Lighthouse Beacon

by B

At the far side of the outdoor bar I sit, drink in hand, coat on chair, eyes on you.

You are on the dance floor, far, far away, but I can see you through my telescope: through the prism of the dark and yellow contents of my drink, over the head of the bartender, past the endless rows of bottles, over the other side of the wood, through the gap between the two drunken beer drinking Irish guys – a capsizing rowboat in the middle of a dark unruly sea of syncopated moving male bodies your silver dress flashes by…and by…

Flash…Flash…Flash…

It is hope of salvation where there is none to be had, that silver flash, but through my telescope it is not to be had, it’s the pulsing beacon from a drifting lighthouse, no shore and no anchor, just that rhythmically (moving male bodies) reoccurring light. Drink in hand, coat on chair, eyes on you, I know what the beacon should mean, but it doesn’t.

“Give me another one!” I command the barman, it arrives, and I down it, ordering another one.

Flash…Flash…Flash…

The beacon of my lighthouse. Me, it’s driving further out to sea, and its quality keeps changing in itself, not rhythmically (moving male bodies) but from the inside and out, from my side of the telescope, over the head of the bartender pouring my drink, past the endless rows of bottles, over the wood, through the gap between the two drunken whiskey shooting Irish guys, in the middle of a sea of rhythmically (moving male bodies) and back: from within that angel dress I bought you, out of the merry evening waters of a dance floor Friday evening out, between two Irish drunks, over the bar, past the girl serving me my drink, through my prism, and – oh glory! – rays of sunshine, endlessly and all illuminating penetrating me.

Flash…Flash…Flash…

“One more!”, and it comes. And I down it, ordering yet another. Drink in hand, coat on chair, eyes on you.

the recipe

by Ling’Ling

take one serving ‘tuesday night exitbar blackout’ mixed in with a wednesday morning sleep-in that costs more than an entire day’s wages. rinse and repeat on thursday and friday. take your weekend and piss away a min’gong fortune at overpriced, crappy restaurants and ‘classy’ bars that you hate. for extra spice, have a few too many drinks on saturday, make-out with someone you shouldn’t and insult a close friend; make an ass of yourself at the bar or send some emails/text messages that will make you cringe the following day. remember the girl you were trying to break up with this week? take her home from the bar and have a few more whiskies so that you’re too drunk to fuck, she won’t mind.

avoid your friends while making an effort to see people that you don’t really care about, or that you’re trying to fuck. reply to all the emails that you want to ignore, and ignore all the emails that you want to reply to. masturbate too much or too little, according to taste.

make sure you forget to let the cat out of your room before you leave today so that he can piss all over your bed or laundry. smoke in bed and burn a hole in your pillow which nicely compliments the scent of stale sex and cat piss. lose your mp3 player and smoke too many cigarettes. don’t eat fruit for a week, unless it’s potato chips or french fries, which are fruits.

now you should have a pile of self-hatred and doubt. don’t worry about the smell, it’s supposed to be like that.

fold the mixture into the festering bitterness that you’ve been aging since that break-up two years ago and serve up on a dirty plate of three-day-old pizza. voila. you’re lonely.

make a firm resolve to deal with the situation. send a hear-felt text message to that sweet girl you’ve been seeing for a few weeks and who you suspect might be ‘the one’. just in case she happens to be busy tonight, recycle said text message and spam it to several other girls in your phonebook. hello. you’re ready for sex.

Xiao La and the Demon: Chapter 1

by Ling’Ling

Xiao La crept out from behind the giant round ceramic kilns that looked like art-deco flower vases for giants. During the daytime they were stoked red hot with dirty coal from the mines of distant Liaoning province and were used to stew little brown pots filled with sumptuous pork soup with carrots and long stringy mushrooms that would get stuck in your teeth for days, if only you had a few coins to spare for the indulgence. She never had any of course, like most these days. A distinctly evil looking tiny grey demon creature in earthy rags would climb up a specially built wooden staircase to retrieve the little pots for paying customers, pulling them out of the kilns with long iron tongs clasped between his stubby green fingers.

For an extra few jiao he would stir in a poisonous mixture of desiccated goat testicles and mashed tiger ears which was widely known to foster the magical qi force that had always been known to exist in the land, but which had until recently remained latent and unexploited by the foreign powers that now cast darkness across the cities and plains. Obscured in plain sight of the peoples’ eyes by too many years of peace and normalcy since the Great War.

Like all wars of ancient past, with time it had taken it’s rightful place on bookshelves next to great dissertations on the treachery of humans, goblin diplomacy and the role of faulty dwarvish armour jointing in the surprise overthrow of some long forgotten orcish city state. The history of that terrible clash had long since ceased to register in the minds of modern historians as more than a peculiar footnote in their dusty encyclopedias and biographies. Unfortunately for Xiao La and the people of her sprawling land, not everyone had forgotten the lesson of those violent times…

The kilns were emptied of their precious coal every night when the little demon closed up shop. He was an ancient creature and surely his eyesight was beginning to fail him, because he invariably left a handful of embers at the bottom of the kiln after cleaning it out, which was an inconceivable thoughtlessness in these impossibly tight times. Even more shocking was his unfailing nightly neglect of at least one pot of the rich pork soup which Xiao La was able to retrieve with the cool tongs. For some reason the neglected soup tasted too strongly of the Demon’s goat testicle and tiger ear paste which always raised the bile in Xiao La’s stomach, but never her suspicion.

The thick ceramic of the kilns would radiate the heat of the Demon’s daily enterprise long into the night, and keep Xiao La comfortably warm and sheltered from the elements as she slept. Her frequent dreams were alternately serene and at times remarkably violent. She had never known lack of want, nor the boundless bloodshed and horror that visited her nightly and so the extreme polarity of her dreams made her serenely reflective in the mornings as she rose early to erase any trace of her presence behind the kilns.

The thought of the little demon made Xiao La shudder in the marrow of her bones. His soup was almost as a famous in the county as his petty and unflinching evil nature. The locals needed no reminder to refrain from crossing the little villain, though from time to time they got one anyway when some unsuspecting traveler would imprudently raise the demon’s ire. Xiao La had once seen him tear the heart out right out of a little girl of a similar age to her own, and toss it into the glowing embers right in front of the poor child’s stupefied mother.

Moments before the gruesome spectacle Xiao La had seen the girl taking aim at the back of the demon’s wrinkled grey skull with a soupy green tomato. The other patrons wisely hid their horrified shocked gazes in the bottom of their soup pots, and the only sign that the evil tragedy had registered in their heads was the presence of their uneaten leftovers that night in the bottom of the kiln. Xiao La was in no position to balk at the opportunity to fill her growling belly. She saved some of the choicest leftovers that night and made a midnight trip to the local temple to offer to the local gods in an attempt to place the girl’s soul in their favour.

Flight of Fancy

– by Betty P

The fallon flew over the city, the neon and green in the air ignited her thoughts and illustrated the mindpages of yesterday, five years ago and tomorrow. The tips of her wings irritated her peripheral vision as she banked left and right darting between the climates of the low skyverts. 

Glancing her reflection in the circular leaves of the Lustrotree and searching back through her mindpages, she couldn’t recall a time when she had not looked on those short crooked wings with disdain. Their ugliness repulsed her, so many joints and twists – conducive to low-level flying, to quick turns and force- key skills for the warrior fallons-  but just so desperately hideous.

Suddenly, her nightlight was blocked from above and she threw one eye upwards to see what she was sure she would find. Sleek and black. Endlessendless wings. Stretching in this direction beyond tomorrow, hurtling with measured recklessness into the future and in that direction back one thousand years with wise circumspection. 

The carpegreat is indeed a magificent beast. Oracles, philosophers, lawmakers, surgeons, artists, musicians and the greatest criminals of society are always carpegreats. How the fallon longed, miserably and hopelessly for their mindspan and wingspan.

The fallon soon noticed that the carpegreat was not proceeding with its usual speed but was mirroring her path from several metres above. Before she had even thought of thinking why, the carpegreat’s eight claws punctured her back and she felt the air whoosh over her ears as it carried her upwards. Higher and higher the carpegreat flew, until eventually it set her down on a high tropical skyvert way above where she normally flew.

The carpegreat arranged the ebony of its wings and took in the fallon. The smaller bird had already settled and despite herself, green enverons sprouted from her eyes and slithered over to the carpegreat’s wings and writhed around them resentfully.

“If you so wish, I will exchange with you my carpegreat wings for one halftime. But you must think carefully, little fallon. No matter what, I will take my wings back and will not be responsible for any consequences.” The enverons snapped back with a sting and the fallon’s eyes grew wide with desire and greed for seeing and feeling the carpegreat’s world.

The exchange was made and the carpegreat bade the fallon farewell, flying off on its new wings with unsettling ease, as if accustomed to the fighter bird’s shorter wingspan.

The fallon examined her new wings, drawing them out this way and that, flapping them up and down – searching around and wishing that Lustrotrees grew tropically. She didn’t feel any different. There was no surge of brilliance, no all encompassing knowledge, no rush of enlightenment. Perhaps it would come in flight, she thought.

She prepared herself and took off, leaving the skyvert behind. Shrieking with joy she soared downwards, swooping on those straight wings, admiring their deep black and their lustre. So busy was the fallon taking in her borrowed beauty that she failed to notice she was losing height with alarming speed. So quickly was she passing skyverts that she no longer sensed their different climates – the air meshed around her into consistent mildness.

The fallon realised with horror as she tried to lift the carpegreat’s wings with her small shoulders that the downward air pressure was too great. Hurtling downwards, accelerating with the deadweight of two wings she could not use, she understood and resigned herself to impact. Crashing blindly to the ground she was thrown into deepsleep.

The fallon regained consciousness two fulltimes later. Looking at the sky, she could see the earthy bases of a myriad skyverts, she could see the low-flying fallons and well above them, carpegreats, masters of the skies. 

Her eyes told her that at least she had her own wings back and she went to ruffle them before taking flight. A searing pain gripped her body and her neck defied command, cemented into a brace hold. She could but stare at the sky.

With nothing to break her fall, the ridge of her back had shattered on impact, snapping her head backwards and locking it there. 

Paralysed, eyes to the skies, the fallon raged on the ground for her eternity, while the wind whispered to her incessantly about where true beauty was to be found.

Do not bury me in Asia

– by B.

Do not bury me in Asia.

I’ve been here already longer than I ever signed on for, and eternity in this wasteland scares me like nothing else. Will you respect this as my last wish?

Do not bury me in Asia.

I will have no say in this matter, I know. I have just this one voice from the void: do not leave me here alone. This climate was never welcoming to me, penetrating shut-in summers, non-existent changes of the seasons, and winter winds vowing murder. This scorched ground will not welcome me, and the gray clogged-up heavens will have no place, no voice, no mercy for me.

Do not bury me in the cold and shallow ground of Asia.

Imagine my trembling white face, laowai forever now, homeless and sad for another 10,000 years while hun and po refuse to dissolve, slow and corrupted now, no one and nothing with me but my books, which my tired demon eyes will no longer be able to make sense of, and which will give me no comfort. Do you see it?

Do not bury me in Asia, please, I beg you.

Xavier, Richi and the German priest will not be keeping me company at the laowai-Valhalla, I shall be denied entry to the inner banquet rooms where they celebrate with Laozi, Li Bai and the drunken monks. A feast is served therein, and the sound of laughter and good spirits escape past the fierce doorman, kongtiaos blasting in there, but I, I be forever pinned in the icy corner of the crowded bar, watching the restless ESL soul’s sad attempts at postmortem pickup conversations with the cute and wingless bargirls, perpetuated huangjiu-headache hovering as premonitions of a storm that will never come to break my monotony. Forever I will watch the horribly slow and uninspired plays by Ding Junhui find their ways into pocket, O’Sullivan sleeping in his chair, cue laying broken beside him on the floor. Forever on repeat plays Take me to your heart, and I still do not know who wrote it, and now I never will. And yes, Facebook is still blocked.

Don’t leave me alone in this cold and hopeless place that is Asia.

There be demons here for me too, do you not know it? Every night my landlord steals my deposit, every morning faceless workers awake me with power drills at dawn, and all day long my ayi steals my things, crowded one-room apartment, and no hot water to be had. This may sound funny but it’s not. It’s always Shanghai winter, and the mosquitoes will still not let me sleep. The Chinese will gang up on me, friends deceiving me, demanding girls constantly texting me, and I can not ignore one single text less they come banging down my door, window, or random like a heart attack stepping straight out of my closet. They will rip commitment out of my heart and put it in their fake LV bags, beneath thick layers of emptiness, leaving no room to breath. This may sound funny but it’s not. There be demons here, can you not hear them already?

Do not fucking do it, don’t put me in this wretched yellow earth.

Am? Nate? Hellowatch? Mum, Dad anyone, for fuck’s sake, do not do it. I hate resorting to threats, but as a matter of fact you shall find me haunting you all in the shape of an horrific laowai demon, the whitened face of Zhongkui mounted on the body of a polar bear, a ghoul exceeding even the wildest daoist dreams. Do you think I want that? Pitiful I shall be, nothing will cover my lies anymore. Of no good use will I be, monotony only and no outside world to dream of, no hope of what could have been, as nothing will ever be again except this cold yellow reality, non-embracing, non-dissolving, non-sensical sorrow. I shall have chosen it myself, for no good reason, so don’t ask me again. 

Why did you have to bury me in Asia? Please, for Gods sake, in the name of heaven, why did you do it, why did I do it?

The One and Only

by Betty P

The only thing I had to go on was whether there was grey or black coming in through the chink. I couldn’t really tell how many times I’d dropped into sleep, but by my calculations, I’d had my face pressed against my knee for 3 days before the concrete block shoving me into my own body was itself shoved aside.

The pressure that had been exherted on my back from the nape of my neck down to the base of my spine was replaced with a small ashtray-sized area rounded off by a pin-prick of pressure just below it. Momentum behind the pressure rocked me too and fro as I gradually straightened out of my hunched position. My arc of vision that began painfully at ground level in a dusty, grimy puddle swept upwards and my heart soared as I glimpsed my savoiur against the light of China greyness.

I didn’t know I’d never been in love until that moment. Those strange, new pressure points on my back had in fact been a platform stiletto. The slender hourglass figure they underscored was crowned with a face of loveliness that I had never before encountered in all the classrooms, lecture halls, offices, bars, KTV parlours or indeed the DVDs or websites I’d ever clapped my eyes on. Framed by a sleek black bob, it was a determined but calm face, highlighted in this one glorious instance by a mixture of concern, relief and fatigue. Brown-black irises dripped, warm, onto my tattered body. The red nailed fingers of an elegant hand reached down and delicately brushed my face. Despite the hunger and the cramps, and moreover, my intense disorientation and fear of what belied this situation, I smiled with such contentment that my saviour too curled the edges of her mouth, displaying a set of perfect pearly whites.

And so, she had me.

I couldn’t stand yet, so she helped me into a sitting position, perched herself close by and started to explain what had happened. The whole country knew that the resource war had been getting heated, but no one had expected such a vicious attack, and so soon. In a bid to cut China’s energy demand and eliminate competition from the Made In China brand, key centres of industry –  Shanghai and its surroundings included – had been hit 3 days ago by massive and breathtakingly destructive nuclear explosions. There were few survivors, but they had found each other and congregated at key points all over the city, pooling their resources and helping each other in whatever ways they could. It was to one such camp that she told me we would be heading once I’d got my strength back.

With the contents of a battered water bottle and some binggan, she nurtured my screaming insides. In my confusion I began to develop a Shanghai syndrome theory, whereby the saved experiences immense emotional and sexual attraction towards the saviour. However, as I regained energy and we set out towards the camp and began conversing, I realised that this wasn’t the product of Shanghai’s implosion – I would kill anyone who took her away from me – under any circumstances.

We had been thrown together in that war zone, the first exciting months of a romance compressed into a few hours trudging through the broken intestines of Shanghai. Any guilt I felt at not racing straight for home to see whether any of my family may have survived and to salvage what I could from the wreckage were quashed as our conversation leapt and soared from topic to topic.

Tentatively at first we introduced ourselves and gradually and more boldly we nudged forth our thoughts on the world. We philosophized and argued. We joked and laughed. I ached as my words animated her face. As I spoke, her eyes grew wider and softer, those brown-black pools drawing me further in.

Venturing on, over and around heaps of stinking bodies and shards of lives destroyed, she slipped her hand into mine, shyly saying she had never imagined that that day’s search and rescue mission could have ended like this. An unearthly quiet had settled on the city and aside from the smell, which once in a while threatened to permeate the illusion beyond repair, it was as if we were walking through a deserted disaster film set.

By the time she told me we were close to the camp, she and I had already assigned each other a list of books to read and albums to listen to. She knew I hated tomatos, I knew she couldn’t stand dogs and we had planned to elope to Italy and set up a restaurant with a bookshop attached.

We were laughing as we turned, hand in hand into the xiaoqu where the camp was located – I was teasing her – her suggestions for the restaurant’s name were cute, but not quite what we would be looking for. She was acting hurt, but gracefully conceding that I was right.

Giggling, she gave a knock at one of the doors in an alley off to the right. The door swung open and we stepped in to shelter. As my eyes adjusted, my smile froze on my face. I reeled in horror and wrenched my hand free from her tender grasp.

The room was full of women. Each one of them wearing a pair of platform stilettos. Each slender hourglass figure turned with distracted curiosity to glimpse who had just come in. Each sleek black bob swished back into position as each pair of brown-black irises satisfied its curiosity and turned back to take up, with red-nailed fingers of elegant hands, each assigned chore.

switching platforms

by Ling’Ling

as we met, so we parted. i cannot remember the date. i never can. it might have been a tuesday or a wednesday.  I was standing on platform 6 at the Shanghai South Railway station. my heart was in my mouth as I watched the train pull away. my hands were shaking from the violent hangover that was ganging up with my broken heart and the morning’s 4 cups of poisonous black coffee. i was never going to see or hear from her again. she didn’t know the routine but i did. new simcard, old e-mail address, no facebook, no myspace, no msn, no worries only fear and self-loathing in my shanghai shoes. it hurt so fucking much, but i couldn’t cry. i wanted to but the tears wouldn’t come.

i turned around and started to walk away as another train pulled into the station on the other side of the platform. to this day I cannot remember where it came from. how is it that i never found out? it was written right there on the side. i stopped to watch it pull in. the big picture windows on the passenger carriages looked like youtube vignettes of chinese travellers gathering their things, saying goodbye to friendly strangers with whom they had just spent the last 36 hours snoring, drinking, eating and chatting. my world had fallen apart but theirs was still turning. they seemed to think that there was hope and joy left on this fucked up planet. hadn’t anybody told them? i didn’t begrudge them their peace, but i envied it.

i turned around and started off in the opposite direction. my first step sent me crashing into a moving stack of fake louis vuitton luggage. this time i was caught too off guard to maintain my footing and was sent sprawling backwards onto the rain soaked platform. i looked up to see that the moving bags were in fact held by the most beautiful creature i had ever lain eyes upon. the weight of her oversized baggage managed to counter the laowai tackle i had just given her and she managed to stay upright.

should i describe her to you? i needn’t. you know her because you’ve seen her before. she’s the girl you saw on the subway, or in the elevator, or on the other side of the street. which way was she going? you knew right away that she’s the perfect one for you. you saw it in her eyes and the way her hair hung down around her cheeks. maybe it wasn’t her hair but something else. i wouldn’t know what did it for you but you knew what it was and i have no doubt that you were right. she was perfect. did you talk to her? maybe she’s next to you right now or maybe you just kept walking and cursed your own cowardice. whatever you did, you have my utmost respect friend.

myself, i was seized with terror in the knowledge that before me stood a creature with the power to fill my days with divine ecstasy or to make my life a waking hell. did she know it? of course she didn’t. such knowledge is a forbidden fruit. she was completely ignorant of it and that is why she could hold it in her hand. god pity the unfortunate woman who puts that fruit into my own hands. in any case the decision was not my own, fate had already decided for me.

like so many things about our story, i never could remember what was said that day. the words were not important, they were just an accessory to what was happening. we left the station that day together and that’s the way it was from then on. she moved into my little apartment on taikang lu that very day.

our life together was inordinately happy. any person who has experienced this kind of love before knows well that everything becomes secondary to the daily bliss of the time spent together with that perfect diamond. there’s really no way to describe it without digressing into romantic clichés, of which i am totally averse, despite my own hopeless romanticism. even the annoying habits ands quirks of femininity that can drive a man to complete insanity were infused with a charm that could send my spirits soaring. she was an angel. a fact that i never once forgot.

i remember one time picking myself up off the ground after being knocked from my bike by a speeding shanghai taxi, i was bloodied and bruised but my first thought as i rose to my feet and saw the blood pouring from my battered knees, hands and arms was her. there i was standing with my mangled bike, having narrowly escaped a gruesome fate under the wheels of a wildly careless taxi and all i could think about was that our plans that evening for a homemade dinner followed by reading together were almost ruined.

i think we continued in this fashion for several years. a habit that never ceased to annoy her was my complete inability to keep track of time. even now i don’t know if we were together for 3 years or 30. i’ve never been able to understand people’s obsession with time. we were together and we were happy and that was it.

oh god oh god. i should stop right here. this story doesn’t end well. did i give you the impression that it would? god forbid. i digressed. grew complacent, took things for granted. fucked up. i have not been nor will i ever be able to make sense of what was going on in my mind as i started to push her away from me. she was such a simple and beautiful thing, making her happy and in turn myself was like paint by the numbers. i knew exactly what i had to do, and in knowing it i proactively began to do the opposite. it’s so easy. two more beers than i needed on a thursday night. phone off of course, just to make an innocent thing look like something else. who was i trying to hurt? don’t we know that we do these things to ourselves? holding in the things i wanted to tell her and saying only what i knew i shouldn’t.

she packed her bags.

as we met, so we parted. i cannot remember the date. i never can. it might have been a tuesday or a wednesday.  I was standing on platform 6 at the Shanghai South Railway station. my heart was in my mouth as I watched the train pull away. my hands were shaking from the violent hangover that was ganging up with my broken heart and the morning’s 4 cups of poisonous black coffee. i was never going to see or hear from her again. she didn’t know the routine but i did. new simcard, old e-mail address, no facebook, no myspace, no msn, no worries only fear and self-loathing in my shanghai shoes. it hurt so fucking much, but i couldn’t cry. i wanted to but the tears wouldn’t come. i turned around and started to walk away as another train pulled into the station on the other side of the platform.

Flee the Children

– by Betty P

The Fearsome Min’gong Man

by B.

At lunch time on that burning August afternoon, Zhang laoban overlooked the Minhang-construction site from his 3rd floor office window while smoking a Zhonghua and taking sips from his water bottle. Zhang laoban was getting itchy: power at the site had been going on and off all day, cement deliveries had mysteriously been turned away upon entering Shanghai, and the very morning of the Min’gong-man’s arrival, 5 out of 10 huge steel balks had been found mysteriously twisted and destroyed that very morning, turned into a pile of useless garbage, halting work that day. How something like that could have happen to the massive steel balks, Zhang laoban could not figure. There were dark signs, that was for sure, but it could be dealt with. But then there were also the rumors, and the black looks his dark skinned workers were passing around.

For his own personal safety, he had installed a group of Jiangsu thugs for hire at the gate of his manager’s office; he was not going to be caught off guard, that was for sure. Zhang laoban was really getting itchy, nervous even. The site manager Mr. Lee was on his neck, and had been screaming at him over cell phone all day. “Do you cao ni ma realize how much money I’m losign every day construction doesn’t move forward?”. He realized. “Are you aware that you’re on a deadline cao ni ma? And are you aware that if you can’t make it, cao ni ma, someone else can?” He was aware. cao ta ma

He could deal with Mr. Lee though, he thought to himself, wiping the dripping sweat from his forehead. Perhaps we did go a little rough with the city funding this time, Zhang laoban admitted to himself, but for fuck’s sake, his new Pudong apartment purchase was about to go through, and raising 3 kids through private schools and preparing to put them through university demanded certain risks. He would have liked to have paid the workers before the national holiday as per their contracts but after all, he said to himself, invoking a fitting quote from the Analects to assure himself family comes first and workers last.

Meanwhile, down at the site something was boiling up outside the workers’ dorm, 40 or so idling away the afternoon with no material to go to work on. The  normally chain smoking and card playing bunch were now huddled together in a tight ring, seemingly holding a council, voices and tempers running high. For months now their wages had been withheld, and word from the top was that they would not be getting any leave for the national holiday, much less their paychecks as agreed upon. Their ring leader Lao Gao had been to the manager’s office twice a day for weeks now already, but word from Zhang laoban was always the same, and were not intended to please him, nor his fellow workers: ‘these are tough times, everyone has to make sacrifices, but if you do not get back to work right this minute there will surely be no money for you tongzhi.’

Outside the office, Lao Gao took a sip from a bottle of baijiu before passing it along the ring. The sun was beaming down and tempers were rising among the ranks, some of the men openly cursing and screaming, demanding, if not money, blood, and openly mistrusting Lao Gao’s wait-and-see strategy. A seasoned and calm man, Lao Gao had worked different construction sites around the suburbs of Shanghai for more than 15 years, and he was nervous about this development. Hailing from Zhejiang himself, he considered his fellow, mostly Anhuinese workers hotheads with little sense for strategy, and in his experience open or even violent conflicts with management was sure to lead to little but tragedy. Lost in his own thoughts, he hadn’t noticed that the angriest group – the new comrades from Anhui –, encouraged and adrenalized by the cheap baijiu, had marched off towards the manager’s office, picking up bricks and iron pipes along the way. Snapping to, he starting running after them, as they were already closing in on the armed thugs at the gate alarmingly fast.

At precisely 4 a clock the bell outside the manager’s office rang four times, indicating a shift change, and as the thugs and the workers from Anhui charged at one another, as Zhang laoban with trembling hands struck another cigarette, as he braced himself for the disaster that would inevitably play out, as Lao Gao was screaming at his Anhuinese rebels to stop; it was then, out of nowhere, mounted on a flying water buffalo that the fearsome Min’gong man appeared. 1.50m tall, his skin darker than the rice pickers of Sichuan, his tea and cigarette blackened teeth sticking out of his mouth at odd angles, and with bulky inflated muscles – he was truly a sight, landing his water buffalo between the groups who had stopped at his arrival, a mere 10 meters separating them. Wearing silicone foam slippers, an orange helmet and a ragged t-shirt under a wrinkled shiny grey two-piece suit made matte with cement dust and stained with motor oil. The Min’gong-man raised his battle cry, sending the hired thugs off running for the gates in panic. Zhang laoban dropped to his knees, put his hands together and in panic prayed to all gods that could possibly find it their duty to protect embezzling managers against the fury of this fearsome creature.

What transpired that afternoon was never officially established. The construction site was never reopened, and none of the workers ever seen again in Shanghai. Zhang laoban was found strangled in his office, the manipulated books of the company lodged deep down his throat. The worker registry was not to be found, and just in time for that year’s National Holiday the workers of the Minhang-construction site all arrived at their homes, bringing with them more than an entire year’s wages. Lao Gao’s first action when arriving back to his Zhejiang hometown was not to start building his own house, but to erect the first of many shrines to the fearsome Min’gong man.

Leaving the Seat Down

by Ling’Ling

I came home this evening to find all the furniture in my house had been rearranged. I was so shocked at first that I failed to notice Bill Gates standing in my living room. Surprised, I inquired politely as to the reason for his presence there. He informed me that he wanted ensure my maximum enjoyment of the Microsoft living room set I had recently purchased. “Great service!” I thought as I moved to sink into the comfy leather sofa, installed just the night before. I was stopped mid-stride towards my destination as Bill held up his hand and cleared his throat, “I’d like to see some identification before you use this Microsoft Furniture, if you’d be so kind. We just need to make sure that you’re the rightful user of this Microsoft product.”

Brushing past him I sank defiantly into the sofa and replied with no small degree of indignation, “This is my home, this is my sofa, and I will certainly not be providing you with any identification!” The sofa had a somewhat harder feeling than I remembered in the store.

“By all means, enjoy your Microsoft Furniture. However, until I can verify your ownership, certain features of your living room set will be disabled. I sincerely encourage you to consider installing an official Microsoft Customer Experience Enhancement unit in your home, in order for you to fully enjoy the benefits of using Microsoft products.”

I looked down to see that I was not sitting in the comfy leather sofa I had purchased, but a lawn chair and my coffee table had been replaced by a wooden crate.

I’m a practical guy. It was late and I couldn’t be bothered to argue with Bill Gates so I showed him the receipt. He was satisfied and so my furniture was returned to its original comfy state.

The novelty of having Bill Gates in my home trumped my indignation at his uninvited presence, so I got up and went to the kitchen to grab us a couple of beers. My pants got caught on a loose spring in the couch and were torn nearly to shreds. The door to my refrigerator wouldn’t open though. Bill informed me that it was a compatibility issue with the air conditioner, but it didn’t matter because he had drunk up all the beer anyway. Strange, I thought, neither the air conditioner nor the refrigerator are from Microsoft.

I moved back to the couch, at which point Bill stopped me again and demanded to see the receipt. I showed it to him and he let me sit down on ‘my’ couch. The arms had fallen off while I was in the kitchen and one of the cushions had caught on fire, but in practice the couch still served the purpose for which it was designed.

Bill informed me that he wanted to determine how satisfied I was with ‘his furniture’ as he kept referring to it. It would only take 10 minutes.  So we began the survey during which he inquired about my financial background, my family, my sex life and my credit card number and so on. Several hours later the ‘customer satisfaction’ survey was complete and I asked if he might see fit to have my couch fixed, what with the burned cushion and the broken arms. Bill handed me a Microsoft screwdriver and told me to fix it myself, it would only take the weekend to do the job. He was busy installing a webcam in my shower and bedroom. When I asked him not to do so he appeared not to understand what I was saying.

At this point I noticed a group of purple imps systematically destroying my kitchen and dining room. According to Bill, half of them had made their way inside hiding in the armchair I hadn’t ordered. The other half he had mistakenly let in the front door. They had, he explained, been wearing official Microsoft uniforms when he answered the door. It was all terribly difficult to understand, he assured me. In consolation, he offered to sell me an official Microsoft Imp Blaster for only $199 (+ tax), which was a deal in comparison to the damage the imps were wreaking on my home. I agreed and Bill installed a massive gun turret in the middle of my living room. It took up well over half of the room.

When he plugged it in, the turret automatically began to blast the imps away, much to my satisfaction. I was quickly disconcerted though, as the turret then proceeded to blast away my TV, bookshelf, and armchair. It even blew away half of my Microsoft couch and took a leg off my cat. Bill didn’t seem to think this was unusual, he even commented on the unit’s effectiveness.

I could see that I the situation was untenable. I needed to get Bill Gates and his Furniture catastrophe the hell out of my house. I had the turret, coffee-table, armchair and everything except for the couch removed. At Bill’s suggestion I downgraded the couch to an older model. A service for which he charged me an extra several hundred dollars.

Having finally managed to usher Bill Gates from my home I took a look around to survey the damage. The house was returned to roughly it’s original state, although there were a few things missing, and more than a few new things that I had insisted I didn’t want. Strangely many of my appliances had now stopped working, but in fact I really couldn’t be bothered anymore. I just wanted to sleep.

I got up from the couch and headed into the bathroom to use the toilet but the nightmare wasn’t over. Bill Gates had pissed on the seat.