A Girl Traveling Through Troubled Times

Gui'er began to feel uneasy, and Acheng also came back and said that he heard from some new guests staying in the hotel that the Japanese had bombed some coastal cities.

"Fortunately, we are going to Hong Kong tomorrow. There are British troops stationed in Hong Kong. If the Japanese do not intend to start a war with Britain, they will probably not attack Hong Kong."

Gui'er felt very upset after hearing this, but when she thought about the fact that Britain would return in a few decades, she felt a little better.

On the day of the boat ride, early in the morning, Ah Cheng said to Gui Er, "Miss, I've sent telegrams and called Brother Qiang these past two days, but I couldn't reach him. So I found a few reliable people through the hotel manager and rented a car. It's safer and more comfortable this way. It's still early and there won't be many people on the road. Why don't we set off first? When we get to the shipping company, we can find a place to store our luggage so we can upload it as soon as the ship arrives. The situation is unstable right now. Neither the car nor the boat are on time."

Gui'er thought it made sense and said, "Okay, let's get going now."

Ah Cheng ran out and told the hired men. Then he led some people in to move their luggage downstairs and put it in the car. They got in the car and drove to the dock.

The hotel manager sent off-duty waiters who worked in the hotel. They were happy to earn some extra money and their attitudes were very good.

They rode their bicycles to the dock and said to Ah Cheng and Gui Er, "Our manager asked us to wait here and help you load your things onto the boat. We'll then drive back to report back."

Ah Cheng nodded, took out some French currency, and gave a few to each person. Everyone was very happy.

Gui'er and Dingxiang were waiting in the waiting room of the passenger station at the pier. At first glance, the waiting room was actually similar to the station, except that there was a long flight of stone steps leading down from another door. After going down the stone steps, they could reach the barge at the pier and then check their tickets to board the ship.

Several other passenger ships were waiting at the pier, all steamships, their numbers painted on their giant funnels. When it was time to depart, a staff member would come out with a loud speaker and read out the ship's number. Passengers who had purchased tickets for that ferry could then disembark and check in. Once the passengers were on board, a long, drawn-out "woooo ...

The shore was also busy, with porters carrying passengers' rattan boxes and sacks shuttling back and forth. There were also some small covered boats, small wooden boats, and even bamboo rafts nearby. Passengers who got off the passenger ship and wanted to go to nearby towns connected by waterways would get on these small boats and pay a small amount of money to have them take them back.

Gui'er sat by the window, watching the porters tying up several boxes of foreign cloth with hemp ropes and loading them onto the merchant ship. A customs officer wearing white gloves was stamping the cargo list with a seal next to her.

Inside the waiting hall, besides the passengers, there were also sailors. Several in shorts squatted by a barrel, smoking and chatting in Cantonese about last night's card game. An old woman selling tea eggs scurried around with a bamboo basket, the clink of porcelain bowls clear as a clink. "Hot, spicy tea eggs!"

After waiting for about an hour, another ferry on the river blew its whistle and slowly approached. The iron hull was painted with three large black characters: "Jiang'an No. 477." It was the boat Gui'er and her friends were going to take. It was immediately packed with people. The crew waved a red flag and shouted, "Check your tickets and get on board!"

Ah Cheng directed the waiters to carry the luggage onto the gangplank, their wicker boxes clanging against the iron plates with a resounding thud. Gui'er, clutching her ticket, followed Dingxiang into line for inspection. The inspector, wearing gold-rimmed glasses, punched a hole in the ticket stub. Entering the cabin, a whiff of coal smoke mixed with steam hit us. The first-class cabin had red velvet carpeting, a wooden double bed, a leather sofa, and cheap oil paintings on the walls. The second-class cabin had wooden benches, and passengers sat in groups of three or four. There were businessmen in suits flipping through newspapers, and women in cheongsams coaxing their children.

Gui'er and her friends had booked a first-class cabin, a private room. When they finally reached their room, they opened the porthole and let the river breeze, carrying a damp breeze, stream in. On deck, several young, student-like people gathered around a man in military uniform, talking. The words "Shanghai" and "Anti-Japanese War" were faintly audible. Dingxiang pulled some snacks from her bag and was about to pass them over when the ferry jerked and slowly pulled away from the dock. The figures on the shore gradually shrank to tiny black dots.

Ah Cheng said to Gui Er, "You must be tired after traveling all this time this early in the morning. Come sit down and have a rest."

Gui'er nodded and said, "You guys sit down too."

She sat down by a window and slowly looked at the pier, which was getting farther and farther away from them. The hotel staff who had sent them there had already come to the car and were ready to drive away.

Suddenly, she heard a long alarm, and then more than a dozen planes appeared in the sky and dived down in an orderly manner. The red circular patterns on the planes could be clearly seen.

"Oh no, it's a Japanese plane." Gui'er screamed.

I saw the planes painted with the red maru logo diving down, their wings almost brushing the roof of the terminal.

Guier watched helplessly as rows of bombs fell from the plane.

"Boom!" The first explosion shook the ship violently, and the glasses in the first-class cabin fell off the coffee table and shattered into stars. Gui'er clung to the window frame and saw a black mushroom cloud rising from the warehouses on the dock. The cloth boxes were blown to pieces, and the blue calico rolled in the air like torn flags.

A bomb fell where they had just parked their car. Amid the explosion, Guier saw a piece of a human arm flying out in the air. She could even recognize that the style of the sleeve was the same as the uniform sleeve of the Aiqun Hotel.

Porters at the dock frantically dropped their loads and jumped into the water. Bamboo rafts were overturned by the surging winds, and people were tossed and thrown in the murky water. An old woman selling tea eggs collapsed on the stone steps, her bamboo basket rolling into the river. The chimney of a merchant ship still docked at the dock was blasted open, sending black smoke and sparks gushing out. The "British Merchants" flag on the bow instantly reduced to ash.

The plane dropped its bomb and flew away, then circled back in less than a few minutes. It dived down with a sharp roar, and the flames of machine gun fire licked the iron roof of the waiting room. The bullet holes were densely packed like a sieve. Gui'er and her crew's passenger ship had already sailed some distance away, but they could still hear screams from inside. The streets were full of passers-by running in all directions, and people fell down wherever the machine gun fire reached.

The captain of the Jiang'an 477 frantically blew the whistle, accelerating their escape to avoid the bombing. Ah Cheng rushed over and pinned Gui'er to the floor. "Don't look up!" His voice trembled, but he held her head tightly. Dingxiang huddled in a corner, trembling as she clutched her bundle, the snacks inside scattered all over the floor.

After more than ten minutes, the planes circled and departed, leaving the river littered with broken wood, scraps of cloth, and floating corpses. Fires erupted in distant homes, and the black smoke stained the sun a dark red. Gui'er lay on the floor, breathing in the mingled odor of soot and blood. Outside the porthole, the dock they had just left was reduced to a blazing ruin.