Fiction: Group 4
From Me, To You
Chinese International School, Kang, Jimin - 16, Fiction: Group 4
he statistics arrived yesterday: in twenty years, my father has manufactured over three million and
five hundred thousand cards. That means three million and five hundred thousand birthdays,
weddings, anniversaries, congratulations, signs of gratitude. Three million and five hundred
thousand lives interconnecting with other lives, perhaps two million sealed with a kiss, perhaps a million that
traversed turbulent seas to find loved ones dozens of hours away.
A dizzying prospect, I know. How much can a card hold?
As I looked at the figures that day, tracing the abundance of zeroes with my index finger, I thought of the
cards that flew out of my father’s factory to fly back to me. In retrospect, it was surprising how slight these
figures were.
One sender, one recipient, three cards in total.
But each worthy of a million on its own.
***
Dear Jia Li - I present to you a birthday card, custom dad-made! I know it isn’t your birthday, but when I
saw the cat on the front I couldn’t help but think about the cat-and-mouse game we used to play back in
Shantou. Remember that?
Back in 1979, Peng and I were two ordinary six year olds growing up in a small village in Shantou. At
precisely ten in the morning, both our mothers would release our squirming bodies out into the labyrinth of
the village streets, where we spent hours and hours playing a whole range of childish games. Although there
were several kids in the village, Peng and I preferred each other’s company above all else: we had a
telepathic connection that even the village elders used to chuckle over.
Everyday our pounding feet would scatter dust throughout the village streets, our squeals echoing past the
wood-paneled windows and signs. We were quite the rascals, mind you. Our hide-and-seek strategy of
hiding behind the greengrocer’s newly arrived produce would always end in complaints, while the local
Chinese medicine practitioner was never happy about how our whirlwind sprints altered the positioning of
his prized deer antlers.
Our favorite game was, unsurprisingly, the one that landed us in the least amount of trouble. For lack of a
better name, we called it the ‘cat-and-mouse game’. The rules were simple: one of us would be bestowed
the role of honorable cat, the other of honorable mouse. The cat would chase the mouse until the mouse
was caught, or until the cat forfeited in fatigue. In both cases, the ultimate loser was punished in the same
way: the captured mouse or the exhausted cat had to consume a whole dried fish. No matter the month or
the weather, the fish - bitter, sour and strangely crunchy - was never pleasant, hence explaining why our
cat-and-mouse games often lasted for hours on end.
Whenever we played, it was customary to completely immerse ourselves in the respective roles. The cat
would don a pair of whiskers that were drawn slightly askew with some cosmetic or another, whilst the
mouse had to wear a headband sporting a pair of round paper ears. Each game would start with the both of
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