My Beast Legion

The Chinese New Year is a time for families to come together and celebrate, but for children, it is also a time for receiving red envelopes filled with New Year's money from their elders. I was eleven years old, a sixth-grade student who was eagerly looking forward to this tradition. My parents usually help us save the money for future needs. However, my priorities were not the same as my parents. I was more interested in using the money for gaming purposes, just the same as my little brother. 

In addition to playing video games, there was another game that we loved at the time. It’s a table-top game. During that time, I was preparing to graduate from elementary school, and everyone's study pressure was relatively easy. In our grade, there was a popular game called “flying car.” What we did is to fold a piece of A4 paper into the shape
of a spaceship and put them all on a desk. We would take turns bouncing our ships with the goal of knocking everyone else's ships off the table. In order to be invincible in the game, I made several large spaceships which are made of four A4 papers. It is four times the size of a normal paper spaceship, and it can even fit two books inside. At this time, the large spaceship is an unshakable fortress. I named those armies of my spaceships the “Beast Legion.” I don't quite remember why I called them the Legion of Beasts. It may be because I gave each spaceship in my legion a name that belongs to a beast, such as, Falcon, Mammoth or Lion. . . The only thing which stays in my memory is that during that time, I really cared about my legion and treated them as treasures of mine. I even kept them on my bedside cabinet before I went to sleep.

That was a winter, on the eve of the Chinese New Year, when my brother and I celebrated the festival as usual. Our family gathered together for a big reunion dinner. We helped our parents and grandparents to prepare special foods such as dumplings, fish, and rice cakes. We also helped to clean the house, to decorate with red lanterns and couplets, and to set off firecrackers to drive away evil spirits. At midnight, we watched the CCTV New Year's Gala on TV with our family, which is a variety show featuring singers, dancers, and comedians. After that, is the most exciting part; they gave us some red envelopes filled with money as a symbol of good luck. Furthermore, on the next day, we would visit relatives and friends, and receive more red envelopes.

There was not much money in the red envelopes, only a few hundred Yuan. If converted it into US dollars, it would be only like fifty or sixty, but for me at the time, for a kid who have not even graduated from elementary school, it was definitely a huge amount of money. This is the one time of the year, or might be the only time that we have the opportunity to own this much of money. Normally, we will hand over the money to our parents a few days after receiving the red envelope, because the children don’t really need this much of money, and it is also dangerous to walk on the street with the money inside our pocket, so we usually will hand over the red envelopes to our parents for safekeeping. However, this time, after my brother and I had received our red envelopes, instead of giving the money to our parents as we usually did, we made a daring decision. I took the money and placed it inside a paper spaceship I made, one of my Beast Legion members. I hid the money and save it for our own use.

After I had hidden the money inside the paper spaceship and left it in my room, I went about my day as usual, assuming that my treasure was safe. However, my plan took an unexpected turn when my mom came in to clean my room. Unbeknownst to her, the paper spaceship was not just any ordinary piece of paper. It was a carefully crafted, four-paper structure that housed my New Year's money. She thought it was just a regular piece of trash and threw it away with the rest of the discarded items in the room. I didn't realize what had happened until later that day when I went to retrieve the spaceship and found it was nowhere to be found. Panic set in as I searched my room high and low, checking all the trash cans and even the recycling bin. It wasn't until I remembered that my mom had been in my room earlier that day that I realized what had happened. When I realized it was gone, I frantically searched my room, again. My brother and I searched every place, checking every trash can in the house. 

As soon as we noticed that the trash bag might have ended up in a public trash can, we ran as fast as we could towards the nearest one. My heart was racing with anticipation and fear, hoping that my paper spaceship was still inside the bag. We raced through the block of houses and took the bush path that only children knew about. When we arrived at the dump, I could hardly contain my excitement. We searched for the garbage, and finally, I saw it. I was overjoyed, I saw the garbage bag with my paper spaceship in it, but my happiness was short-lived. Before I could open my mouth to yell at my brother to tell him what I saw, my heart fell into the ice cave again. My younger brother should have noticed my strangeness, and following my gaze, he also saw the culprit that made me become like this. It was a homeless man, rummaging through the trash.

As we stood there, my mind was flooded with a range of emotions. I was worried about the money that we had hidden inside the bag, and whether the homeless man would find it. I was also worried about the safety of my younger brother and myself. My thoughts raced, and I wondered if we should just turn around and go home. However, we remained rooted to the spot, staring at the homeless man. I don't know what we were waiting for; maybe we were waiting for the moment when this homeless man turned around. When we stood there like a pillar long enough for the homeless person to notice us, he looked at us, and I saw him clearly. He was a tall, scruffy man, with ragged clothes and a rough beard. His appearance sent shivers down my spine, and I was filled with fear. We looked at each other, and at this moment, countless thoughts ran through my mind like flowing water with the stench of the garbage dump: what should I do! Why does it smell so bad in here! I must protect my brother! What about the money! What would he do if he knew there was money in it? Should I just turn around and go home now? If I run straight up, will he come and chase me? Most importantly, will he hurt me and my brother? I don't know how long we looked at each other, I said, I don't remember if my voice was trembling, "I want my trash back", I spit out this sentence as if I wanted to spit out all the stress and fear. I looked at him and didn't expect a response, all I could think was, if he did anything unusual, I would run with my brother, into the bush path that only our kids could get through, and pray for that homeless person wouldn't go to such trouble trying to drill down that trail just because he was meeting someone for the first time.

To my surprise, the bum responded. "Is this it?" He asked, looking in the direction of his finger, I was even more surprised. He actually pointed straight at the trash bag with my spaceship in it. I don't know how he guessed our target, maybe he also noticed the spaceship and guessed it belonged to the kids, or maybe he found the money inside and thought only people who come back to get the lost money come to this dump. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I managed to speak, “Yeah”, I nodded, and took the garbage bag that the homeless man handed back to us. I couldn't believe it. I had my paper spaceship back, and we were safe. I looked back at the homeless man, who was now back to rummaging through the trash. As we left the dump, I couldn't help but feel a sense of gratitude towards the homeless man. He could have taken the money or the spaceship, but he didn't.

When we got home, we didn't check the money inside at first, but lay on the bed, reminiscing about what happened today. My brother and I looked at each other. That day was not just a thrilling adventure for us, but also an experience and feeling that we had never experienced before. Not only amazed by the kindness of the homeless man, but also his insight that can directly guess our thoughts. I turned my head and looked at the paper spaceship we had brought back so hard, my “Beast Legion”. At that time, at least at that moment, the money didn't seem so important to me.

"Empty Red Envelopes from CMB" by SoQ錫濛譙 is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/2.0/jp/?ref=openverse.