Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 252

New Tales of the Ming Treasure Voayages
Buddhist Sin Tak College, Lau, Addison - 16
- I held the paper - just received - with my shaking hands. Witnessed the person who
sat on that shiny silver and bloody red horse; then with a sudden neigh, vanished beyond
the far-away darkness. When sand and dust settled around the edge of the glittering flare,
there left alone, I held the wrinkled paper, looked between the lines filled with black
characters, perplexed. –
New tales of the Ming Treasure Voyage
1
Exactly one month later, that very same paper became my toilet paper, and had
been thrown into the endless, restless southern waters. It was the third day after the
departure from the dockyard, and I’ve already been having severe stomach aches. The
captains have reserved themselves all the juicy beef and pork, leaving us the exhausted
catch of either smelly raw or already rotten dead fish. Worse still, our livelihood rested
upon those inedible fish, throughout this immeasurable journey. It wasn’t as if I had an
ambitious plan of having a delightful vacation, but I never thought it would be this bad,
getting food poisoning every second meal. To make things worse, I was having a hard
time sleeping on the rolling wooden ship the first few days, while dealing with both the
physical and mental tortures of being miles away from home. I counted the ongoing days
with my fingers, lost count with my sweaty hands, and then shook them hard in
frustration.
Out of my expectation, the fleet wasn’t small either. On my ship, which was one of the
60, there were a few hundred crewmen, forming a full sized navy. Some of the men who
were by my side were those I’d met back in the early days at war. I had good times
chatting and playing chess with them back in the day. But when darkness fell along with
the cold blowing winds, we couldn’t do much, except lie somewhere on the ship, closing
our eyes to pure nothingness, and we waited for the morrows to delight the sky.
As my mind ran wild, I couldn't get myself into any dream. I climbed up the ladder, out
of the wooden chamber, sat on the wet, salty wooden planks, then laid down in the open
air. I felt calm winds whispering over my body, and listened to the charm of the pearl blue
waves. I looked beyond the sky - the endless, glorious, mysterious canvas of stars -
searched for the brightest one amongst the countless glimmers. There I saw Polaris
twinkle, shining its hardest, exactly behind where our ships faced.
2
The rise of the sun shined and leaked into the golden waves, happening millions of times
over the same old sea. The rays woke me from a really short sleep, again . The kitchen
offered us our usual half-cooked-but-still-rotten cod for breakfast. I munched between
the stale mixture of the stone hard skin and soggy wet flesh, picking a sharp bone from
between my teeth. I looked at the nothingness on the horizon for a while, then turned my
head towards the fleet, waving in white, sailing on blue, above the untouchable depth of
the waters. Maybe there was land out there, maybe an undiscovered civilization, maybe a
place we've never known, never stood on.