Chen Rong, Class 9, Senior 2, Shenzhen Xin’an Middle School Instructed by He Liming, Tang Ying

    深圳市新安中学 高二（9）班 陈蓉 指导老师：贺黎明 汤颖

    During winter vacation, I went back to my hometown with my parents and brother. My hometown is in the countryside of Jiangsu Province. There, most of the trees have dried up and all the leaves have fallen off the trees, but there were not too many leaves on the ground. Maybe they had been blown away by the wind.

    Comparing my hometown in Jiangsu with Shenzhen, Jiangsu is a place with four distinctive seasons. During winter vacation, the average outdoor temperature was five degrees below zero. The surface of the river was covered with ice, but the ice on the river was not too thick, so I went boating with my brother and my mother.

    On both sides of the river, there were many plants, such as shrubs, reeds and some young trees. All of them were growing freely. It was so peaceful all around, with only the sound of my brother beating the water with branches, the sound of rowing by my mum and the sound of us breathing. Moments later, it was time for lunch, so my mum rowed the boat home. On the way home, my brother used the branches to strike the water and the ice on the water repeatedly.

    Suddenly, my brother gave a cry of delight: “Wow, look at it!” he said. I jumped up from my seat and saw a fish on the boat. It just so happened that a fish had jumped into our boat. What an amazing and amusing incident it was!

    The fish was covered with black gray scales and was about 10 cm long. It was struggling, and it needed water as we need air. It should be put back into the river but my brother treated it as a gift from nature. So we decided to keep it.

    My mum rowed as quickly as possible. Although I experienced the freezing cold wind beating my face, my heart felt warm and was full of excitement. We hoped the fish could survive. My brother used the branches to drip water on the fish again and again to keep it alive and paddled hard with branches, hoping to get the boat to go faster. However, it might have had no influence on the moving of the boat because the branches were not only thin but also short. At last, we put the fish in a big tank and the fish then swam about like it was in the river.

    We imagined we could go back to Shenzhen with it and buy another fish to let them play together and grow up together, like me and my brother. What’s more, we named it “little sesame” because it was as black as sesame.

    We let my dad and my grandpa watch the fish. However, my grandpa told us to put it back into the river because the fish in the river were fed by other people.

    Despite the fact that we were disappointed and reluctant, we still put it back into the river. Maybe it also had its home, his mum, his dad and his brother like me. They must miss him. After we put it into the river, I waved my hand and said “Goodbye” to “little sesame” with my brother, and then we went home quietly.