fiction

How to fake it – a short story by Aaron Fox-Lerner

THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN CONCRETE FLUX

You can find a replica of a Chinese copy of a French village in the Santa Monica Mountains in California. It's up in the hills a bit, but if you don't mind dirt roads it's possible to drive all the way there.

It was supposed to be for a movie. The American spy hero has to stop a mercenary sleeper cell in the Chinese military from carrying out a coup and nuking America. One of the screenwriters had read about these fake European villages they have in China and decided to set an action sequence there. They couldn't shoot the film in China if the story had bad guys in the Chinese government, so they needed a version in America.

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.

AN EXCERPT FROM THE INCARNATIONS, A NOVEL BY SUSAN BARKER

Through the windscreen of his taxi, Wang has seen the city change. He has seen the wrecking balls swing, bulldozers levelling streets to rubble and dust and skyscrapers rising like bamboo after the rain. Land and planning permission is bought and sold. Property developers draw circles on maps and, in weeks, all that is circled disappears; the residents exiled to the far-flung suburbs and demolition crews moving in to clear out the rest. In the decade Wang has been a taxi driver, the city has changed radically. And as the dust of construction gusts across the city, sheet after sheet, he often wonders when it will end.

A different kind of zoo – Josh Stenberg's story concludes

THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN HALITERATURE

Back at the museum building, Vitaly slunk off without saying a word, clearly embarrassed at how far from bovine the tigers had proven. The guide, herself frightened witless, told everyone to keep calm. She could not be blamed for the incident, and though the director cuffed her on the head out of sheer frustration when he emerged from his office, gazing uncomprehendingly at our terror like a fruit bat in sunlight, I do not think her job was ever in danger.

The director then delved into a strikingly quick and unperturbed general address of sorrowful farewell, urging us to return on a more propitious occasion—incidentally, they had successfully hosted many weddings.

Don't feed the tigers – A short story by Josh Stenberg

THIS STORY FIRST APPEARED IN HALITERATURE

My editor signed off on the tiger story right away. “Yes, yes and yes again. Finally, you’re getting the hang of it. Endangered species, big scary-slash-noble cat, conservation, Chinese corruption—all of these are humdingers. Go for it. Way better than the poor-factory-conditions stuff you’re always trying to pull. Be sure to get a picture of a tiger roaring or something. Smiling tourists, taunting a cub or whatever. You know what works; you know what the public likes, ergo you know what I like. Things red in tooth and claw.”

I had proposed the topic after reading about the tiger park in a Chinese newspaper fluff piece, and now I searched the Internet to see what was current on the subject in the Anglo press.