Shortlisted
New Tales of the Great Wall
Michelle Wing
t long last, the eternal climb to the top of the Great Wall was over. Both Drew and I let out a huge
sigh of relief and stood there, feeling the wind on our faces.
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see from the su
Sze Ng, Group 2: Fiction, Diocesan Girls' Junior School
A
When I had fully recovered from the three-hour walk, I fished out my camera from my
pack and started snapping pictures like crazy, trying to preserve the breathtaking view we could
mmit of the Great Wall with my camera.
Drew, whose restlessness was palpable as usual, was pacing about, peering around everywhere. Suddenly,
he gave a cry of ecstasy, having finally found something interesting enough to rivet his attention, if only for a
few minutes.
I thought to ignore him when he called me over to see, but the urgency in his tone startled me. I looked at
the inconspicuous nook he was fixated at, and saw a thin, delicate piece of bronze with a carving on it secreted
inside. On first inspection, it looked like normal cement, as it had a thick pile of dust on it, but on deliberate
scrutiny, I realised it was a piece of bronze.
We looked incredulously at each other, and there was no doubt that the bronze carving was old, but why
would it be left here? I kept trying to come up with reasons to refute our own theories, but there were none.
I snapped out of my reverie just in time to see him loosen the stone tile in front of it. “Drew! What are you
doing? What if people see you?” He grinned. “Bet you’re just as curious as I am about how it came here. There
may be some kind of signature behind the bronze piece, so we might be able to figure out who carved it!” I
groaned. “That’s called destroying public property! If everyone did that, then there would be no stones left on
the Great Wall!” “Chill Izzy, the carving didn’t even seem like part of the Great Wall. Come on, let’s go back to
the hotel and see what we’ve got.” I sighed in defeat. “Fine. But only this once.”
When we got back to the hotel, Drew took the bronze piece out and handed it to me. I turned to look at the
back of it, and sure enough, there were some characters there. But what did they mean? I turned around, but
Drew was already on Google. We compared all the characters on the stone to the ones on the computer, but only
five out of the nine matched. They were the first three, and they meant “no one could”. No one could what?
What was it that was so important that someone had it carved on a piece of bronze?
My head was buzzing with a ton of questions, but I had a feeling that Drew had even more.
“
What do we have to do to find out what these other characters mean? If we asked some random people on
the street, the chances are they can’t tell us!” Drew said.
“
Well, we could find a translator. But I don’t think any ordinary translator can tell us about these
characters. They seem really old. I don’t think anyone even uses these in China nowadays.” I told him.
“
What are we waiting for? Let’s copy the symbols down on a piece of paper and go.” I shrugged and took
a piece of paper to copy them down. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t draw one that was even a bit
similar to the ones on the tile. I peered at the ones Drew had drawn. They seemed much better. We would have
to use his then.
While he was copying the characters down, I searched on Google Maps for nearby translators. There was
one a few blocks down, so I decided we would go there first. If that wouldn’t work, there were still a dozen or
so we could try.
When we arrived at the shop, I knew at once that this was a poor choice. The people at the counter were
too young, and the shop was too new. It was probably just to translate modern Chinese characters to English or
vice versa.
The next few shops were just as disappointing as the last. We had almost gone through the whole list when
I saw a sign pointing to an old shop saying, “That way to translation shop.” I pounced on it immediately and
went into the shop with Drew.
The shop smelled old and musty, full of incense. Behind the counter was an old man. He looked to be in
his nineties already. I approached the counter and asked him about the characters, giving him the sheet of paper.
He looked at them and smiled, saying, “I would be honoured to translate them for you, young lady. Those
characters dated back a few thousand years, and they were extremely difficult to write.”
The man creased his brow in concentration and started to translate them first into modern Chinese, then
into English for us. “It says, “No one can live forever”. The signature, it is from a famous sage man back then.
Unfortunately, he was killed by the emperor when he was only in his forties.”