When I was young I was aware that children were sold over the counter or even in the market place. I witnessed such a sale myself and I know of four relatives who were sold as children, isn’t that shocking! – Yong Pease

This doesn’t sound like part of a conversation that will lead to a knowledge of happiness, but that is the story I’m about to tell. Life can be very surprising sometimes.

I first met Yong Pease at Stamford literary festival. A cheerful, maybe slightly shy Malaysian woman sitting behind a stall exhibiting a book called ‘Brown Jade’. The cover of the book bore a bowl and chopsticks, with a background of cane screens. Bit of a stereotype really – cover art created by a budget publisher I guessed. Yong, I had been told, was a nurse, living and working in Hampshire, so I had absolutely no idea what to expect of the book.

There isn’t much opportunity for conversation when one is thrown together with a new group of people on a Friday evening in order to run a series of exhibitions, readings and workshops on the Saturday and Sunday. What conversation I did have with Yong gave me the impression she was a pleasant, down-to-earth woman of the type one is always glad to meet when attending a hospital appointment – but when I heard her at the festival reading from Brown Jade, I was transported into a world which I would have thought was buried in ancient history. In fact, it was Yong’s mother’s world:

A heavy, tired woman is clutching a chair back, struggling to stand still on her three-inch by two-inch bound feet, searching for the courage to tell the adolescent girl in front of her that she is not, as the girl has always believed, her natural mother. The story she aches to tell is the story of her absent husband, of the lives he has decreed for her, and for his other two women and for their children. It is a story the girl will one day find the courage to tell to her own children – children who will reach adolescence in the 1950s and 1960s. When youngsters their age in my country were demanding the right to wear fancy dress and ‘let it all hang out’ at pop concerts, the children of ‘Brown Jade’ were helping their mother to run a laundry business and plotting and planning to find the money for them all to attend school until the age of thirteen.

The world is a very wide place and somehow, Yong Pease has managed to share her life between two very different worlds. This Buddhist health worker living in Hampshire has written an elegant, well-crafted story to bring the lessons of her early days in Malaysia to the modern UK. It struck me, as I listened to her reading, that there are a lot of discussions about ‘ethnic workers’ and ‘immigrants’ doing the rounds these days and we spend a lot of time talking about the number of them, and the consequences for us, particularly for our health service; but I have heard precious little about what it is like to be one of them. They get to contribute all their working hours to our country, but how much of their knowledge and experience filters through to us?

In China, jade is associated with health and temperament, brown jade with living wisely. When I came to read ‘Brown Jade’, I could see the ‘living wisely’ element shining through. We see, through the eyes of the main character Jen, the attitudes and experiences of three generations – that of herself and her brothers and sisters, and of their mother and her parents. Although the generations cause a lot of each other’s troubles, all the characters are painted sympathetically. As Jen comes to understand the pressures her mother has grown up under, we see her beginning to use this knowledge to look differently at the school bullies she has had to tolerate. She begins to realise why they behave as they do, and so becomes curious enough to want to talk to them when her less experienced friend just wants to slap them.

But school bullies are probably the least of Jen’s problems. Much more pressing are the responsibilities she faces when her mother is ill, such as trying to keep herself and her brothers and sister fed, safe and, if possible, attending school.

Whilst discussing the book with Yong, I told her that I thought most westerners would consider such heavy responsibility damaging for a child – certainly most of the youngsters I know would consider themselves terribly hard-done-by in Jen’s situation – but Yong tells me Jen’s life is easier than her own had been in many ways. She says:

I started earning when I was eight years old. I attended school in the morning and then worked afternoons and most evenings. I learned about responsibility before I learned how to use a pencil. This aspect has not done me any damage at all, in fact it has stood me in good stead all my life. Having to work as a child is not necessarily a bad thing. You learn about responsibility, timekeeping, respect, the importance of money or lack of it, being aware of other people and how they fit into the world; you become less self-centred.

It is the lack of compassion and love that damages the child, particularly if is coupled with physical and verbal abuse. Nowadays more children are damaged by drugs and alcohol and the food we ingest than by poor living conditions or child labour. I also believe that our genetic make-up affects us in how we view the world and how we are changed by our upbringing. I took a lot of risks as a child in order to survive. This risk-taking has given me the courage to do many things in life that I don’t believe I would otherwise have done.

I remember arriving in the UK on the 27th of December 1970 on a one-way ticket. I did not have the money to buy a return ticket nor did it occur to me that I would fail in my quest, and all I had on me was twelve pounds that had taken me months to save. Maybe I should write that book, too!

I sincerely hope she does, not least because I think we in the UK could do with some of the quiet philosophy Yong’s experiences have given her. Despite all the struggles and the sadness she has seen, Yong comes over as a happy, relaxed person. She says:

There are many, many unhappy in this world. They could be rich or poor, in good or poor health, the question is why are they unhappy. It is about facing your own truth. If a person could honestly face his/her own self and do what is right then happiness is there for the taking.

To see the seeds of this philosophy growing in a young girl, read ‘Brown Jade’ by Yong Pease. To read the next instalment, well, patience is a virtue too – I, for one, am waiting eagerly for the next book!