章 2: Leaving China
Lu Bao P.O.V
So I was now living in the streets of Beijing, sent out of the imperial palace by my father the Emperor, His Majesty Wu Ma. I had no money and knew no one who could help me.
People in the streets couldn't recognize me and I knew they wouldn't believe me if I had told them that I was the Crown Prince. With no imperial guards by my side, no procession, no splendid garment, and looking homeless, I was fully aware that it would just be a waste of time.
The hardest part of my sentence was when I became extremely hungry for the first time in my life. Something I had never experienced before. Though I disobeyed my father countless times while I was in the imperial palace, he had never punished me by depriving me of food but the street did.
I started begging random people for something to eat. However, it was like there was a plot against me. No one wanted to give me even what their dog wouldn't ingest. They had the same answer which was that "you are physically fit, you can get a job and make money that can help you buy anything you want." That was their most common answer to reject me.
The funny part was that all these people who insisted that I should work rather than mooching would have surely given me everything, even their last imperial coin if they were informed that I was the Crown Prince of the Empire of China because so calculating they were, they would expect me to favor them later when I hold the power.
I wasn't used to manual labor. That was something utterly foreign to me. So I had big trouble keeping a job that I found in a popular frog restaurant in Beijing where I had to wash tons of utensils in exchange for three meals in a day and a very small reward that didn't even amount to the tips that I donated to the beauties of the brothel that caused me my banishment from the imperial palace.
I slept at the back of the frog eatery on cardboard papers along with other homeless that had been in the streets for years and who thought at the beginning that it would just last a few days.
I became good friends with an old man who had fled from Shanghai when at the time of my grandfather, the late Emperor, His Majesty Bu Bang, the city faced an uprising of the laborers against the wealthy whom they accused of greediness and enslavement. They wanted to create a land of their own.
So the laborers attacked the properties of the unlucky targets such as my friend, the old man who lost his commercial center. When my grandfather sent the supreme imperial forces to restore order and peace, many entrepreneurs such as the old man had already sustained great losses.
Ultimately with time, he appreciated more being alive than possessing material. When he came to Beijing, he was completely out of place. Life was hard and like I was, he was used to commanding men and being obeyed. And now he had to apply for jobs and couldn't find one better than a dishwasher in a noodle eatery for the smallest pittance.
After some time I decided to move and change my nighttime sleeping hideout. I went over a hundred kilometers away from Beijing and arrived in Tianjin where there was a sea and a huge harbor, the port of Tanggu.
I met youngsters like me with different stories who had left their homes on a whim or because of misunderstandings with their parents or guardians. The tales about how they found themselves sometimes over one thousand kilometers away from their cities of origin, were simply appalling.
And when my mates asked about me, I finally made up a story that my parents had passed away, trapped in a wildfire that no one knew how it started and burned the house in the middle of the night. I told them that I had been unscathed because I had gone outside and was with other kids in the village chatting with no purpose.
They liked me and they showed me how I could survive by stealing goods in the containers that were being unloaded on the coast of the port of Tanggu.
However, it didn't last long for me. I was caught by a security agent who threatened to take me to the imperial police but I convinced him to release me and take a portion of my money. He accepted and I was free to go on the condition I would never come back there again.
I used the rest of the money with me to resist in the streets of Tianjin but I had no more entries and no job. So my income quickly decreased and soon I was going to starve again.
One day I was very upset with what had happened to me in the recent past. So I thought about leaving China once and for all.
I had no specific destination. I just wanted to move out of a land I considered now cursed.
Hence one day there was a ship in the port of Tanggu that was about to sail and go somewhere I didn't even know before boarding. I walked past the security and did as if I was a docker and when I noticed that no one was caring about my movements, I secretly entered the accommodation and went to hide in a room that seemed not too much attended.
I don't know how it was possible but I had never been caught throughout the endless voyage to the unknown. I spotted a place where they kept the reserves of food and served myself reasonably so I would not raise suspicion. I almost got caught one day but the man was in such a hurry that he didn't care about who I was, certainly assuming I was a regular employee of the ship.
Ultimately the ship berthed on the dock of a foreign land. I waited until it was night and disguised myself with the crew uniform and exited without talking to anyone I met on the way out.
But as I was moving forward inside the area where the ship had landed, people began to look at me strangely, for I was looking so different from them. I was a yellow walking human in the middle of all black individuals who were speaking in a language I had never heard before and it was quite intimidating.
Finally, I reached a point where I could no longer move ahead or go back. I was encircled by tall and slender topless black men equipped with daggers and arrows.
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