Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 120

Brothers of the Night Pearl
Diocesan Girls' Junior School, Fung, Ashleigh - 12
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hanghai, 1930s. The surrealistic and hedonistic ‘Manhattan of China’ is still a smoothly running engine, but
only superficially. The colonial neoclassical buildings lining the Bund continue glittering like palaces under
the starry sky. The hugs, kisses and laughters of drunken people from around the world ceaselessly fill the
boardwalk along Huangpu River. Yet looking beyond this prosperity, even casual observers can detect a mood
of panic lurking beneath. The Japanese imperial army has taken Manchuria for years. Their aggression would
not stop there. The day they invade Shanghai is imminent. The Chinese government is striving to expose all
the undercover agents hiding among us.
Tonight, in front of the City God Temple, Old Shanghai City, the Chinese are unusually elated. The
police have arrested a group of Japanese Secret Service agents, and chained them to parade as a show of triumph.
The crowds are yelling obscenities. Officers draw bloodred marks on the captured Japanese undercovers’ backs.
Some of them are actually Chinese. They are being burnt on the chest with words like ‘traitor’, and ‘guilty of
treason’. While the public is