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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Postcard from Shanghai

by W. Nat Baker

“They are safely hidden behind a panel in the long bar at the Shanghai Club, first floor.” Then as if by an afterthought, the writer wrote, “First panel from the left side, marked with a small notch on the top panel molding.” In the dim light of the shop I read it again, “Ils sont bien cachées derrière un panneau dans le bar long du Club Shanghai, première étage. Premier panneau de la côté gauche.” The writer of the postcard had even drawn a little diagram showing the location. It was the little drawing that had caught my attention, that prompted me to read the message. The writing was small and filled the entire back side of the card. I looked at the date, July, 1916. I turned back to the front of the card and looked at the picture again, a neo-classical style building much like you’d see in New York or London. At the bottom of the card it read, “The Shanghai Club, The Bund.”

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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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Happy Birthday, Spring 2112

by Katrina Hamlin

It was her 123rd birthday party, a century after she’d first come to Shanghai.

They gave her a silver walking stick. They also promised to take her to the tailors to have another cheap qipao fitted, though they were all certain that she would never wear it out of the house.

Some of the neighbours came to pay their respects. She thanked them with bare, toneless niceties; then, flustered, she returned to the backroom.

“So rude,” her great-grandson complained to his mother. “Why does she do that?”

“You know, when they arrived, almost all of them were illiterate, and most of them couldn’t tingdong,” said his mother. “Sometimes it’s still a bit much for her.”

That was the first time he’d thought about her arrival. Suddenly, his great-grandmother’s life seemed like a bad fit.

After a hundred years, the qipaos were still only costumes; this wasn’t her real home.

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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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Dead Meat

by Lindsay Redifer

For one week, the thick smell of rotten meat in the hot sun walked up and met us in the street. Flies came from everywhere, crawling on our arms and foreheads and deftly avoiding our swats. I don’t think I killed a single one.

All the roads were closed to our little burg. Cam, who had insisted we live in this adorable little shithole, wandered the streets at night, fueled on Tsingdao. He would finish one with a shopkeeper down to his last packages of Tuc crackers and then wander across the street to start again with a manager in a tiny noodle shop.

No, no fancy complex apartment for us, no pool, no gym. Instead, we had a small concrete enclave above a dirt road, laundry lines connecting us to our Chinese neighbors in every direction. Most days it was alright, a truly local neighborhood-but at times like this, oh God. What I wouldn’t give for the oversized dogs and fancy cocktails of the Shanghai elite.

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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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