HKYWA 2015 Fiction 3 to 6 - page 159

Fiction: Group 3
A Nightmare of the Three Gorges
Island School, Dharmawan, Athena - 13, Fiction: Group 3
une 3, 1993 was the day my nightmare began. It’s the day my family was forced out of our boat, the day
which ended our lives as fishermen and a tragic time which changed the life of us, I was only 9. I’m
Xiaoyang or “little sheep”, my dad gave me this nickname to prevent the spirits and demons from
harming me as I was sick a lot when I was young. Our family was poor, so as many fishermen like us. We
were one of the 50 families lived along the shore of
Liujiagang
, Jiangsu province. We
dock our boats on the
Liu River all year round, and like our ancestors, we depend on the water for everything. We eat and sleep
on our boats and rely on Yangtze River fishing for our livelihoods.
My family had been fishermen for 3 generations. It all started with my great-grandfather whose parents
were so poor that they sold him to a fisherman who had no son. After the fisherman died, my grandfather
inherited the boat where we lived until that wretched day! My school was a 2 miles walk from the shore
and after school I would help my dad to set out the nets. Though peaceful, it was a hard life even for a kid
like me.
I remembered a few months back my parents took me to a meeting in this big town hall, my neighbours
were there too. The officials on the stage were announcing a project called the "Three Gorges Dam”, they
said it would be the largest construction project since the Great Wall.
I had never been to the Great Wall,
but my teacher taught us
it’s a wall made of stones and bricks built across the historical northern borders
of
China
to protect the Chinese Empire but I had no clue what a dam was. I asked my dad, but he was
listening so intently with angst that he didn’t hear me. My mum explained to me later that it’s a barrier to
obstruct the flow of water, however this dam
would stretch a half miles wide, more than 600 feet high and
nearly 400 miles long. The dam would submerge more than 100 towns once the water starts to rise in 2003.
The government wanted us to relocate… and soon! My father and our neighbours were furious yet helpless.
On the day of evacuation, there were hundreds of police wearing white gloves and white suits surrounding
the area. They were there not only to instruct the evacuation but to suppress those residents who refused to
obey the order. I was helping my mum to pack while my younger brother was playing in the corner when
we heard heavy footsteps on our boat followed by poundings on our cabin door. “Open!” they cried. I
stared at my mother in shock; she hugged me while my father looked away and went to open the door.
“You all have to leave now!” one of the policemen commanded. My father just stared at him blankly. He
shouted again but my father didn’t respond he just had his hand blocking the door so the police couldn’t
come in. Mother was shuffling things around while mumbling, “We’ll go, we’ll go…” Suddenly my father
yelled at them, “We aren’t going anywhere! This is OUR HOME!” Every scene after that moment had
since been playing in slow motion over and over again in my head, I saw my father pulled from the door by
the police and was dragged to the shore, my mother was trying to stop them but she was held by 2
policemen. They kicked and beat my father non-stop until he laid there all bloody and lifeless. They left
my father there and warned us to say nothing of the incident. Otherwise, we would end up like father,
beaten, helpless on the ground.
Our neighbours all started to leave after seeing what had happened. With
the help of some, we took our father to the hospital. My father survived but ended up paralyzed shoulders
down from the injury.
We moved to Chongqing after my father was better. The compensation from the government was a
meager 50 yuan per month, much less than what they have promised. My mother went to work in a
factory, while I dropped school to take care of my brother and my father. Then my mother fell sick 2 years
later, she got breast cancer, t
he doctor said that there was no hope since the cancer was in the advanced
stages. My mother had bravely faced her disease; she continued to work until the last few months when she
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