Fiction: Group 2
Lost and Found in the Pearl River Delta
Kennedy School, Green, Leia - 10, Fiction: Group 2
om, Dad! Don’t go! No, Stay! No!”
Ping awoke startled, drenched in sweat. She looked
out of the window beside her. The night was pitch black. The soft shapes of cloud
covered the sliver of moon in the sky. She could even here a distant owl repeating its
chorus. Ping wriggled out of her out of her coffee stained blankets . Her dainty feet slipped into her rugged
old slippers which she had been wearing since she was 10. She put on her patched-up dressing gown . She
felt the loneliness stab into her heart - a wound that would never recover.
4:30 am. The only sound Ping could hear was the pitter-patter of her own feet as she tip toed down the hall
to boil some water for a cup of warm jasmine tea. She sat down on the old, yellow stool by the windowsill.
Ping looked out although there was nothing to see. Just then Ping saw a beam of light come out from
behind the smoky factories in the distant skyline. She had never seen a sunrise as beautiful as this! The sky
was like a paint pallet creating new colors every time a new beam shot out. This was a good sign. Ping was
always looking for good signs.
7:37 am. Ping was late. She hurried into her hideous, blue uniform and grabbed her mask. She was the
youngest in her family. Her mother and father had left her alone with her grandfather a long time ago and
her sister died as an infant.
7:44. Ping rushed past other factory workers at a rapid pace. She could not get fired. That would be her life
gone.
Then she was on the road
And then
And then…
The screech of breaks
A scream
A SCREAM!!!
The little girl fell to the ground, her dark hair covering her pale face. Women ran up to the small silent body
lying on the grey sea of concrete. They wiped the scarlet liquid gushing from her pointy nose. They poured
cool water down her throat. But Ping did not move.
Was she dead? Where’s the ambulance!
Ping was still
alive, she was thinking, wanting the woman to just leave her alone and to stop fussing over her.
“No! I am not responsible for the scoundrel! She was dumped on me by some officials for government
policy!” The person speaking was a man. Ping recognized the voice. It was her granddad. Ping sat up
immediately. But she did so a bit to quickly. Her glossy black head and her pale arm were throbbing with a
horrid pain. Tears squeezed out of her eyes and down her white face and onto the cream linen on her lap. A
young nurse who started speaking gently pushed her down onto the mattress. Suddenly, Ping switched on.
She remembered all of it now. She looked up at the dirty grey ceiling. She knew she was going to get fired.
They would have no tolerance. Was there anyone in this world that had tolerance? Someone interrupted
her thoughts. “Tea?” She looked up to a, smiling, rosy-cheeked face. There was something about that face
that she recognized.
The only feeling poor Ping had was boredom. But at the same time she was lucky those ladies that fussed
over her because they bought her to a very nice hospital all the way on the other side of town. She looked
out the window every day to see the pollution getting worse and worse. How she wished she could save this
world. She had heard of places where the sky is as blue and bright as bluebells. And the ground was full of a
plant called grass, which was as green as an emerald. Ping had also heard about a wall so long you could see
it from outer space, and it was just a few hours away from her home.
Ping heard voices coming from the room next door. “You heard the doctor sir, the girl is hurt!” She
recognized that voice, it was the sweet nurse that looked after her. “The girl has to work at the factory. If
she does not her wages will be lowered! I own her!” Uh oh. Her boss. She could almost feel his mean eyes
staring at her through the wall. She lay back down on her pillow. She let salty tears spring out of her weak
eyes and fell fast asleep.
Ping woke up all of a sudden. She had slept through the whole day. Now she was in the back of a van. She
was able to crane her head round and look at her surroundings. She saw a logo. She squinted her eyes and
“M
Comment [2]:
Can you wriggle out of
straw? Maybe her make shift mattress
is stuffed with straw?
Comment [3]:
Other than her ugly
blue work uniform, Ping had not been
able to afford new clothes for years.
Comment [4]:
May want to think
about combining this sentence with the
sentence where she makes her way
down the hallway.
