Posts by Hannah Lincoln

A house of cards – fiction by Hannah Lincoln

Ed: Friend of the Anthill Hannah Lincoln has published a collection of short stories from Beijing, Ashen, with gorgeous illustrations by Amy Sands. We're proud to present one of the stories from the collection

When the kang-kang man came by they were playing cards on a plastic table in the hutong.

The kang-kang man was the only grown-up on the lane who never smiled at Du Er. He only took the cans and paper and Ma ran after him to give the bottles from the customers last night with the big bellies. Du Er pinched a scrap of paper off the ground and ran after him too. “Uncle, I have paper!” he looked down and did not smile, just kept clanking kang-kang. Du Er bumbled back to her Ma and announced, “Look, paper!” but she was counting her coins and didn’t see.

Brother Guang hadn’t moved from his stool next to the table with the cards on it.

Punch lines – flash fiction by Hannah Lincoln

It’s Wednesday night and still too early for the bar to fill with bodies, let alone cigarette smoke and laughter. This isn’t the type of crowd to smoke, anyway: Westerners in their twenties, mostly white, simply dressed, with patient faces waiting to be entertained by tonight’s comedy, sharp eyes ready to judge, and over-invested analyses already penning affected reviews. Myriad blog posts could flow from the fingertips of their sweating hands, damning you, tonight’s entertainment, to legendary mediocrity.

As the audience trickles in, your heart staggers under the weight of this possibility. Jenna, your best friend, sits alone near the back

A short story by Hannah Lincoln

“Tea is very healthy! It keeps you warm and strong. Little Li, you listen to me – coffee is nothing but dirt dug up in the West! It does not care for your well-being as tea does. I am already seventy and healthy as an ox thanks to long jin.”

Sometimes he is seventy, other times sixty. On really cold nights he is as old as eighty-three. In winter he usually claims to be older, as if preparing his own obituary.

A short story from Beijing – by H.L.

That summer, whenever Wang Fei played guitar at Xiao Peng’s bar, he always offered cigarettes to his audience. It was more than just following etiquette – he took careful note of which girls did or did not accept. Most did not accept at first. He would play two or three songs and then offer again. Some would still not accept, and for them, he would sing his throaty fireside hymn.

They always accepted after the throaty fireside hymn.