Carrying the Edge of the Waves

The salty sea breeze carried the embers of artillery fire and dispersed them at the Macau Pier in 1844. Sixty-nine-year-old, she was leaning against the third-floor window of the "Jinfan Pavilion" casino, her skinny fingers caressing a dagger inlaid with coral - it was the only relic that was not swallowed up by the Pearl River when her father fell into the water eighty years ago. The Portuguese sailor downstairs was shouting in blunt Cantonese: "That widow... I heard that all the men who slept with her were fed to fish?" She burst into laughter. The tip of the knife opened the sandalwood box, revealing the yellowed "Red Flag Gang Roster", with dense cinnabar circles recording the names of the deceased. In the blood-soaked corner of the first page, there is written crookedly the oath made when she was twenty: "The life of a girl from the Dan family will either sink at the bottom of the river or be carved on the top of the waves." She spent her whole life standing on the waves of the South China Sea, protecting the people in her own way.