Jin Young Lim was studying ancient philosophy when he delved into a philosophical investigation of his life to date – from his humanitarian work in Fukushima to studying in Tokyo, becoming a yoga teacher and Taijiquan instructor, and co-founding a non-profit in the Himalayas before moving to Beijing as a Schwarzman Scholar. Along the way, Jin Young met scholars, teachers, artists, philosophers, farmers, social workers, and spiritual leaders. In this book, he weaves classical texts into his experiences with Taijiquan, Daoism and Zen, tea, agriculture, conservation, art, history, geography, politics, and social economics. He captures his physical, intellectual, and spiritual journey in a series of incisive reflections, vignettes, and anecdotes that make it accessible in simple terms. Through these stories, Jin Young constructs a philosophical framework of Daoist principles that he calls ‘The Dao of Flow’ — a way of continuous transformation based on embodying, flowing, and regulating water. These same three principles recurred as patterns in the lives of his role models or ‘walking flowers’ – those who ‘walk the flow’ and do so beautifully and naturally like flowers. This book is an invitation to discover the wisdom of water and provides readers with a novel spiritual map to deeper harmony with oneself and the world.
Archives: Books
Last Kid Running
Welcome to Book 2 of the thrilling LAST KID RUNNING gamebook series, where YOU decide how the story unfolds. You are Runner X, one of six eager contestants on the biggest reality show streaming on the mobile web.
This time, you’re taken to a secret venue in Indonesia. The enigmatic Dr Yamato has created a massive Run Dome filled with crazy technological inventions to challenge you and amuse his viewers.
You’re prepared to face anything, even the intimidating Six Headed Robogator. But the night gets creepy. And you can’t help feeling that the Run Dome hides a nasty surprise in its shadows.
Will you be too overwhelmed to outrun the others? Or do you have what it takes to be the LAST KID RUNNING? Quick, open the book and find out!
The Apple and the Tree
When an apple falls, does it roll far or stay close to its tree?
Is it an exact clone of all the other apples the tree produces or something entirely different?
This is the question that has perplexed the public about Marina for the simple reason that she is the daughter of the man who has governed Malaysia for almost twenty-four years. Does she echo him in his view of the world, or does she chart her own path?
Why is it that in her own public life, in her writing and speeches, she expresses opinions that seem to contradict his?
This book hopes to detail how she has navigated her life as the daughter of a charismatic politician and a loving father, even as sometimes she has chafed at being constantly under his shadow. It talks about how she has struggled to find her own identity, to defend her worldview at times and to reconcile them with his at others.
She tells the story of growing up as the daughter of Malaysia’s most influential leader, from the values instilled in her as a child, right up to the day he was forced to step down as the 7th Prime Minister after leading the historic ouster of the government he used to lead.
Duxton Hill
Set against the backdrop of an aging boutique hotel, once a jewel of elegance in the heart of Singapore’s Duxton Hill, a tropical rain storm brings together two unlikely singles, Clara Tan and Nicholas Tate. Their personalities and cultural backgrounds at first seem at complete odds. Unbeknown to them, their futures are very much aligned. Through the twists and turns of a potential relationship, and the trials and tribulations of sorrow, love, friendship, courage and the Duxton Hotel’s fight for survival, Clara discovers that her tendency to fall in love too fast for every single male she encounters, needs some adjustment.
Her life is about to completely turn upside down when she inherits the hotel from its billionaire owner Mr Chan, but through having to lead and re-brand the hotel towards its new beginning, she inadvertently overcomes a sensitive and socially difficult medical condition. In the meantime, her love for Nicholas develops, deepens and blossoms as a result of her new found confidence, on which a new life and hotel empire begins.
Yangon Days
Yangon, previously known as Rangoon, is the former capital of Myanmar (Burma) and one of the major commercial cities in Southeast Asia. Moreover, it stands out among its neighboring cities, such as Bangkok, Phnom Penh, Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, and Singapore, and is regarded as a well-structured and booming city. The influx of people is constant, with individuals coming and going through the city. Even famous international literary luminaries, such as Rudyard Kipling, Rabindranath Tagore, George Orwell, Pablo Neruda, and Somerset Maugham, once visited, stayed, and enjoyed Rangoon’s vibrant life.
Yangon has become a home for many people, both locals and expats, who seek jobs, success, a new life, good food, and good housing. While most Yangon residents gain success and prosperity from what the commercial city has to offer, some encounter failures and frustrations. However, a city is a city, amiably welcoming those who seek refuge in its bountifulness.
These twenty-six stories revolve around people, especially ordinary individuals, living in the city of Yangon. They depict their delight, empathy, follies, and humanness through their daily and family lives. “Yangon Days” is about them.
The book is intended for general readers, especially teenagers and adults living in Southeast Asia and beyond. By reading these stories, they will become more familiar with Yangon and its charming people, gaining insights into how the city offers and treats its residents.
Little Hero
Seven-year-old Ying Xiong looks forward to a better life in post-war Singapore after the Japanese troops’ surrender in September 1945.
However, a new war erupts at home when Xiong’s father decides to return to his homeland in China. This tears the family apart when he takes Xiong’s two elder brothers back with him, whilst Xiong and his mother remain in Singapore.
Xiong navigates his childhood years alone in a poor neighbourhood as his mother ekes out a livelihood for them. He makes a friend in Kampung Silat, follows a fearsome teenage gangster in Silat Road and gets to know a brave police inspector who becomes his neighbour. Through all this, Xiong comes to realise what it takes to be a hero, which is also the meaning of his name Ying Xiong.
Little Hero is a touching work of fiction inspired by real-life events from the childhood years of the author’s father in post-war 1940s Singapore and beyond.
Leap of Fate
Singaporeans found themselves having to navigate livelihoods and relationships in unexpected tragicomic ways. Siblings would turn out to be lifelong enemies, money—or rather the lack of it—a crippling nightmare, love an ever posture of deception, wild gossip the coup de grâce. In spite of it all, the unforeseen, even death itself, would every so often become a flint for courage and redemption for some, especially Tin, a brave teenage girl who continued to defy familial odds, and Mona, a widow-turned-prostitute who was forced to thwart her own expectations.
Equal parts inspired by real-life anecdotes and borne of imagination, this story promises to lay bare the struggles and aspirations of those living in an era and a place unwittingly defined by societal taboos and quirky traditions that have long vanished from the face of contemporary Singapore. Ultimately, this is the story of what it means to be human when fate decides to take a leap.
Mouths to Speak, Voices to Sing
Singing Chinese antiquities. Ghosts that only one young man could sense. A house with a sentient A.I. that becomes a part of the family. A cricket that acts as a tragic voice of reason. A man born and bred for neural mass surveillance.
This anthology is a collection of unpredictable stories of various genres—fantasy, science fiction, crime, horror and the supernatural—that touch on courage and fear, loss and resolution, denial and honesty, despair and hope…from an author who writes about being human in a world where the unseen is suddenly exposed. Every story is written in versatile language, with characters sure to elicit sympathy, and perhaps even familiarity, from readers who are sure to recognize themselves or those they know in the unique situations of each entertaining tale.
Winds of War
The lost gods of Kayumalon are returning.
Before the exodus of kings to Kayumalon, seed mages were revered by both strangelords and mortal men, their magic reserved only for the bloodlines the gods deem worthy. It was a time of peace and prosperity, but it was an age that had passed on into history and then myth and then superstitious whispers around the bonfire.
Now, seed magic is cheap, the power of the gods reduced to a bottle of oil and borrowed magic mass-produced on magic plantations and coveted by enemies within and without.
Little do they know that Kayumalon’s fate will fall in the hands of a simple Dayo slave girl.
Yin knows that Masalanta Island Plantation is not home—though she longs to become a part of it, if only to be noticed by the island’s most beautiful red-haired boy. All she knows is that she and her father have been on the run all her life, and no matter how many times she asks her father why, he would only warn her that the world means her harm.
When the boy does notice her, she follows him into the night against her better judgement and realizes too late that her father is right. She wakes up the next day, feeling like she had the world in the palm of her hands and power that any girl in her position could only dream about.
INFINITE LIVES, INFINITE DEATHS
Infinite Lives, Infinite Deaths is a collection of stories that straddle genres such as horror, magic realism, metafiction, and science fiction, while stitching together elements from world mythology and folklore, Philippine history and society, and the Chinese-Filipino experience in a nightmarish version of Manila.
In Dreaming Valhalla, a family’s noodle restaurant is converted into a Norse-themed girly bar that parallels the rise and destruction of the Æsir. A group of children take a traumatic fieldtrip in A Visit to the Exhibition of the International Committee on Children’s Rights. In An Epistle and Testimony from June 13, 1604 a Spanish friar meets a Chinese convert bearing the stigmata, while in The Life and Death of Hermes Uy, a Chinese-Filipino entrepreneur opens a pharmacy in 1950s Manila, diversifying and expanding the business throughout the decades until its mysterious and abrupt closure.
A professor of applied folkloristics discusses the case of a young girl who returned home as a crone a few days after her elopement in A Reply to a Query, while Where Old Whores Go to Die features a grant application assessment detailing the context and procedures that govern a concentration camp for aged prostitutes. In The Way of Those Who Stayed Behind a Chinese-Filipino expatriate returns home and uncovers a family secret, while The Lament of Philip Reyes features a failed doctor coming face-to-face with the possibilities that never materialized throughout his life.