Escape

PART 1

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My Grandad came to New Zealand with his parents and escaped the Japanese invasion of Shanghai, leaving everything behind. This is based on a true story of him, but I have made it into a narrative. This is his story. P.s. The names are not real!

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Chug! Chug! Chug!

How am I supposed to sleep with that constant chugging?

And when am I going to get out of this closet and into a proper-sized room?

Those are the thoughts I have as 6 years-old boy sitting on a hard bunk in a tiny room aboard a steamer heading towards a totally unknown destination in the middle of the night.

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I have no understanding of the drama that has just occured - one moment I am sitting at the table in our house with my mother, about to eat dinner prepared by our servants when my father rushes into the room and scoops me out of the chair.

I don't know what's going on, but he gestures for me to be quiet as he and my mother hurriedly toss items into a couple of cases.

Thud! Thud! Thud!

There's someone at the door, but I can't understand what they're yelling, why aren't they speaking in Chinese?

Why are we runnning out the back way without seeing who it is?

It's cold outside and crowds of people are running through the backstreets of Shanghai.

I've never seen so many people except during festivals, but the yelling is happy then, not like the frightened voices now.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Some of the shouting stops and the screaming starts.

We run faster.

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Chug! Chug! Chug!

That engine never stops, but the yelling and screaming has; everyone aboard is silent as the ship steams into the night.

Maybe our servants have gone ahead and there will be a splendid meal waiting for us at our destination.....

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I wake up to the sunlight on my face - our only source of light, shining in through the tiny porthole above me.

My parents are already awake.

Voices all around us speaking excitedly in Chinese are mixed with something new, something that I can only understand a few words of - English.

We gather out belongings and join the others walking down the gangplank and crowd into a room full of stern-looking men in suits and uniforms with white faces, they look like ghosts so we call them "gweilo", which means exactly that.

We quietly wait our turn.

My father hands over some papers and the gweilo says something to him which I can't understand, but my father replies with our surname, "Chou".

The gweilo in the suit can't say it, so my father repeats it many times.

The gweilo in the suit appears impatient and keeps saying, "Joe", to which my father replies, "Chou".

Finally, the gweilo think he knows best and we are given our "new" surname of Joe.

So this became my new home - New Zealand.

My parents took a translated name of Joe

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We all live in a tiny coal shed at the back of a Chinese Cousin's laundry in New Plymouth with nothing at all.

No money, no nothing.

Mother earns two pence (two cents) for ironing and starching men's shirt collars using an iron heated by a coal-fired pot belly, which is also our only means of cooking and heating.

Everyday and everything is a big blur.

We have little contact with the outside world, except for an old wireless (a radio) lent by our Chinese cousin who owns the laundry shop.

It's bad news.

The war isn't going very well, the Allies are losing to the Japanese at the moment.

I don't know how we survive, we barely earn enough to feed ourselves - still, with hard work and determination, who knows what we can achieve.....

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Hey everybody! I hope you enjoyed this story and learnt something from it. WIth hard work and determination, you can achieve great things!

~Ilovetomfelton~ ;P <3 xoxo