Dragon's Gate (Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1867)

Dragon's Gate (Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1867)

by Laurence Yep
Dragon's Gate (Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1867)

Dragon's Gate (Golden Mountain Chronicles: 1867)

by Laurence Yep

Paperback

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Overview

In 1867, Otter travels from Three Willows Village in China to California — the Land of the Golden Mountain. There he will join his father and uncle.

In spite of the presence of family, Otter is a stranger among the other Chinese in this new land. And where he expected to see a land of goldfields, he sees only vast, cold whiteness. But Otter's dream is to learn all he can, take the technology back to the Middle Kingdom, and free China from the Manchu invaders.

Otter and the others board a machine that will change his life — a train for which he would open the Dragon's Gate.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780064404891
Publisher: HarperCollins
Publication date: 01/23/2001
Series: Golden Mountain Chronicles
Pages: 352
Sales rank: 1,030,074
Product dimensions: 5.12(w) x 7.62(h) x (d)
Age Range: 8 - 12 Years

About the Author

About The Author
Laurence Yep is the acclaimed author of more than sixty books for young people and a winner of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Award. His illustrious list of novels includes the Newbery Honor Books Dragonwings and Dragon's Gate; The Earth Dragon Awakes: The San Francisco Earthquake of 1906, a Texas Bluebonnet Award nominee; and The Dragon's Child: A Story of Angel Island, which he cowrote with his niece, Dr. Kathleen S. Yep, and was named a New York Public Library's "One Hundred Titles for Reading and Sharing" and a Bank Street College of Education Best Children's Book.

Mr. Yep grew up in San Francisco, where he was born. He attended Marquette University, graduated from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and received his PhD from the State University of New York at Buffalo. He lives in Pacific Grove, California, with his wife, the writer Joanne Ryder.

Read an Excerpt

Chapter One

The sixth month of the third year of
the era all In order, or July 1865.
Three Willows Village, Toishan County,
Kwangtung Province, China.

"They're coming!" the servant cried from the pass. "They're coming!" The cry traveled up the valley faster than the stream.

"They're coming!" the sentry announced from the watchtower.

All over the village of Three Willows, doors and gates slammed as people tumbled into the street. It was a clear day between summer storms, and the sky was a bright blue.

In the schoolroom, I could hear the slap of their feet on the dirt. Though I was only fourteen, I sat in the back of the schoolroom with the older boys because I was ahead of my level. I rose eagerly from the school bench.

At the front, Uncle Blacky, our teacher, was lecturing about some ancient words that might occur in the government exams. The exams would qualify you for office.

He was a slender, middle-aged man in a scholar's robes. There were small black marks on his lips, for he had an absentminded habit of licking his brushes to a point. "Yes, Otter."

"Master, may I be excused?" I asked. "I think my father and uncle have arrived."

"Of course." What else was he going to say? Most of the subscription for his new school had come from my own family.

When I got ready to run excitedly, he looked at me sternly "With dignity," he reminded me. That look was enough to intimidate my other classmates, but not me.

"I'm sorry, master." I started to walk away.

Behind me, I heard Stumpy laugh. He was the sixteenyear-old son of one of our tenants, and he wasalways trying to play the bully or to mock me when he thought it was safe.

When he wasn't playing one of his pranks, I almost felt sorry for him. His father, Stony, often needed Stumpy in the fields. As a result, Stumpy's schooling was sporadic; but he was sharp enough to make up for the lost time.

Immediately, Uncle Blacky strode down the aisle and grabbed Stumpy's frayed collar. "You should thank Heaven for people like Foxfire and Squeaky. Without their sacrifices, we'd all be starving."

As he lifted Stumpy to his feet, his son, Cricket, brought him his bamboo rod. A young man in his twenties, Cricket acted as his father's assistant while he pretended to study for the government exams.

Uncle Blacky shook the boy as though he were a rat. "I'll teach you some manners, you little pig. Hold out your hand."

Reluctantly, Stumpy held out his hand, palm upward. There were two groups of boys in our school: those whose fathers had stayed here and those whose fathers had gone overseas to America to become guests of the Land of the Golden Mountain, as everyone called it. The difference was often between the poor and the rich. Since the guests paid for the school, their sons led a privileged life. The other boys, though, were fair game.

Determined to do the right thing, I turned. "It was my fault, Master. You should hit me."

"Why can't you be a gentleman like Otter?" Uncle Blacky asked. He gave Stumpy six of the best across his palm, even though I had been the insolent one.

As he sat down, I whispered, "I'm sorry."

Stumpy rested his hand on the table but would not look at me. "I'm used to it."

I felt bad because I could see some of the boys cringing -- the ones whose fathers had stayed here. Uncle Blacky might give them six for not volunteering to answer a question; or even if they did, he might punish them if he judged their response a poor one.

What do you do when your family is so powerful that you lead a charmed life and even your teacher won't find fault with you? I tried to bring candy treats on different occasions for all my classmates. The poorer boys were lucky to get a bite of meat in an entire year, let alone taste sugar. And of course, on festivals, I used my allowance to buy toys and firecrackers for everyone. So I don't think they held it against me that Uncle Blacky treated me as his pet. The other guests' sons led just as protected a life.

Despite Uncle's bamboo rod, the school began to buzz with excitement behind me. When other guests came home, there were banquets and celebrations; but none of them could match one of Uncle Foxfire's homecomings. While Father and Uncle were home, life was one long festival of banquets and entertainments and fireworks displays.

I went out of the school into the little courtyard where porcelain stools sat in the shade of a tree. The entire setting was also the result of my family's donations. My mother was generous with everyone but herself.

As I stepped into the villages main street, I met my mother, Cassia, striding along, too impatient to be carried along in a sedan chair as her sister-in-law wanted her to do. As the clan said, Mother still had mud between her toes.

Mother was tugging self-consciously at her jade necklace. It was her one piece of jewelry-and it had taken Father an entire evening of arguing to make her keep it. Her blouse and pants were clean but plain.

"Look at you." She frowned. "Dirty already." Seizing my arm, she made me stop in the middle of the street. Then, to my chagrin, she began brushing off my clothes as if I were still a child.

For the homecoming, the Lion Rock lady -- Mother referred to her sister-in-law, Uncle Foxfire's wife, only as "that Lion Rock woman" -- had insisted on new clothes for herself and her son, whom everyone called the Little Emperor. She had taken me along as well when we went to her hometown, Lion Rock, which was the market town for our area.

Dragon's Gate. Copyright © by Laurence Yep. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.

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