Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 519

Old Shanghai Life
Western Academy of Beijing, Grace-Evans, Oliver - 9
B
oom! As the bombs flew through the air, I shouted “watch out Grandma!” But it was too late. Grandma
lay dead on the floor. Boom! Another bomb landed close to my family. It was so frightening. I was so
scared. I could feel the tears rolling down my cheeks. The Japanese soldiers surrounded our house. We
surrendered. We were captured by the Japanese.
We were taken to a prison camp.
already there.
We were shoved into one small cell.
Other families I knew in Shanghai were
Things that you should know before the story continues!
Hi, my name is Gordon. I am Oliver’s Granddad. My family used to live in a nice place in Shanghai until the
Japanese invaded in 1937. Then World War 2 started and we were put in prison camp. It was hard.
The story continues
“I hate being in this cell”, I said. A Japanese soldier took us out of our cell and said “clean up the bathroom”.
We were made to work hard. We had to wash the floor, we had to eat gross food! It was horrible. That evening
my family made a plan.
Our plan was to escape by climbing through the pipes. Then we would throw some rubbish to distract the guards
and sneak past them. They would turn to look and we would run.
We would go at 5:30pm.
It was 2:32pm now so we had almost three hours until our escape.
Three hours later
It was time to escape! I was prepared.
I was excited. We were ready to go.
We found a big pipe and started crawling through it. It smelled like sewerage. I hated every bit of climbing
through the pipe. Then we heard a noise. It was the sound of a siren! We turned around and realised it was just
my dad fooling around! Dad!!
Our plan failed. Our distraction did not work.
again. We were put in the same old cell.
When we reached the end of the pipe we we were captured
2 years later
Finally the end of World War 2! We were released. We moved to Hong Kong, and when I was 15 we moved to
New Zealand. My grandson Oliver was born in Taiwan in 2007 and his twin brothers were born in Shanghai in
2009 exactly 65 years after I was born there. Luckily, Shanghai is very different now.
THE END