Hainan Dao

Book II Chapter 01

HAINAN DAO BOOK II

CHAPTER 01

“Wake up!”

A young girl lay curled up in her bed.

Another was shaking her by the arm and calling her name. “Shuyi! Shuyi, wake up!”

“Hmmm…!” Shuyi turned over, but toward the wall.

“Hurry, or else there’ll be trouble.” More shaking.

“Shuying…!” Shuyi shrugged off the hand on her shoulder. She burrowed deeper beneath the covers.

Shuying frowned and shook her head.

The whistle sounded again.

She jumped.

She peered down at her sister, still lost in her spittle and her dreams, still smiling, still facing the wall.

Shuying drew back and sighed.

With a piece of red yarn, she tied her hair back into a ponytail and rushed out of the door in a blur, leaving the wooden panel to swing back slowly to a close, all by itself.

The year was 1941, the first year that the Japanese had come to occupy Hainan Island in the Second World War.

When they arrived, the first thing that the Japanese did was remodel the landscape. They changed it all. It was like nothing on the Island suited their tastes. Everything looked wrong. Too Chinese, I suppose. All over Hainan, in the cities as well as the villages, wherever the invaders went, they tore down all the buildings and put up new ones. Here in Wenjiau, the local high school had been the first to go. Then the post office. Then the mayor’s office. They had continued to tear things down until there really wasn’t much left of the old town but the mess that they had made. To clean up this mess, the invaders decided it should be the local residents, one member from each family, who should come down and help out. After all, it was their town.

This was the first day that the work crew in Wenjiau had been called together. They were to assemble in the old school yard, first thing in the morning, line up in a single file and await further instructions there.

Shuying jogged onto the field and joined the others lined up by the wall, the last one still standing from the old building. She stole a glance around her, at some of the other people in the company. Some of them were much older, while others were as young as herself, even only twelve or thirteen years of age.

Over from the far side of the field, two men approached. One of them, the one in the Japanese officer’s uniform, wore a crew cut and a short moustache. The other was a younger man, a mere boy in fact, not much older than Shuying herself. It would be another few years yet, before the hairs on his pasty face became anything more than mere fuzz, but he was obviously trying hard. As he marched alongside the taller man, this boy held a clipboard to his side, and he gripped it tight, as though it was a sceptre or a staff and he was afraid to lose it.

Shuying knew the boy. He was a local. His name was Fung Jiwei.

Just before the two men could come to a stop in front of the line, a last member in the work group came racing up to the wall and skidded to a halt in front of them both.

The soldier spun around. Folding his arms across his chest, he frowned at the newcomer, a dirty specimen of a boy with short-cropped hair and a grin. The dust cloud that had been trailing the youngster also made an entrance at this point, and drifted into the officer’s eyes so he had to blink. It got into his nose too. The man tossed his head back and sneezed.