Fiction: Group 4
Lessons and Blessings
St. Margaret's Co-Educational English Secondary and Primary School
(Secondary Section), Bezant, Diana - 16, Fiction: Group 4
ooking back on how things used to be, I can’t quite believe how things are now. Everything was
calm, quiet and serene; one could sit up early and watch the sun rise without obstruction. The birds
used to nest near the old banyan tree and sing a beautiful song to wake me up. During the cooler part
of the day, you could see children running around and playing amid the teenagers watching over them for
their parents. Such was the life back then, where I used to live, I have such fond memories of my little
village. Which now I cannot recognize from the images that live on in my head from when I was a child.
I grew up in a little village in Pan Yu which is now known as Guang Zhou, my father was a merchant and
my mother stayed at home to mind the children. I remember when my father came home excitedly and told
tales of strange people coming from lands far away, bearing medicine from the west, these foreign
merchants wished to trade with us, they wanted silk and porcelain , I admit these objects have their beauty
but back then I wondered why they didn’t just make them themselves.
My mother and grandmother both were highly skilled in the process of making silk; they guarded it like a
secret and when the time came for me to learn they bade me to keep it unknown. The foreigners wanted to
know the secret of making silk so badly, many of the foreigners tried to ask us and figure out the process but
none of us would give it up. The emperor too wanted to keep the knowledge of making silk among the
Chinese, perhaps he could see the business opportunities that the trade brought. Now I understand that
since the people from the west were demanding silk, many decided to keep them from knowing how it was
made to make sure that they kept coming back for more instead of vandalizing and stealing our tradition.
You can call it business if you wish, but we believed that we were protecting our history.
We kept a large stack of trays in a room of our house, the trays were full of what I used to call silkies – that
is, the worms that were used to make silk. They ate freshly chopped mulberry leaves at almost every hour of
the day, my job as a child was to gather the leaves, and then feed them to the worms. Eight or nine days
after they started spinning their cocoons, we baked them to kill the worms and then dipped the cocoons
into hot water to loosen the threads.
Over time, the trade of silk and other oriental goods like our finest porcelain was sought after by many from
the west, they were strange people, no one could understand what they said. Soon the road on which they
took to and from Pan Yu was called the great Silk Road since the main reason they kept coming back was
for more silk.
Of course, soon other countries found ways to make their own silk and the demand for Chinese silk came to
a halt, the monopoly of silk had ended and the dependable income we earned from the foreign trade we
received over the years started to fall slightly as less and less of our prized silk goods were bought by the
foreigners. We were outraged, how dare they cast us off? Our silk was the best of its kind and we were first.
They stole our idea! They made promises to keep business with us but we were betrayed and now they left
us with nothing.
Our protests and complaints fell on deaf ears of course and the Silk Road trade dropped more year after
year. When dear mother passed on and the silk trade had declined, father was heartbroken and struggling,
all us children had grown and father wanted us to have a more stable life, but life in our village in Pan Yu
had slowed to the point where we were close to having nothing to put on the table. We had built our lives
up on the Silk Road trade and we knew nothing but silk-making. Now we had nothing as many could
make their own silk so it was not of much use here. Of course, I felt a lot of bitterness towards the
westerners; I associated them with deceit and betrayal. They took what we had to offer and left once they
had their fill. I believed that I would never have to deal with them again.
My father heard of a boom in trade in Shen Zhen, we packed up and were off within days along the way
we offered silks and other items made of course from silk to help keep us going as we passed from town to
town. It was our first time seeing the world outside our little village, it was strange and exciting. At the same
time we missed Pan Yu, I suppose you never love your home as much until you have to leave and then you
realize just how great a place it was.
Upon our arrival at Shen Zhen, we were instantly swept away by the vastness of the markets, full and
bustling with people, many wanted our silk and it was a great feeling knowing that we were back in
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