Fiction: Group 4
The Pearl on the Horizon
Chinese International School, Jeong, Gyu Ho Kenny - 16, Fiction: Group 4
n the last evening of that empty summer, I wandered down to the old beach in Tai Tong Wan
with a case of lukewarm beer. For the first time in three weeks, the smoke in the skies had
cleared, revealing a clear vermilion sunset. I was able to see the red sun and the ocean reunite on
the horizon, the crimson orb casting a clear reflection of the sun on the calm waters. Up in the heavens, the
thrushes were leaving the palm trees to return to their nests in Yuen Long, where they would rest until the
next morning.
Ever since the incident that we are never supposed to talk about, there is nothing down here in
Tung Ping Chau anymore. Apart from my father’s old church, no building in this village is over two stories
tall. The only people who live here are the ones who desperately cling on to the image of what this place
used to be a long time ago, an image that will forever remain a figment of the past; they refuse to
acknowledge that the Delta has irreversibly changed, and the things we had grown to love have disappeared.
Once one person realized that this village was long dead and left for Lamma, everyone was quick to follow
him with their own families to pursue new lives. Since then, evenings here are quiet and uneventful, except
for public holidays. On those days, the sounds of white tourists on yachts echo across the waters down to
this beach, but I make sure to scream and shout back at the sea if I ever hear them.
It’s not as if I wanted to stay here. I remember packing my own suitcase for the new life ahead,
anticipating the day my father would come home in his old motor boat, bearing news that I would move. In
my mind, there had been no doubt that we too would go to Lamma, just like all the other kids at school
had. But that day never came. The day before my 16
th
birthday, he unpacked my dreams and sold the
suitcase to a
qigai
for just a few dollars.
Much to my regret, my old man was a pastor; much of my childhood was spent devising ways to
avoid the pointless early worship services that I was dragged to every morning before school started, the
endless hours dedicated to studying the memoirs of a mortal but albeit sage man who preached love for god
and other humans, and the long sermons about obedience and compassion and love and obedience and
compassion and love and god. To be frank, I never realized how much I hated him until my birthday, when
he left alone for the city, leaving me only his old bible for a birthday present. Seeing that there were no
believers left in Tung Ping Chau, he wanted to move to Hong Kong Island to preach the word of his god.
That evening, I ran down to my family’s grave with a shovel and buried this cruel joke that he had the
indecency to call a birthday present – and there it lies to this day, right next to my mother’s coffin.
But that blessed summery day was different from all the other days that I have lived out here in
Tung Ping Chau; as I settled into a dilapidated beach chair, I realized that there was someone other than
myself on my beach.
Pacing along the coastlines was a tall slender man, dressed from head to toe in a formal suit. While
he immediately drew my attention, he didn’t look anything like the
shangren
that appeared in the magazines
released these days in Hong Kong; the suit he was wearing was old and torn along the seams. Moreover, his
face was browner than a city person’s, more like the farmers who used to live in Tung Ping Chau. Another
young man driven by his ambition, only to be denied by the realities of city life. With every step he took,
his shoes dabbled in and out of the cascading waves, teasing the water.
With the mellow rays of the twilight sun shining into my eyes, I shuffled forward on my seat to get
a closer look. The man strolled the length of the beach with his eyes staring into the horizon, before he
finally stopped and sat down on the edge of the water. I thought to myself, maybe the man was born here.
Maybe he just came back down here to see a family relative. Or perhaps it was just a man who had come
down here to think, a man who wanted to forget everything and escape it all.
O
