Hong Kong Young Writers Anthologies Non-Fiction 2017 | Page 29

The Diary of the Past
St. Paul's Co-educational College Primary School, Lam, Alistair - 12
T
he following are pages from the diary of my great great grandfather who lived and fought for the Old Shanghai…
It was in the 1950s. Poverty and famines were everywhere but the Imperial Qing government was unable or
unwilling to help. Local officials just kept raising taxes to build their personal fortune. Peasant farmers from my
own and surrounding villages were all starving. People around me were dying every day. I had had enough.
I decided to leave my hometown with a few friends to search for a better life. We travelled northward towards the
end of the Huangpu River where we heard there was a big fishing port called Shanghai. We met many people like us
along the way and we were all hoping to get a job in Shanghai to feed our families. We heard there were lots of
opportunities in Shanghai because many foreigners had moved there after the Qing government lost the Opium War to
their countries a few years earlier.
I was shocked to see so many foreigners when I arrived at Shanghai. They were big people coming from faraway
places called Russia, Germany, France and America. With red hair and blue eyes, they looked very different from Chinese.
Many of them seemed friendly but I could not speak their language.
Most of us had no idea what the Westerners did for a living – they called themselves “merchants” and worked in
buildings with strange names such as “banks” and “trading houses”. They bought and sold goods like tea, silk, cotton –
and opium.
These foreigners erected many big buildings in various styles along the banks of the Huangpu River and throughout
the city. One of my favourites was the “Red Church” or the Holy Trinity Cathedral in the Huangpu District where
people went in there on Sundays for some kind of “Christianity” service. I preferred going to worship at the City God
Temple.
The foreign merchants built magnificent houses called mansions and garden estates in special areas in Shanghai
known as “foreign concessions”. The local government had no control over those areas. At the beginning, locals were not
allowed to live in those foreign concessions. However, the city got too crowded and foreign businessmen began to build
houses and let them to the Chinese. They made a lot of money by doing that, so more houses were built. In particular,
two- or three-story townhouses called shikumens that combined Western and Chinese architectural elements were built
all over Shanghai to house the fast-growing population. Such construction boom provided plenty of jobs to both locals
and migrant workers like me and my friends who were attracted to Shanghai to find work.
The foreigners introduced many new things and inspiration to Shanghai that changed the lives of the Chinese in the
city. I had never come across lamps, telephones, electricity and cars before coming to Shanghai. They set up gigantic
rooms called factories and hired a lot of my friends to make things like rubber tyres. I was amazed by the advanced
manufacturing technology such as reeling mills, yarn and flour making techniques that the foreign merchants imported
into the city. Besides technology, they also brought cultural influence. Western fashion and music too had certainly
shaped the lives of residents in Shanghai even though I could not understand them.
When my friends and I first arrived in Shanghai, the locals called us “refugees”. We, like most of the refugees and
migrant workers, were Han people who disliked the incompetent Manchurian rulers and corrupted local officials. There
were many of them in Shanghai. Being new to the city, we needed protection and there were many groups banded
together to help each other out and to fight against the Qing government which became increasingly oppressive.
My friends and I decided to join one of the largest groups called the Small Swords Society to fight against the
imperial authorities. We met regularly at Yu Yuan, an extensive Chinese garden near the City God Temple. When our
Small Swords brothers in nearby cities revolted, we also took control of the city but left the foreign concessions alone. For
seventeen months, the Small Swords Society ruled the city and we lived peacefully with the foreigners. In fact, a good
number of foreigners, including many British and American sailors, helped us keep the Manchurians out. However, with
the assistance of French soldiers, the imperial armies were able to recapture Shanghai. I lost a few Small Swords brothers
during the fights. In the end, my friends and I had to flee and hide our involvement in the anti-Qing movement.
However, we were proud of what we had tried to do – to make Shanghai a better place for all.
I was not a native of Shanghai and could not speak a word of Shanghainese when I first came here. Yet, it was such a
unique, energetic and welcoming place that I would not hesitate to call it home.