Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction 4567 | Page 334

belong to our time. The city has changed, for the better or for the worse. It has become something way too
much for me to be taking in all at once.
I heave a heavy sigh at the view. My emotions are beyond words now, but I know just where my last piece of
hope should lead me to— and I am very happy to witness the outcome myself.
The alley to home, to my surprise, still looks as ravishing as I have remembered it to be, with the exception of a
few foreigners that scurry along the road from time to time. It looks exactly like the one I have grown up
knowing. My soul is somehow soothed at that instant, as though having found a piece of indigenous land in an
exotic territory. I inhale deeply as a preparation of what is about to come, and I anxiously stride my way into the
alley despite the furious pounding inside my chest.
My footsteps come to an abrupt halt at the sight of an artifact shop. The walls of the brightly-lit store are finely
lacquered, along with exquisite antiques placed neatly on the wooden shelves glittering in their own colors. An
aged man sits idly on a rattan chair that looks all too familiar, the scene immediately pulling a string of
retrospection inside me.
This is it. This is home.
I approach the old man in excitement, swallowing a lump in my throat. He lifts his head slowly to greet my gaze,
a tinge of confusion flitting across his feature.
“Excuse me. Do you own this shop?” I gingerly question. The old man raises an eyebrow at me, intrigued.
“Yes.” He answers with slight hesitation. “It was possessed by my ancestors and we’ve been running the business
for quite a long time now. Why?”
I almost fail to conceal my gaiety at this point, knowing that the shop still exists after decades, but I manage to
suppress it anyway. I fiddle with the piece of jade that has brought me here, making the convenient assumption
that the truth will never be able to convince the man of my true origin.
“The owner of this shop used to be the predecessor of a relative of mine. I heard about the artifacts from there.”
I blurt out the story that I have quickly come up with.
“He told me the city has changed a lot over the years.”
“Well, that he wasn’t wrong.” He murmurs, ruffling through a head of hair with streaks of gray lurking in
between. “What happened then?” I carry on. The old city must have its own story to tell, in the past or at the
present. It is still where I belong, despite all vicissitudes— and I am eager to know what exactly has changed the
city at this astonishing degree.
“It used to be no more than just a city really,” the old man leans back, deep in thoughts. “There were barely any
foreigners. At my grandfather’s time, at least. But then people started traveling around the world, visiting new
places just to see how everything looks like on the other side of the globe. That was when people started coming
to the city, and they really liked it to say the least. It made the city’s economy bloom like a flower in the dawn
with more and more people paying their visits, and things quickly got commercial so as to make as much profit
from the visitors as possible. They built hotels, opened restaurants and souvenir shops around the community,
but they kept part of the traditional constructions, rebuilt them even, knowing this is basically what the tourists