National English Skills 7

Structure
•• Poverty ••
Language features
When and
where
Who
Events recounted
as they happened
Complication
Personal
comment
Resolution
By 1969, the poverty around Laoshan had worsened. I remember going with my
friends to the beach one day, an hour’s journey on foot, to find clams and oysters
or, if we were lucky, a dead fish. We each carried a bamboo basket and a small
spade. My parents always warned us never to go into the water because of the
rips.
Many people were already there, also searching. After about half an hour we’d
found nothing except empty seashells. The beach was clean and bare.
Halfway home I suggested to my friends that we should make a detour and
sneak into the nearby airport to try and find some half-burnt coal. This was the
airport the Japanese had built during the Second World War. Now there were
only a few People’s Liberation Army guards and some old cargo planes there. The
Japanese had used coal and half-burnt coal as part of the filler under the runway,
and the outer part had already been dug away by desperate people. Since then the
guards had tightened security.
There was a line of big trees along the edge of the airport and a small ditch.
The ditch was dry at that time of year and we crept along it for about fifteen
minutes, bending down so the guards couldn’t see us.
There was still evidence of half-burnt coal below the surface, very hard to
loosen. Digging for half-burnt coal was like digging for gold. Eventually our
baskets were full. But carrying heavy baskets with a bent body proved too difficult
for us eight-year-olds. About halfway out, one of the boys slowly straightened up
and was spotted by the military guards. They immediately fired bullets into the air
and started to chase us. We dumped our baskets and spades and ran for our lives.
I rushed breathlessly home. It was early afternoon. ‘There’s some food in the
wok,’ my fifth brother Cunfar said. Niang had left some dried yams and pickled
turnips for me.
‘Where is Niang?’ I asked him as I ate my lunch.
‘She went back to work in the fields,’ he replied. Cunfar only had morning
classes at school that day—there weren’t enough classrooms for everyone to go
for a full day. ‘Where have you been?’ he asked me.
I told him what had happened at the airport. He frowned. ‘You dropped your
basket and spade there?’
‘The soldiers would have killed us if they’d caught us!’
‘No, they wouldn’t,’ he replied. ‘You have to go back and get your basket and
spade. We can’t afford new ones.’
‘I’ll never go anywhere near that airport again!’
But he did eventually talk me into going back. At the edge of the ditch I
refused to go any further and pointed to where we’d dropped our baskets and
spades, but the guards had confiscated them. Only a few half-burnt coals were
left scattered around the ditch.
from Mao’s Last Dancer by Li Cunxin
Written in
first person
Past tense
Names of
events
Use of verbs to
create action
Use of direct
speech
4: Recounting
31