Fiction: Group 4
hands of fate. We would finally be living, instead of simply surviving. This thought gave me hope, and kept
me going.
Throughout these years, I bore witness as this miracle happened, when more and more businesses and
factories took root here, and this once humble fishing village transformed into a budding megacity in just
under two decades' time. But by the time I came to realise that reality is, in fact, otherwise, it was already
too late for me to regret my decision. Yes, the Pearl River Delta does give promises of riches, but these
promises are only meant for the large companies and the businessmen - not for us peasant workers who
came all the way from the inland to these cities. And discovering this, the dream extinguished like a weak
flickering flame in a hurricane.
With neither degree for completing education nor qualifications for professional skills, I could only
move from factory to factory, committing to mundane, repetitive jobs like polishing the tiny components of
electronic devices, or screwing on plastic caps of toothpaste tubes. We never earned much money or respect,
and life gets harder by the day. They would request us to work overtime without pay, as well as threaten us
into accepting jobs with the lowest pay or risk getting laid off - a cost too high for me to bear. I could
barely support myself in the city, let alone Xiaobao and you.
Despite having lived here for over a decade, I can never be one of their own. Not with their
condescending tones when speaking to us, and certainly not with their surly glares directed at me wherever I
go anyway. To them, I have always been, and will forever remain, a lowly peasant. This is why even though
I desperately wanted to have Xiaobao come live with me in the city, I never did. I might have no choice,
but I did not want my son to be treated the way I have been since my arrival. He deserves better.
This Pearl River Delta that gave me so much hope and so many dreams, is the very same one that
took them away. Behind its façade of wealth and affluence, are the blood, sweat and tears of people like us.
Yet no matter how we feel or what we say, there is nothing we can do to change our unfortunate
circumstances for apparently, no one cares enough to fight for us, and no one cares enough to stand up
against the authorities for us. Our fates are written by the moguls, and sealed by the silent majority.
We never really do know how precious time is until we've got hardly any left. There's still so much I
want to say to you, but time is what you have run out of. I am sorry for so many things: for leaving Xiaobao
in your care when she was not your responsibility nor your burden to bear, for being so stupid as to trust
that my heartless husband could turn away from gambling, and most of all, for not being the sister you
deserved. I wasn't completely honest with you in my previous letters, but I hope that with this final one in
which I have, at last, told you the whole truth, you would not leave blaming me for what I have done. I
simply had no choice.
Farewell, my brother. I will see you again.
With love from
Mei
*
I put down my pen, looking up towards the cityscape. I try to look for some sort of meaning to it all, and
coming up with none, I decide not to dwell upon it.
I pick up my letter and climb down from the roof, my legs moving on their own since my brain is
definitely not functioning anymore, having been numbed from both pain and remorse upon learning of my
brother's passing. But while my brain is nullified, my heart is still very much alive, screaming in anguish and
weeping in agony, mourning for how much Shang had sacrificed for my son and I, and mourning for the
fact that he is never going to see this letter, and I am never going to see him again.
Stopping by the bank, I tear up the letter into shreds, and scatter them into this nameless stream of
running water, which would somehow meet with the prominent Pearl River, and, eventually, drain into the
vast ocean. But by then, it matters not where the water came from.
