Beauty and the Barbarian

by Ginger wRong Chen

Second by second, the bitterness is brewing stronger and stronger as the sweet longing turns sour.
One day, three days, a week, two weeks, four weeks, she hasn’t shown up. Not a word, not even a peep. The moment hatred starts to bud, it is self-nurtured already.
Luke has been sick in bed for one month. His face is pale with sunken eyes and cheeks. His used-to-be-neatly-trimmed mustache has grown into chaos. The last time he saw Zhenzhen, she said: “Of course I will come back. If a little disease can stop me from seeing you, what is my love worth?”
Good question! What is her love worth?
She hasn’t visited him once ever since. He feels abandoned.
“She is probably somewhere inside the Han District entertaining her friends. Those so-called ‘friends,’ God knows who the hell they really are. I dare to say some are her lovers, some are just lovers. She is such a shameless bitch,” he thinks to himself. “I am in pain; she is having fun, bitch, a thousand times a bitch!”
“Ouc…” A sharp pang hits his chest.
If he had the energy, he would have gone into the Han District to seek her out and humiliate her. It would require a lot of costume and make-up work — he needed bronze to turn his white skin yellow; for his deep eyes and high nose, he would use a pair of big sunglasses; and for his blond hair, a black wig was a must-have — but all the trouble would be worth it.
He knows how much she hates losing face. She wants everyone to think of her as a precious flower, even sometimes appearing a little too exotic or wild to the common taste, but always fun and delicious. She can’t handle being laughed at in public. That would kill her. Yes, that would kill her real nice. Continue reading…

Groupthink Storytellers – Part II

Jeez Louise! This has been a crazy, strange week for us here at the HAL offices. First we get a huge response to our STORYTELLING GROUPTHINK meeting, with folks nearly crawling over one another to tell a tale. Then we get mysterious emails from mysterious writers, sitting outside of mysterious bars, who get mysterious notes from mysterious strangers who don’t tip their waitress (Please let’s all pitch in and send Jennifer 15% of that tab!). Now we get more Storytellers telling more stories! Will the madness ever end? Here are two more yarns for your listening pleasure! Enjoy.

Carrie Sanders: A Real Man

Robin Silver: Cream Puffs

Missed PART 1 of Storytellers? Check it out here.

STORYTELLING EVENT OCT: (Please note)

We are getting a lot of interest from people wanting to be storytellers at our storytelling event, so if you are in Shanghai and want a chance to join in please confirm with us at butler@haliterature.com ASAP. It might just turn into a competition to see who gets a slot, so act fast!

Groupthink: Storytellers

We write stuff. That’s what we do. We write and we read and we discuss stuff. That’s what Groupthink is. This week though we decided to go a different route. The route of our forepeeps. We wanted to get our olden timey on and do the whole “sittin'” by the fire telling tales thang”, and so we did. But HAL style.

Instead of a camp fire we sat around a table laden with cheep booze, getting hammered and chain smoking cigarettes of questionable authenticity. Yup, twenty people crowded around the tables at Crocus telling true tales. Real live stories! None of that fiction crap the kids are so crazy about these days. So sit back and enjoy these recordings from our evening of storytelling.

Oh, and just when you thought it couldn’t get any sweeter HAL is putting together the first ever Storytelling Event in Shanghai this coming October! We are looking for Storytellers, Musicians of all kinds along with Artists, illustrators, painters  and digital artists to join HAL in putting together an event that combines all these elements in a celebration of storytelling. Interested in joining? Email us at butler@haliterature.com

Click on the links below to listen to Groupthink live storytelling!

W.M.Butler: Extra Cracky KFC

David Hampson: Declare Your Pork Pies

Kitty Harlow: Mum, Dad, an Arabian Prince and an unspecified amount of Cocaine (We withhold, for now, from you this brilliant piece, it will instead be performed live in Shanghai soon by beautiful Kitty, stand by for updates on HAL events).

Check out more Groupthink storytellers.

The Emerald Necklace

By W. Nat Baker
For a long time Conrad said nothing but just stood there and stared at the cable. He read the first line again, “Auditors arriving Shanghai next week STOP.” His throat felt thick and dry and his hands moist and clammy. He leaned against his desk to steady himself. He read the words again. He needed more time, he thought. He had to think this out. He needed more time. He had one week, no more.
“Handle this for me,” he heard his boss say, “It’s been three years since we’ve been audited so plan on spending most of next week with them. Just show them what they want to see and take them through the books.”
“Yes, of course,” Conrad stammered, “it’s just that I had no idea that they were coming. Why didn’t London notify us so we could prepare?”
“Consider it lucky they gave us this much notice. Last time I got one day’s notice. They’ll just go over the books, make sure that everything’s in order, verify export orders, find some minor deficiencies to justify their job, write up a report, and leave. It’s nothing to worry about. It’s just routine.”
“Right,” Conrad replied.
For the rest of the afternoon the words “Auditors arriving Shanghai next week” struck his senses over and over again like a wailing siren that wouldn’t stop. “Nothing to worry about,” his boss had said. If only it were that simple he thought to himself. If only it were that simple.

Continue reading…

Of Bikes and Shanghai Street Mobs

Shanghainese had an inbred flair for the theatrical, participating in as well as watching spectacles. For this reason, as one amused American, Julian Schuman, observed, “street brawls were an accepted part of the city’s life, had their own rhythm and ceremony, and never failed to attract an enchanted audience.” These featured “a great deal of shouted bluster and insult, some of it fairly inventive. But rarely was a blow struck. The conventional windup was an appeal to the galley for adjudication, which was willingly rendered and usually abided by.”
– Stella Dong, Shanghai, the rise and fall of a decadent city.

By Willow Neilson

So many things in Shanghai seem to draw a crowd. Being a foreigner, sometimes your appearance alone attracts attention. When bartering with stall keepers, people will often mill around to eavesdrop on the interaction, sometimes offering a commentary to or asking the opinion of their equally ogling counterpart on the unfolding interaction.
I noticed a habit of the locals when it comes to dealing with merchants, the raised voice and the shocked or mocking expression accompanied by scoffing laughter when hearing the price is not seen as rude, but as the prelude to an unfolding drama, the raised volume of the conversation becomes a public relations spectacle.
Dramatic negotiations transpose to areas beyond commerce. When witnessing the chaotic spectacle of Shanghai roads, it is not surprising that road accidents become enthralling matinees for gawking onlookers. The greater the accident, the greater the crowd; from a distance one often sees throngs of spectator’s gathered around some spectacle made anonymous by the shroud of their backs.
Continue reading…

The Beautiful Country

by Katrina Hamlin

My name is Xiao Yu. I am nineteen.

I have eaten KFC fried chicken and onion rings, washed down with milk tea. Then I ate a doughnut, which is an incomplete cake with a hole in the middle.

I have heard rap, which is when you have a song but you don’t sing. I can do that at the KTV.

I have seen their TV show series, which are about real life, but with shiny teeth and hair and perfect love.

So I already knew quite a lot about the Beautiful Country when I met my first Beautiful Person.

The Beautiful Person, whose name was Sam, was still in some way not what I expected.

Continue reading…

Down in the Depths, the Very Very Depths

By JC

Sitting on the subway train thinking about rain Damon watched the man trying trying trying to touch a young woman. The train lurched, the woman leaned, then the man lunged. Paw. Breast. Contact.

When he’d awoken that cold windswept snowsleet Sunday afternoon, his apartment felt claustrophobic, a cluster-wart. Crust everywhere. He’d gone out out, into the air, the dim winter light but oh the cold. He needed to examine the city like an etherized patient, poke and prod its under-bits – how else could he experience it? and yet it was too cold and he was too hungover/dessicated/frailsick to do it aboveground.

You learn a city from its subways – he coined the aphorism as he bumped down the first flight of stairs, his body bumping down like a dragged suitcase. As he bought a fare card he decided he liked the idea – nearly everyone congregates here, and you can get a good look at them in a way you can’t when passing on a street.

He’d once thought of writing on the subway but he was too hungover. All he could come up with were titles.

My second novel will be called ‘Dark Star: a Memoir of Addiction.’ It will be about a nine-year old girl and her very happy childhood. It’s like, something something something about how that happy childhood feeling won’t last, it’s transitory, just like addiction? Or drugs. Something like that.

The subway squealed to a stop: eeeesh, his cotton candy brain. His brainbox felt drier than a Kleenex in the desert. Continue reading…

Coins

by Mark Talacko

I rose early to the cool dawn light and the voice from the loudspeakers. School would start again, but not today. Today I was free to run headlong at my future.

I sprang from the kang and pulled on my cotton padded pants and jacket, slipped on my cloth shoes and threw back the curtain that separated our sleeping quarters from the rest of the space that we called home.

My mother ladled out rice porridge with chunks of taro into a cracked bowl and set down a cold, hard boiled egg on the table my father had built from discarded wooden crates.

She told me that was all we had and gave a wistful smile.

But tomorrow we might have pork, she announced with fleeting vigour and gathered up the dishes her and my father had used. She said this every morning, like a prayer and put the dishes in the blackened and dented pot to take them outside to wash.

I bolted down my breakfast and ran for the door just as my father was coming in. His leathery hands halted my forward progress momentarily.

Whoah. Where are you speeding off to? Don’t you have school to prepare for? They’re starting classes again soon, he said looking me up and down like he didn’t really recognize me.

I know. I know, but I have to go. There’s going to be some rennao down by the river today. I’ll prepare tomorrow.

I heard about that.

He seemed to be weighing something in his mind. His eyes took on the same look they did when he told me stories from his youth.

Yes. You should go see what it’s all about. Wouldn’t want to miss it. No. Not a young man. Continue reading…

Hard Seat from Shenzhen to Shenyang Chapter 4

Different Lines

By Miller Wey

On the way back to his seat, the young businessman spotted the boy. He was sleeping deeply with head was pressed flat on the glass of the train window and much of his body with it, forced over by the man next to him, a large man with a hard, dark face in a rough navy blue sports coat. When the young businessman had passed the seat before he hadn’t been there. He must have just gotten on the train from some nameless, small Chinese town. Why on earth would this foreign boy, maybe a few years younger than him, be getting on to a train to Shenyang in the middle of nowhere? Maybe he was an English teacher? Could he be one of those backpackers with an overstuffed North Face bag living like a snail with his house on his back?

As the young businessman walked past the boy, he held his breath. Recognition by another foreigner meant excited, staring eyes. Questions. Questions. The same questions. WhatsyournamehaveyoubeeninChinalongcanyouspeakChineseyoucan’t-speakanybetterthanthatshouldn’tyouknowwhatyou’redoingImakemoremoneythan-you? He pushed and gave gingerly through the people standing in the aisle and glanced the way of the foreign boy, still deep in sleep.

Continue reading…

Pandas Unleashed

by Willow Neilson

Wildlife authorities realized in the past,
We need to find ways to make certain species last,
Practices were put forth and they made distinctions,
In an effort to save cherished creatures from extinction,
They devised methods to have offenders reprimanded,
Governments pandered to demands and they saved some pandas,
Kept in captivity in breeding pairs,
So future generations need not despair,
But a problem was found, it wasn’t long til they knew it,
The problem for pandas was that they don’t like to do it.
Maybe they had mismatched, like previously with the Kodiaks,
They even sort consultation to check compatible zodiacs,
Schemes were hatched and ideas were born,
They even tried making erotic panda porn, Continue reading…