Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 477

New Tales of Old Shanghai
Stewards Pooi Kei Primary School, Ng, Jayden – 11
L
ong time ago, there was an agricultural village called Xin. They were absolutely penniless. Simple straw huts
were built everywhere. The village ruler was rich and buried his riches and treasure in a secret place to ensure
that the village has no financial problems and left clues for the villagers to find it. He left a complicated riddle:
Town Hall is the key,
Go find wise Ron.
Elytra spirits is what you need to see.
Glide to heaven and beyond!
The villagers had not bothered to think about it-they were too ignorant and the riddle is too complex!
One day a boy was born. He was named Chang. Everyone thought it was just another ordinary boy, but little
did they know: he will be the savior of the village and the future founder of the historic and glorious
Shanghai...When he was three, he finally asked his beloved mother:"Are there any solutions to our poverty
problems?" His mother told the story. Ever since that day, Chang had a goal to solve the riddle.
When Chang turned 18 and officially became an adult, he grouped his friends and read the riddle scroll once
again with his eyes concentrating on the first line: “Town Hall Is the Key.” What did that mean? Chang and his
friends Xin, Wang and Fong were smart and they did not search for any help as, for them, it was not that
complicated. So they sat down in a local tea shop, got drinks and started brainstorming.
Ideas were roaming trough their brains. There’s a key in the town hall? The key to the treasure is there? But
none of them sounded right. Xin recommended to actually understand the word ‘key’ as it sounded a bit different
than the rest of the riddle. They finally remembered that its other definition is ‘main’. So they finally figured out
that they had to visit the Town Hall.
It was as busy as usual: frustrated villagers complaining, hawkers selling crops, cleaners cleaning. To speed up,
they had to bump into hundreds of villagers.
They found a graveyard and not-knowingly, found a grave of an old trader named Chung Nor. And soon
they understood ‘Nor’ is ‘Ron’.
They found a passcode and typed their traditional (99) number. And inside they found horror…
They saw a bloody arena with a throne of amethysts placed in the middle and an unbelievably evil king stood
there! He muttered a spell that summoned a skeleton army which he then instructed to attack Cheng and his friends.
While they were standing, frozen in terror, they saw sparkling spirits, almost beetle-like creatures, emerge from the
walls of the arena and destroy the skeleton army in a blink of an eye.
It was the Elytra spirits. They needed to be seen by a bare human eye to be able to free themselves from a curse
that had them locked within the walls. They left the evil king to cry in despair, lifted Chang and his friends and
flew to heaven and beyond until they finally reached a place where a giant chest of gold was hidden. The spirits
handed Chang the key and disappeared behind the clouds.
What will they use the gold for? To build and rule the beautiful city of Shanghai.