The Holy Mountain - Short Story

Many people believe that the Korean conflict or the Vietnam War was the biggest war in Asia in the 20^th century, but it was the 2^nd Sino Japanese war (1937-1945) which merged with the Second World War, that was the most destructive. In a way it was the inevitable result of the 1^st Sino Japanese war (1894-1895) which resulted in China becoming a fragmented land ruled by different warlords, and although it was finally united under one leader, it meant that imperialist Japan would invade China and in collaboration with the warlords tighten its grip over the Chinese people. In the end after millions of bombs which killed tens of millions of people, just two bombs dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the imperial ambitions of the Empire of the Sun. It is difficult to say what was achieved by this tragedy of human arrogance, pride, foolishness, greed or whatever good things you would want to call it, but the horror of those days still mingle with the unpleasant dreams of the many still in Shandong.

In August 1940 Shandong was surrounded and there followed an aerial bombardment like the world had never seen before. During a midnight bombing raid a bomb fell right in front of our house and flattened it, but incredibly we were unhurt. My father went temporarily mad but finding we were unhurt said in an excited voice, “Chang, there are too many bad people here, if we are unlucky before the sun sets on the land of the rising sun, we will all be dead, but if we are lucky we too will turn into bad men, there is an island in the west which they call “the land of the rising moon”, when I was your age I lived in that island, in it there was a mountain which they called “the Holy mountain”, with great difficulty I climbed this mountain once and it is said if a man climbs it his family will be protected three times, and I believe this mountain protected us today, there is no time to lose, we collect whatever we can and leave here within ten minutes. There was no doubt in my mind where my father wanted to go, for he used to mumble about it even in his sleep,  he wanted to go to an island in the middle of the Indian ocean which was then called Ceylon. So my parents my younger brother and little sister and I started walking in the pitch dark of the night, a night that had more stars than I had ever seen, with fires burning everywhere and people shouting and stumbling for the bombing had temporally stopped, and we went in the direction my father always wanted to go - west. Strangely it was very exciting. Confucius said “he who treads softly goes far” but my father didn't seem to know, for he hurried on in such a clumsy, crude way that the four of us who followed him felt embarrassed.

Written by: RJX