• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, “If Not for the Melon”
• William Wang, “The Antecedents of a Rodent”
• Qing Qing Chen, “The Reckoning”
• Jacques Qu, “Delivery”

I didn’t smoke my first real cigarette until I was twenty-four.

I was the kind of teenager who, at lunch, would watch classmates spray deodorant to mask the smoke that still lingered in the changing rooms. It must have been the spring of senior year when I inhaled a few cautious, self-conscious drags by the public toilets at the top of D’Aguillar Street, Central. But I never cared to smoke more.

When I moved to Beijing for my first real job, the winters were so thick with cold.Therewas no difference, it seemed, between smoking indoors and breathing in the smog, and I despised how smokers chose to suffocate inside, stainingour clothes with terrible traces of second-hand tar.

~

I first met Julie and Kirin that winter, in a crowded Beijing bar where condensation clung to the windows as if the walls were breathing. Someone asked if I was mixed-race, explaining that her friends had placed a bet. I saw Julie’s large eyes widen in disbelief.

We spent the rest of the right talking while the house band wailed in the background. Although Kirin was barely within earshot, I noticed him watching us.

After Julie and Kirin finished their Chinese-language program that summer, Kirin stayed in Beijing to research his PhD. Though Julie planned a trip back to the United States to visit family, I knew she was delighted that her boyfriend and I would be spending time together. Somehow, every time Kirin and I made plans, I’d feel guilt waft over my conscience. It left the stain of second-hand tar.

~

One hot summer’s night, so humid that the dragonflies lazily dragged their bellies across the shimmering surface of Houhai Lake, Kirin and I decided to join the queue to the Sichuan restaurant near his apartment. I will never understand the logic behind eating spicy food in the heat.I know that eating the chili peppers makes you sweat excessively, and that sweating is supposed to make you cool. But I suppose eating mala is a good excuse for drinking cold beer.

As we ordered Yanjings for the wait, we sent Julie selfies of our shadows and made each other do the t-shirt belly flip. At our table, Kirin took upon the mission of ordering too much food: pan-seared eggplant, fried fish, chicken and vegetables steeping in a bath of cold chili sauce, and pork slices drowning in peppers, all washed down with generous portions of beer.

Tongues flaming and bellies sated, we gathered more cheap beer from the corner-store and sat amongst the potted plants, listening to music blaring from a hutong courtyard.

I rested my head on Kirin’s shoulder to keep the world still as the foot-traffic plodded past. I was pretty content, so I was surprised when he reached into his pocket for a pack of cigarettes.

I can’t exactly remember how Kirin responded when I asked why he smoked, but he said he did it to suspend moments in time. I thought about taking the cigarette from his lips, but I stole the silver pack instead and fumbled to light a Taishan No. 20 of my own.

There is something undeniably cool about smoking. While I felt like an actor staging a prop, Kirin was a natural – his cigarette an extension of his fingers. I watched him exhale, the smoke punctuating his breath.

I inhaled and, as I relaxed, I felt the warm smoke escape my lungs like sand slipping through my fingers. The smell reminded me of chestnuts from a searing paper bag.

~

Hours later, I found myself collapsed on Kirin’s bed. I woke to find everything still. Kirin was perched on the window sill, quietly smoking. His hair, normally pulled into a tight ponytail, now lightly draped his shoulders.

He was facing the cool night air. Maybe he was watching the moon cast light over the Lama Temple or gazing over the direction of the Atlantic Ocean. Perhaps his eyes were closed. I couldn’t tell.

I could feel him breathing. I watched him inhale, holding the ashen smoke for a fraction of a moment. He would then release, chest falling, letting the air disappear into the vapid night.

~

Rosalyn is a college counselor in Beijing who enjoys dancing in unusual contexts.

• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, “If Not for the Melon”
• William Wang, “The Antecedents of a Rodent”
• Qing Qing Chen, “The Reckoning”
• Rosalyn Shih, “Taishan No. 20”

6 AM, I wake up on my upper bunk in the company dormitory with a lingering happiness from a dream. I can only recall trees, the smell of damp earth, and the taste of sugarcane. It must be my village. After another day’s work —10 hours, 150 express deliveries, I’ll be on the train home. Another 10 hours later, I’ll be home.

I picture how my 6-year old son would jump into my arms asking the same question like one year ago, “Dad, what does Beijing look like?”When he first asked, I was caught off guard for I rarely had time to tour the city, to find how it differs from any other. “A lot of tall buildings, 10 times as tall as the ‘Tank’.”I pointed to the chunky 5-story county government building across the wheat field. I wanted to tell him about the Great Wall or the zoo but was afraid to draw more questions that I couldn’t answer.

When I think of Beijing, the first thing that comes to my mind is doors. Metal doors, wooden doors, doors that leave paint on my knuckles, doors with three locks, doors that never open. When they do open, the life inside pauses in front of me for a brief moment; when they close, the dinner or quarrel or kissing resumes. I have to be on the next delivery right away but part of me longs to stay, to share a taste of the life inside.

When the recipients open their packages, some are delighted, some disappointed, some surprised. Occasionally, I’ve even seen people cry, in delight or in sadness. I felt partially responsible for that as if I also delivered their emotions. However, the real causes of those emotions remain secrets to me.

As usual, the day passes fast once I get on my package-laden motorbike. In the late afternoon when checking the remaining few packages for the day, I am surprised to see my son’s name, Wang Yaning, printed on one large envelope. I find the address and press the doorbell, imagining my boy running towards me from the other side of the door. It turns out to be a teenager, 15 or 16 perhaps, slightly shorter than I hope my son would be at that age. He tears open the envelope, a hardcover comic book revealed. When he thanks me with a smile, I suddenly realize that I’ve never sent my son anything from Beijing, nothing addressed to his name. An idea hits me: why not deliver him something with my hands. Yes, why not the same book this kid is now holding, the one with a winged snake flying towards the sky? I ask him if I can copy the title of the book. “I want to buy one for my son,”I explain. The boy is more amused than surprised at my words and starts to tweet on his iPhone even before I finish writing down the English letters.

Before heading to the train station, I buy a copy of the book at a bookstore. It is nicely wrapped in plastic paper. I insert it in a yellow envelope, seal it, and then write my son’s name and the address of my home on it. An hour later I find a seat on the jammed train. I hold the envelope to my chest, thinking of how excited my boy will be, despite the fact that neither he nor I can understand the English words in it.

Son, this delivery is different from all others. The words in this book are secrets to both of us, but Dad’s love is not. Dad still can’t give you a nice description of Beijing, but when you open this envelope, you will find something your Dad has not been able to see in this city.

~

Jacques is an Apple sales operation manager in Beijing.

• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, “If Not for the Melon”
• William Wang, “The Antecedents of a Rodent”
• Jacques Qu, “Delivery”
• Rosalyn Shih, “Taishan No. 20”

The faintings started on the subway. The first time on Line 10 to Guomao. Wasn’t even during rush hour. I wanted to clock in a few extra hours on a heady project at the office. My partner Shane began his Saturday morning routine on our tiny balcony that, after a trip to the flower market, had become a veritable greenhouse.

Maybe it was all the green. “Hey I’m walking to the subway,” I adjusted my tie and announced to Shane.

He wrinkled his nose. “In this weather? Good luck.”

He had a point. It was typical soup weather. By the time I waded out of Xingfu Ercun, I was fish without water, morphing into reptile crawling underground, scampering onto the train only to find no breathing space. I lodged myself in a car full of migrants, their faces wizen. To the right was a flock of school children, and to the left, a group of backpackers with big limbs and bigger laughs.

I was stuck. Three stops. I told myself, and all of a sudden the open plains of Ohio flashed through. Three stops, the four churches at the intersection leaned on the sleepy college town. Two stops, the American restaurant on our first date, afterwards Shane and I went to the CVS Pharmacy for a walk. One stop, that’s when my heart twisted and closed like a hand around my throat and everything went black.

It is said that reptiles have a three-chambered heart consisting of two atriums and one partitioned ventricle that lead to systemic circulation. The variation in blood flow has been hypothesized to allow more effective thermoregulation and longer diving times, but has not been shown to be a fitness advantage.

It was a grandma that shook me awake. She was yelling in my face, waving an empty bottle of Wahaha in her hand. My shirt was soaked.

“So… her son was my landing cushion. He was squatting and I fell right on him.” Six months later when I recounted the story, Xue’er looked at me incredulously.

“Hey you need to get this checked out. It might be your heart.”

“He wore a heart monitor for a while,” Shane jumped in, “but the doctor says it has to do with nerves. In other words, David is shenjingbing.”

“Has this happened before? Like in America?” Xue’er pushed her salad aside.

“It just started this year. Twice on the subway. Once on the plane. Maybe it’s some form of claustrophobia. The doctor told me to squeeze my thighs really hard and inhale.”

Xue’er raised an eyebrow and looked at Shane. “Maybe next time you should just slap him, like you know, a good lover’s slap.”

Shane darted for the Starbucks after we parted with Xue’er. He’d picked up the ice coffee habit after four years in America but seemed to have left everything else. Once he said I’d wanted to go back only because I was the nostalgic type, that it didn’t matter where it was or how goddamn boring.

“Just for a visit,” I’d explained to his shrug.

It began on the intersection between two malls. Shane was walking fast and my heart was speeding up, then hiccuped to the next beat. I squeezed my thighs hard then shouted at him, “let’s go back!”

My lover spun around, his expression unreadable. “What?”

“Let’s go back to America.”

He sighed. “Babe we’ve talked about this. Our lives are here. Our careers are here.”

“Let’s go back!” My heart beated wildly and I kept sputtering. “Let’s! Go! Back! Let’s! Go! Back!”

-Slap-!

Shane slapped me. A good lover’s slap.

“Let’s! Go! Back!” My heart giggled and gurgled. I saw visions of green hills and abandoned mills, my ears rang church bells. “Let’s! Go! Back!”

-Slap-!

“Let’s! Go! Back!”

-Slap-!

“Let’s! Go!”

It went black.

Then white.

“Baby? My God!”

“Hey…” I croaked.

“You fainted again! This is ridiculous. We have to get you checked out properly.”

I’m on the ground with Shane’s arms around me, a crowd hovering above us. Let’s! Go! Back! an echo, in my mind. “Did I say something to you before I fainted?”

“Yeah you yelled, Shane! Then your body went rigid like a domino and I grabbed you. Thank God. You would have smacked on cement.”

“Oh, right, thank God.”

“Thank God! Thank! God! Thank! God!”

~

Qing Qing was born and raised in Tianjin. She is now Managing Director at a creative agency in Beijing, and also considers New York home.

• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, “If Not for the Melon”
• Qing Qing Chen, “The Reckoning”
• Jacques Qu, “Delivery”
• Rosalyn Shih, “Taishan No. 20”

I had a dream last night. Mother says rats don’t dream, but I do. I dreamt I boarded the Line 1 subway and sat on a chair between a businessman with ill-fitting trousers and a young girl with taped-up eyelids. People saw me there and frowned because one little rat was taking up the whole seat. I didn’t get off, even after Jiangguomen.

“Rats don’t dream,” mother quietly mumbled again, her hind toe scratching her tattered ear.

25 generations ago, some relative of mine went out as far as Tiananmen. It was a time when the humans above were getting all excited. There was noise, fire, and lots of food waste in the relatively new subway. He found an untouched bag of sunflower seeds in a gutter, ate the whole thing, and almost died of constipation afterwards.

Mother likes talking about the old family. “It’s important to know where we came from,” she wheezes. I come from some dusty gutter in a Pingguoyuan hutong. The downtown rats say that’s not even Beijing. “It is,” I insist. “It’s on Line 1.” “Pingguoyuan?” they ask, possibly in earnest. “Never heard of it.”

But actually, many rats live much farther than that. Dad had friends who actually lived in fields where they ate corn all summer and froze to death in winter. Dad went out there one fall and didn’t come back. Mom said he probably tried hibernating, and failed. Once she speculated that maybe he bumped into a horse. “Horses and rats aren’t fond of each other,” she always says, but she’s pretty old-fashioned. Anyhow, she holed up for one full day in a discarded motorcycle helmet, weeping quietly. After that she never mentioned him again.

“Mother,” I call out. “I’m going to find some lunch.”

“Okay,” she mutters. “Just not that weird stuff again.”  Mother doesn’t like foreign food. Says it’s unhealthy, not natural; complains because she knows I like it.

Seven generations ago was that time when all those strange-smelling humans came out to the city. “From the other side of the ocean,” my great aunt informed me. Things changed a lot around then. The city and subway got much bigger. Now rats from far away can meet up, the pool of mates increasing exponentially.

“It’s not right for you,” Mother sniffs, pushing her nose along the wall. “City rats aren’t like us. They think differently. Haowen went to Fuxingmen but was forced out. Dingguo went to Baochao and had his hind leg gnawed off by a wild ferret, can you believe that? A ferret!” I shrug and yawn as always.

Last week, I told her that Mimi met a rat whose dad came over from America on a boat. “America,” she humphed. “Why would a rat from America come to Beijing? Haven’t you heard all those Beijing rats want to cross some ocean?”

I scratch and stroke mother’s neck and tenderly gnaw the base of her tail before departing. “What’s this?” she giggles. I hide my face. “Nothing. Just saying bye.”

I head down a disused subway track to meet Mimi, just past the toilet’s acrid smell.

Mimi’s there with her friend. His eyes are sly but alert. Claws, impeccably sharp. “Roger,” he says. That’s his name. “Yeah, my dad digs Beijing now. Says all rats originated from China, so he wanted to check it out.”

Roger smiles, showing off his incisors. “Downtown’s great. You should come too, Mimi.” She squeals giddily. “No, no, no!”

Roger turns to me. “Ready?”

But I’m already heading toward where the silver rails disappear.

“Whoa dude, where you going?” he laughs. “You’re not gonna walk there.” He’s serious. Obviously. The track is vibrating. Mimi’s turning in circles.

“It’s cool. Just stay with me.” Roger scurries onto a ledge. The train roars in with a deafening shriek. He leaps, leaps onto a spring behind the wheel and disappears above. I don’t know what’s happening. Mimi’s squeaking behind me. I’m on the spring. “Climb up!” Roger screeches. The machinery around me is alive, heaving and groaning. My feet slip on the oily surface, but I manage to clamber up. Roger laughs. I try to, but fail.

I’d thought I’d go downtown, look around a bit, and return home. But the ground below had turned into a roar of blackness and wind. I think about how little mantou I’d hidden away for mother. Roger’s no longer smiling, also trembling in the wind. “Don’t worry,” he shouts. “You’ll like it.”

~

William Wang works for China Radio International.

We’ll be posting our five readers’ entries this week, culminating in a podcast of the full event on Friday. To start, here’s Daniel Tam-Claiborne, author of the novel What Never Leaves, with his short story “If Not for the Melon.”

Also see:

• William Wang, “The Antecedents of a Rodent”
• Qing Qing Chen, “The Reckoning”
• Jacques Qu, “Delivery”
• Rosalyn Shih, “Taishan No. 20”

We discussed it, and after a time decided on the watermelon. What if the landlord doesn’t drink, we wondered, or if he hates sweets. Watermelon was neutral, we reasoned; something we could all agree on.

My roommate bought it on her way home, one of those massive ones you see stacked in the back of a minivan idling by the side of the road. She took it on the bus to the landlord’s house herself – up front in the priority seats, her arms wrapped around the watermelon on her lap like she was three weeks from bursting.

The landlord wasn’t obligated to invite us over for dinner, but he said he wanted to. He couldn’t remember when he started doing it, but he had been renting out the apartment in Beijing for decades and it was just something he liked to do.

When he came to the door, he was wearing a baggy t-shirt draped over a pair of gray sweatpants like he had just woken up from a nap. We brought you this, my roommate said, gesturing to her midsection. He laughed a little when he saw it, as if gifting a watermelon revealed something innate about her character.

I’m sorry my house is such a mess, the landlord said. It wasn’t dirty so much as cluttered. We took off our shoes and were careful not to say anything about the boxes draped in table linens stacked floor-to-ceiling against every wall of the apartment.

We sat down and started drinking tea. When we finished, the landlord poured us each a measure of baijiu into the same glass. The watermelon sat between us in the center of the table, like an interloper, the characters in the name itself signifying its foreignness. 西瓜: western melon.

To friendship, the landlord said, before tossing his head back and emptying the glass. We drank ours down too, the clear alcohol slowly corroding the backs of our throats. Once more? he asked, holding the bottle out in front of us. But we both waved our hands, no, in front of our faces, albeit a bit too quickly.

The landlord withdrew to the kitchen. Most of the food is already prepared, he said, I just need to heat it up. In all, he had made six dishes: cabbage and mushroom, pickled cucumber, potatoes and cauliflower, stir-fried egg and tomato, pork ribs, beef seared in an iron skillet. He smiled when our eyes perked up: I wanted to make sure you ate well.

It was only when we could barely stand the sight of the still half-full plates that the landlord abruptly spoke out. The melon! It was sitting in plain sight for so long that we nearly forgot it was there. He came back from the kitchen brandishing a cleaver big enough to use as a movie prop and sliced off a large chunk for each of us.

The watermelon was juicy and sweet and perfect for a summer night. Before I arrived, I had never thought twice about spitting out my seeds, but in China I adopted the convention of poking them through with the end of a chopstick. It was common practice, but it still felt entirely novel to me. How funny, I thought, that this once foreign object no longer felt the least bit out of place.

When you go back to America, the landlord said, everything will be different. You will miss food like we have here. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. I looked down, tracing the shimmery liquid in the bottom of my bowl, newly studded with black seeds.

Yes, I admitted, though I wished it weren’t true. But we will always have watermelon.

~

Daniel Tam-Claiborne is currently studying Chinese in the Tsinghua IUP program and on a Gruber Fellowship working on a microfinance initiative. Check out his website Travel Breeds Content. (Image via.)

Okay folks, here’s your final reminder that Flash Fiction for Charity is happening this afternoon at 2:30 pm at Great Leap Brewing’s Original No. 6. All the details you need are here. On a semi-related note, while Beijing Cream will still post over the summer (Beige Wind on Thursdays, in particular), I’ll personally be scaling back for about two months starting next week (travel, etc), so come by and say hi and I’ll let you know how you can help us keep going.

For now, below are the profiles of the five selected readers at this afternoon’s event. We’ll give listeners a chance to vote for their favorite, so begin familiarizing yourself with them now. The top two get great prizes sponsored by GLB (it’ll probably involve beer; we hope that’s okay).

In addition, our celebrity readers, Susan Barker and Kaiser Kuo (who should need no intros, but click here if you must), will regale us with their original work.

Daniel Tam-Claiborne

I am a currently a student at the IUP program at Tsinghua University, and will spend 10 months on a Gruber Fellowship working on a microfinance initiative with the China Foundation for Poverty Alleviation (中国扶贫基金会) in Beijing. I have lived here for exactly one month, but have spent about 2.5 years cumulatively in China. My first book of fiction entitled What Never Leaves based on my travels and work in Asia was published in 2012 by Wilder Voice Press.

Story: If Not for the Melon

William Wang:

William Wang is a Canadian guy who came to Beijing because someone once told him that China is the best country. He’s been here for seven years now, presently working as a guy who makes videos for China Radio International. Yes, he knows you can’t watch videos on the radio.

What do you like best about this city?
It’s really hard to piss people off in Beijing.

Story: The Antecedents of a Rodent

Qing Qing Chen:

Born and raised in Tianjin until age nine, Qing Qing considers New York City and Beijing her spirit homes. A stint in journalism proved she’s bad at putting out volumes on command, and, at solitude. She’s now Managing Director at a creative agency, assigning commands. Writing has been the way since spiral Mead notebooks, and it’s done out of instinct, like a more perfect, capable, emotional human. In her “Why I’m Leaving Beijing” after two-and-a-half years column, she cites “conscious uncoupling,” “masochistic behavior,” and “infidelity” only to conclude with “oh baby… I want you back!” by Jackson 5.

Story: Reckoning

Rosalyn Shih:

Been working in Beijing as a college counselor for about a year and a half. She is the only sibling of three who doesn’t currently live in Hong Kong. She also enjoys dancing in unusual contexts.

My favorite thing about Beijing is watching old men write calligraphy with over-sized brushes.

Story: Taishan No. 20

Jacques Qu:

I came to Beijing when I was 15 and lived seven years here before going to the US for graduate school. I came back in 2010 and now work in Apple as a sales operation manager. Writing is the only thing that makes me feel fully engaged. I love the feeling of creating moments that may touch people’s hearts and capture the elusive truth of life.

Story: Delivery

Flash Fiction for Charity is July 13, 2:30 pm at GLB Original No. 6. 50 RMB gets you free beer, with all proceeds going to Educating Girls of Rural China. Direct all inquiries to fiction@beijingcream.com.

Our charity for tomorrow’s community fiction event is Educating Girls of Rural China, which provides financial aid and other support for deserving young women from rural areas (principally Gansu province, but also Qinghai and Guizhou) to continue their educations. Since its establishment in 2005, EGRC has awarded 435 university and high school scholarships. The organization boasts a 100 percent graduation success rate.

We caught up with Cindy Jensen, one of EGRC’s China advisors, to learn more about the charity and its founder, Tien Ching, whose education was cut short during the Cultural Revolution when she was sent to Gansu for eight years to work in a factory.

About EGRC:

I love what the organization stands for: the opportunity to give an education to girls who are really financially disadvantaged. Last year I went to Gansu, there was a group of Canadian executives that went down, and it was just amazing, just to visit some of the families.

I want you to envision: here’s one of the homes… we hiked up — I can’t say mountain, but it was a really big hill — 45 minutes, through a mountainous region, and there’s a family living there with a young girl being sponsored by the charity to help her complete high school.

What I really admired is, if you meet any of these young professional women who are studying for university, they are so poised, if you see them in a room you wouldn’t necessarily know they were less advantaged than the next person. And they have this incredible tenacity to do well.

But not only that, they continue to give back to the community. Tien Ching has done a wonderful job working with the girls: they’ve now created mentorship programs to support each other, (especially) the younger women who just started university. And it’s something that’s very sustainable. Everybody keeps giving back.

About Tien Ching:

She’s originally from Beijing, and during the Cultural Revolution she and her mother and brother were sent to Gansu, so she lived there for eight years. She was a young child herself and obviously didn’t have the opportunity to continue her education, so she has a personal association with the region. She told me she was attending a charity event [when she was an adult] and really began to reflect on her own experience and what she knew about the region. And what she saw was a need to do something important, providing a greater opportunity for other women.

I was really struck by the personal dedication and commitment and personal man-hours that she has put in to ensure this program is a success. She’s definitely a voice of the charity, and what she’s almost singlehandedly been able to accomplish was really impressive, and I was just really blown away by what she was able to do.

I think it’s driven by passion and a belief in something so strongly. She has the ability to mobilize people into creating a sense of change.

Flash Fiction for Charity is this Sunday at 2:30 pm at Great Leap Original No. 6 (the courtyard/hutong location). 50 RMB gets you a free beer, with all proceeds going to EGRC.

We’re two days away from Flash Fiction for Charity at Great Leap Brewing’s Original No. 6 (friendly emphasis: that’s the courtyard/hutong location). The doors will open at 2:30 pm, with the event kicking off shortly thereafter. If you’re interested in a seat, we have just a few spots still available for reservation: please email fiction@beijingcream.com. (We’ll also take walk-ups, but you might have to stand/lean.) The 50 RMB ticket gets you a free beer, with all proceeds going to Educating Girls of Rural China.

Over the past week, judges read 29 anonymized entries and did the agonizing deed of choosing only five. All the caveats of these sort of subjective appraisals apply here: don’t be disheartened if your submission was not chosen. Be the opposite: we’re hoping a vibrant crowd of fiction lovers will gather this Sunday; we already know representatives from several fiction circles in town (a reading group, at least two writing groups, an online writers colony, etc) will be present, so let’s mingle and have fun.

While we had to choose five readers, how happy we are that these are our five:

• William Wang, The Antecedents of a Rodent
• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, If Not for the Melon
• Qing Qing Chen, Reckoning
• Rosalyn Shih, Taishan No. 20
• Jacques Qu, Delivery

In addition, Kaiser Kuo – rock star, Sinica host — will be reading a story about a dishwasher’s coming-of-age in early-90s Beijing, and Susan Barker will be reading an excerpt from her acclaimed novel The Incarnations.

We’ll have two more posts before the event, including a Q-and-A with an EGRC advisor and some mini-profiles of the readers. For now, here are the first lines of the winning entries:

The Antecedents of a Rodent. “I had a dream last night. Mother says rats don’t dream, but I do.”

If Not for the Melon. “We discussed it, and after a time decided on the watermelon.”

Reckoning. “The faintings started on the subway.”

Taishan No. 20. “I didn’t smoke my first real cigarette until I was twenty-five.”

Delivery. “6 AM, I wake up on my upper bunk in the company dormitory with a lingering happiness from a dream.”

Flash Fiction for Charity is July 13, 2:30 pm at GLB Original No. 6. Direct all inquiries to fiction@beijingcream.com.

Thank you for answering the call, Beijing writers. I’ve anonymized all entries and sent them over to our judges, who now have the truly unenviable task of choosing just five. We’ll reach out to each writer individually later this week (Thursday at the latest). Important note: if you submitted but did NOT receive a confirmation email, PLEASE EMAIL US AGAIN as soon as possible. We had an untimely server hiccup over the weekend, but everything is now fixed.

We’re in the process of confirming an exact time, but expect the event to begin in the late afternoon. The location will be the hutong Great Leap Brewing, i.e. Original No. 6. Due to space restrictions, we are taking seat reservations: please email fiction@beijingcream.com to ensure your spot (otherwise you might find yourself standing in the back). The entry is 50 rmb, all of which will go to the charity Educating Girls of Rural China. We’ll give you a free beer, too.

For more information, follow our Flash Fiction for Charity tag. Please come back later this week as we roll out event previews and reveal which celebrity readers will be joining us.

UPDATE, 7/5, 3:51 pm: It’s come to my attention that not all emails to fiction@beijingcream.com are going through. If you’re submitting, please use this email address. UPDATE, 7/6, 11:59 pm: The problem has been fixed! If you did NOT receive an individualized confirmation of submission receipt, PLEASE SEND AGAIN as soon as possible. Apologies for any inconvenience.

We’re extending our flash fiction deadline. Submit stories 500-700 words before 11:59 pm this Sunday for a chance to read your piece over beers at Great Leap Brewing’s Original No. 6 courtyard on Sunday, July 13. If you need any inspiration, check out the piece that just went up on the Anthill about the heartache of being alone in a city of 21 million.

She was an art student from Beijing, and said she drank so she could get a good night’s sleep. I wondered what personal tragedy, heartache or sadness was at the bottom of her glass.

Since the beginning – ab ovo, to borrow from Tolstoy — fiction has attempted to render reality in way more meaningful than reality allows. (“Fiction is the lie that tells the truth,” says Neil Gaiman.) It slows down our world, magnifies and captures in a snowglobe the moments that deserve to rest beside our bedstand. Or it speeds it up, elides those insignificant routines we shuttle into deep storage for our future bedridden and blind selves to revisit.

Is that overstating it? Let’s see. Terence said in the 2nd century BC that “there’s nothing to say that hasn’t been said before.” Maybe fiction, in our modern day and age, has been subsumed by other media such as television or music or even journalism, or Twitter. Why can’t all the elements of a good story be contained within 140 characters? David Shields wrote in the manifesto Reality Hunger – from which I cherry-picked the above Terence quote — about the “lure and blur of the real,” specifically a burgeoning “artistic movement” that relies on reader recognition and viewer participation. It’s the spirit of stand-up comedy injected into a book reading.

Alas, call me old-fashioned, but I still believe in the special ability of fiction to enable lateral thinking, to trigger unique feelings or surprising remembrances: how, for instance, Steven Millhauser’s story about thirteen wives can make you recall a singular someone; or how you can chat with a cab driver in the local patois and think of Mongol slaves or court eunuchs (that’s the premise of the Beijing-based novel The Incarnations, the author of which, Susan Barker, will be reading at our event). Allow yourself to imagine the ghost of city walls or what’s implicit in the movement of elderly dancers in yangge’r. We’re not asking for a recreation of that drifting trash bag scene from American Beauty, but Beijing does lend itself to metaphor, doesn’t it?

Fiction is calisthenics for the brain, scattershotting the matte plane of verbal lexicon with sparks of red and orange and midnight violet. It’s the joy of coming up with an idea, and the satisfaction of reifying — for eternity — an instinct or construct or thing that heretofore floated in the realm of dark matter. It’s autodidactic and liberating and fun. Lock yourself in a room this weekend and give it a try. You might be surprised. As Picasso said: “What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.”

Whether you believe in meliorism — that individual effort matters, like the lonely dissident engaged in Chinese striving — or its opposite, cynicism, and prefer watching concrete and hope fall in accordance with natural laws of gravity, it doesn’t much matter for our purposes. Just express yourself, as a pop star once said.

Of course, we’re not that old-fashioned. (I mean, come on.) That’s why we’ve paired our event with beers (and a charity!), and we intend on this being a fun community outing. Do consider attending — reserve your seat by emailing us. The 50 RMB door fee (all proceeds go to Educating Girls of Rural China) will get you a free GLB beer.

In the meantime, enjoy your Fourth of July plans, Americans. Everyone else: enjoy drunk Americans. Try not to pass out in Sanlitun – though that’d make for one hell of a story.

Below is a story by Alec Ash, editor of the writers colony the Anthill, our publishing partner for this event. This is a mirror image story in response to a story I wrote, “Mayonnaise,” which you can find at the Anthill. Both are exactly 808 words — which technically disqualifies them as flash fiction entries, but we present them as inspiration to get you writing. Think you can do better? Show us!

Red Bean Paste

Two expats, both English teachers, step out of their respective classrooms in a university district in northwest Beijing.

“Where do you want to go for lunch?”

“I’m hungover and I need meat. Let’s go somewhere close.”

“How close? There’s a Kro’s Nest up by Tsinghua East Gate.”

“That’s a whole fucking Chinese block away. How is that close?”

“There’s a baozi pu over there.”

“Oh shit, I haven’t had baozi in ages. Let’s see what’s steaming.”

“I went the other day. They had pork and beef.”

“Did you go with Lauren?”

“Piss off.”

“Pork and beef? The Chinese sure know how to pull out all the stops.”

“No, not pork and beef. Pork, and beef. And vegetarian.”

“I could teach those migrants a business trick or two. Location like this you got to hit that Western clientele. We have special needs. What if I want a baozi with pork and beef in it? Think they could do it?”

“You’re lucky to get the beef option, that’s rare. Mostly it’s all pig and chives. They make everything at like 4am anyway, then keep it hot. They roll a thousand or something in an hour. It’s like skyscrapers: one week and there’s a new one.”

“One week? BullSHIT.”

“No man. One week. I promise you, I saw it on a blog.”

“All right, what do you want? They all look the same.”

“I don’t know, let’s ask what they have. This is what I hate about baozi pu, only the top ti is ever open, and nothing’s marked.”

“What tea?”

“Ti. It’s the measure word for those wooden cylinder things.”

“Did Lauren teach you that?”

“Piss off.”

“Next person. Watcha want?”

“What is this?”

“Pork.”

“One ti. What else do you have?”

“Vegetable.”

“Do you have beef?”

“No. Eat here or take away?”

“Eat here.”

“Five kuai. Next person. Watcha want?”

“I want pork and beef.”

“Only have pork.”

(“You’re such a twat.” “Shhh.”)

“That one. One tea.”

“Eat here or take away?”

“Eat here.”

“Four kuai.”

“Do you have four kuai mate? I only have a hundred.”

“You’re such an unbelievable twat.”

“Said the bishop to the actress. Thanks.”

“You’re paying for the next one.”

“I got you that Starbucks. That’s worth at least a hundred baozi.”

“That was three months ago.”

“This seat is filthy. They can’t wipe these off after the last lardass showing more belly than Britney Spears has sweated all over it?”

“Pass the lajiao.”

“Oh fuck!”

“What is it now?”

“What the fuck is this?”

“Did you choke on your own bullshit?”

“That. Is not pork in this baozi.”

“Let’s have a look. Ha. They gave you red bean paste.”

“Who puts red bean paste in a baozi?”

“They put red bean paste in everything man.”

“I’ve never had red bean paste before.”

“Really? How do you like it?”

“I don’t like it. I want pork. Can you give me another four kuai? I pointed at the pork one, it was their mistake, they should switch it for free.”

“Crap mountain. How is it their fault if you point at some random baozi without asking what’s inside it? Why don’t you like it?”

“It’s … sort of like chilli con carne, but with no chilli and zero carne. No, wait, it’s like clay putty mixed with flour and left in the sun too long.”

“Did you eat a lot of clay putty as a kid?”

“How would you describe it genius?”

“I don’t know. I’ve seen it all over the place but … I don’t think I’ve ever had it.”

“Ha! Well screw you, Mr. Let Me Tell You About China. You can shove your measure word for wooden cylindrical things up your arse.”

“I’ve only been here three months.”

“We don’t have red bean paste in Essex, that’s for sure.”

“They put anything in baozi man. Congealed duck blood, pig colon, turtle egg. I had a breakfast baozi with custard in it. Chilli bean is nothing.”

“Read bean’s not a chilli bean dumbnuts. It’s a type of kidney bean.”

“Give me one.”

“If I gave you one, they won’t switch it.”

“Just a bite.”

“Well?”

“It is kind of like clay putty. Less chewy than you think it will be.”

“Let me try it again. It’s a bit like a can of Heinz beans was opened after a hundred and fifty years and a radioactive apocalypse.”

“Give it here. Edible plastic explosive. Taco flavoured cement.”

“Processed plasticine. Quorn playdo.”

“Sweetened mud cake.”

“Marzipan, if it were red and made of beans.”

“Tastes like congealed spunk.”

“Is that what Lauren said last night?”

“Piss off.”

“Okay, enough. I’m going to switch it.”

Outside, the stall owner looked at the ti of cold baozi, six with bites out of them, then at the white man, who was waiting expectantly.

“Don’t want. That one. One tea.”

~

Alec Ash is founder and editor of the Anthill. Follow him @alecash.

Flash Fiction for Charity will be held July 13 at Great Leap Brewing’s Original No. 6. Please register in advance by emailing fiction@beijingcream.com. There’s a 50 RMB door fee (includes one free beer), with all proceeds going to the charity Educating Girls of Rural China.

Meet the writers here:

• William Wang, The Antecedents of a Rodent
• Daniel Tam-Claiborne, If Not for the Melon
• Qing Qing Chen, Reckoning
• Rosalyn Shih, Taishan No. 20
• Jacques Qu, Delivery

In addition, Kaiser Kuo – rock star, Sinica host — will be reading a story about a dishwasher’s coming-of-age in early-90s Beijing, and Susan Barker will be reading an excerpt from her acclaimed novel The Incarnations.

Update: We’ve extended the submission deadline to July 6. Click here for some inspiration.

Attention, writers of Beijing: we’re holding a flash fiction reading on Sunday, July 13 at Great Leap Brewing‘s Original No. 6 location (Doujiao Hutong No. 6). Space is limited, so we’re asking those interested to register by emailing us – spots will be reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. The cost is 50 RMB, which includes a select GLB beer, with all proceeds going to the charity Educating Girls of Rural China. Also, importantly: we’re seeking readers!

Until Friday, July 4, email us (fiction@beijingcream.com) stories between 500 and 700 words that fit the theme “Beijing.” Entries will be anonymized and read by our judges…

• Alice Xin Liu, managing editor of the literary journal Pathlight
• Alec Ash, founder and editor of the writers colony the Anthill
• Leslie-Ann Murray, MFA-Rutgers, winner of the 2013 Literary Death Match in Beijing and host of the biweekly Bookworm event “Writing on Walls” (check out her blog)

…who will select at least five winners based on literary merit. These people will be asked to present their work on July 13, alongside “celebrity readers.” For your efforts, all readers will be rewarded two GLB beers each.

There’ll be a fun little competitive wrinkle that we’ll introduce later. (Or we’ll tell you now: audience members will vote for their favorites and the top two vote-getters will face off in a to-be-determined game to see who goes home with an all-you-can-drink voucher good for you and a friend. As if you needed incentive to read your own fiction.)

Get writing, people. Here’s all the above info packaged in millennial form:

WHAT: The Beijing Cream Flash Fiction Contest / Reading at Great Leap Brewing
WHERE: Great Leap Brewing Original No. 6
WHEN: Sunday, July 13 (afternoon; exact time tbd)
WHY: For literary fun and to benefit the charity Educating Girls of Rural China
COST: 50 rmb
AND: Reserve seats by emailing fiction@beijingcream.com

ALSO: Submit stories between 500 and 700 words to fiction@beijingcream.com by July 4 that fit the theme “Beijing” for a chance to participate in this event, receive free beers, and be toasted for your literaryness.