The Night Tiger

The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo was published in 2020. It’s a mixture of genres, including mythology and historical fiction, and it is a New York Times bestseller. The Night Tiger chronicles the period between May and July of 1931. The setting is colonial-era Malaysia, or “Malaya.”

Plot Summary

Chinese house servant Ren, is a 10-year-old orphan who’s mourning the death of his master, Dr. MacFarlane. Dr. MacFarlane was a weretiger who changed into a tiger at will and would kill villagers and animals at night. On his deathbed, Dr. MacFarlane made Ren promise to find his missing, amputated finger and bury it with his corpse within the next 49 days, or the dangerous weretiger ghost will wander forever.

Ren travels to the Batu Gajah home of Dr. MacFarlane’s friend, William Acton. William is the doctor who amputated Dr. MacFarlane’s finger. Dr. MacFarlane has willed Ren to William; his finger may be in William’s home.

Twenty-year-old Chinese Ji Lin grew up in Ipoh with her mother, violent stepfather, and handsome stepbrother, Shin. Ji Lin now lives in Falim, where she is completing a dressmaking apprenticeship. She also has a secret job at the socially disgraceful May Flower, a dance hall, to help pay for her mother’s mahjongg debts. Shin is an orderly at the Batu Gajah District Hospital.

During one shift at the May Flower, Ji Lin accidentally receives a jarred finger from a dance partner, the salesman Chan Yew Cheung. Shin identifies it as belonging to the hospital’s pathology storeroom. The salesman dies soon after. His friend Y.K. Wong comes to the dance hall asking about the finger, but Ji Lin is evasive.

A white woman named Lydia takes a romantic interest in William. Lydia has had many fiancé’s and is in Malaya to avoid the scandal. William, too, has an air of scandal due to the death of his former fiancée Iris. William is only interested in local girls in Malay. He conducts an affair with the married Ambika until she becomes the apparent victim of a tiger attack. However, Dr. Leslie Rawlings performs an autopsy on Ambika and suspects she was first poisoned before the tiger mauled her body. William develops a predatory crush on the young and pretty Nandani.

Meanwhile, Ji Lin is falling in love with Shin. She has also begun having peculiar dreams of a train station by a river. She meets Yi in her dreams, although she does not yet know that he is Ren’s dead twin. This dream world is a part of the afterlife. Yi affirms the mythology of the Five Confucian Virtues. The “Ji” in Ji Lin’s name is the Chinese character zhi which means knowledge, one of the five Confucian Virtues. Shin’s name is from the Chinese character xin, which means integrity. Yi, whose name means righteousness, and Ren, whose name means humanity, are also part of the set. We later learn that the dangerous fifth of the set, Li, is Lydia, though Choo initially leads us to believe it is William.  

After Ji Lin and Shin replace the finger in the storeroom (noting all amputated finger specimens are missing), Ren magically senses it’s there and recovers it. He hides it in William’s garden until he can return to Dr. MacFarlane’s grave.

A nurse asks Ji Lin to arrange retrieval of her parcel from the men’s quarters of the hospital. Shortly after, Koh Beng secretly pushes the nurse, Pei Ling, down the stairs, leading to her death. The parcel contains a list of names and money transactions that indicate Koh Beng is selling the amputated fingers on the black market. Ji Lin won’t arrive at this conclusion until much later.

Girls from the May Flower attend William’s party, including Ji Lin. She meets Ren and makes the connection between him and Yi. Nandani arrives looking for William, and William turns her away. She, too, is poisoned and dies near William’s property. Meanwhile, a tiger is spotted in the garden. Ren, thinking the tiger has come for the finger, goes to fetch it, and William accidentally shoots him. Ren gives the finger to Ji Lin and asks her to bury it with Dr. MacFarlane before passing out.

In her dream, Ji Lin asks Yi to leave Ren alone so that he can live. In the hospital, Ren also enters the dream/afterlife. He meets Pei Ling and Nandani, who are preparing to travel on the train further into the afterlife. Nandani urges him to leave.

Ji Lin returns to the May Flower to retrieve her last wages. Shin, Y.K. Wong, and a rich man named Robert, who is seriously courting Ji Lin, are all there. Robert compares her to a prostitute, Shin punches him, and a melee ensues. Shin and Ji Lin escape and bury the finger with Dr. MacFarlane. During the journey, Shin and Ji Lin confess their love for each other, and Ji Lin puts off Shin’s sexual advances.  

At the hospital, Koh Beng dispatches Y.K. Wong, dropping a heavy tile onto his head. Lydia gives Ren a vial and asks him to give it to Ji Lin for stomach pain. Ji Lin arrives and meets Koh Beng. She realizes Koh Beng is selling the amputated limbs, and he puts a scalpel to her throat and takes her to the roof. Ren senses the trouble and tells Shin, who fights with Koh Beng. Ji Lin is knocked out and sees Yi at the station—he says he’ll intercede on Shin’s behalf. When Ji Lin comes to, she, Koh Beng, and Shin have all fallen off the roof, but only Koh Beng has died.

After Ren’s recovery, Lydia meets with William. She confesses that she poisoned both Ambika and Nandani to help him, and she wishes to marry him. She knows William killed his fiancée, Iris, and she too has killed multiple fiancés. Ren prepares tea for them and puts the vial from Lydia into William’s tea, thinking he is ill. William dies soon after, as Lydia intended to poison Ji Lin because of William’s interest in her.

Shin and Ji Lin move to Singapore to live independently for a year before marrying. Dr. Rawlings offers Ren a new job as his house staff in Singapore.

The novel explores the patriarchal limitations in 1930s Malay, burgeoning feminist opportunities, the effects of colonialism, and the significance of cultural mythologies.