By Marina Emmanuel

“All her life Rose had battled poverty, prejudice, moral hypocrisy, racism, puritanism and gender discrimination – and often, but not always, emerged triumphant.”

Sent by her impoverished parents from China to Singapore in 1931, six-year-old Rose Chan learned to survive on her wits and bravado.

The ‘Flower of Malaya’ transformed herself into the consummate show woman with her shocking dance moves and snake wrestling acts that took her and her troupe around Malaya and the world. 

Behind the glamour, the five marriages, travel and adulation was a life of hardship, sorrow and suffering that threatened to break her but never left her bowed.

In her ‘retirement’ years, Rose returned to the one place she felt happiest – Penang – where she ran her famous Sakura club until her untimely death in 1987. Lawyer and poet Cecil Rajendra was introduced to Rose Chan in the 1980s, when she invited him to pen her memoirs. ‘No Bed of Roses’ charts the remarkable story of Asia’s ‘Striptease Queen’ who was also known as the ‘Charity Queen’ in her later years.

Cecil Rajendra was born in Penang, and studied at St. Xavier’s Institution, the University of Singapore and Lincoln’s Inn, London. He is a practising lawyer and established free legal aid in Malaysia.

Pre-order of the book is available HERE