Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 137

New Tales of The Old Shanghai
Island School, Yeung, Jonathan - 14
T
he house itself was very new and modern, one that many couldn’t dream of owning- it was one that I had
bought for her 90th birthday a few years ago. There were large rectangular windows that wrapped around
almost every wall, the floors were made of marble and dark walnut wood. There was a courtyard filled with grass
and gravel, though only housed the stray animals of the woods.
“Children, look at all the stuff we have here!” Martha said. I brought my family over to help clean out the house
of my mother, and maybe learn a few new things about her in doing so. The attic was dark and stuffy, only to be
lit up by the few rays of sunlight shining through the small windows. It was stuffy and reeked of old people smell,
contrary to the rest of the house. The paint on the walls were peeling and chipped, exposing the wood that laid
behind it, supporting the house. The attic felt empty, despite the fact that it was populated by towers and towers
of grey, faded cardboard boxes.
One by one, we went through all the cardboard boxes, scything through tower by tower. I quickly developed a
technique; cut open, sift through, move box away. Cut open, sift through, move box away. After hours upon
hours of finding and collecting disappointing cutlery, the sound of my four year old Daughter in exclamation lit up
my world of boredom.
“Look Babady, look! I found something that isn’t knives and forks!” I found that my Daughter had opened a box,
hidden away from all the others. Placed in the one dark corner of the attic, it was delicately wrapped up in tape and
plastic unlike all the others.
Looking into the box, the inside was organised neatly. Photo books stacked on top of other photo books,
cardboard sandwiched in between every level. But something else caught my eye. Cupped in the hands of my
beaming Daughter, was a string tied into a circle loop, with a kite-shaped pearl green emerald in the middle. It was
a necklace. Worn out and scuffed in every nook and cranny (crevice), the necklace had seen better days. Though,
it still reminded me of something. Something in the past...
The year was 1932. It was a new year in Shanghai and I was just turning four years old. “送回个人叫”. It was
my Baba, a tan middle aged blue collar worker, who worked long hours day and night. He had wrinkles etched
in his face, of which, was always covered in sweats drops cascading down his face and dripping from his neck to
the ground. It was early morning, the sky was a pale blue, and the sounds of people returning to their market
stalls, setting up, could be heard. He wanted me to deliver a package to the most successful man in town- a
gweilo who I had delivered to on many different occasions.
I took the sheet with the address written on, in very messy handwriting that could only be Baba’s and headed off.
The walk to the address on the receipt wasn’t far, the delivery business my Baba works for is located in the docks
anyways. The streets of Shanghai were as busy as ever for some reason. As I traversed the busy and loud streets, all
I could hear was the sound of market vendors and rickshaw drivers attracting people with too good to be true
prices and the occasional dinging of trams as they passed by.
Left, right, right, left; I wandered the streets like a well oiled mouse in a maze. As I dashed through the streets one
by the other, I remembered what my Baba hald told me when he first brought me to work alongside him- to avoid
the police at all times. I never knew why. In fact, I didn’t know a lot back then.
“Baba, what’s in the package?” I would ask every now and then. All he would have left me with was a half-hearted
grunt of acknowledgement and would go back to work. Since he’d never tell me, I opened the package once and
found what appeared to be fancy pepper seeds that I’ve seen all the rich people smoke in the movies. I would often
hear Baba and Mama arguing about my life when we were at our hut. “He shouldn’t be doing this.” “Oh it’s for
the good of the business and the family.” The box itself used to be glued on with rice. We were that poor.