A New Tale of the Great Wall
Chou Ka Ying, Group 3: Fiction, Tung Wah Group Of Hospitals S. C. Gaw Memorial College
oa…..Boa ……where are you? Boa!" I shouted out.
“
Soo Jung, have you had a nightmare? Why are you shouting?”
My grandmother heard the sound and ran quickly to me.
I woke up and looked around. I saw a clock in front of the ebony bed, a cactus on the
windowsill. All of the above illustrated one thing which was that I was back to the world of mankind. Then, I
wondered, was everything just a dream although what I’d experienced I believed to be truly authentic. I spread
out my hand and noticed there was a wound on my ring finger, and the skin around the wound was glowing red.
I touched the wound lightly, then I felt severe pain. I likened the pain to a caterpillar biting my wound. The pain
was a sharp reminder to me that it really happened.
After a while, I suddenly remembered that my grandmother had been standing next to me for a long time.
For a time, I had completely forgotten the presence of my grandmother. I didn’t want my grandmother to worry
about me so I took her to the garden and explained what had happened to me. At the same time, I recalled many
things that had happened in the past two weeks.
Last month, at the beginning of the summer holidays, I originally planned to travel to Korea with my
parents. However, they suddenly received notice from my father’s company that they had to go to France for my
father’s work. They didn’t want to leave me at home alone. So they sent me to my grandmother’s home in
Beijing. At first, I didn’t want to go there since my grandmother’s home was a traditional Chinese quadrangle
without internet access, a TV and other modern facilities. Finally, I was compelled to live in Beijing for three
weeks until my parents came to take me home.
The first few days in Beijing were very boring, I had nothing to do but just sleep and eat. One night, during
my first week in Beijing, my aunt came and took me to the Great Wall. I had never been to the Great Wall so I
was very excited about seeing it for the first time. As the saying goes, “He who has never been to the Great Wall
isn’t a true man.” I was interested in it and wanted to see it for myself.
The journey to the Great Wall took about one hour during which I felt very nervous as I eagerly awaited its
sight. However, the reality of seeing it did not match my imagination. When I arrived there, the only thing I
could see was a large number of people. The people pushed us to walk forward and I got separated from my
aunt in the resulting confusion. I continued to walk ahead. As I did so, the number of people around me
decreased and eventually there was only me at a section of the great wall. I looked back at the route I had just
walked. I had covered a huge distance from the beginning of the great wall. While I was squatting, I saw a
unique symbol on the side of the wall. The symbol was drawn in a covert corner of the wall. I thought if I hadn’t
squatted, I would not have seen this symbol. I studied it carefully. Although I didn’t know what it was about, I
knew that it wasn’t a Chinese or an English word and I knew that I had never seen it before. It looked like a
picture of a dragon and I was curious about the unique symbol.
Then, when I tried to use my hand to touch the symbol, a miraculous thing happened.
In the dark sky, seven stars appeared abruptly and they formed a logo of a dragon and came closer and
closer. They rotated faster and faster. Unexpectedly, the stone under my foot moved to both sides of the Great
Wall. This made me fall underground and the stones above my head closed over me so that I was entombed
underground. I wanted to stand up and get away from there but it was impossible as the stones above me
prohibited any light reaching me underground. In total darkness, I was very scared and cried out. My cries for
help drew no responses so, after a while, I stopped crying and tried to calm down. I started to search for
something useful from my bag and I found my mobile phone and used the flashlight apps to illuminate my
surroundings. I saw that I was in a place similar to a tunnel and I could feel some wind coming from the depths
of the tunnel. I walked gingerly towards the depths of the tunnel. I only wanted to get out of this place quickly.
So I ran very fast and I didn’t know how long I had been running. Finally, I arrived at the middle of the tunnel.
There was a large wooden door with a few words written on it. I didn’t know what it was about. I just opened
the door. When I opened the door, a fresh breeze flapped softly on my face. I breathed the fresh air forcefully to
soothe the toxic feeling I’d experienced in the tunnel. The fear in my heart disappeared slowly after I saw the
views outside the wooden door. The endless grasslands, dotted with colourful flowers against a backdrop of
wispy clouds floating in the blue sky, was a sight to behold.
Nearby, a blossoming flower swung like an adolescent girl dressed all in white. “They should only
“
B
Shortlisted