The Bookish Bird

by b

“你好”? “你好?” “恭喜发财”?

“你妈的逼,” screamed 文文 the black parrot in response at the three Chinese older women outside the bird shop, who had tried to engage him in a light conversation. They looked at each other in disbelief, looked at me for some kind of explanation, then again at 文文 the black parrot, now quite and uninterested. I could hear the fat and bald shop owner giggle from the back of the shop. The big black dog gave off a big bark from his undersized cage placed right beneath the bird cage, next to a big carton box containing baby rabbits.

I was used to walking through the animal market every afternoon on my way back from work, and had gotten used to spending 20 minutes or so with 文文. He was mostly a very polite little creature, and greetings and nice phrases such as “欢迎光临” was all I had ever heard him say. Odd. The ladies walked off shaking their heads. I felt puzzled, yet oddly encouraged; Shanghai apparently still held surprises for me.

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The Buttman Cometh

by Dan Plunkett

I was nursing a warm Carlsberg when she burst in through the Crocus Bar doors screaming. Her clothing was tattered and torn; a look of insane bewilderment accompanied this tragic vixen as she collapsed onto the floor in tears. I turned on my stool to watch as several of the female employees rushed over to help the woman off her feet. She continued screaming until one mole-faced employee covered her revealed body in a coat from the lost and found behind the bar. They took turns trying to coax the story out of her. She was muttering something that I could barely catch over the whines of the various bar inhabitants. Something about an eye. I overheard one barback mention something about rape, as another went to go call the authorities. Yanqiu! Yanqiu! She kept repeating, over and over again. She screamed it at the paramedics when they arrived, and the screams continued to echo until the blue and red sirens made their way past the corner of Xikang Lu.

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Siberian Muskrat

by Christine Forte

This story was told to me by one of my middle-school students whose Shanghainese grandmother had told it to her. They both swear up and down that it’s true.

In the early 1950s, in those jubilant days just after the foundation of the Republic, it was common for young lovers to quietly slip out of the homes where they lived with their parents, grandparents and siblings to meet one another in the dark, quiet corners of Shanghai’s then still abundant lanes and alleys. (Of course, my student’s grandmother had never participated in any of this but had merely heard about it in whispers from her friends and neighbors.)

Then, as now, it was near impossible to be truly alone in one of these dark passageways, as even when there were no other humans around one would still often encounter creatures of other varieties. There were, of course, the common rats, stray cats, and occasional cockroaches. None of which were seen as threats to privacy or safety, rather they were simply natural parts of Shanghai lane life. More rarely, however, a Siberian muskrat would appear. These animals were long and furry, quite similar in appearance to a bushy overgrown lemur. As carnivores who routinely feasted on rats and mice, they also had a ferocious set of teeth and so were much feared by the female half of the loving Shanghai couples hiding in the lanes.

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Hunny Pot

by Willow Neilson

My friend and I were in the sex shop on Xiang Yang Lu, just out of curiosity of course, when we spotted a Winnie the Pooh doll donning a gimp mask. It was sewn to accommodate the particular proportions of his head, his snout jutting outwards atop his yellow body. The black leather balaclava with zippered opening for the mouth gave the once cute bear a sinister glint; the misspelling of the pot containing “Hunny” atop his rotund belly now symbolizing more of a base and barbaric nature than that of a cuddly simpleton.

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Train

by Dena Rash Guzman

I was channeling Rimbaud when the train went off the rails. Tom Thumb the dreamer was there sowing the roads with rhymes. My inn sign would have no Great Bear, my only Bohemia would be perhaps a beer, or a Queen song from a lucky jukebox. I was caught up in supposing that the train

On board: black hair, black hair, no hair, black hair, black hair and me, if you can imagine it, with blond hair

would stop and that I’d find something Western. Fantasy. I had packed twenty minutes before I was to leave – some blouses, two pairs of jeans, a nice dress for work, a pair of boots for rain and a pair of heels.

On the street: red heels, black heels, blue heels, black kitten heels and me, if you can imagine it, in Paris, in scuffed yellow clogs

My destination was no Paris, but I’d also packed my beret. Nights I pick fights I wear that beret. It’s of fine wool and silk satin, a Basque one. That’s original. In it, I’m a shepherdess of the nightclub throngs, a Swedish cigarette smoking member of the Underground, trouble in scuffed yellow clogs. “I was just in Stockholm, you see. Fuck off!” I bash hard. The next day I’m on a train, looking out windows.

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Detox

I picked up the phone and heard his voice weak and in slow motion, “I…think…I…am…dying.”

It was the first guy I dated in Shanghai. He was dying, always dying, at least once in every five weeks: fighting, pneumonia, car accident, overdose, allergy attack…

He simply couldn’t prevent himself from getting into emergencies.

Till now, I can still hear his “I…am…dying” from time to time, when I stand at a crosswalk with cars coming from every direction; when I look down from 100 Century Avenue, feeling the nausea or when people finally build up their nerves and ask the number one of the top ten boring and clichéd questions— What’s Shanghai to you?

Seventeen minutes after I answered his call, I showed up in our apartment, panting, short of breath. Not an easy task, considering how tough it is to get a taxi when you really need one in Shanghai. I actually ran that day, on heels. No kidding. He was lying in the middle of the living room floor, marble, icy cold, with knees, elbows his neck bent towards his chest, like a cocoon. I knelt down and leaned down next to his curled-up body. His face was pale as wax, sweating, shivering.

“Oh, poor thing, you ARE dying.” I confirmed his assumption.

I looked around and saw a plate of oyster shells. I picked one up and took a sniff: Phew! 
 “Honey, you don’t eat oysters that are bathed in a sauna.”
 My eyes stretched a bit further and landed on an empty bottle of Hongxing Erguotou. 
 “And you certainly don’t mix them with cheap Baijiu that burns your organs.” 
I stood up, recovered my poise, took off my coat, walked to the coat hanger, hung my coat, approached the bar, made a Negroni, took a sip, put more Campari in, took the second sip, satisfied, I walked back to the man who was in pain. I wasn’t being indifferent or cool, I had just thought through the suitable procedure for his situation. I am a trained caregiver, I know what I am doing: 
 I laid down a blanket with a silk surface and stuffing of down by his side. I rolled him onto the blanket.

I took off his shirt, pants, and socks.

I wiped his face, fingers, toes, back and stomach with a hot towel.

I wrapped him up with a thick wool blanket with soft cotton cover.

Then I went to the kitchen, put a pot of milk on the gas stove. While stirring the milk, I threw in fennel, cloves, cinnamon, peppercorns, and star anise. I kept on stirring till from the pot rose the pungent smell of spices. I turned off the gas and poured the liquid into a white porcelain bowl.

I walked back into the living room with the aromatic milk and an empty bucket with black plastic bag lining.

I put the bucket by his head and started feeding him the milky soup I just made.

He sniffed it and frowned.” You need this.” I insisted.

There is no place for a dying man to negotiate.

After three spoons, he rushed his head over the bucket and started vomiting. Oh, those rotten oysters marinated with Baijiu mixed up with human juices. How colorful!

He kept on retching long after his stomach was emptied. It felt like he was throwing up his stomach, his liver, his guts, and his testicles. As he was vomiting, he couldn’t stop murmuring, “God…I’m…dying…oh…I’m…I’m…dy…ing.”

“You are not dying. You are getting better.” When he finally calmed down in peace, I gave him a glass of pure water so he could wash the stink off his mouth.

He was still pale, but more like rice paper than wax now. No more sweating and shivering. He rested with eyes closed, still with bent knees, elbows and neck, more like a baby than cocoon, peaceful and clean, inside and out.

I lay myself down by his side and wrapped an arm around him from behind, and said, “I think you want all these.”

“Mmm.” weakly he made an ambiguous sound. I couldn’t see his face, so I could not know what expression he had.

“I think you want to get sick. I think you want to be taken care of.”

“Mmm.” Another ambiguous sound.

The next morning, when I woke up, I found a pillow in my arms, a letter attached:

My Darling One,

You are absolutely right. I want all these.

I want to get sick, so sick that all I care is to get well.

I want to hit bottom, so I can go back to live with the minimum needs.

So all the desires and obsessions aroused by commercial machines would be cleansed out of my body.

Living in Shanghai, poison is my best medicine; you call it getting sick; I call it detoxification.

And of course, to know that I am not alone when I am sick, that’s comforting too. I know this is not love, only companionship. But still, it is something.

The finest way to wake up in Shanghai: minimum needs, total satisfaction. It won’t last long, so I have to run.

Love

Z

I’ve been keeping this letter till today. It is attached to the dressing table. Every time I put on my mask, sorry, make-up, I read it once.

The first advice I got in Shanghai was love is a luxury. Companionship is minimum need.

And it never stops being true.

Water

by Danielle LeClerc

Plop.

Water was the first thing she thought of that day.

Plop.

Water that broke on the curve of her forehead, sliding into her eye socket and into her dark hair, all rat’s tails after a night’s rolling.

Plop.

Kai Ying sat up and raised one bone shoulder to the cement, then the other.  Grandmother says it’s important to stretch mindfully each morning if you’ve slept in a hard, cold place.  But today she rushed the familiar movements: cheating when her nose opened to smell the water.  Cheating as she strained to identify the sounds coming from the stairwell and the floor above.  Nowhere in the shadows could she see her mother or father.

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The Other Side of the Coin

by Tobias Andersson Åkerblom

No reflection could be seen in Arthur’s eyes. He held the coin between his index finger and thumb and gazed into the absolute absence of matter in front of him.  A sound, or a sensation, resembling a string orchestra swept through his head. He had taken the coin out of his pocket after feeling a slight sucking sensation, wondering what it was. What he was now seeing was not like anything he had ever seen. For the first time in his life, he could grasp the grandness of existense.

-Shit, he said as he realized that on the other side of the Chinese tree peony that decorates the one yuan coin, a black hole was forming. He quickly resorted to putting the coin into a plastic  bag and placing it upside down on his hardwood kitchen table before heading off to work.

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Rabbit Hole

by Katrina Hamlin

Once upon a time someone had told her not to go out into the dark, dark city when the sun went down. Shanghai was full of monsters after midnight, she was warned.

She was told not to go out into the dark, dark city. But she went out.

She left a trail of rice behind her, so she could find her way back.

She followed the music in the air, towards the bright, distant lights.

She found a city built from the Frankenstein shards and splinters of other places and peoples. She couldn’t understand what she heard and saw, because they didn’t make sense, together or apart; red rabbits and Father Christmas and pink tinsel and gold characters and toneless speech and sing-a-long, ghostly laowai and rosy cheeked Shanghairen slamming glasses on the table, dancing on the bar, sleeping on the floor, falling out the door and blowing smoke into the night.

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Stained

Sketchbook

by Lindsay Redifer

illustrated by Robin Wang

Bang!

The metro doors bulge for a second and the train seems to go faster. It’s as if someone trapped in the tunnel has made a desperate attempt to get through the doors shoulders first. The sound is angry. I’ve only slept a few hours, I remind myself. I could be hallucinating.

Deep breath.

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