A PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES FROM SHANGHAI STREET STORIES

Lie back and think of Kunming – by Brent Crane

The same security guard sits in his office by the door to my old university dorm. “Remember me?” I ask him. He studies my face. “I studied here three years ago. American.”

His eyes light up.

“I remember! I remember! American! Three years ago!”

His name is Tang Zao’an and he has worked as a security guard at Yunnan Nationalities University in Kunming for eight years – one at the front gate, three at the male dorm across the way, and four at the all girls foreign students dorm.

Edited from Fuck Yeah Chinese Myths!:

One of the inventions the Chinese gave to the world is paper, and it’s helped everyone loads, because before paper books were written on bamboo strips, rolled up and tied with string. The thing is, these books were really heavy and a hassle to transport. Some of them were said to weigh 120kg, and others were 3000 bamboo slips long. Yikes. (Ed: silk was also used, but was too costly.)

Enter Cai Lun (蔡伦 Cài Lún), 50-121 AD, a eunuch working under the Emperor in the Han dynasty.

A PHOTOGRAPHY SERIES FROM SHANGHAI STREET STORIES

Short fiction by Michael Salmon

Another meal together. They couldn’t simply spend the evenings ignoring each other. Gary still wanted to complain a little.

“Why don’t we find a new place, outside the complex? I’m starting to feel like I’m living in a fortress. Let’s go somewhere out on the streets, you know?”

“Fine,” his cousin replied. “I know a good place.”

They walked to the back of Charlie’s apartment block, around the high metal fence you couldn’t see through. The buildings dropped in height and grew darker, and the streetlights changed colour, orange instead of white.