Forbidden City Essay, Research Paper

Phan, Nam

Per. 5

English Book Report

Title: The Forbidden City

Author: William Bell

Ted and Alex Jackson had to go to Beijing to report a story. When Alex and Ted arrived at the capital city they met a guide named Lao-Xu, who directed them to the Beijing

Hotel. At the hotel, Ted and Alex meet Eddie Nowlan. Eddie is the reporter that Ted would be working with.

After settling into the routine of the hotel, Alex began observing Tian An Men square, and interviewing some of the students who were protesting. One night Ted and Eddie left to observe the square, Alex wanted to come, but Ted and Eddie wouldn’t let him. So Alex and Lao-Xu went out to see what all the machine gun fire was about.

When they got to the square they saw PLA soldiers shooting students, and crushing them with armored personnel carriers. This was the People’s Liberation Army.

As Lao-Xu and Alex stood on the curb, they watched students getting shot, Lao-Xu became enraged and ran out into the middle of the street and started shouting at the PLA soldiers. Suddenly one of the soldiers raised his gun and shot Lao-Xu several times. He fell to the ground as Alex took confidential pictures of the the soldiers killing Lao-Xu and other students, he turned and ran, for his life.

As Alex ran, he felt a sharp pain going up his leg, he had been shot, he started to feel dizzy and he wearily stumbled to the ground. As Alex laid on the ground some chinese students took Alex to a house.

In the house he met a woman named Nai Nai. Soon after he met a girl named Xin-Hua, the granddaughter of Nai. Xin-Hua and Alex became friends. Later, Alex meets Xin-Hua’s friends. With the help of Xin-Hua and her friends, Alex devises a plan to get to the Canadian Embassy.

One of Xin-Hua’s friends gives her a ping ban che to get across the city. Once on the road they made good time, on the way the two friends encountered some PLA soldiers, but they didn’t have any problems.

Once they arrived at the Canadian embassy gates they could not get in, so they headed for the airport. On the way to the airport they were stopped at a road block where Xin-Hua was taken into a nearby stand of trees and was shot. A PLA soldier forced him into a car, which took him to the airport where he was united with his father.They went back to Canada where they discovered that Alex was carrying videos of the things that happened while Alex, Ted, and Eddie were in Beijing.