Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 428

The New Tales of Old Shanghai
Singapore International School (Hong Kong), Wang, Megan Ruijia – 11
I
look up from my little corner in the boat, watching the storm above stir up the sea’s waves. The captain’s voice
yells, “Hard to port!” as the ship lurches sideways. A few unlucky stragglers get thrown overboard into the
maelstrom, but I couldn’t care less. Here, in my small corner, I am safe.
At least for now.
We’ve been on sea for the past month, eating the few scraps of food that we can find aboard, hoping to survive
the escape from that hellhole of a home. “We” are the Jews lucky enough to find an escape from Hitler’s dangerous
wrath, hoping to find a better life in the Chinese city. The rumours say that the county of Shanghai is the only place
on Earth safe for us Jews to live in. No concentration camps, no Führer, a promise of peace, and we are already
prepared to take the incredibly risky trip there: an overcrowded, leaky boat, terrible conditions and two months
spent waiting.
Sounds very promising.
But that hasn’t deterred us. We would rather die than live under Hitler’s regime, and that means that anything
is better than staying and accepting a life that isn’t right.
The ship lurches one more time, and a young girl gets flung overboard. Her mother screams in anguish, but
through the thickness of the rain, I see her lips move in a silent prayer.
My eyes tear up in a sudden burst of emotion, as my subconscious starts yelling at me. The family I left
behind, however, cannot be helped. Not from where I am or am going, anyway.
They never cared for you, I scream silently. Why should you care for them?
I unroll a cigarette. Since fire is forbidden onboard, I chew the tobacco inside instead. The taste calms my
nerves a little, and my stomach stops heaving so badly. As another person flies off deck, screaming, my head lolls to
the side; I fall asleep, dreaming fitfully until morning.
Days pass without anything interesting happening. Weeks go by and I still haven’t grasped a sense of time.
When I finally check the calendar, I realize it’s the twentieth of April. It has been nine months since Hitler’s regime
began, and already two since I left, which means that we should have arrived at Shanghai long ago.
I think for a while, thoughts floating around my head. And realise something.
Today, a whole nation is chanting “Heil, Hitler”; wishing him a happy birthday.
I spit into the surf.
Barely a week later, I tumble onto the ground of Shanghai. I am one of the dozen or so survivors of this trip,
out of more than a hundred who began. My emotions are jumbled. I got here; what now?
I rifle through my bag. A wallet with my ID. The rest has been robbed off somehow, or used up by the trip.
No cigarettes, cookies, nothing. I sigh, then line up.
Everyone in line is waiting for the inspectors to come and check our IDs to print new ones for us. After all,
we have run from our country, and therefore we are outlaws.
Fake identities are the least they can do for new citizens.
And then I blink twice when I see the inspectors. Each of them look nothing like what I imagined: the flat
noses, the black hair, none of it. For a second I think that the ship brought us back to Germany, and I panic. A
thought flashes through my mind. What if they are Hitler’s soldiers?
But the language they speak doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s a weird jumble of all letters imaginable,
impossible to understand. Immigrants who found a better life?
Maybe.