A girl should be two things: who and
what she wants to become:
Yew Chung International School, Yubil Das, Fiction: Group 4
T
he Gobi Desert, one of the coldest deserts on earth, the place were people live on cattle
farming and minimum agriculture and where people live in tents with strong smells of
slow cooked meat.
On the outskirts of a tiny village lived a girl called Lihua. Lihua is a very curious girl
around 24 years old with an own dear perspective that where she lives is a dump and where the
foreign people are, its heaven. Lihua’s family members include Mei, who is Lihua’s younger sister,
Gang, her father and finally her mother Chan. Gang is the Chief of the village and manages to
take care of everybody while Lihua’s mother spends her time with Mei sewing.
Although she lives with her family, Lihuas life is a bed of thorns or so she thinks. Day after
day she has to perform the same old chores. She has to get up early in the morning fetch a bucket
of water and even often shoo away the scorpions she finds on her bed at night. Then of course she
cannot forget the not so often events like major sandstorms, flash flood and so on. These and other
worries like bandits and frostbites and cold nights that makes Lihua wonder if this is life in hell.
Yet to take away the focus Lihua does something interesting for a living. In her thoughts this
is her only way to connect to ‘heaven’ from ‘hell’.
She is a travel guide for journalists and tourists. Any time she meets anybody from a foreign
country, she feels that why do I have to come from this place. Even though Lihua would work for
hours and hours, all she makes is around $50 on a good week.
And when she is upset about her world its her mothers stories in the cozy tent that helps add
wings to her imagination and dreams. She always felt better when she heard some of her mother’s
stories. Her favorite one called “Why camels roll in Ashes”.
So as the days went by Lihua continued to grumble, to dream and to do her somewhat
interesting job as a tour guide something somewhat interesting happened one day. Lihua was
sitting and waiting for some tourist to come, She saw this really pretty girl that looked like
around her age or maybe older, with big, dark brown eyes and with hair so glossy that is shined
in the sun. Lihua knew she was a journalist because of the huge, expensive cameras that were
hanging on her shoulders and the tiny notebook on her hat. She looked quite lost. Lihua had
second thoughts about helping her. She had never been so nervous about helping any client
before. “Should I or should I not” that is all that went in Lihua’s mind. Finally Lihua thought that
she should go to help the poor girl and so she went. Meeting the girl, she felt afraid to talk but
she managed to do it successfully. She found out that the girl’s name was Hazel and she wanted
to know about how people live in the Gobi desert. The next question she asked was weird “ Please
don’t mind but um, is it okay if I stay at your house for a few days” Lihua was completely stunned
but without thinking she agreed. After a while she realized that she should not have agreed with
Hazel staying in her house but there was no way out.
Whatever Lihua said before was wrong. She really enjoyed Hazel’s company even though she
asked a lot of questions. Hazel made Mei’s life fun to by putting makeup on her. The only thing
that wasn’t that good was that Lihuas father did not like Hazel being here and changing the way
