Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 333

The Lost Sun of Shanghai
Peak School, Li, Hugh – 10
T
hey say, you’ll know that trouble looms when the sun is lost to the beast.
9th March, 2016, partial solar eclipse - perhaps it had to do with my superstition about the astronomical event, or
maybe it was the pressure to come up with the plan for one of the largest events in years - I had an unsettling
feeling something out of this world was going to happen today.
My colleague, Professor Nakayama, and I were heading to Dr. Sun Yat-sen Museum to prepare for the
celebration of the Dr. Sun Yat-sen’s 150th birthday. Professor Nakayama was an elderly Chinese man who
worked in the Museum and was a historian. We always walk together to work- he lives next door. We were busy
planning in the Professor’s office when a chilly draft of wind blew the windows open, which raised my alarm. I
turned around, but the Professor was nowhere to be found in the museum! The professor was in his office a
minute ago, and now he's disappeared!
A piece of paper on the floor drew my attention to the Professor’s desk. I was flipping through a history book
when all a sudden, I saw black, black everywhere! “Help!” I screamed. Then I fainted in fear.
When I came to, Professor Nakayama was looking down at me. “ Are you okay? ” he asked.
I mumbled yes, even though I didn’t feel so. “ Where are we? ” Everything felt so old-fashioned as if we were in a
film.
“ We have been transported to Shanghai in the 1920s. I’m not sure how we are to get back to the present time… ”
I was dumbfounded.
As we boarded the limousine parked outside of the HSBC building on The Bund, Professor Nakayama explained
that a letter in between the book ‘The History of Modern China’ had notified him to pick up a document from
the HSBC here.
I mumbled, perplexed “ They told you to collect a document from the 1920s? ” How could this normally precise
professor leave out such an important detail?
“ I have the documents with me in this box but we should lose no time to go to The Paramount. ” When he was
able to catch a breath, he continued, ““I was told to look out for a moustached man who has the key to the box
and I would be able to find some clues at The Paramount.”
He motioned the driver to turn onto Yanan Road. In spite of our urgency, the limousine lined up behind a long
line of traffic. Trams were traveling leisurely, undisturbed by the rickshaws, horse carriages, alongside stray
pedestrians and animals on the road.
When at last we arrived at The Paramount, did I realize that it was the famous dancing hall where the rich and
powerful, not least the imposters, mix and mingle! Here, in the decadent world of Old Shanghai, high life was
juxtaposed with lawlessness, and money was as addictive as opium.