Gao Wen walks home ; An uncle makes an offer

Gao Wen hoisted his fishing pole over his shoulder and started home. The sun broke through Wuhan’s perpetual haze and played in trapped prisms over the lake. The boy had been coming here to fish for a long time, ever since his uncle had taught him. He had once asked his uncle if the fish were all from Wuhan, or if they had migrated here like his parents had. His uncle had taken a drag from one of his small, homemade cigarettes, and told him that fish could go everywhere. All they had to do was swim.

The boy knew that if he were a fish he could go anywhere he wanted, but as it stood, he was not a fish. He was the only son of two merchants, and he was going to the only place he could: home.

So he followed the road beside the lake. There were benches with older brothers and sisters but some chose the grass, all on that large barrier where road met grass, grass met concrete, and concrete met lake.

Green, brownish stuff was accruing at the shoreline. Gao Wen knew better than to ever drink this water and so did his classmates, but the promise of 20 RMB had changed the mind of one boy who had spent the next week or so puking up his meals. After that, no amount of money could convince Gao Wen to drink it, not even a thousand U.S. dollars.

He also knew not to swim in the lake and so did his classmates, but something had changed the mind of one boy, who after school had discarded his backpack and gone in. Gao Wen and the other classmates had watched the boy swim out a little ways, then disappear under the water. They never saw him again. The boy had left their mouths first, then their minds, and along the way people had been very direct about what had happened to him. Gao Wen pretended to go along with it, but he knew what had really happened.

His classmate had turned into a fish, and swam away.

He passed twin towers. This university was rich, with a lot of minorities and when he’d asked father if he’d one day come here, the old man had laughed. Not here. Wuhan University, Beijing University. Places like that awaited him.

Good study, day day up. That’s what powered him at school. Next year they had the Zhong Kao. Hard, but a mere prelude to the gauntlet awaiting them in a few years: the Gao Kao. The college entrance test.

College. The boy couldn’t even begin to imagine that.

Past the towers he turned left at a half-globe with English letters balanced atop a hollow, silver mound. He passed more school buildings and took a right. Tucked in a nook were motorbikes and the entrance to the backstreet and beside this a guard chatted with an old man, his face a crumpled quilt. He leaned on a bamboo cane as the boy’s grandfather once had and his lips sucked at a cigarette, draining its leaves of their poison vitality and both blew smoke, laughing and talking, the guard in Wuhan Hua, the old man in a toothless Hua only his friends could decipher.

The boy stepped on to the backstreet. He did his walk past the stores, the puddles, the shanties. The trash. He had been doing this since he learned how to walk.

Down the road, two old men faced each other on stools playing weiqi on a door laid sideways over two poles. Others played Mahjong and smoked and faintly he heard mealtime cries of Gan bei! and powerlines over shanty metal roofs hung low to the ground, tied together in a strangled mess at the entrance to an alley.

The boy turned.

Down a short hill the ground changed from cracked street to hard mud. A bit further on an old woman sat on the steps before a great oak door framed in red strips of paper. She was perched on a cane, her skin a coarse leather.

“Xiaowen!” her ancient croak filled the alley.

They greeted each other and the woman’s laugh matched her voice, a thick speech more ancient than the revolution itself. From behind her came the call to lunch. She pivoted on her cane and stood, her feet shaped like diamonds in handcrafted moccasins.

“Gai ci fan le.”

“Hao de.”

She swayed up the steps and through the door.

He went over to his home, unlocked the door, laid the pole against the wall and went back out. At the end of the alley he turned right. Further down, the street opened to a lot. Golden characters arched over a gate, the name of a high school. And at the corner, his parents’ store.

Father had his head down on the counter. Gao Wen went up the steps.

“Mama!”

“Hao!”

There was a small room in the back of the store with a bed and a coal stove. Mother had food, one meal ready, another frying.

“Tai re le ma?”

“Mei you.”

He got a bowl of rice and stood eating as his mother finished the second plate and then piled a little of each into two bowls of rice and took them to his father. The boy followed.

Out front they sweated and ate and talked.

“Wo jin tian he yi laowai suo hua le,” the boy said.

“Ah,” father said. “Ta shi na ge guo jia de?”

“Bu zidao. Wo xiang ta si ge laosi.”

“Nimen shuo zongguo hua ma?”

He giggled. “Dang ran shuo de, suo yi ta han yu bu tai hao.”

“Ni yingyu ne?” mother asked.

While they were eating, an uncle approached.

“Nimen chi fan ah!” the uncle called.

Father went over to him offering a cigarette. The uncle took it and the two stood smoking and chatting.

Gao Wen sat on a short stool, listening. Mother disappeared in the back and returned.

“Jin tian re si le ah,” she said and handed him a fan.

They spoke too fast to catch every word, but the boy heard enough.

The uncle wanted Gao Wen’s parents to loan him money. Like always, father did not say yes or no. The boy wasn’t even sure which uncle this was. He had many uncles, not all of them true kinsmen. Father had many uncles too, plus eight siblings. All with uncles of their own. For all he knew, half of Wuhan was an uncle in some way.

The uncle went on his way and father returned to the counter and lit a cigarette. Mother came and they discussed whether to loan the uncle any money, and at the end they were no closer to a decision than before. And all the while, Gao Wen stared at where the uncle had gone, trying to place who he was, and what he needed the money for.

New short story: Ghosts

New short story, Ghosts, appears in Terracotta Typewriter Issue 9:

“I was married once,” David said. “Guys here, they’ve been married three, four times. Just once for me.”

He stopped eating, lit a cigarette. He shook another free from his pack, handed it to Jarrett and lit it for him.

“Yeah,” David said with some smoke. “I was married once.”

They’d given their final exams yesterday and caught the first bus out of Wuhan. They were in Jingdezhen, a city famous for china, in Jiangxi province. They planned to spend a week seeing Jiangxi before heading south.

It’s from a novel I’m working on. Read the rest here.

Breaking Bourgeois Brains (starring Jack Stearns, PhD)

Jack Stearns is an English teacher in China, waging a one-man crusade against Americans, capitalists, and Christians, which are one and the same in his eyes. This is FICTION. Any resemblance to actual people is simply coincidence.


Class was over but not the day, so for Jack Stearns it was time to play.

He had taught this to his students. Yes, he had taught it. . .now if they had understood it or not. . .

They hadn’t, of course. That’s what you got when the bourgeoisie was allowed to control education. Students only interested in passing tests and what’s worse, teachers only interested in the same thing, that fat payday which all A’s brought. Oh well, at least it wasn’t Wuhan University. His experiences at that Jesuit stronghold had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

The Governor of Hubei had invited him to give lectures on Critical Thinking. Knowing as he did how the Jesuits had taken over, he dedicated his lectures to disproving the existence of God. At first, attendance had been high, but slowly, people stopped showing up; at his last lecture, his words only reached a few brave students, who were standing in the doorway, calling out “Hello!” and snapping cellphone pictures. The Jesuits had run him off. Oh Grandpa Mao, if only you could see what has happened to your China!

Jack had written a new chapter today, concerning his university experience. No, not the one at Wu Da—this happened in the UK when he was earning his degree. In a European History course, they had a discussion about England’s greatest Prime Minister. Point: what made a Prime Minister “great”? One student—a young bourgeoisie man, though Jack’s brain had yet to receive the Chinese upgrade so he hadn’t been able to articulate it, still his powers of intuitive reasoning had always been rather strong—had said that despite the hatred she’d got at the time, despite some rather conservative policies, Margaret Thatcher would go down as the greatest Prime Minister in history for the impact she had, not to mention the barriers she’d broke for women. Jack’s hand immediately shot up. “I would rather see her riding up on a cross than the wall of any hollowed building,” he said. Everyone had laughed. So Jack had gone on. He didn’t remember what about, but it did involve his time as a bodyguard for women, especially this stunner who he would have followed, for free or otherwise.

“You followed women around?” someone said.

“Let’s move on,” the teacher started, but Jack overrode her.

“I provided protection for plenty of women, even ones I didn’t know.” Some snickering met this. Such was the attitude among hopeless bourgeois cases. “In fact. . .” and when he got done telling them of the people he had beaten up and killed back when he’d owned his own multimillion pound international law firm, including of how he’d once hidden in the backseat of one client’s car who’d neglected to pay him and that morning “persuaded” him to cough up the money. “Among other things,” Jack added, winking at a young Asian lady in the front row. After that class, the teacher had taken him aside and told him the discussion section wasn’t mandatory.

“It’s only for the students who need extra help.” She cleared her throat. “Which you clearly don’t.”

I broke her bourgeois brain, Jack thought and resolved to remember that line for his writing as he pounded up the stairs to the netbar.

The girls behind the main desk avoided all eye contact with him. Shy as usual. So typical, so so typical. Jack gave them a wide smile anyways. One girl moaned and buried her head in her hands. Oh Grandpa Mao!

He stalked around the computers. He had no one spot; just a right one and the right spot could change from day to day. And indeed it did, though he didn’t remember exactly what the variations were. Today that computer by the window called to him. Good too, for what he was working on he had best to avoid any eavesdroppers. Anyone who might steal his magnum opus and make a killing off the brutal truths and caustic arguments and stirring philosophy found within. No, that would not do at all. Any money made off his wisdom rightfully belonged to him.

He already had a rather wonderful topic. Just yesterday, he had seen the cutest sight. Two little Chinese girls were skating along, when one fell and her skate came loose. The other stopped what she was doing and helped her put it back on. Such concern, and shyness too; when Jack came rumbling over, they both ran away screaming.

He had the idea. He had to write.

He spotted a laowai.

Who was he? Jack knew he was $American$, he just didn’t know the yank’s name. He was on the phone. His masterpiece forgotten for the moment, Jack now wanted to play a few rounds of Warcraft 3 against someone. The Chinese being far too shy to play with him, he defaulted to this guy. . .this. . .$American$. However, he could not simply stand there and wait for him to stop yapping. That was too boring. He needed to occupy his great mind with something—otherwise, he’d go mad. So he squatted through pain and creaks and reached over his enormous belly and untied his shoes. Slowly, slowly, he started threading them back together.

Read more about Jack Stearns.

Also, check out Jack at McDonald’s.