Secrets of the Terra-Cotta Soldier by Ying Chang Compestine

Author:Ying Chang Compestine
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Abrams
Published: 2013-11-27T16:00:00+00:00

Ming wished that he had a friend like Feng. He would have shared everything with him, as he had with his friends in Xi’an. Soon after moving to Red Star, he had started a conversation with a classmate. At first, the boy, whose name was Yang, seemed shy, but when Ming told him that he was building a radio, Yang became very talkative and friendly, showing great interest.

Ming was excited and planned to invite Yang over that weekend. But when he talked to the boy the next day, Teacher Panda pointed at Yang and called out, “Why are you talking to the bourgeois boy?”

Since then, whenever they met, Yang would look around nervously and quickly walk away.

After lunch, we entered a valley. The wind whistled through the trees and rattled the barren branches around us. When we reached a sloping hill, Mongols charged down from behind the tree line. We immediately moved into a circular defensive formation around our supplies, facing outward.

The enemy’s fierce attack and their loud drums startled our horses. Two of my brothers-in-arms were bucked off their horses. One broke his neck in the fall and was trampled by his own horse; the other was dragged off by the enemy. Fear drowned out any excitement I had felt before. We would have been wiped out if a regular patrol had not come to our aid. Humiliated, we stumbled back to camp, clothes torn and covered in blood, carrying our wounded and dragging our dead.

Unlike those lucky cavalrymen who guarded the Great Wall and could see the Mongols from far away, we were fighting shadows and chasing ghosts. Once we left the camp, we never knew when we would fall into an ambush. During battles, I tried to stay at the center of our formation, away from the enemy. Unfortunately, being a coward didn’t give me a chance to kill any Mongols.

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