel Universe of Characters
When we hear about powerful anecdotes, we are often unsure whether it is first-hand or second-hand information, or if it has changed slightly each time it was retold over the years. Sometimes, a story grows in power precisely because it has been shared and reshaped, carrying different perspectives that add layers to its meaning. The following is an alternative story to the one in Chapter 7, and one wonders, which is the more accurate story? Or could both be true in their own ways, each revealing a different facet of the truth that depends on who is telling it, and why?
Stories passed down through generations are often clouded by memory, bias, and the silences that families keep to protect themselves from past pain. Each family, whether Chua, Tang, Chen, or Tan, holds its version of the truth, shaped by the fragments they chose to share or the secrets they were too afraid to voice. What is told around dinner tables often changes subtly with each retelling, becoming part myth and part history. In the case of Tan Boon Seng, some said he betrayed Tang Guang Liang for survival, while others believed he did it out of fear and regret, leading to his wife’s tragic death during childbirth as karmic retribution. Others whispered that the betrayal was never deliberate but a mistake, a consequence of being caught between fear and war. This alternative story reminds us that truth is not always a single thread but a tapestry woven from many lives, perspectives, and hidden truths, waiting for someone like Julian to untangle and understand.
Guardians of Karma, Keepers of Silence
Singapore, 2008 – The City That Remembers
Julian Chua stepped out of Lavender MRT and into the heart of a neighborhood that seemed caught between centuries. The iron shophouse grilles, faded prayer papers tucked behind ceramic door knockers, and the scent of salted plum and joss sticks all whispered of stories too old to shout.
Clutched in his hand was a notebook with a faded photograph and a single lead: Sakya Press, a near-forgotten printing house once mentioned on a crate in a 1940s photo of Tang Electric Supply & Co. He had followed this fragment of history like a trail of breadcrumbs, his instincts pushing him forward with the same quiet force that had led him to the four Sanskrit scrolls in Raub.
The address led him to a quiet side lane on Tyrwhitt Road. The wooden signboard above the door was cracked but legible:
SAKYA PRESS – Sutras, Prophecies, and Preservations.
Below that, in gold foil so faded it could be missed in the wrong light, was a line in Sanskrit:
“Those who return do so not to relive, but to repay.”
Julian’s heart beat faster.
Inside, the scent of sandalwood mingled with yellowing paper. A lone fan spun overhead. Behind the counter sat an elderly woman—her silver hair pinned with a tortoiseshell clip, her eyes like two ink wells absorbing the world.
She looked up. “You are looking for what your ancestor left behind.”
Julian paused. “You know who I am?”
She smiled. “I remember your great-grandfather, Chua Teck Wah. But more than that, I remember the man who came after him. The one who brought a black silk scroll and cried when he handed it over.”
She stood. “Come. It’s time.”
Guangdong, 1920 – A Boy Born to Silence and Fire
Far away in time, in a different lifetime, Tang Guang Liang crouched in the narrow stone courtyard of his family home in Huizhou. He was ten years old, barefoot, thin as a reed, watching his father brush calligraphy onto paper lanterns.
His father, Tang Da Shun, had once been a schoolteacher but lost his post after the Qing fell. He’d turned to crafting lanterns for festivals and temples, clinging to art as both resistance and refuge.
“Lanterns carry hope,” he told Guang Liang. “Even if your path is dark, hang a lantern. Light will come.”
Da Shun had inherited from his grandfather a trunk of rare Buddhist scrolls—handwritten in a blend of Sanskrit and Chinese, with margins filled with cryptic commentary. It was said that one of their ancestors had sheltered a traveling monk fleeing a temple fire during the Taiping Rebellion. The monk had left only one thing behind: a warning.
“Your line shall carry karma forward. What is broken shall return to you.”
Guang Liang loved those scrolls. He couldn’t read them fully, but he touched the pages like relics. When the wind passed through the bamboo groves, he imagined it was the monk whispering old truths.
But in 1929, famine struck. Then came bandits, civil unrest, and the cruel draft of boys into warlord militias. At age seventeen, his mother dead and father gravely ill, Guang Liang made the painful decision to leave.
His father gave him two things: a single scroll, wrapped in black silk, and a name scribbled on rice paper: Teck Wah.
“He saved our ancestor. You may one day meet his shadow. When you do, don’t hesitate.”
Arrival in Malaya – A World Lit and Shadowed
In 1930, after weeks aboard a rusting steamer bound for Nanyang, Guang Liang landed in Singapore—young, unskilled, and burning with quiet determination. He slept in godowns along the Singapore River, working odd jobs repairing lanterns, fixing wires, learning from street electricians who wired the new Art Deco buildings springing up in Geylang and Balestier.
He had a gift for circuits. Not just technical precision, but the instinct to feel how current flowed—as though he could sense where energy wanted to go. In time, he moved to Ipoh, where the mining boom needed men like him. He opened a modest electrical supply store: Tang Electric Supply & Co.
His kindness made him known in the community. He often repaired for free, waived bills for widows and orphans, and brought light—literally and figuratively—to the dark corners of town. He employed two brothers from a struggling merchant family in KL: Tan Boon Seng and Tan Boon Leong.
It was Boon Seng who would later betray him.
Ipoh, 1944 – The Betrayal and the Bond
By then, war had come. Resistance fighters asked Guang Liang to hide blueprints and radios in electric crates. He agreed, silently, believing in justice. One day, Boon Seng found a transmitter hidden beneath a crate of fuses. Fearful and greedy, he reported Guang Liang to the Kempeitai, hoping to save himself and take over the business.
Guang Liang was arrested. His store torched. Tied up and left to die in a warehouse near the edge of town, he prepared for the end.
Until a stranger came.
A man, thin and calm-eyed, appeared in the smoke—Chua Teck Wah, who had come to Ipoh to visit an old classmate but followed an unexplainable instinct to this very site. He cut the ropes, carried Guang Liang into a limestone cave, tended his wounds, and left before dawn, saying only:
“We all owe something to someone. Yours has now been repaid.”
They never met again. But both remembered.
Sakya Press, Present Day – The Fifth Scroll
Mei Yun led Julian to the back of the shop. She unlocked a narrow cabinet and removed a bundle wrapped in black silk—bound with red thread.
“This was entrusted to me in 1946. The man was shaking, gaunt, and weeping. He said it must never be opened until one bearing the name Chua came asking.”
Julian gently took the scroll. It was heavier than expected.