Superman Down - Photography - Jillian Brall of Unshod Quills

We at HAL are happy and proud to inform you that our sexy sister site in Portland has released the second edition of Unshod Quills, containing art, fiction, videos, and more; all the finest in hip literature in pandemic format. A good amount of HAL authors are including in this issue (you remember the China-US cross-writing exercise we did at Groupthink? You see people, there’s a plan with everything we do, promise!), look out for Jason Lasky, Lucinda Holmes, Ginger wRong Chen and Catherine Platt, just to mention a few. Oh, and your favorite HAL editor debuts as a photo artist. In all modesty as always, needless to say. Big congratulations to Dena and UQ, HAL loves ‘ya!

B.

Letter from the editor of Unshod Quills

September 2011
back at home on the farm
somewhere near Portland, Oregon

Dearest Reader,

Let’s get to the the art and literature, shall we?

What do we have for you? Funny you should ask.  We always feature writing and art based on themes assigned by me, because I am the editor, and I like to assign themes. This issue’s themes include America, fire, rapture, villanelles, “Somewhere Never Traveled, Gladly Beyond,” and red shoes.

In this issue, we have a very special feature: a literary and art based exchange program between China based English language publisher Haliterature and the United States based Unshod Quills. HAL is UQ’s sister site, and something of its mothership, even. For this effort, members of each publisher’s writing group shared writing or art based on the theme of America. Perhaps my favorite contributions to the mix come from Katrina Hamlin in Shanghai, with her story about white teeth and incomplete cakes, and New York City’s Jillian Brall, with her catchy line, “Yo yo yo, turn it up. This is the best part.”

Please click here to read the full Letter from the Editor, and click here to go straight to Unshod Quills.

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.

The next day I came again, and was greeted as usual with a screechy “你好.” Hi yourself Wenwen, I said. The shopkeeper came out to make chit chat about the weather, all the while polishing his bald head with a dirty grey rag. “才三月份已经这么热我操,” he said. I nodded, fucking horrible. “我操,” added 文文 in a high pitched, all-penetrating voice. We looked at him. He looked at us. “真你妈热,” he added, almost in a thoughtful tone. The shopkeeper sighed. “The bird’s mind is going I’m afraid, he’s getting worse everyday, last night he called the passing 城管 a pack of stinky pigs asses. I have no explanation really where he gets it, 他妈的.” I had my thoughts where he might be picking up the foul language, but kept my thoughts to myself.

The next afternoon I was distracted by a pretty dramatic car accident on 新闸路, and arrive at the little store quite a lot later than usually. “你好文文,” I tried. “You’re late you stinky foreign cock sucker,” was his reply in pitch perfect English. This was getting confusing now. The shop owner just looked at me and shook his head. “You see he said, it’s not my doings.” So it would appear, I had to agree.

“文文,” I said, directly addressing the little black bird, what’s going on with you? You used to be such a polite little creature.

He looked me straight in the eyes, his tiny eye balls an impenetrable black. He glanced back at the show owner, head turn 180 degrees, seemingly to confirm that no one was listening. “Come closer,” he whispered. I took a step forward towards the cage. “Closer”, he insisted. The cage was hung too high for me to get any closer like this, so I pulled out the black dogs cage from the wall, and stepped up on it. My face was now directly in front of the cage, a mere couple of centimetres from Wenwen’s beak. “You’re right B,” he whispered gently, with an almost feminine voice. “I have warmness for the world in me too, I promise. I could recite poetry and passages from the 庄子 instead, I could give compliments to the pretty girls walking by, and I could encourage the ugly ones by singing to them. I would comfort you B. when you’re tired and lonely, when the world is all too much for you, when this city that you hate has ruined yet another promising day for you I’d lay my little beak on your hands and sing lullabies for you until you go to sleep.”

I could feel the black dog moving around nervously in the cage I was stood upon. In the eloquent little feather friend’s eyes had taken on a lighter colour now, almost bluish it seemed.

“Let me out of this tiny cage B. Please. I can be a good bird, but never from in here.”

The black dog was jumping up and down in his cage now, barking like mad, and the shop keeper had spotted me in this odd position, on his way now out of the shop, no doubt to ask me what the hell I thought I was doing.

I didn’t really think about it; with one swift manoeuvre I opened the latch, and Wenwen shot straight out of the cage, bumped into my forehead and sending me flying backwards into the ground, overturning the black dog’s cage as well, throwing it open.

I just laid there on my back, in the midst of the chaos I had created. Not really hearing the mad dog start tearing apart the rabbit babies from the shop next door, not being able to acknowledge the bald shop keepers horrific insults directed at me, and only vaguely aware of the steady trickle of blood emanating from my forehead.

Straight above me Wenwen performed two slow and elegant circles, all the while looking straight at me. “wrheeeeee!” he screamed, “whreeeeee,” his eyes again black as the night. He looked away, up towards the marvellously blue sky and disappeared.

By B.

I got back from work today to find 5 big white bags of salt piled up outside my door. I know she means well, and I can tell by the tiny little dark spots on the top bag that she must have cried a little before leaving. I cry too when I have good intentions and no means whatsoever left to communicate them, no way to mend. I can understand that. Tiny little spots on white bags of salt, covering half my door, like WW1 trenches. I set my laptop bag down on the floor, sit down with my back against it, and let the lights in the hallway go out. Still I sit, as to not disrupt the darkness.

You’re out there somewhere right now, right here in Shanghai, trying to guess the moment that is now, trying to feel what I feel, think what I think. Hoping I will see this gesture of yours, the apologetic love it contains. It’s true, you do know me, Betty. I worried then, about radiation and all that, I did. To the point of panic. Back then you used to laugh at me. B, you know you don’t have to wash those vegetables for 10 whole minutes before you cook them right? (joking and lovely.) B, you can’t stay home from work again because of a yet to happen nuclear disaster 3000km away (blaming. I’m so irresponsible). B, can you stop talking about half-life and mutant apples for one fucking second please? (I can’t). I was scared then. I don’t know why, I can’t explain it properly, I only know that those reactors spoke to me, right there and then, I couldn’t go to work, did not dare eat. Couldn’t breathe, sleep, or accept any attempts to repair, couldn’t stop the movement initiated. Those cores threatening to burn a hole through the containment, through the hull, and through 5m of reinforce steel, that same core inside me lost also its stability, initiated the same unpredictable set of chain reactions, not really possible to monitor, not really possible to understand.

So I pumped sea water, straight into my heart.

That was then, a month ago and counting, the containments did not hold, and those tiny dark spots on the top of 5 white big bags of utterly and completely useless salt tell me that the fallout did eventually reach us here in Shanghai, and that most of it landed on you. Poor Betty.

Fukushima my love, I know we can’t rebuild you to what you were, to what you aspired to be. I went down with you then, scared and angry just like you, afraid of what I would become, just like you. Just like you I stood shaking by the sea, I cried for you my love, and I’d like to think you cried for me too.

I’m seated now in my silent pitch-black hall way, my hand leaning on the WW1 salt trenches blocking my door, and I’m thinking that it’s a comfort to know we tried everything, even the impossibly retarded.

by B.

Things work a little bit differently in Fujian, so it doesn’t surprise me much when a young Chinese guy stops me at the intersection of Hexiang Xi Lu and the old bomb-shelter tunnel to display his vast assortment of porn VCDs: ‘the kind that laowai like’ he assures me. ‘Fair enough’ I think, and good to know for future reference; however, jintian buyao de. I’m on my way down to the waterside to cure my hangover with coffee and sea breeze.

“But I have all sorts of things,” he continues, “all the things laowai likes, big blond tits porn,” he flashes a badly photoshopped cover of a truly big blond girl from the 80s, “japanese sexysexy” more dated covers. All the while he’s sidestepping along next to me, attempting to force me to closer inspect the shabby discs on offer. “Sorry, hai shi bu yao my friend, maybe next time”.

I’ve continued walking into the old tunnel now, where the local taitais offer their vegetables and mysterious little warehouses are visible left and right in the side tunnels, storing what?…corn and carrots? These tunnels are the product of those crazy years in the 70s where for a brief period of time the entire population of Xiamen were mysteriously compelled to dig bomb shelters. The little fellow is still running after me, his voice getting more eager as he keeps trying to find a porn genre to my liking (“Groupfucky? Black man? You like-uh?”). A rat runs across the floor and dives into the carrot storage, and I’m starting to find his porn rant rather surreal in this environment, particularly now that the taitais are also up on their feet, trying to push their vegetables onto me in their unintelligible local dialect. “Bu yao” I tell him again, accompanied this time with the all dismissive hand gesture, head turned away, and he stops his rant, visibly disappointed. I guess he thought I was a sure customer. For a moment I feel sorry for him, this business can’t be easy. As he turns away from me, in one last attempt he says “dongwu A-pian, laowai like.”

I freeze. Really? Animal porn? The kind that laowai like…What kind would that be now? “Yesyes,” he says, “exactly the kind laowai like, girl with the animal, with the horse, with the dog, with the water buffalo”. He’s on a roll now, and embarrassing as I find this he’s caught my attention. Water buffalo sex? That just might cheer me up on a rainy hung-over Sunday afternoon. He has his whole selection out in the open now, and the vegetable taitais are crowding in, commenting loudly on the big blond laowai girls on display, while I haggle on the price for some Sunday afternoon water buffalo flicks, ‘just the way laowai likes it’, as promised. Oddly, the situation seems perfectly normal to everyone involved. Just another case of supply and demand in a forgotten old bomb-shelter tunnel in Southern China. I pay 10 kuai for 3 discs and the taitais all laugh and comment loudly in minanhua on how inept laowai are at bargaining for animal porn. One of them gives me a handful of carrots for free out of sympathy I can only assume.

The little fellow compliments me on my choice and good taste. I’m not sure I agree with him on the good taste part, but it is what it is. Another rat comes strolling out from the carrot storage, sniffing about, and one of the taitais give it a surprisingly skilled kick, sending it off flying back into the carrot pile. They laugh wildly as I turn around toward the exit again with my laowai entertainment.

Home again, I insert the first disc into my DVD player. A three part complete history of the Chinese Communist Party begins to play on the screen. Surprisingly high quality image. Munching on a carrot I watch the Red Army storm the Luding bridge. ‘Shame on me’ I think, and wonder briefly if the little fellow is part of a secret campaign to educate laowai on the essentials of the glorious Long March. With my finger I scrape a piece of rat shit from my carrot and insert disc 2.

Picking up my coat and scarf from the bar chair and collecting my Zhongnanhai 8’s, I down the last lonely Glamour Bar mojito for the evening, and to the muffled beat of what I think could only be Soulwax, I take the elevator down to the ground floor. The lobby’s divided staircase in plated gold lead takes me to the street, and dodging the Anhuinese beggar woman by the taxi stand, I turn left on to Guangdong Lu, and without really thinking I walk the 30 meters or so to where the Bund once used to be. The December cold is biting this year, and I pull my scarf tighter, reminding myself for the millionth time to buy a pair of proper gloves. Shanghai isn’t Northern Scandinavia, but I can’t remember ever the minus 20 degrees at home feeling as cold as these supposedly modest plus 3.

At the intersection I stop for a moment. On the other side of Waitan, where the stone stairs leading up to the Huangpu waterside used to be, the only thing visible this gloomy December night is a beat up metal wall advertising the new look of the Bund, and shielding off the cranes and workers of what now must be Shanghais largest construction site. The partition where John broke his nose is still there in the middle of the road, but the small clearing of trees and benches where me and Betty laid him down and tried to revive him back to consciousness, drunkenly cleaning the blood off his face with 100-kuai notes, – that clearing is gone, replaced by a pile of uprooted asphalt and random garbage. To reopen 2010 the metal wall tells me. Better city better life. Great.

I cancel an incoming call without looking at the display, wave another beggar away from me, and shivering from the cold I make my way over to the other side. I don’t feel like talking right now. Not yet.

Me and Betty were probably less worried than we should have been that steaming night in August, a mere four months ago. In fact, even John was laughing when we finally caught a taxi, trying 2 hospitals before finding one ready to process his international insurance card. Betty bought us beers and held John’s hand as they stitched him up, chain smoking in the ER. Laowai bonding moments.

I toss my cigarette away and light a new one. From the very spot I’m standing right now I remember John raising a battle cry and charging across the road ahead of us, a plastic family mart bag full of Suntory in his left hand, using his right to jump the partitioning, but instead of sprinting up the stairs to the water promenade we saw him disappearing behind the partition into the other side of the road, Santanas sweeping by at alarmingly close distance.

I remember also me and Betty returning here later that night just the two of us after finally having put John in a taxi. We walked together up those stairs, watching the muddled water of the Huangpu flow by. Not kissing yet, and not yet needing to, no drama able to touch us. Not just yet.

Those stairs are gone now, and the frosty winder cold drives me away from here; it’s still a long walk home. I hang up another incoming call. There’s no need for me to look to know who it is, but the Shanghai winter darkness does not fulfill her August promises. Not just yet.

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.

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?

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.