Terracotta Typewriter A Literary Journal with Chinese Characteristics

Issue 8 Spring 2011

Unsolicited manuscripts are welcomed throughout the year.

Terracotta Typewriter seeks submissions of literary works

with a connection to China. The definition of “connection to

China” can be stretched as much as an author sees fit. For ex-

ample, expatriate writers living in China or who have lived

in China, Chinese writers writing in English, translators of

Chinese writing, works that are set in China, manuscripts

covered in Chinese food (General Tso’s chicken doesn’t

count), or anything else a creative mind can imagine as a con-

nection to China.

© 2011 by Terracotta Typewriter. All rights reserved.

Cover art by Matthew Lubin © 2011

Visit our Web site at http://www.tctype.com.

This literary journal is free for distribution.

NOT FOR RESALE.

Terracotta Typewriter

A Cultural Revolution

of Literature

In This Issue

From the Editor 1

Music as an alternative 3 Aditya Shankar

to a forgotten narrative

Verse (u) s 5

Just a Formality 6 Brian Kuhl

On the Train 12 Emily Strauss

to Chengdu

Meditation in Yellow 14 Kevin Sexton

Dust

Cripple Gang’s 16 Lance Weller

Terracotta Army

After Su Tung P’o 38 Buff Whitman-Bradley

Minimal Offense Intended 39 Gabriel Ricard

Contributor Notes 41

From the Editor

Dear Readers and Writers,

Welcome to the eighth issue of Terracotta Typewriter. I

know many contributors have patiently waited for its publi-

cation and I appreciate their patience. Running a literary

journal alone can be time consuming, especially when free

time is difficult to come by. No matter how little time I have,

I will continue to publish this journal for the world’s enjoy-

ment. Our contributors love to write and deserve the recogni-

tion for their efforts to create great works of literature.

Feel free to drop us a line every now and then. We want to

hear from our readers.

Thank you for your continued support.

Matthew Lubin

Editor & Publisher

tctype@gmail.com 1 一

2 二

Aditya Shankar

Music as an alternative to the forgotten narrative

I remember my friend

from a 1978 Hong Kong winter

tried expelled released and lost,

relearning the pavements of his native

as the wind does at the waterfalls

as I do it with you

our separation from the real

as thin as the sheath of a contraceptive,

but absolute

until nightly

everyone returns to everyone

shedding the cities

the jarring doors of government offices

and the smoky exteriors of occluded factories

when at the isolated depths of a closet,

he confronts music –

well-built and insensitive

contrary to popular beliefs

– who picks him up like a bow

3 三

and plays a note of perfect fifths on the violin

a melancholy constructed on imaginary bricks

like an ancient highway to forgetfulness

that even

an earthquake may fail to crush

4 四

Verse (u) s

Poetry separates us

two halves of the same warring face, often

warring cities pretending to be allies

the Venn Diagram of our intersections –

boring null sets

Each word is

a door between us

You keep opening it

to distance yourself from a distaste

and I

an escape route from your cartography

to a city of bruises, residues,

collapsing and resurfacing structures –

Hong Kong, a cloudy and confounded philosopher

who thinks without language

5 五

Brian Kuhl

Just a Formality

S everal semesters ago, during my literature final

exam at the Chinese college where I teach, I caught a

student cheating. Not surreptitiously, but boldly,

openly. I had clearly explained the rules by project-

ing them on the computer screen and discussing them one by

one—even listing what the students should and should not

have on their desks during the exam. Yet, when I walked up

the aisle near this young woman, I saw what looked like ex-

tra papers before her. At the end of the aisle, I turned and

walked back down, slowly, stopping a little behind her to

stare. There sat the notes I had given the students to study

from, right next to her exam questions, as she copied answers

from them. She made no attempt to hide them, but surely

she had seen me walking by. After teaching in China for five

years, I am all too aware of how widespread cheating is, yet

this shocked me for its brazenness. When I spoke to her out

in the hall afterward, she made no excuses, her only explana-

tion being that she was afraid of doing poorly.

Various instances of cheating in China were in the news

last year. In October, The New York Times published an article

under the headline "Rampant Fraud Threat to China's Brisk

Ascent" that gave several examples of cheating in both soci-

ety and academia. We've all heard of the melamine scandal,

but what of academic dishonesty? One such case happened

not far from me, in the city of Hangzhou. Zhejiang Univer-

sity, the highest ranked university in the province, conducted

an investigation in which it submitted a number of its scien-

6 六

tific journals to a computer program that identifies plagia-

rized passages. According to the Times, about one-third of

the articles submitted for publication had at least some sec-

tions likely to have been copied. In another example, cheat-

ing shut down the MBA program that New Jersey's Centen-

ary College had run in Beijing, Shanghai, and Taipei since

2004. That one shocked me. I once worked at a university in

Xiamen that partnered with a Canadian college to offer a

business degree program, so I've seen that dynamic first-

hand. Western universities are so starved for cash at the mo-

ment that they jump at an opportunity to expand into China.

Based on what I saw and heard, I would guess that many

such schools are willing to accommodate lower standards—

even to the point of ignoring problems of academic integ-

rity—in exchange for the influx of cash. So for Centenary to

completely close its program, it had to have been quite bad.

USA Today also reported on this last summer when it hap-

pened. All of the college's 400 students in China, the newspa-

per noted, had their diplomas withheld and were given the

choice of a tuition refund or the chance to gain their MBA by

taking another exam. Only two chose to retest.

Cheating comes in many forms, and new technology,

such as cell phones, only adds to the myriad methods stu-

dents can choose from. One decidedly low-tech approach

that's always intrigued me for its being so unlikely to succeed

is when one student simply substitutes for another to take a

test. Called qiang shou, this kind of cheating is fairly common

in China, where so much of the assessment is done by exami-

nation, and exams invariably include large numbers of stu-

dents. The two Chinese characters literally mean "gun hand,"

and are sometimes translated as "gunman," though a more

7 七

accurate English term would be "hired gun." A former stu-

dent once served as a qiang shou, and told me about it shortly

afterwards. A petite young woman bursting with intellect

and energy, Ann was among the best students in the three

classes I taught at her grade level. Based on her work in

class, her involvement with the campus English club, and our

discussions during my office hours, I knew her to be an hon-

est, thoughtful, and ethical young woman. Yet a year later,

when she was a senior, she took someone else's English exam

for him. I was taken aback when she told me, and at the

same time curious about why she had decided to do it.

Ann had been sick and was in bed with a fever when her

classmate Mary called to ask if Ann would do this to help out

a friend. Despite being a little nervous at the idea, Ann al-

lowed Mary to give the friend her phone number because she

wanted to be kind and do her a favor. Mary only told her

that it was a person "in society"—a person in the working

world—taking adult classes that the university held during

the summer and winter breaks. Ann expected a call a couple

of days later, but instead received one the very next day: "It's

time for [the] examination this morning," the caller told her.

They arranged to meet near the library at 8:50 A.M., and a car

picked her up. The driver was the man for whom Ann would

be taking the exam; he gave her instructions as they drove to

the building where it was held.

This man was supposed to be in a classroom taking an

exam at that moment, yet here he was driving her in his car.

And she did not go into the classroom for him? No, because

the teacher giving the exam was her own class supervisor

and head of the English Department, Ms. Zhang. Instead, the

man brought the exam papers out to Ann in the car. He

8 八

turned out to the be the chief of police in the nearby city.

Taking course work in law—toward a master's degree, Ann

guessed—he needed to pass an English exam like every uni-

versity student in China. Ann explained that teachers in

these courses were fairly lenient, that they "will not pur-

posely fail [the students] because they are all adults and they

have—maybe some of them have 'backgrounds.'" In Chinese,

this means they have both money and power. So for these

kinds of exams, in Ann's words, "they hand in the money to

the college, to the universities, and they just pass the exami-

nations."

The police chief had two friends also taking the exam,

one from a bank and another who worked at the local court.

Ann began working hunched in the front seat at about 9:30,

and an hour later the two others were copying the answers

from her completed paper. The exam was supposed to end at

11:00, but the students in the classroom had all finished early

and by about 10:40, Ms. Zhang came out and walked very

near the car. Ann crouched down as far as she could. I was

astounded that Ms. Zhang was not upset to find three of her

students with their exam papers outside the classroom, but

apparently she wasn't fazed. "It's very common," Ann as-

sured me. "It's not very strict, that kind of examination. It's

only—you know, in China we call it only a 'process.' No. I

cannot find the exact word." I asked her to say it in Chinese

so I could look it up. Xing shi. Formality. The exam was

only a formality.

However farcical the logistics of this operation were, I

was most intrigued by Ann's involvement. What had moti-

vated her to cheat like this? It wasn't money: the police chief

had wanted to pay her and she refused. She had mentioned

9 九

wanting to help out her friend who had initiated the meeting.

But cheating is just inherently wrong, and the Ann I knew

was honest and virtuous to the point that she would be con-

sidered a little naive in the U.S. At the very least, wouldn't

she fear the repercussions of being caught—by her own class

supervisor, no less? Hadn't she anything to lose? Not much.

She explained that these classes were not as important as her

own (those for full-time university students). Of all the pos-

sible punishments I put forward, she only agreed that Ms.

Zhang would have been upset with her and given her a talk-

ing to. "But even Ms. Zhang found a gunman for other per-

sons in our class," she added, laughing. "Secret!" And, I

wanted to know, what would have happened to the police

chief had they been caught? She had already explained that

he had a "background" so I knew the answer even before she

confirmed it. "Of course nothing," Ann said.

I asked her if she would do it again if she had a chance to

go back and make that decision. "Maybe I want to experience

this kind of thing," she answered. Why? "I don't know. I've

never been a gunman before!" She continued:

Maybe I think I don't have that kind of

courage to do—you know, I know this can-

not be called courage, but you know, all the

time I'm just like a tortoise, a little. [laughs]

When the danger come, I just put my head

in the shell. So I want to experience differ-

ent things. And in my hometown, in my

home, in my house, my mother and my

parents just protect me all the time, so I

never know what the society really is.

And what to make of that society? In a chicken-or-egg sce-

10 十

nario, one wonders whether cheating by students continues

into society at large or, conversely, the open secret of corrup-

tion among business persons and government officials sig-

nals to students an acceptance of academic dishonesty. It's

not merely a hypothetical query, but one with significant

ramifications. For example, when Chinese President Hu Jin-

tao visited Washington in January, one of the continuing is-

sues addressed in the U.S.-China Joint Statement was intel-

lectual property rights—specifically, China's promise to

strengthen their protection. I wanted to know Ann's

thoughts regarding this larger system of corruption that en-

compassed cheating. Could it be changed? She seemed re-

signed to the realities of it and how pervasive it was in prac-

tice. Her own parents, she said, had to flatter their leaders, as

well as give them presents (read bribes). "They cannot pass

the situation or pass the difficulties if they don't do that." In

the end, she weighed the matter the best any thoughtful col-

lege senior might be expected to when she said that she really

believed "honesty is the best policy" but that it was hard to

change things so deep-rooted.

Deep-rooted indeed. Once I visited a museum in Nan-

jing that had reconstructed an ancient exam center, with life-

size displays depicting how students once sat for government

exams, or keju. The participants were locked in their cubicles

night and day for several days to prevent cheating (they slept

on boards that doubled as desks). One cubicle, however,

showed an enterprising young test taker holding a creative

solution: a carrier pigeon.

11 十一

Emily Strauss

On the Train to Chengdu

(i)

early morning a thousand miles

away fast train runs all night

through dry flat countryside

yellow fields, tall millet stalks

wave in neat fields, red brick

farmhouses maybe one light

on quiet scenes we rush past

no stops, land changes while

we sleep, at first light we are

all different, air cool and still

on the way to Sichuan.

(ii)

the water is left behind finally

all the canals, rivers, channels

garden ponds, pools, long-leaf

green tea, tall white farm houses

with upturned roofs, the bustle

of progress, industry, friends

who laugh and cry, hands that

warm, seek, comfort, air that feels

of the sea, cities too big to hold—

for the dry west, another city of tea

houses and mahjong, bicycles,

farmers at work by 6 AM in fields

12 十二

lined with tall trees, distant outline

of blue mountains in morning haze

telling the rising plateau, the coming

massif of Central Asia while peasants

gather sheaves of grain, white goats

feed, lotus appears in brown mud

the land speaks its own tongue.

(iii)

round grave mounds cluster like

hillocks in grassy plots surrounded

by gold fields, each one crowned

with a large stone marker chiseled

with calligraphy, subtle art, ignored

mostly until the time comes

funeral procession walks slowly

white robed figures behind saffron

monks chanting, old women weep

young men solemn for once carry

wreaths of paper flowers on wire

stands, the fresh grave soon circled

with color in the drab field of chaff.

13 十三

Kevin Sexton

Meditation in Yellow Dust

(From a Window in Seoul)

11:30 am

and it’s dark.

The yellow dust

has come

from China

and its

scouring

my lungs.

The norae bong

didn’t help –

screaming

Roy Orbison songs

and drinking

soju straight

until

I can’t talk,

only growl –

and I look

out my window

and it’s dark.

A city

of 13 million

and no one’s

on this block.

No one’s out

and my leg hurts.

14 十四

The seaweed trucks

with their megaphones

shouting out deals

like propaganda

aren’t here.

The cold wind

blows the

yellow dust

from China.

My lungs hurt,

my throat hurts

and it’s dark.

A man

walks by.

It’s not raining

but he carries

an umbrella.

The neon light

behind me

shines bright.

15 十五

Lance Weller

Cripple Gang’s Terracotta Army

T hat morning, Cripple Gang woke weeping at the

mouth of Horsehair Alley around the corner from

the new East Asia Bank on Xi Street. The air was

thick with the scents of soot, cooking food and the

dense, dirt-clod odor of calligraphy supplies laid out for sale

on folding tables. He had dreamed and in those dreams he

walked. Walked not rolled. Not pushed. Walked over fields

of soft grass lavender-colored in the moonlight and wet with

fresh rain. Walked on two whole feet and two strong legs

through wet grass. He could have run if he wanted, for

healthy lungs moved his breath. Clean and fresh and cool

and light throughout that chamber within which beat his

tired and undersized heart. A stream brimmed with reflected

stars and, there!, a vast water-colored moon rippled at his

feet. He felt himself an emperor, glorious and bright and

caped in velvet. And when Cripple Gang woke to the prod-

ding of King Li’s shoe against his ass, his eyes were still wet.

“What? You’re not in your little house?” King Li jerked

his chin toward the after-hours ATM atrium in front of the

bank.

Wiping his face with the back of his wrist, Cripple Gang

leaned, spat a sooty overnight accumulation of filth and

shrugged. “Got in too late last night,” he said. “Somebody

beat me to it.”

“I looked,” said King Li. “It’s that fucker Zhang Yung-fa.

Hey, are you crying?”

With a snort of effort, Cripple Gang pushed himself up.

16 十六

He blinked to take in the grey morning—the stained side-

walk, the soot-smeared buildings, the smog and the mist and

the breath of the gathering crowd churning through wan

beams of daylight dribbling through the clouds—and rubbed

his face with a soft moan. He pushed his cricket-leg about

until it was comfortable and began patting down his pockets.

“He must’ve finally made a big enough deposit for a cash-

card,” he mused. “Fuck.”

King Li crossed his arms and shook his head. “You know

what’ll happen now?” he asked. Cripple Gang continued

turning out his pockets—moving from his shirt to his pants

then picking up his shoe to inspect. “What’ll happen now,”

said King Li, “is that people who want to use the ATM after

hours—real people—will get a whiff of his peasant stink and

complain. And the bank’ll raise what you need in your ac-

count for a card and you and him and all the other peasants

will have to find somewhere else to spend your nights.

That’s what’ll happen.”

“You think?” asked Cripple Gang.

King Li nodded sagely.

Cripple Gang sighed. He moved his search from his shoe

to the worn messenger bag beside his wheelboard then

squinted up at King Li. “I’m no peasant, by the way.”

“You’re no peasant?”

“No.”

King Li lip-farted and took a long drag on his cigarette.

With his over-sized glasses, pox scars and the thin slant of

the cigarette from his froggish mouth, his face was vaguely

reminiscent of the character for disappointment. “Well,

Zhang Yung-fa certainly is. You’ve smelled him?”

“I have. Why do you think I slept out here?” Giving up

17 十七

on the bag, Cripple Gang squinted toward Xi Street. Trucks

and cabs and passenger cars rolled through curls of steam.

Pedicabs clattered past all overloaded with crates of vegeta-

bles and fruit, with the butcher’s work and the artisan’s,

while translucent blue pyramids of empty water jugs rose

from the fenders of rickety bicycles and weaved amidst the

traffic. Sidewalks accreted pedestrians and funneled them

workward.

King Li pinched his half-smoked cigarette from his lips,

flicked it against the wall then hawked up a thick, yellowy

ball of phlegm. Cripple Gang, with a soft exclamation of de-

light, plucked up the still-smoldering butt with the fine,

strong fingers of his good left hand. King Li stood watching

him smoke a moment before sliding over the gym bag he’d

brought with him.

“What is it?” asked Cripple Gang, blowing satisfied

smoke.

“Ten warriors, four archers . . .”

“No one wants archers,” said Cripple Gang. “Archers

are boring. They don’t sell. And four? That’s unlucky.

Also, archers aren’t . . .iconographic of the Terracotta Army

experience.”

King Li looked at him. “Iconographic of the Terracotta

Army experience?”

Cripple Gang waggled his eyebrows.

King Li shook his head. “And fourteen Western-style

Mao Books.”

“Agh!” cried Cripple Gang, clutching the top of his head.

“Fourteen? Fourteen is unlucky! I have no interest in dying

today.”

“With the warriors and archers, that’s fourteen twice,

18 十八

you know.”

Cripple Gang blinked up at him. “What can I do?” he

moaned. “I’m ruined.”

“You can sell anything. Isn’t that right?”

Cripple Gang shrugged. He drew the dregs of the smoke

into him and tossed the butt out onto the sidewalk which

was thick with suited office workers, day laborers smelling of

charcoal, hay and yesterday’s sweat, street sweepers, bicy-

clists, smoking loafers and elderly walkers out taking Xian’s

October air.

King Li shrugged. “But, if you don’t want to even try...”

He made a show of looking around. “Maybe Zhang Yung-

fa . . .”

“Oh, King Li,” sighed Cripple Gang with faint theatrical-

ity. “It’s no wonder you’re the king of all souvenir salesmen.

You leave me no choice.”

“Fine, fine,” said King Li with a broad grin. He took a

deep breath and hitched up his pants. “I’ll meet you in a

couple days at your little house over there,” he said, fishing a

little calculator from his pocket. “I figure there’s about

twenty-eight hundred yuan of merchandise here,” he finally

said. “So you’ll keep, say, anything over two thousand.

Good?”

Cripple Gang’s face crumpled around the figures and he

rubbed his eyes. “So, to see any profit, I need to sell these

for, at least, ten Euros or fourteen dollars American. Each.”

King Li frowned. “So?”

“Fourteen! Again!”

“Huh. Hey, how did you figure that out so fast? Are you

sure?”

“I’m sure I’m ruined,” sighed Cripple Gang. “But I’ll try,

19 十九

King Li. I will try.” He squinted up, and wet his lips. “But

you know,” he went on, “if I could move these fine pieces

fast, you could supply me with more and we’d both profit.”

King Li looked down at him and shrugged. “Simple eco-

nomics,” he said.

“There’s nothing simple about economics. And you

grasped it so quickly. You’re truly as wise as Deng Xiaoping.”

“‘It doesn’t matter the color of the cat, as long as he’s a

good cat,’” laughed King Li. He puffed out his chest and

tilted his head. “Fine. You sell this lot by the end of the day

and I’ll see you get more tomorrow.”

Cripple Gang hung his head. “I won’t even have time to

eat,” he moaned.

“Not my problem.”

“But my selling prowess will surely wane with hunger,”

argued Cripple Gang. “It would ease my mind and simulta-

neously bolster my efforts to know that I might, perhaps,

keep anything over, say, fifteen hundred. Then I could eat a

good dinner and work all the harder tomorrow.”

King Li blinked quickly. “All right then,” he said with an

enormous sigh.

Cripple Gang goggled at King Li’s generosity then said

quickly, “But to manage this prodigious feat I will need one-

hundred-fifty yuan right now.”

“What? Why?”

“To properly sell these fine pieces,” said Cripple Gang,

raising three fingers like a Qin minister, “I will need to dis-

play them in such a way that the consumer will want to in-

vest in the China Experience.”

“The China Experience . . .”

Cripple Gang nodded. “And to do that, I require a

20 二十

square of fine, red felt upon which to display my troops.”

“A square of felt.”

“Red felt. Think of it as the field upon which my army

will proudly march.”

King Li held up a hand. “So one-fifty then?”

“Two hundred would be better.”

King Li sighed, peeled a selection of worn bills from a

roll and Cripple Gang held each up to the light to find its wa-

termark then carefully scratched the Chairman’s hair with his

thumbnail to feel for its texture. Satisfied, he nodded sol-

emnly then maneuvered himself onto his wheelboard. When

he had his balance, he nodded to the gym bag. “Just set it on

my cricket-leg here,” he said.

“Cricket-leg?” King Li started as though he believed

parts of Cripple Gang’s malformed body were actually made

of cricket parts.

Cripple Gang smiled as King Li set the bag down in the

crook of his left leg. “My good leg,” he said, patting his

thigh. “My strong leg. If that truck hadn’t smashed my

foot,” he lifted his chin to indicate a sock-wrapped protru-

sion,” then this leg would be strong enough to carry me with-

out this board. Like a cricket jumping in Summer.”

He settled his right leg over his left so the bag was caught

between his knees as King Li bent to inspect his mangled

foot. The older man drew quickly back again. “Looks like its

bound,” he said with a moue of distaste.

“It was a Sinotruk,” said Cripple Gang. “Ran right over

it and never stopped. Didn’t even slow down.”

King Li shook out another cigarette. “Cripple Gang,” he

said, lighting up and blowing smoke from both nostrils.

“Why don’t you kill yourself?”

21 二十一

Cripple Gang squinted up at him. “But why?”

King Li shrugged and cupped his elbow with his palm,

holding the cigarette near his ear. “For your next life,” he

said. “It’s got to be better than this.”

Cripple Gang waved his good, strong left hand. “Sitting

or standing,” he said, “I’m as tall as anyone else. Besides, it’s

not all bad.” Then he pushed himself off toward Xi Street,

his wheelboard rattling and squealing.

* * *

He took King Li’s two hundred yuan to the little snack

shop outside the Meihua Hotel lobby and bought four packs

of cigarettes, a black plastic lighter, two hot meat buns and

one plain, two bottles of drinking water, a short can of Pringles

and a little glass jar of onion paste. The woman working the

counter came out from behind it to hand him his goods in a

paper sack. She was middle-aged, worn thin and her shiny

forehead creased with alarm to see him. For his part, Cripple

Gang checked each bill he received back, put the sack in his

messenger bag and pushed off again. He used a brick-size

chunk of wood set with eye-bolts and a rope handle to push

himself along while the board itself was fixed with three

skateboard trucks with chewed, pink polyurethane wheels.

It was slow going, in and out amidst the crowds, but by-and-

by he reached the mouth of the alley at the edge of the Mus-

lim bazaar near the Bell Tower.

Waste-water spread flat and stale in dark, thin peninsu-

las about the cracked paving, where in times gone by banner-

men had assembled, concubines strolled, emperors passed.

The hot, coppery stink of fresh butchery rose from the fore-

most stall where a glass case gone yellow with old grease dis-

played kebabs of lamb, boiled ram’s hooves and sweetbreads

22 二十二

in stained paper cartons. The vegetable-seller stood outside

his stall to spray beneath wooden troughs overfilled with

persimmon, dark bundles of spinach and pale, trembling

spears of snow cabbage while nearby a washerwoman squat-

ted over a kettle brimming with soapy water, kink-veined

fists fast about the handle of a paddle from which dripped a

bluish soapscum. A clerk at the calligraphy shop was setting

out trays of brushes all finely-balanced and tightly-ferruled

and dark, heavy inkstones smelling electrically of rock and

time and grace. Cripple Gang trundled past.

The old man was asleep at the back of his stall. The yel-

low air within close and frowsy. Narrow, waist-high tables

ran along either side all ajumble with antique square-holed

coinage faded and patina’d and near worthless. Tables lit-

tered with old time-pieces inscribed to workers and lovers

and sons long-dead. A mare’s nest of clutter heaped in West-

ern-style cigar boxes and converted cigarette cartons. Gilded

Mao busts stood here and there about the bric-a-brac while

the Chairman’s grinning countenance along with various

Terracotta Warriors were emblazoned upon t-shirts, back-

packs, scarves and posters hanging listlessly in the logy air.

Cripple Gang touched the old man’s ankle and he came

awake with quick, silent urgency. As though he expected to

wake in some awful place. His eyes were milky, the skin

around them fractured and crazed as though the useless orbs

had been hammered carelessly into his face. The old man

said his name and Cripple Gang pressed a meat bun to his

rootskinned palm and took the other for himself. They ate in

silence and in silence passed the water bottle back and forth

and in all that time the old man did not have even the rumor

of a customer. After a while, he asked about her and listened

23 二十三

carefully to Cripple Gang’s silence.

Finally, the old man told him to take a shirt from his se-

lection, something clean in which to wrap himself, but Crip-

ple Gang told him no and thank you and gave over one of

the packs of cigarettes and the lighter. The old man tapped

the pack three times against his palm, split the cellophane

with his fingernail and thumbed the foil off. He tapped a

cigarette against the back of his hand and twisted the result-

ing nub about the end and tore away the filter and lit it. He

smoked a while then passed it to Cripple Gang who drew

from it and passed it back.

The old man dozed. His long, wispy chinhairs fell in an

airy spray across the front of his coat. Tired old man, he slept

easily but lightly these days. He’d been struggled against

when he was young and now Cripple Gang sat watching him

sleep; sat watching the play of shadows in the little craters

bitten from his cheeks and in the hollows where his ruined

eyes nested.

Midmorning now and the breeze fell off. The air mud-

died. Cripple Gang floated down a river of mercury into a

wide space the shape of the ocean and knew he was dream-

ing. His twin’s womb-warm palms upon his shoulders

where she held him safe from harm. An intimacy few re-

cover from. And then he was enveloped in brilliant light

where he found himself un-sistered and alone.

When he woke, Cripple Gang set the plain bun and two

more packs of cigarettes on the counter near the old man’s

elbow along with the last of King Li’s two hundred yuan.

Placing the gym bag back between his knees, he pushed off

into the alley but the old man called him back.

“Xiao Gang.”

24 二十四

He turned. Blind old man on a stool at the back of a junk

stall. “What?”

“I know she’s gone. I know that.”

“Last I heard she was fine. Her health. It was fine. And

she had plenty to eat.”

The old man nodded and waved. Age and injury had

robbed him of his power to weep but Cripple Gang could

hear the catch of his breath just the same. And though the

old man could not see it, he waved back just the same.

* * *

In the warm afternoon, near the bus depot in the shadow

of the Drum Tower, Cripple Gang watched lazily as Vivaldi

and Jack Bauer argued over dead mantises. They’d placed

the insects in a frayed wicker basket to fight them and now

both were dead and there was no clear champion. For his

part, Cripple Gang smoked his last cigarette and eyed the

crowds surging around the base of the tower and off toward

the Century Ginwa Plaza where the Starbucks and the higher

-end shops stood.

Both insects were small; Vivaldi’s leaf-brown but only as

long as the distance from the tip of his little finger to the cen-

ter of his palm while Jack Bauer’s measured from the end of

his thumb to the center of his wrist and was green as a grass

stem. Neither, at first, seemed inclined to fight, but merely

sat in the basket as listless and lazy as their owners in the

heat. To agitate them, Jack Bauer pursed his lips and whis-

tled while Vivaldi parted his lips and hissed. This was, ap-

parently, enough as both mantises began to sway like pam-

pas grass before shooting forward, razorous forelegs raised.

Now both lay dead at the bottom of the basket—one

headless and the other merely still—and Vivaldi and Jack

25 二十五

Bauer turned to Cripple Gang.

“What do you think?” asked Vivaldi.

“You mean who won the match?”

“Of course,” said Jack Bauer. “What else?”

Cripple Gang studied them a moment. A pathetic tab-

leau as old as the stones they squatted upon. Mornings and

afternoons, the pair ran groups of Western tourists through

the bazaar and the Great Mosque. Guo took Vivaldi as his

Western name because it made the Europeans smile while

Ang named himself Jack Bauer because it made the Ameri-

cans laugh. And, because of their good English and Western

names, they were in high demand and got very good tips.

“Well, I watched quite carefully,” said Cripple Gang.

“And both combatants fought fiercely . . .”

Vivaldi waved an impatient hand. “We wagered. We

need a decision.”

Cripple Gang pursed his lips. “I see. Well, the winner is

clear.”

They looked at him. “Well?” Jack Bauer finally

prompted.

Cripple Gang held three fingers aloft and said solemnly,

“Our Great Chairman Mao quotes Lenin as saying ‘Concrete

analysis of concrete conditions is the most essential thing.’

Truth, therefore, as Mao himself said, comes from facts.

Given that, you must see how clear things become.”

They gaped.

“No?” asked Cripple Gang with careful surprise. “Well,

I can, of course, settle the matter but, like all worthy endeav-

ors, there must be recompense.” He raised his three fingers

higher. “Deng Xiaoping has said, ‘To uphold Socialism, we

must eliminate poverty’ and, my comrades, I am poor.”

26 二十六

“I see where this is going,” sighed Vivaldi.

“Where?” asked Jack Bauer.

“How much was your wager?” asked Cripple Gang.

“Five hundred,” they said in unison.

Cripple Gang nodded soberly. “Well,” he finally said, “I

would be happy to instruct you as to the obvious truth of the

matter for one-hundred-fifty.”

Vivaldi rolled his eyes. Jack Bauer slapped the ground

and said, “Done.”

“Each,” added Cripple Gang.

They sighed and rubbed their faces, flattened the hair

atop their heads with cupped and pensive palms before fi-

nally waving in tacit agreement. So, after they had paid him

and after he had held each bill skyward and scratched the

Chairman’s hair, Cripple Gang began a long oration.

He began by listing the admirable physical qualities of

each mantis—its hue, size and demeanor—and then elabo-

rated with an exposition regarding their martial virtues, their

apparent styles of combat and their bravery. He compared

the mantises to the famous oath-brothers, Zhang Fei and

Guan Yu, and compared Vivaldi and Jack Bauer themselves

to the equally famous Liu Bei and Zhuge Liang. Cripple

Gang then described in detail the Great Insect Battle as he ob-

served it, extending his Three Kingdoms metaphor by com-

paring it, improbably, to the Battle at Red Cliffs. He waved

his hand about. His lips grew wet, his cheeks flushed. His

hair trembled. Passers-by stopped to listen while Vivaldi

and Jack Bauer leaned close, their eyes wide and mouths

open.

Finally, after nearly a quarter-of-an-hour, Cripple Gang

wiped his face and gestured toward the basket. “And so,” he

27 二十七

said, “we have before us now the sad, tragic results of this

terrible clash. Both heroes lie dead. Two oath-brothers have

fallen. Those are their concrete conditions, yes? Those are

the facts upon which we must base judgment, which is both

obvious and clear, that neither mantis bested the other.” He

paused and looked at them, one and then the other, gauging

their reactions as the little crowd began murmuring and

laughing. Cell phone cameras clicked and small coinage was

tossed into his open messenger bag.

For their part, Vivaldi and Jack Bauer sat blinking at him

and at each other. Cripple Gang looked at them from under

his eyebrows and then down the length of his nose. Finally,

he shrugged and gathered his things, saying, “And I leave

you now to ponder the truth of this lesson and take to heart

the wise philosophies of our Great Chairman.”

Cripple Gang pushed himself off on his wheelboard,

leaving the pair to gawp silently after him until he was lost

between the clicking legs and strobic shadows of the gather-

ing afternoon tourist crowd.

* * *

Cripple Gang spread out upon the sidewalk the fine red

square of felt he’d found at the back of the old man’s stall

two days ago. He fussed with it, getting it to lay just so and

smoothed out the wrinkles with the side of his truncated

foot. Satisfied, he laid the fourteen Mao Books on one side

like a mahjong meld of his own invention. Nodding to him-

self, he turned his attention to the Terracotta Warriors.

Their fidelity was good enough, which meant the sculp-

tor had a Government contract and some sort of template to

work from, but the clay was chalky and unsmooth; it failed to

capture the riveted intricacies of the armor let alone the com-

28 二十八

plex folds of the scarves. His little army of fourteen was also

completely hollow which made them feel cheaper than those

cast and fired with stones embedded in their headspaces to

give them heft. Nevertheless, the faces were good with none

were twinned in this batch so he shrugged and set them in

martial rows upon the left side of the felt, archers to the front.

As the first few buses of foreign tourists pulled up before

the Drum Tower, Cripple Gang fished the onion paste from

his bag, unscrewed the little blue cap and spread a thin layer

along the back of his forefinger. Resealing the jar, he tossed it

into the bag, plucked up a Mao Book and opened it ran-

domly, careful not to get any of the paste on the vinyl cover

or the rice paper pages. As the first group approached—six

men, all Americans—he affected an air of studied indiffer-

ence, moving his lips silently as though deep in study.

The first of them paused and Cripple Gang heard the

light insuck of his breath as though he’d steel himself for

some unpleasant task before speaking. After a moment’s

confusion, he understood the American to ask if these were

real Little Red Books and Cripple Gang fixed him with his

best revolutionary expression and assured him that they

were. He went on to explain how they were known as Red

Treasure Books by their owners because they were, indeed,

the most treasured of possessions. Cripple Gang said, in his

passable English, that each of these particular Mao Books had

been carried in the pocket of one worthy or another in their

struggle against the Four Olds and in the cleansing of the

class ranks in the mighty days gone by. Setting down his

book, he raised three fingers and explained how the Red

Treasure Books contained more than just the thoughts and

teachings of a great man but, indeed, the very soul of the Chi-

29 二十九

nese people. He went on to tell the Americans how fortunate

it was to have even a few of these books to sell, so precious

were they.

In the end, all six bought Mao Books for seventy-five

yuan each. All complimented Cripple Gang on his English

and after the last of them had passed over the requisite cur-

rency (and after he’d checked each bill in turn) one of them

squatted and carefully asked what had happened to him.

Cripple Gang hung his head and wiped beneath his eyes

with the curl of his forefinger. When he raised his head

again, his red eyes shed tears. He said his situation was un-

important, that his only goal was to see that his mother never

had to skip another meal. With a shake of the head, Cripple

Gang explained that even though this was a country of fam-

ine and of woe, it was also a land of great beauty, peopled by

a folk prided on filial devotion.

Cripple Gang fell silent and the Americans stared and

shuffled about, little red books in over-large hands. They

held a little congress in the middle of the bazaar and finally

and silently handed Cripple Gang six one-hundred yuan

notes. He held each to the sky, squinted at it, scratched

Mao’s hair six times, and thanked them profusely on behalf

of all mothers, everywhere.

Cripple Gang’s mat was one among dozens. Souvenir

hawkers had set up along the sidewalk to either side of him

and stretched back along the curved stone wall of the Drum

Tower. They sold little toy monkeys that danced on strings,

flutes carved from calabashes, painted paper fans, green por-

celain and little jade figurines. Terracotta Army banners and

figurines were everywhere and local guidebooks prolifer-

ated, as did postcard sets of the First Emperor’s clay legions

30 三十

in their silent, earthen majesty. Silk scarves of every color

and design fluttered in the warm breeze. There were lac-

quered chopsticks for sale in lacquered boxes on the lac-

quered tops of folding tables set out before tea shops, spice

shops and pearl sellers. Everything polished, everything

bright. Travelling tinsmiths sold dragon sculptures of castoff

aluminum while shifty, desperate men pedaled knockoff Ro-

lexes, Gucci bags and Mont Blanc pens with aggressive ur-

gency. Paper cutters roamed the crowds snipping shoppers’

silhouettes into matchbook covers and greybeard craftsmen

sold combs and toy swords and little soldiers carved from

peach wood. Confectioners offered blown sugar shaped like

animals for children’s delight. Persimmons by the thousands

were set out in plastic baskets and food stalls sold saffron

and cinnamon from open hemp sacks and pickled pigs’

snouts, skinned geese and sugared twists of duck and lamb

dripping with fat and skewered on kebabs with wedges of

tomato, pepper and onion. The thick, brown scents of grease

and cooking meat mixed with the pungent, earthy stink of

mounded spice, the sweat of the crowd and the wet-dog odor

of loose teas. Beggars wandered with trembling palms and

all was accompanied by the bazaar’s soundtrack: the insistent

horns of pedicabs, the hectic, unmusical jangle of dense com-

merce, of the high bright tones of flutes and bicycle bells and

of a dozen different tongues and the laughter and the moans

and the shouts and the cries that coalesced into a mercurial

pool of humanity.

By the time the next American tour group arrived, Crip-

ple Gang had sold four more Mao books to some German

students and a little squad of seven soldiers, including one

archer to a French family. He’d also gathered a collection of

31 三十一

butts over the course of the day and now sat at the head of

his mat, smoking pensively as he waited. He ate the Pringles

then reapplied the onion paste and, as the first few cautiously

approached, rubbed his eyes and hung his head.

The woman who stopped before him wore Nikes and

cargo pants and stood with her weight gathered in her heels.

The pants were wrinkled, dusty and sooty, which was typical

for travelers to his dusty, sooty country and the laces of her

shoes were knotted with expansive little bows that flared to

either side of her instep. When he looked up at her, his eyes

red and damp, she clasped her hands together and widened

her eyes.

Oh, she said. Oh. Oh my God you poor man look at

you. Were you in the earthquake? My God how terrible.

She turned away then turned quickly back, knelt to select a

Mao Book and an archer, held out four hundred-yuan notes

and asked was that enough. She held the bills as though she

were holding a spider by the legs and Cripple Gang blinked

rapidly at her—partly in surprise and party because his eyes

stung so badly—dipped his head in silent assent and mur-

mured his thanks. When he reached for the yuan, she re-

leased the bills before he could touch them and they fluttered

down to land behind his remaining ranks of soldiery and he

checked each one then tucked them away.

Cripple Gang surveyed his forces: four warriors, two

archers and three Mao Books remained and he had already

cleared King Li’s fifteen-hundred. His cricket-leg ached and

he rubbed at it while watching for passers-by to drop ciga-

rettes. By habit, he’d set his cap down on one corner of the

felt and an expert glance told him he had collected something

like another two hundred yuan in coin without even having

32 三十二

to beg. He was in the process of transferring the coins into

the empty Pringles can when another American woman

stopped before his mat.

He glanced at her shoes. Nikes again. Her bare right leg

was smooth and tan while her left was a shining metal rod

socketed into a plastic ankle riding in the throat of her shoe.

Cripple Gang blinked. He followed the line of her metal leg

to an intricate knee joint and a metal upper leg that disap-

peared into a pair of baggy shorts. She carried neither

crutches nor cane and her hair was Chinese-black. When she

removed her sunglasses and squatted, the knee of her pros-

theses hissed pneumatically.

She opened her mouth and closed it again. Searched his

eyes as though she’d ask a question. Sunlight through the

coal smog set her knee joint glittering. A man stood beside

her with his palm lightly on her shoulder as the woman

searched for the words to say the thing she wanted.

Cripple Gang shifted about. The remains of his army

stood ranked before him. When the woman apologized and

reached to carefully touch his withered right leg, something

shifted within him. He felt it in his throat and in his bowels

and he felt it in his heart. Some change he could not recog-

nize but might in days yet to come. He opened and closed

his mouth and raised three fingers but had nothing to say so

lowered them once more.

“I’m sorry,” the woman whispered. “I’m so sorry.”

Cripple Gang’s eyes were red and damp. He could not

speak but shook his head as though he’d force the words he

wanted to tell the things he needed. Of his father and his

mother, of his sister and all the ways he was ever hurt by his

own country. But he remained silent, shaking his head from

33 三十三

side to side.

The woman balanced herself on the balls of her feet with

her forearms resting on the points of her knees, both the

natural and the artificial. She looked at the man and he

shrugged and nodded and she stood. Another hiss from her

knee. She fished about in her hip bag then knelt again to

press a wad of bills into Cripple Gang’s palm, apologized

once more and turned away.

Cripple Gang glanced at the yuan. He reckoned it more

than two-thousand. He held it in his hand. The bills were so

light. As ephemeral as watery moonlight reflected in a

stream and as ineradicable as an emperor’s delight for pools

of mercury shaped like the sea. Sighing, he opened his

mouth to call her back but she had disappeared into the

crowd, leaving him behind, alone, his eyes red and wet.

* * *

That evening, Cripple Gang went back out to Xi Street

and bought two lamb kebabs and an orange soda. He

wheeled across Century Ginwa and ate beneath the giant

video screens above the plaza where models cavorted in the

latest fashions from Shanghai, Beijing, and Hong Kong. Up-

scale shoppers hurried back and forth across the neon-

washed square, heels clicking on geometric designs worked

into the dark concrete. He sipped his soda. It was warm and

flat. No one paid him any mind. He finished the first kebab

while listening to an old man play the zither for loose coin,

then ate the center from the second, set the stick between his

teeth and pushed off across the plaza.

By the time he reached the East Asia Bank his left arm

was very tired. He stopped beside the atrium, cupped his

hand against the smoky glass and peered inside. Zhang

34 三十四

Yung-fa was curled up on the floor.

Cripple Gang sighed.

He had to cajole a passing news seller from his bicycle to

slide his card through the reader as it was set well above his

reach. The door opened with a low hiss and he rocked him-

self up the steps by rotating his hips about and pushing with

his left arm. Dragging the wheelboard up after himself, he

had a moment of clumsy trouble when the wheels caught in

the door as it closed and when he was finally in, he leaned

back against the smoky glass to catch his breath. Across the

tiny space, Zhang Yung-fa huddled under a thin blanket,

stinking like a dead pig.

“Fuck,” muttered Cripple Gang. “King Li’s right.” He

coughed and softly groaned. After a few moments, he

reached out with his left heel to nudge the other man.

“Didn’t Confucius teach that the superior man develops a

cleanliness of heart and mind?” asked Cripple Gang. “You

might consider starting with a cleanliness of body and see

where that leads.”

Zhang Yung-fa did not move but his voice slipped out

from beneath the blanket. “Fuck Confucius,” he said. “And

get out of my room.”

Cripple Gang could see the lines and planes of his body

beneath the blanket. So thin. “I brought you a kebab,” he

finally said.

Zhang Yung-fa roused himself. He looked at the kebab

then looked at Cripple Gang. He panted and the whites of his

eyes, even in the dim glow shed from the ATM screen, were

yellow. His knuckles were huge and red, his lips cracked

and his faced dusted with patchy stubble. After a moment,

he reached out a trembling hand.

35 三十五

Cripple Gang watched him eat. He cleared his throat.

“Zhang Yung-fa, where are your pants?”

“Traded them yesterday,” he said around mouthfuls.

“You traded your pants?”

“For a persimmon,” Zhang Yung-fa nodded, swallowing

with great, jerking shudders as the food went into him. “But

it was soft. I think it made me sick”

Cripple Gang sighed, stripped the shirt from his back

and handed it over. “Tie it by the sleeves around your

waist,” he said, reaching into his messenger bag to remove

the square of red felt. With his fingers and teeth, he opened a

tear in its center and slipped it over his head to wear like a

cape. He raised three fingers and his chin. “Now I am

garbed like an emperor,” he proclaimed.

Zhang Yung-fa looked at him, shrugged and finished the

last of the kebab, licking the juice from the stick and using its

pointed end to clean his teeth. When he’d finished, he sub-

sided beneath the blanket once more, using the shirt as a pil-

low. Cripple Gang watched him settle. He took the two-

thousand yuan from his pocket and sat holding it in his

hand, in the dark of the atrium.

“I wish I could die,” murmured Zhang Yung-fa from the

edge of sleep.

Cripple Gang pursed his lips and sat silently a long time

as Zhang Yung-fa fell back into an uneasy sleep. Then he

took a great deep breath and rolled up the bills he’d accumu-

lated throughout the day and tucked them into one of Zhang

Yung-fa’s shoes. He moved to the door. It slid open and the

wheelboard slipped from his grasp, went clattering down the

steps and out into the wide sidewalk.

“Fuck,” muttered Cripple Gang as he prepared for the

36 三十六

long, grinding trip down the stairs and over to the board.

37 三十七

Buff Whitman-Bradley

After Su Tung P’o

Today my daughter wanted to hear stories from my youth

Tonight I sit outside in the October chill

Reading old poems of mine under the porch light.

There is no moon

A neighbor stops by and tells me much of his life story

And his plans for the future

I think of my friend Theo, old, alone, losing his sight

And I wonder about my own old age

The zen master said Wood does not become ash

In other words each moment is absolute

One moment does not become the next

The boy doesn’t become the man doesn’t become the old man

Doesn’t become the corpse

There is much in this, I know, for my deep reflection

Instead I grow sad at one more autumn and the music of

crickets

38 三十八

Gabriel Ricard

Minimal Offense Intended

I’m not going to hang out the living room

window and yell at the mail lady. I’m not going to throw lit

cigarettes at tanks

with sirens that don’t even have time for the memory

of strong eyeglasses or churches that tell stories

on milk bottles and priceless works of art.

Don’t worry about me when the weather

gets warm, and I want to consider grocery shopping

in Hong Kong or just the black market in Queens.

There’s a lot of new music on my self-made radio station.

My hands still love to run through her hair.

The neighborhood kids aren’t trying to leave rattlesnakes in

my mailbox.

I can hold on,

hold on with both hands, see that point where the high and

low

roads are at constant odds and still find time to smile like a

idiot.

I’ve been learning how to stand on the air between

the passenger seat of my old friend’s Cadillac

and that place in the kingdom of Heaven

where they expect you to get through the paperwork

with a pen.

39 三十九

I’m going to be just fine,

and I’ve only got a few people

to thank for that. A lot of brilliant students

and competent writers gave up on me around the time

I started picking fights with chess players in the park.

Just enough people hung around.

Their patience,

most of all her kind words

made me look like I could outrun two packs a day

and all those books I needed to read.

I’m grateful to the lot of them,

even when I was pretty sure that some

were just humoring the change jar

and sleeping through my favorite highways.

That’s probably just sentimental paranoia talking.

Watch the way I’ve got a pretty good idea

of how to tell half-strangers that I’ll call them later,

only to do nothing of the sort.

I’m paying for breakfast with perfect change every single

time,

and that’s not an accident by any means.

It’s a few points higher than dumb luck,

and I’m not revealing anything further.

40 四十

Contributor Notes

Gabriel Ricard is a writer, actor, stand-up comedian and pro-

ducer. He has written short fiction, poetry, film/stage scripts,

book/film/music reviews, novels, creative non-fiction and in-

terviews. He has also been a featured contributor with such

publications as Unlikely Stories and The Modest Proposal. As an

actor he has appeared in several successful stage plays and

short films. Born in Canmore, Alberta, Canada, he lives in

Waverly, Virginia.

Brian Kuhl, originally from the United States, now lives and

teaches in Zhejiang Province.

Kevin Sexton was born in Montreal, Canada and received a

degree in creative writing from Concordia University. His

poetry has been published in Dawson College's Creations

Magazine and Concordia's Soliloquies, as well as the With-

Words chapbook, "Crystal Balls and Birth Canals." He cur-

rently lives in South Korea as a kindergarten teacher.

Aditya Shankar writes in English and Malayalam, and pub-

lishes poetry and articles in leading journals across the globe,

including Asia Writes, Meadowland Review, The Little Magazine,

The Word Plus, Indian Literature, The Literary X Magazine, Mun-

yori, The Pyramid, Poetry Chain, Mastodon Dentist, The Wild

Goose Poetry Review, Bayou Review, Meadowland Review, Words

-Myth, Chandrabhaga, Miller’s pond, Message in a bottle, Aire-

ings, Hudson View, Snakeskin, The Legendary, Literary Bohemian,

The Caledonia Review, The Other Herald among others. He lives

and works in Bangalore. 41 四十一

Emily Strauss lived in China from 1999-2008, with a one year

break, both on the mainland and in Macao. She taught EFL

and was a teacher trainer in Chengdu, Suzhou, and Zhuhai,

and traveled extensively, including three months in Urumqi,

and at least 17 provinces. Lance Weller has published short fiction in several literary

journals. “The Breathable Air” won Glimmer Train’s Short-

Story Award for New Writers in 1997 and “The Seven

League Boots,” published in New Millennium Writings, was

nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2000. He is also published

in The American Literary Review. His most recent work has

been published in the online journal White Whale Review and

The Broadkill Review. An excerpt from his unpublished novel,

Wilderness was published in the Fall/Winter 2008-09 Lincoln

issue of Quiddity.

Buff Whitman-Bradley is the author of two books of poetry,

b. eagle, poet, and The Honey Philosophies. His poetry has ap-

peared in many print and online journals. In addition to writ-

ing, he produces documentary videos and audios. His inter-

views with U.S. soldiers who have refused to fight in Iraq

and Afghanistan can be heard at www.couragetoresist.org.

He lives in Marin County, California, with his wife Cynthia.

42 四十二