Stories and News No. 604
China, air pollution has forced the authorities of Harbin, a town of 11 million people, to a city shutdown, closing all activities, urging people to stay indoors.
We talk about a poisoning of the air 50 times higher than the maximum allowed.
Schools are closed, the children of a fifth grade have to write an essay: tells your days until they return to class.
The following is by Yimou, ten years old.
Essay.
This is my essay.
The title is 6. Six stands for six days.
The days I'll be here, in the bedroom, in front of the window.
My window has only one color, that is two.
Light gray and dark gray.
The color is not about the window.
The glass is transparent, I know. I wish it was not.
The outside world is the color, not me.
If it were up to me, it would be of any color except gray.
Both the glass and the outside world.
The type of gray decides our time.
Our family time, I mean.
Light gray, the holiday will end and my sister and I go back to school.
The same goes for mom and dad with work.
Dark gray, very dark, is the night.
This is easy, because if it is not the day...
But when it is dark gray in the morning the city closes.
And we write about until we come back out.
The second day I'm still here, in front of the window.
My mother asked me what I'm doing, morning and afternoon in the bedroom.
That’s for school, Mom, I said.
And for me, I thought when she came out to leave me alone.
I want to look at the window glass, fix it and try to change the color with my mind.
This is the day of magic. The power of my gaze will challenge the gray.
And I will banish it forever from the realm of colors.
On the third day I'm sad.
Finding out not to be a magician at ten years old is not easy to swallow.
But deep down I knew to be a Muggle, my sister tells me since she read for the first time Harry Potter.
So I tried to wake me up.
Yes, trying to wake me up from a dream I was born prisoner, surrounded by an army of cold and cruel clouds.
On the fourth day I woke up.
From the normal night dark gray, is clear.
Because when I opened my eyes, around me there was no army of clouds, but only my usual enemies: the window glass and the outside world.
So, I got to sing.
Loud singing.
One day my grandmother told me that singing makes you feel better.
She is out of tune, but she often does.
My father says she's crazy, but it costs nothing to try.
The next day I get up and my head still hurts for the strip it came across with the day before. You see, it was just five ‘o clock when I started to warm up the uvula and my sister in the morning is like a cat after a cold shower.
However, I find the time to concentrate and try with super powers.
From Hulk's rage to Iron Man’s intelligence, through the hammer of Thor, I tried to defeat all my gray enemies, with no luck.
Indeed, I got also a good scolding from my father for having made a mess of his toolbox.
You see, my father has a huge hammer that seems to come from Asgard.
The sixth I finished the essay. And I won. Yes, I won the battle. Just one.
Not the whole war, because the gray is still there today, around me. In that one, the first of many, I just realized something.
If you want other colors, on that glass, you do not need magic and supernatural powers.
I am the missing color.
And only me can change the outside world.
With myself.
If we are many, a child, a color, we will delete all the gray from the windows.
And from our eyes too.
Also on Stories and News:
China, air pollution has forced the authorities of Harbin, a town of 11 million people, to a city shutdown, closing all activities, urging people to stay indoors.
We talk about a poisoning of the air 50 times higher than the maximum allowed.
Schools are closed, the children of a fifth grade have to write an essay: tells your days until they return to class.
The following is by Yimou, ten years old.
Essay.
This is my essay.
The title is 6. Six stands for six days.
The days I'll be here, in the bedroom, in front of the window.
My window has only one color, that is two.
Light gray and dark gray.
The color is not about the window.
The glass is transparent, I know. I wish it was not.
The outside world is the color, not me.
If it were up to me, it would be of any color except gray.
Both the glass and the outside world.
The type of gray decides our time.
Our family time, I mean.
Light gray, the holiday will end and my sister and I go back to school.
The same goes for mom and dad with work.
Dark gray, very dark, is the night.
This is easy, because if it is not the day...
But when it is dark gray in the morning the city closes.
And we write about until we come back out.
The second day I'm still here, in front of the window.
My mother asked me what I'm doing, morning and afternoon in the bedroom.
That’s for school, Mom, I said.
And for me, I thought when she came out to leave me alone.
I want to look at the window glass, fix it and try to change the color with my mind.
This is the day of magic. The power of my gaze will challenge the gray.
And I will banish it forever from the realm of colors.
On the third day I'm sad.
Finding out not to be a magician at ten years old is not easy to swallow.
But deep down I knew to be a Muggle, my sister tells me since she read for the first time Harry Potter.
So I tried to wake me up.
Yes, trying to wake me up from a dream I was born prisoner, surrounded by an army of cold and cruel clouds.
On the fourth day I woke up.
From the normal night dark gray, is clear.
Because when I opened my eyes, around me there was no army of clouds, but only my usual enemies: the window glass and the outside world.
So, I got to sing.
Loud singing.
One day my grandmother told me that singing makes you feel better.
She is out of tune, but she often does.
My father says she's crazy, but it costs nothing to try.
The next day I get up and my head still hurts for the strip it came across with the day before. You see, it was just five ‘o clock when I started to warm up the uvula and my sister in the morning is like a cat after a cold shower.
However, I find the time to concentrate and try with super powers.
From Hulk's rage to Iron Man’s intelligence, through the hammer of Thor, I tried to defeat all my gray enemies, with no luck.
Indeed, I got also a good scolding from my father for having made a mess of his toolbox.
You see, my father has a huge hammer that seems to come from Asgard.
The sixth I finished the essay. And I won. Yes, I won the battle. Just one.
Not the whole war, because the gray is still there today, around me. In that one, the first of many, I just realized something.
If you want other colors, on that glass, you do not need magic and supernatural powers.
I am the missing color.
And only me can change the outside world.
With myself.
If we are many, a child, a color, we will delete all the gray from the windows.
And from our eyes too.
Also on Stories and News: