Tjhit Liap Seng
Cover
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| Author | Lie Kim Hok |
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| Country | Dutch East Indies (today Indonesia and Malaysia) |
| Language | Malay |
| Publisher | Lie Kim Hok |
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Publication date
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1886 |
| Pages | 500 |
Tjhit Liap Seng (Perfected Spelling: Chit Liap Seng, Hokkien Chinese for Seven Stars or Pleiades; 七粒星) is an 1886 novel by Lie Kim Hok. It is considered the first Chinese Malay novel.
In Canton, a baby girl is delivered to a group of seven male students who call themselves the "Seven Stars", during their meeting. They name the child Tjhit Seng Nio and agree to raise her together. Eight years later, after the group graduates, Seng Nio is enrolled in a school for girls. Her adoptive fathers find their own employment, but stay in contact. When Seng Nio turns 14, her guardians argue whether to either choose a husband for her, or let her find her own.
Meanwhile, one of Seng Nio's guardians, Tjin Hoe, is unintentionally swept up in the Taiping Rebellion, when he mistakenly believes that he is bankrupt. Though Tjin Hoe asks his father's friend Ong Thaj (real name, Thio Giok) to kill him, the latter is unwilling to do so and asks the leader of the rebellion, Lauw Seng, to do so. When Tjin Hoe realises that he is not bankrupt after all, he attempts to prevent his death, tracking Lauw Seng down to the Great Wall of China. The rebel leader captures Tjin Hoe and declares that the former student must die for being so willing to waste his life. He locks Tjin Hoe in a coffin and sends him to Shanghai by boat. There Ong Thaj reveals that the challenge was meant to make Tjin Hoe value his life better.
After her studies, Seng Nio is sent off to be a private teacher. Her student, Bwee Phek, falls in love with her, but as her family's history is not clear – and thus the possibility that she and Bwee Phek have the same family name cannot be ruled out – Seng Nio's guardians decide to send her to another school, to stop the blossoming romance. At the home of Sie Boen Tong, Seng Nio is mistreated and eventually kicked out of the house by Boen Tong's jealous wife. She finds shelter at a house belonging to Entjim Tjoene, who had helped her during her travels, only to find that it is a brothel. With the help of one of her guardians, Na Giam, she manages to leave, avoiding the forceful advances of the self-entitled womaniser Lauw Khok.
In another city, Seng Nio finds protection at the home of Goat Nio, a poor woman whose husband was captured by Taiping rebels. Seng Nio helps an old man, Thio Tian, who is stunned at her resemblance to his dead wife. When Seng Nio falls ill, he agrees to take her and Goat Nio to live at his house. Thio Tian, after a lengthy search, discovers that Seng Nio is his granddaughter, born of Goat Nio and Thio Giok. Finally, with Seng Nio's identity revealed, Thio Tan agrees to have her married to Bwee Phek. Although an upset Lauw Khok refuses to accept this, Seng Nio's guardians take him away so that he cannot bother her anymore; he dies soon afterwards.
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