Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 - 2017 | Page 197

The New Tales of Old Shanghai - Freedom
Heep Yunn School, Tsui, Yu Hei Iris – 12
1921
F
anchone grew up in the largest city in France – Paris. Like all Parisians, Fanchone had always been extremely
conscious of freedom.
He was an only child. His father was away from Paris and only came home during Christmas. All these years, alone
with only his irritable aunt for company.
Fanchone’s life changed in 1928. It was the last Christmas and the last time Fanchone ever saw his father. His father
never came back; his death message came instead, delivered by a Chinese man. Orphaned at age seven.
His mother had died when he was born, so his father was all he had in the world. And now the only one in the
world he could rely on was gone, and though he tried to get his father to talk to him, the dead, as always, refused to
speak.
The Chinese man told Fanchone that his father’s business partner in China would take him in and he had to go to
Shanghai. Fanchone knew nothing about Shanghai except what his father had told him. Shanghai. A cosmopolitan
city, known as a paradise for adventures and Paris in the East.
Fanchone left on the day after. When the cruise approached Shanghai, Fanchone stared at the faraway port. He saw
people fighting, yelling prices, bargaining… and along the coastline, coolies and barrels of opium.
The Chinese man led Fanchone to a rickshaw. The rickshaw hurtled towards Nanjing Road. In seconds, they
arrived at the International Settlement – a place run by the Municipal Council, a powerful assembly of “taipans”
and “nabobs”, who set up their own police force and defense corps, and ruled all of Shanghai.
Hurrying on for another mile or two, they arrived at a huge villa in the French Bund. The villa stood imposingly
amongst its neighbours and embodied an elegant mix of European and traditional Chinese designs. Fanchone
stepped into the villa and saw a Chinese man in a long robe talking to another man heatedly. Fanchone stood
imprisoned in the hallway, listening wearily to the man’s criticisms about the disastrous opium business the man had
been running.