Disobey Read Online Free

seven-hundred-and-fifty-mile journey to where China bordered British-ruled Hong Kong, the place he’d set his heart on being.

    He’d sneaked into the back of his uncle’s lorry, without thought or goodbye to his parents, and had lain crammed amongst the metal rungs for over a week, with barely any water and certainly no food for the whole of the journey.
    When Chang had arrived in Lo Wu, he’d slept rough, hiding out in the backstreets. During the day he’d tried to glean information about how to cross the border to Hong Kong. It’d taken over a month for Chang to find out what he needed, during which time he’d stolen food from shops and broken into houses to steal money. It all came naturally to him; even though crime had previously been absent in his life it now seemed second nature, and although he was fending for himself at only fourteen, Chang was the happiest he’d ever felt.
    A man Chang had met when he’d been getting something to eat had told him about the yellow waters of the Sham Chun River which flowed unceasingly under the Lo Wu bridge; the only link between China and Hong Kong.
    He’d told Chang about the town of Sham Chun which stood on the river, a few miles down from Lo Wu, telling Chang about the people who’d risked their lives by swimming the river to the British side to escape communist China.
    But Chang hadn’t seen it as a risk as he’d listened to the tales of those that’d made it and those that’d perished by drowning or from the bullets of the soldiers who stood in the chain of sentry boxes along the shore. No, Chang had seen it as his bid to freedom.
    At its widest point the river was less than a quarter of a mile across; an easy crossing to a strong swimmer like Chang. What wasn’t so easy to avoid was the manned twenty-four hours a day armed guards searching the river banks for any would-be escapees hiding out until the darkness of night.

    Over the next few weeks, Chang took daily trips to Sham Chun to survey the river, taking in the position of the sentry boxes and the patrolling guard’s schedule, then on the 3rd July 1965 Chang hid amongst the rushes of the river, waiting for his chance to make the journey across.
    Chang knew from hearing the nightly echoing of bullets across the river that the sentries would fire at the slightest noise and the waters would be aglow and riddled with bullets, but neither this nor the stories of failed escape attempts could deter Chang from lowering himself quietly into the cold blackness of the river.
    The swim across had been almost uneventful until he’d seen a family of six a few metres behind him. The youngest child had begun to cry, and had immediately brought attention to the escapees.
    Without a moment’s hesitation on hearing the child’s noise, the guards had opened fire, killing all those present and wounding Chang in his leg. The wound had been deep and the blood had poured out into the river but Chang had continued to swim through his pain and haziness, making it across to the other side, onto the safety of British-ruled soil.
    He’d blacked out on the river bank and had woken up in the back of an old van, after a kindly man had driven past and seen him lying there. The man had taken Chang to his home, a tiny, squalid apartment within Kowloon Walled City; once thought to be the most densely populated place on Earth, with 50,000 people crammed into only a few blocks,
    From the Fifties the walled city had been run by the triads and this was the place Chang Lee had learnt his trade; prostitution, gambling, drug dealing, along with implementing fear and torture.
    Chang had lived within the walls of the city until the government destroyed it in 1994, forcibly evicting everyone; but by this time, Chang had become one of the most feared triads – powerful and ruthless, still basing his ethos on Chairman Mao.
    Chang hadn’t minded leaving Kowloon Walled City, the place had become too small for him, and he too big for the place, and