Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 - 2017 | Page 10

An Old Shanghai Tale
British International School, Shanghai, Puxi (BISS Puxi), Sun, Raymond - 12
I
t is a warm and sunny day in Shanghai. A beam of sunlight bounces off the window of a nearby modern
skyscraper, runs through an old neighborhood of the city, and lands on a brown house on Hua Shan road.
Today, there is apparently a big family reunion in front of the old house. There were about seventy people.
Many are children. Some are middle aged and some are very old sitting on wheel chairs. They were all listening to
an old man who has grey hair and a clean and well ironed suite. He stood in front of the crowd and looked at the
house, his eyes slowly watering. “It has been seventy years,” he raised his right hand, “now I am back to pay tribute.”
He turned around to look at his whole family and said, “Today I brought you all here to tell you a story. There was
once a Jewish boy who had to flee from his home in Austria because the Nazis was in the process of wiping out all
Jewish there in early 1930s. Many Jewish people died. His parents were almost sent to the concentration camp. The
boy and his family applied for visas to a number of countries but none of the countries issued the visa to Jewish
people because they were afraid of Nazis. We became desperate.”
He stopped for a moment, and then continued, “Then we heard that China was issuing visas to Jewish people
so we gave it a try. They waited and waited as there were so many Jewish applied. One day, a kind looking Chinese
consul went up to the boy’s family and said their visa request had been accepted by China and that China would
welcome them anytime. The boy and his family were happier than they had ever been in their whole lifetime.”
They finally escaped from Austria to Shanghai, China. In Shanghai, they found out that almost 20,000 Jewish
people came from around the world to Shanghai to run away from the Nazis. At that time, China was also in a
difficult situation as they were invaded by the Japanese. However, Chinese were friendly and helpful to Jewish
people. Although there were bombing and there were famine, the boy and his family managed to start a small
business and learnt to make friends with some local Chinese people. They learnt to speak Chinese and cook
Chinese food. The boy’s parents even learnt how to play Ma Jiang!” He smiled.
Finally after a few years, the Nazi lost the war and so was the Japanese, which meant Jewish people could
finally go wherever they want. The boy and his family decided to go to the USA. They settled down in New York
and started a business. Fifty years later, they became one of the biggest real estat