The Way History Passes
Gwenyth Slaug
ears and years of history pass in the wind. History is an unconfined pond that just stagnates while
being flooded by new stories to tell, and new tales to proceed, year after year, decade after decade,
century after century. New people come, new things are invented, but real stone-hard history remains
there, it stays still in the pond, with neither a wave nor a ripple. My head is spinning (when I
thought), about each moment that is going by. I feel like a nothing. I don’t do anything in my days. I
just stare into the sky and watch the clouds just pass by. I had to be presented in an appalling brief medical
examination, the doctor there had no brains what so ever. He said I had an unnatural heart beat, a diagnosis from
just touching my small boned chest. This determination, then prevented me from being a soldier or doing any
work such as building. I would have no place in the building of the wall, meanwhile all of my friends are on the
heavenly mountains building stone after stone that is reaching the sky, I do not have a place on the wall just
because of my bloody heart that beats too fast. I just let thoughts gently swirl around my mind. Past history has
it’s myths, it had it’s problems and solutions no one can touch past history it is as though it is gone. The past and
the present are very different things, you can change things in the present, transfigure what is happening, even
as I speak. History blooms and flourishes in the present and in the future, history grows as though it is the Great
Wall of China.
hter, Group 3: Fiction, Hong Kong Academy
Y
Names are not always written in stone. People die every day, some survive if they are lucky. Every death I
am informed of, happens on the Great Wall. The Great Wall causes lives to be lead to their conclusion. People
are trying to build the longest wall in the whole world. Young boys don’t have an alternative choice, if they are
healthy. They need to build the wall, and if they refuse will consider themselves without a head. They do this for
the emperor. The emperor, wants to spilt up China, He doesn’t want any intruders to sneak by. Families are cut
apart, such as when you dissect a dumpling. People sense the dumpling may never be reunited with it’s pieces
again. The mighty emperor sent out the message about the wall a year ago. Boys from 13 to 35 years of age are
taken away from every moment of their personal lives. Those lives vanish and disappear and these men are then
turned in to the same thing, the same person. You either die or survive. They all do the same thing, build, die,
build survive.
“
Àiguó!” screamed my father from the noodle kitchen. That was my name, Àiguó. It means “patriotic” in
Chinese. I was buried in my grubby linen bed covers clutching my book. This book was now my life. It has
every word about the Great wall. Every recent fact and estimations and thoughts about what might happen in the
future. I write stories in this book, about the people who die and then get buried in the wall. I write about my
brother, my sweet blooded brother who died of a broken heart because he was taken away from everything he
knew, including me. Cōngmíng, was his name. This meant clever and clever he was. He was an architect, he
could design anything imaginable in your mind. When he left we were so proud of him. He was going to design
the Great Wall. Now he just seems like one of the boys that died.
“
Coming, father,” I said. I didn’t want father to become cross simply because I was a little somnolent. I
rose and then gently put my book under my bed. Father knows how interested I am about the wall, but he
doesn’t like how I constantly study the book and every fact about the wall. He doesn’t believe in the beauty or
future history in the wall. I think this is because of what happened to my brother.
“
Àiguó, come down quick! There is alarming news!” he shouted, in more of a panicked tone. This time I
ran down stairs to find him standing in the door frame with the front door wide open. Outside the people were
bellowing around a man with a simple white scroll. This man was in pleasant clean clothing standing on top a
wooden pedestal.
“
I need your attention!” This man yelled out this sentence with an inpatient facial expression.
“
I am here to send a message from the emperor!” Everyone fell silent, with their eyes glued to this man. I
moved my way out the door, thankfully I had fallen asleep in my clothes the night before so I did not look
strange in front of everyone.
“
The emperor is dead!” This man shouted, everyone gasped.
“
He is without an heir to his throne.” Immediately everyone broke into conversation. Everyone was talking
so loudly. It hurt my ears!
“
I am not finished!” screamed the man.
“
Before the emperor died he ordered all of the men in China to find the dragon scroll.”
I stood there shocked.