Tales of The Gobi
German Swiss International School, Derek Ng, Fiction: Group 3
M
y ol’ granny and I used to cuddle up by the fireplace at cold nights of December.
There, she would tell me stories about monsters and volcanoes, and various other
things that I probably wouldn’t have bothered remembering. But one of her stories
has stuck in my mind: a connecting twist of different tales about the Gobi.
My granny was in fact an adventurer until the burden of age had hit her back into staying at
her house full-time. Here is what my grandmother used to tell me about the Gobi Desert.
“I imagine the sweet sand in the Gobi desert blowing into my eyes. I trudge through the
desert as if it were infested with dangers. The Gobi has a reputation of sucking up countless lives
through different hazards it contains. Tales of the Gobi shroud me in frightening thoughts. I fear
that once I think deeper about the desert, my mind will have succumbed to its sweet yet leering
feeling of dying in the sandstorms.”
“Grandma, isn’t that dangerous?”
“But it isn’t the dangers that lie in the Gobi that compel me to travel through it; it is the
adventure and the stories that the Gobi holds. The first dinosaur eggs were found there; the sand
that I am travelling on could be where dinosaurs stood millions of years ago. The Gobi also
contains many exotic animals, which only hikers can have the luxury of seeing. These animals
include the tough Brown Bear, the fragile and delicate Snow Leopard, and many more animals like
this. Legends say that these animals have been here long, carrying the past on their shoulders.”
And as Grandma kept on explaining about the Gobi, I could not help but simply sit and listen
intently to her stories about her adventures of the Gobi tens of years ago.
“The Gobi desert has a tale as to how it actually came to be. Would you like to hear it, sonny?
Legend tells that the Gobi was actually created when a Mongolian General who was skilled in the
art of black magic was forced to leave his hometown because the Chinese Army was in pursuit of
him. As he fled the Chief cast a spell that made the land shrivel up behind him, leaving nothing
for the Chinese but vast desert stretching out miles away. These are the stories that push me on in
life; the ones that include adventure; the legends that I have been chasing over my whole life. This
is one of the shrouded tales of the Gobi.
“Other people claim that there are other stories to the Gobi Desert, as to how it had come to be,
but I know that this one, sonny, this one is true.”
And as we huddled up by the fireplace, I realized that I had in fact spent the whole night
simply listening to her tales of the Gobi, and had spent the following few days simply pondering if
in fact her tales were real or not.
I would never have thought that tales that included boring deserts would have influenced me so
deeply when I was young. I used to spend every day simply wondering if the legends Grandma had
supplied were in fact true or not. I had spent half my life wondering about the Tales of the Gobi.
