Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 2 -1 2019 | Page 216

Adventures of Yen Wu
Norwegian International School, So, Ocean - 10
Hello, my name is Yen Wu. I used to be a fisherman in a small village. On the day I was supposed to
go fishing, the people from the Baochuan told me that some of the workers overslept and one fisherman
couldn’t make it on time. I told them I could replace him, and they dragged me on board. I told them I am
a fisherman and I can cook. So I was allocated to the Liangchuan. On the Liangchuan, there were all the
cooks and fishermen. They were responsible for cooking and preparing food for everyone, including Zheng
He.
A few months later, we landed on our first destination. It was the international port, Port Vijaya, in
the capital city of Vietnam, Champa. We gave them some of our finest China, the best spices, and our
original oolong tea. They gave us some wonderful wool, colourful cotton and a lot of gold in return.
We traveled near Java, Indonesia, but we didn’t stop because we had to carefully avoid one of the
most feared pirates of all, Chen Zuyi. Then we went to stop at “Chen Zuyi-free” places such as Malacca,
Semudera, and the Anderman and Nicobar islands to trade. They gave us silver and gold, but we didn’t get
any ivory which our emperor Yongle wants. Finally, we stopped at Calcutta, India. Calcutta was one of the
world’s major trade ports, so we traded a lot of gifts with the ruler. As India has Indian elephants, finally we
got the most wanted ivory for our emperor and it was time to return home.
On our way back to China, we met Chen Zuyi near Palembang, Indonesia. I was just going to
present food to Zheng He and I saw grapple hooks came up in an instance.
“Grapple hooks alert!” I screamed and the soldiers all lined up.
Everyone was freaking out! Even I was freaking out. I dropped my serving plate on the ground and
ran in circles with my hands up. The other people went to the poop deck of the boat and chattered their
teeth. Some of Chen Zuyi’s men lost grip while climbing up and fell into the water full of man-eating
sharks. The intruders that didn’t fall into the water jumped on board. I joined my pals at the poop deck and
watched the soldiers fight. The intruders had very little people so we won very easily. We came out and
celebrated. We threw them to their own boat and we sailed away.
On the next day, Chen Zuyi suddenly came back to the fleet with a larger fleet of pirate ships.
They used grapple hooks again but there were more this time. Many pirates were climbing up to our ship at
the same time. Our soldiers were cutting off some of the ropes. Some pirates fell into the water and got
stung by the box jellyfish and died, while others were successful and got up onto the deck. I was delivering
food to Zheng He when I saw Chen Zuyi came up again. My pals and I panicked and climbed up the mast
to hide in the crow’s nest instead of the poop deck.
After a few moments of fighting, it seems like that Chen Zuyi was losing.
“I surrender!” Chen Zuyi said.
A few of our soldiers dragged him and as we walked to the stern going to the Captain’s quarter, he
wrestled his way out and he ran to the helm to steer our boat to his boat.
“Oh my gosh! He is just pretending!” I screamed.
Just when our soldiers were about to react, the men on Chen Zuyi’s boat jumped from mast to mast
until they got to our main mast. Then they jumped down with their swords pointing down. We called the
soldiers to go help us and they dodged their swords that were falling down. My fisherman buddy and I
wanted to help, so we went to the weapons room but everything was gone. All we can do was to use our
fishing equipment! We used our best fishing technique to fight the pirates off. First we made a trap by
putting our fishing net on the ceiling. Just when they came into the room, we dropped the net on them and