part of my novel (Poi Yong) -really need to get this finished-

Chapter 1
The Pig, The Soup And The Storm

We will now start the story of an eleven year old girl called Poi Zhou, she lived in a small village in GuangZhou in China with her mother Mun Yong Zhou.
Poi’s mother was very ill with a serious condition of angina, and her father Rui Yan Zhou had recently, mysteriously died on a trip to Xi’an, where he had tried to find work, the authoroties had apparently not been able to find out how Rui Yan had died.
Poi was only ten years old at the time of her fathers death.
Mun Yong had been very badly affected on the death of her dearly loved husband, but she tried her best to keep her sadness away from Poi, but Poi had sensed that her mother was now very glum and Mun Yong was in no fit state to work and had given up all hope of finding work, her illness got worser as time went on.

They lived in a village where the patterns of agriculture had gone on for centuries.
The hut was very inadaguete, the walls were made of dried plastered mud and the roof straw. Poi would help her mother grow their own vegetables in their vegetable patch, and in all weathers would collect wood for the hut’s fire. They had to put up with bitter winters but when the summer came they would bake in the small hut, so they would prefer to sleep outside.
They were both soaked in poverty and went through a constant cycle of famine, flooding and sometimes even attacked by bandits.

Poi would try and earn money for the medicine that her mum needed by doing small jobs for people in the village, she helped them feed and herd their livestock and would muck out the stables.
She tried to find as much little jobs as she could to scrape together money for her mothers much needed medicine, Poi had already lost her father and did not want to also lose her mother.
Poi’s mother insisted that she would never work in the terrible, unimaginable conditions of the factorys, but Poi thought that she would do anything for her mother.

They could not afford education, just like everone else in the village, so when Poi was not helping her mother or trying to earn some money, she would run around the village with all of the other little children and play games, her personal favourite was pig rodeo, when a pig had escaped from its sty poi would try and jump on the back of the escaped pig and see who could stay on the beast the longest. Poi would usuualy.

Poi sometimes felt that she was always blamed for things that she just couldn’t explain how they happened, for instance when Poi was being teased by a small scrawny little boy that had some delicious soup in a large wooden bowl, Poi got rather upset as she was extremely hungry, and all of a sudden the boy leapt back screaming and thrust the bowl to the floor, the soup had gone and in its place was a dead, black haired rat with a severed head the only liguid left in the bowl was the rats blood.
Poi could not explain how this had happened but altogether had been blamed for this ‘incident’.The only person that had believed her of not doing it was her mother.

On one cold windy night a terrible storm had crept over the village, Poi was down the hillside by the lake fishing, a little way away from the village, she heard the thunder crashing above her head and the bolts of lightning shocking the clouds above like a haunted fireworks display, the dark, grey clouds swerved in and out of each other like sharks fighting over chunks, of bloody meat.Poi heard the horses and cows moaning in distress, and heard one of the villagers screaming, a long horrible cry “FIRE!”.
‘Mum’ thought Poi, Poi was really worried about her mother, Poi jumped to a halt, let go of her fishing rod and knowing that it wouldn’t help that much, she dipped the wooden bucket that was next to her into the lake and obtained some icy cold water, Poi raced back up the hill, toward the village, praying.When she got there she stood frozen to the spot, all of the villagers were out of their huts, screaming in panick, as they threw buckets of water over a hut that was on fire, it must have caught fire from a bolt of lightning, Poi ran through the crowd in her mind she was screaming but could not suspress a sound, was her mother trapped inside the fire, too weak to even try and get out, her lungs too clogged up with strong, dark billowing smoke. Poi still had the bucket of water in her now shaking hand, the temperature of the water was no longer cold because of the overpowering heat of the fire, Poi thrust the water over the burning hut, the water seemed to evaporate before it even came in contact with the fire, Poi had now fallen to her knees, she was now screaming, she felt helpless, the storm had now died away...