“Emmm… errrr…” an eerie sound filled the night, spreading its gentle beauty throughout Huanghuacheng Village. It seemed as if the sound came from nowhere, a diaphanous speaker singing its uncanny melody. The villagers in Huanghuacheng Village had learnt to both fear and respect this echo that resonated throughout the mountains, as they knew that every note represented each and every drop of sweat and tear of the millions who had sacrificed for the construction of the Great Wall. This sound was the Voice- the Voice of the Great Wall.


In Eastern China in the Ming Dynasty, a small village of two families lived as agrarians, cultivating the fertile land for food. The days passed by, no different from the day before.


One day, this all changed...


The sun was about to set. Yuwen and Yuanzhi, both from different families, lay their feet on the grassland, basking in the warm sunshine. Brushing their jet-black hair like a soft comb, the soft wind murmured inarticulate words in their ears. The flowers swayed in the zephyr, waltzing to the sound of the breeze. Before long, the blazing sun had crossed the sky and was about to dip its head under the hills to give way to the stars.


“Clop, clop, clop,” the steady sound of numerous horses came closer, kicking up the dirt on the plains so that the valley was just a blur of orange and brown. Puzzled, Yuwen and Yuanzhi stood on tiptoes, gazing curiously at the spectacle beneath them. They counted no less than 50 soldiers mounted on horses, each carrying a drawn-out sword that glittered under the sunlight. Ah Mee and Ah Yan, the only ones left in the house, both the boys’ mothers, came out to greet the soldiers and to inquire about the purpose of their unannounced visit. After a few minutes of intense conversation, the boys’ mothers started to protest. They shook their head in disagreement, retorting with inaudible words. The soldiers surrounded Ah Mee and Ah Yan and grasped their hands, not letting them move. Something was wrong.


Yuwen and Yuanzhi rushed down the steep incline to their mothers. When their mothers saw them, they let out a scream of despair and beckoned for them to run away. The soldiers looked up to see whom their captives were communicating with. When the general, the only soldier still on a horse, saw the boys, he nodded his head to betoken the soldiers to catch them.


The boys stood rooted to the spot for a few seconds before taking to their heels, sprinting away hell for leather. Yuanzhi, the more nimble of the two, tore into the nearby forest to hide. When Yuwen was about to barge into the forest like Yuanzhi, he felt a hand grasp tightly on his collar. A split-second later, a man knocked him over and pressed him to the ground.


Ten minutes later, all was silent, except for the weeping of Ah Mee and Ah Yan.


The soldiers took Yuwen across deserts, grasslands, plains, mountains, and beaches… Yuwen couldn’t keep track of all the various terrains in which he was brought to. On the way, the soldiers terrorized more villages, taking all the young men with them. As each day passed, the number of captives accumulated to a few hundred people. Every one had to walk over thousands of kilometers. Although each step was like an arrow piercing his body, Yuwen kept up the struggle. No information was given to them. They didn’t know what they needed to do, or where they were headed. All they knew was that they needed to go forward.


The days turned into weeks; the weeks turned into months. One afternoon, the captives reached a big trench where hundreds of other captives were already settled. Once everybody had sat down, the general spilled the beans. The Chinese emperor was lacking in laborers to build the Great Wall, so the emperor had called upon soldiers to round up men in all parts of China to assist the soldiers in the construction of the Great Wall. The Great Wall’s purpose was to prevent the barbaric Mongols in the north to invade into China. He informed the captives that the section of the wall, which they had been delegated to build, was called Yellow Flower Fortress or ‘Huanghuacheng’ in Chinese. He immediately sorted the big troop of people into different groups


“This group will be in charge of the brick laying,” the general pointed at Yuwen’s group. A minute later, his group was briefed about how to lay the bricks. They had to lay the brick in a certain pattern so that the wall remained sturdy. Right after the briefing, Yuwen got to work.


Before long, Yuwen’s life became a daily routine. In the morning, he was provided with a simple breakfast of porridge. Then, the general led him to the site of the Great Wall, where he would collect bricks and deposit them on the ever-growing Great Wall. This routine would be repeated until noon, when he was given another bowl of porridge and a cup of water for lunch. He would continue this routine until sunset when he was finally led back to the camps, a few tents for the laborers to sleep in. There was no furniture in the camps, and the only source of comfort was the blazing fire, which was set up every night to scare away wild predators. Yuwen had often thought about running away into the dark forest and putting all this behind him, but he knew that he would never make it alive out of the dense forest without food and water.


The work was very arduous. Easily the youngest, Yuwen had to work twice as hard to keep up with the fitter and stronger adults in his group. Even though the sun was shining brightly in the sky, casting its hot rays to bathe the earth in its boiling glow, he was still expected to work. Soon, summer gave way to winter and the thick snow, which had been accumulating on the Great Wall, further worsened the atrocities that the laborers faced. Every night, he was faced with severe cold and hunger. As each day passed, he witnessed more and more people just toppling over from exhaustion, lack of sleep, cold or hunger. These hapless cadavers were quickly taken away and dumped onto the surface of the ever-growing Great Wall because there was no better way of disposing of the corpses. Yuwen became gaunter and gaunter due to the lack of nutrition. In his heart, he feared the day when he too, was going to be dumped like a sack of potatoes on cold slabs of stone, left to rot forever. While Yuwen worked sedulously, his parents and neighbors worked equally hard…


On a road leading to Xian, a troop of five people consisting of Yuwen’s parents and Yuanzhi’s family sat down for a well-deserved rest. They had travelled many kilometers, asking everyone whether they knew about the whereabouts of Yuwen. Some said many people were led north, near Beijing. As a result, they trekked recklessly towards Beijing, oblivious to the freezing cold that wrapped them in its tight clench.


Time flew by, and Yuwen was on the verge of collapse- only the cacophonous sound of the general kept him in focus, reminding him of the massive job he had to accomplish. One day, a wave of exhaustion blew over Yuwen. He staggered for a bit, before staying still, swaying like the wind which he was used to in his homeland. The general’s cries grew softer, and Yuwen fell to his knees. He dropped the brick he was holding, and closed his eyes for the last time…


Two days later, a bevy of five people came up the slope to inquire about a boy. When they asked one of the workers, the worker pointed to the wall and shook his head. A cry rose up from within Ah Mee, as she leapt forward and banged her fists against the wall. No sound replied her drumming, but the voices of millions of dead civilians, raising their voices in harmony.


“Emmm… errrr…” an eerie sound filled the night, spreading its gentle beauty throughout Huanghuacheng Village. It seemed as if the sound came from nowhere, a diaphanous speaker singing its uncanny melody. The villagers in Huanghuacheng Village had learnt to both fear and respect this echo that resonated throughout the mountains, as they knew that every note represented each and every drop of sweat and tear of the millions that had sacrificed for the construction of the Great Wall. This sound was the Voice- the Voice of the Great Wall.