Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Fiction Group 3 - 2017 | Page 69

brown eyes. While I had blond hair and blue eyes. She looked a lot like most the Chinese people. Same they all
looked. Identical. You may even think. And I looked different. From all of them. Every single one.
I talked to Li Zhang. She told me I needed a job. A message she had written on a piece of paper which I was to give
the note to a man named Chao Xiang. He worked at a dumpling restaurant, she had told me. 老北方饺子餐馆 the
restaurant was named. She had written it on the message up at the top. She explained to me that she was asking him
for me to work there as a chef making dumplings. It was one of the most visited restaurants in the Hongkou district.
They needed many workers. The reason they had hired me. Jiao Zi. Type of dumpling I was making. Filled dough
with meat and vegetables. Delicious. Li Zhang told me to exit the Ghetto early every morning and late every night.
She told me this to keep me safe. Safe from the Japanese. I thanked her for her help and waited for tomorrow
morning to leave the Ghetto. I left the ghetto to go to the man Chao Xiang. I knocked on the door and a round
man opened the door. I gave him the note. He read it and after that said, that he would take me. He then gave me
one of his dumplings to taste. It had a juicy but weird taste. I asked the man how to make this, and told him that I
have never tasted a dumpling before. He replied and said that he will give me the recipe and that the other chefs will
teach me how to make it, and so they did. I mastered dumpling making after a week and was qualified to join the
kitchen team. It was hard work. My hands hurt from rolling the dough. I was exhausted. I slept every chance I
could.
Around a week later, after I had started to get used to my job, Chen Gonbo, Shanghai’s mayor, arrived to the
restaurant. He was a Chinese man supporting the Japanese. Everyone was frightened of the man while we were all so
honored to serve there. Half a dozen dumplings he ordered. I decided that to really master dumpling making, I had
to serve him and do it well. I swiftly made each dumpling. Faster and better than I have better made them. If only he
had eaten them and not his suit. The whole tray toppled over. And it was my fault. And I got paid my salary. And I
got fired. I ran to the ghetto. Forgetting everything Jiao Zi had told me about the guards. I bumped into one of them
he handed me a letter. He said it was from my mamyte. He told me to take it to the Ghetto and only read it there.
“Be more careful” he said to me “Don’t run to the Ghetto like that it makes people suspicious” He affirmed, and I
agreed. I to the Ghetto and opened the letter. Stuck to it was a note. It read:
Hello Chiara,
I am the Japanese Guard Who Gave You This.
I Never Betrayed.
Akio Hatanaka.
This message got me thinking, but I was so thrilled to open mamyte’s letter that I didn’t bother writing a note back. I
opened mamyte’s letter and read:
Dear Chiara,
If you are reading this I didn’t survive.
What was most important is that I didn’t lose faith or hope.
I have three things to ask from you:
1.
2.
3.
To return to Lithuania now.
To keep the locket I gave you safe.
To never lose faith or hope
And so I sat there and I waited for the train to arrive. Tears streaming down my face as if the moon was toppled over
me. And I, Chiara, didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to leave anyone, anybody, anything. Not mamyte. Not tetis.
Not Namai.