Books of Future
Creative Primary School, Chan, Nathan – 6
t was the Warring State Period, and I was a six year old boy. My name is Shing-Hei. One early
summer morning, my good friend Ying Zheng and I were in the forest with our lunch bags and
backpacks. As we walked, we saw a huge tree and we walked around this amazingly large tree and
found a long ladder leading up to a tree house. We were curious about what was inside that tree house
and climbed up carefully. We were surprised to find a lot of books stacked up along the walls of the tree
house.
Over the next few years, Ying Zheng and I returned to the tree house often, we played, ate, and read
together. Reading those books in the tree house was interesting to us as what were written in the books
started to happen in real life. We slowly realized that the books were about what was going to happen
in the future.
At age 13, Ying Zheng’s father died and he became the king of Qin State, and I was made his General.
Ying Zheng wanted to expand his country and prepared horses, trained warriors, and went to war with
the other six states. Over the 26 years, together we fought many battles and from what we had learned
from the Books of Future, we won over the states one by one and finally Ying Zheng united all states and
became Emperor Qin.
After he united China, I was tasked to build the Terracotta Warriors, Ying Zheng thought these warriors
would follow him to the new world after his death so he could continue building his kingdom. As I’ve
read the books too, I knew that Emperor Qin will become a very mean king, and told him many times
not to continue with what he was about to do. We had many arguments, as I didn’t want him to
become cruel. “Don’t argue with me, just do as you were told,” he often bellowed. The last
argument we had, he was writing on a bamboo roll and he got so angry he swiped it clear off the table.
As for me, I was very sad to see how my good friend had changed, I thought about leaving him many
times but finally stayed and continued building the Terracotta Warriors and the tomb. The soldiers and
I built until Emperor Qin left our world into his new world. At that time, we finished 8,000 of these
figures. Upon the death of Emperor Qin, I was sad that my good friend had died but also happy that all
of the people working to build the Terracotta Warriors could now go home. I told the soldiers the
story about our tree house, and returned to the city where I grew up with Ying Zheng.
I
