Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4-7 2019 | Page 139

made me scared as I thought it was soldiers sent to arrest us. That’s absurd, I thought, What soldiers are up in this hour?
As I slowly calmed myself down, the boat shuddered. It had started moving. “Well, this is it. This is where our dreams
come closer into becoming reality.” I thought aloud. “Yes, this is where all our adventures will start.” And so, our
adventure came to a start.
The journey out of Lijiang was smooth. No living soul saw us unless you called the shadow which I just saw a living
soul. I kept seeing a shadow of a person tailing us. I told myself I was seeing things, but seeing the exact same shadow at
the rendezvous point made me scared. Coincidence? I think not. When we reached the borders of Lijiang, it was
already dawn. I think I looked unassured of my decision because Zheng He said, “My friend, this is the path we must
take, figuratively and literally. We are not only doing this for our needs but also for our country’s needs.” Being honest,
this was the most inspirational speech I have ever heard. After we crossed the border of Lijiang, we proceeded down to
the port. This took two years and by the time we arrived in the port of Suzhou, I had already matured. I no longer
wanted to be a sailor. Since the travel across China had already satisfied my dreams, I wanted to settle down, maybe
even have kids. When I told this to Zheng he, he got angry. We argued for a long time. “After coming all this way,
you give up now?” he asked. “Yes”, I replied firmly, “The trip across China was fun, but now I want to settle down.”
With that, I left him.
In the next ten years, life was peaceful for me. I got a job as a fisherman, bought a house and settled down in it
nicely. I had almost forgotten about Zheng He. Sometimes, I heard other fishermen talk about this great captain. When
they told me his name, it sounded familiar. Apparently, he wants to be a good pirate. Again, that sounded extremely
familiar. When I asked them to tell me more, they said they had told me all the knew. Apparently, he would be coming
to our town in a few days, Everyone was talking about him, When I asked other people who he was, they told me the
exact same things the fishermen told me. In the following days, people began to set up decorations to honour the
coming of this man. The people treated the coming of this man like the coming of the emperor. Even though they
barely knew who this person was, they still honoured him because he was a person of high rank. It just occurred to me
that even though I had asked a lot of questions about this man, I still didn’t know his name. I ran to ask one of the
volunteers helping to decorate. “What’s the guy's name?” The man, being extremely busy, just pointed to a big banner
hung across the town hall. In bold colourful words, it read ‘歡迎鄭和”. Now, I guess the name of this man was quite
obvious to you, but in fact, it was subtle to me. In my defence, I had not seen him for about ten years. Anyways, the