Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 12 | Page 55

New Tales of old Shanghai
Alliance Primary School Kowloon Tong, Liu Ka Wing – 11
I
t was a bright sunny afternoon, I was flipping through a photo album of my grandfather, who lived in Shanghai
when he was young. The album is full of black and white photos about the time during war between China
and Japan. It showed how life hard was back then.
Then, I saw a photo which was very foggy, so I leaned forward to look closer.
began to expand, turning into an endless black hole, sucking me inside its depths.
All of a sudden, the photo
After a few terrifying moments. I crashed onto a sack of hay, which was very fortunate for me caused it
cushioned my fall.
I slowly got up and surveyed the surrounding, I was in a farm looked exactly like the scene
in grandfather’s photo. I asked a pedestrian about the date and time and found that it was the time when the war
between China and Japan was about to start. I had gone back to time!
I thought, “Everything must have a purpose. I wonder what is the purpose of this be?” When I was
buried in deep thought, I noticed a young boy who looked like my grandfather, I suddenly understood my
mission. I remembered grandfather did tell me that long time ago, a girl wearing strange clothes rescued his
village from the Japanese soldiers’ attack. The girl took them to a secret underground passage which was near his
house. Just when I was celebrating to myself for my intelligence, I heard a war cry in Japanese soldiers from a far
distance. I quickly jumped off from the hay stack, ran around the village to warn them and told them about my
plan. I told them to bring all their families and food and gather around my grandfather’s house. As expected,
they found a door in the basement and turned out to be an underground passage which was big enough to hold up
all the people from the village. Just when everyone was in the passage, they heard the Japanese soldiers entered
the village. The Japanese soldiers destroyed all of their houses, crops, animals, but not one villager was hurt.
The whole village managed to stay alive for a whole week for they brought their food with them, but slowly, the
food barrel began to starve. Just when the villagers began to give up, the war ended. The Japanese soldiers
moved on for they started to feel bored that there was no people in this village to kill. People began to emerge
from the underground passage to the bright sunlight which they haven’t seen in days. Everyone was celebrating
for their good luck, but I realized a problem. How can I went back to the future? I don’t want to die in
seventy years ago. I started pacing around in frustration, when I tripped over something. I picked it up and
found that it was grandfather’s photo album. I flipped through the pages and found a strange sentence written in,
strangely, my own handwriting! The sentence said, “To go back to the future, say the destination, date and time,
good luck!” The frustration inside me a moment before disappeared, replaced by eagerness. But just when I
finished saying my sentence aloud, my younger grandfather caught me by the arm and asked, “Dear stranger, what
is your name?” I replied, “Ashley”, I wanted to say more to him, but all went black and the last thing I
remembered was clutching the photo album tightly on my right hand and looking at the circle of blue sky above
becoming smaller, smaller and smaller……
When I came back to sense, I found myself back at home again, everything was exactly the same before my
whole adventure. I quickly flicked through the pages of the album and found the foggy photo, no, not foggy
photo, now it is a clear black and white photo of the villagers and me inside the underground passage. Just then,
grandfather came in and saw me looking at the photo. I seized the chance and asked him, “Grandfather, do you
remember the girl who wars strange clothes in this picture?” My grandfather said, “Oh! I remember, she save
the whole village and her name is ……….. Ashely? Oh yes, I name you after her as an honour.”
Life is really unexpected, right? I decided to keep this photo album.
and have an unexpected trip to old Shanghai too.
May be one day, you would find it