Between Two Shores

This is a story which begins in California and ends in China. It is a detective tale with a subtle love interest. Victor Lin, a Chinese-American died in mysterious circumstances on a trip to the Thousand Island Lake south of the city of Hangzhou. His wife Anne Gavin, an Irish-American, goes to China to find out what really happened. In the course of her investigation, she teams up with David Han, an academic from Hong Kong who also lost his sister in the same “accident.” As the story unfolds, the reader is taken on an exploration of the Chinese mind torn between two cultures―the native Chinese culture and the culture of the West.

At one level, this is a story about corruption, obsession, and the quest for closure. But running through the story is the soul-searching of David Han and the identity crisis he is going through. In the course of telling the story, Between Two Shores takes the reader behind the shroud that hides the Chinese persona and reveals the fears, aspirations, frustrations, and underlying beliefs of the Chinese people. It splits open the archetypal “Chinese characteristics” to reveal the deep-seated motivations which underpin Chinese behavior. It is a very revealing book and goes to depths never before explored.

Tsim Tak Lung writes under the name of T. L. Tsim. He read English literature at the University of Hong Kong and politics at the University of Manchester. He started his writing career at The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong with a column called “One Man’s View.” He also writes in the Chinese language and had, for many years, a weekly column in The Hong Kong Economic Journal. His Chinese essays on politics and culture were subsequently published by the Oxford University Press in Hong Kong in a series of six volumes entitled From Culture to Civilization. He is also a broadcaster and political commentator and his most recent interview on Canada’s Real Vision Finance (“Will the Hong Kong protests result in civil war?”) has attracted over 450,000 viewers worldwide.

Between Two Shores is his first English novel.

“I’ve greatly enjoyed reading this. It’s a novel that deserves to reach a wide readership … the writing is convincing and moving on a subject of the greatest importance to today―the internal dynamics and confusions of the Chinese identity in a cosmopolitan world.”

–John Minford, writer and also translator of the best-selling Penguin Classic The Story of the Stone



“It’s 99.9% brilliant … capturing the cultural/political differences and making predictions re the future of Hong Kong and China … I delayed getting to the end of the novel, fearing the author may not be able to tie together all the various strands. But he did.”

–Joan Plaisted, retired US Ambassador



“It is a complex work … a book to make one think, an intelligent piece of writing, combining philosophical and emotional introspection with good and incisive dialogue. No mean feat. The characters live on the page.”

–Michael O’Neill, Reader in Politics, Nottingham Trent University



“I found the novel engrossing, with a strong plot and sympathetic characters underpinned by an extraordinarily ambitious exposition and analysis of the complex history of China, the Chinese psyche and contemporary politics. I particularly appreciated the fact that the writer didn’t shy away from the challenge of portraying how many different strands there are within each of the PRC, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora. I think it may be unique in this regard.”

–Judith Ting Hanson, former Professor of English