Asia Literary Review No. 31, Summer 2016 Sampler

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Photos by James E. Elbrecht • Graphic Services & Print Center, P&M • 740045

No. 31, Summer 2016

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No. 31, Summer 2016

Publisher Greater Talent Limited Managing Editor Phillip Kim Editor in Chief Martin Alexander Senior Editors Kavita A. Jindal, Justin Hill, Michael Vatikiotis, Zheng Danyi Special Acknowledgement Ilyas Khan, co-founder of the Asia Literary Review Production Alan Sargent Front cover image ‘Revenge of Green Dragon. E. meets W.’, 2014 © Konstantin Bessmertny konstantinbessmertny.com. Published with kind permission of the artist Back cover image ‘L’État C’est Moi! Can smoke & Free Noodles’, 2014 © Konstantin Bessmertny konstantinbessmertny.com. Published with kind permission of the artist The Asia Literary Review is published by Greater Talent Limited 2504 Universal Trade Centre, 3 Arbuthnot Road, Central, Hong Kong asialiteraryreview.com Managing.Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Editor@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Submissions@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Subscriptions and Advertising: Admin@AsiaLiteraryReview.Com Typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro Printed by Charlesworth Press ISBN: 978-988-14782-5-2 (print) ISBN: 978-988-14782-6-9 (eBook) ISSN: 1999-8511 ‘Underground’ published with the generous support of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea ltikorea.org ‘Rocky Romeo’ and ‘Watermelon Seeds’, from Love Across a Broken Map, a production of The Whole Kahani, are published with kind permission of Dahlia Publishing (UK) http://www.dahliapublishing.co.uk Extracts from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao!, Now That It’s Over and Sugarbread are published with kind permission of Epigram Books (Singapore) shop.epigrambooks.sg Individual contents © 2016 the contributors/Greater Talent Limited This compilation © 2016 Greater Talent Limited

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Contents Editorial

5

Fiction from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao!

9

Sebastian Sim

from Underground

25

Seo Jin translated by Jason Woodruff

from Now That It’s Over

47

O Thiam Chin

from Sugarbread

65

Balli Kaur Jaswal

from That Man in Our Lives

85

Xu Xi

My Mother’s Miracle

88

Rajesh K. Reddy

Rocky Romeo

107

Dimmi Khan

Watermelon Seeds

116

C. G. Menon

From Noin Ula

130

Bae Suah translated by Janet Hong

Circular Feed

145

Sreedhevi Iyer

from Malindo

159

Nada Holland

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Non-fiction Interview: Xu Xi

79

Interview: Krys Lee

101

The Whole Kahani

106

Kavita A. Jindal

About ‘From Noin Ula’

127

Bae Suah translated by Janet Hong

Poetry Hiuen Tsang

42

Abhay K.

Giving a Reading of My Poetry in Hong Kong

61

Yu Jian translated by Simon Patton

The Punctual Air-Hostess

76

Rushda Rafeek

Eelam, 2009

77

Rushda Rafeek

Narrow Lanes of Sanity

125

Shuja Alhaq

Chinese Checkers

157

John Thieme

The Creeper

178

Zhu Zhu translated by Dong Li

Island in the Sea

179

Zhu Zhu translated by Dong Li

Contributors

181

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Editorial Edit orial

Edit orial

Politics, as George Orwell famously wrote, gives ‘an appearance of solidity to pure wind’. If that holds true, 2016 has been particularly blustery.

Unsettling gusts have blown in from the extremes of right and left to fill the vacuum of a middle ground hollowed out of once widely-accepted doctrines – capitalism, globalisation and representative governments.

Though the storms are geographically distinct – Brexit in the UK, Trumpism in the US, Localists in Hong Kong and Hell Choseon in Korea, to name a few – their turbulent consequences have merged into a jet stream of disillusionment and alienation sweeping across the world.

The debate over the merits and shortfalls of prevailing socioeconomic policies is a complex matter that is not easily packaged into tidy remedies.

Nevertheless, the prevailing popular agitation has given rise to political campaigns presented in snappy, binary terms. Us or Them? In or Out? White or Non-white? EU or not EU, China or not-China? Law-and-order or Chaos? Arguments are offered in sound bites or 140-character tweetstorms that epidemically attention-deficit audiences can easily digest. The Internet has always furnished the means to disseminate opinions and democratise debate, and Google and social media provide easily accessible megaphones.

But instead of celebrating diversity, populations cluster into self-reinforcing echo chambers. Polarisation freezes out nuance.

Particularly troubling about the abuse of slogans in shaping government policy is the attendant application of labels to individuals in a group. No person will ever be less than a unique and complex nation-state in microcosm. True friendships and rivalries can only be built day by day through delicate and fluid diplomacy, much of it more subconscious than rational.

Labels are useful shorthand, but they become obstructive when they cross

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Editorial

over from descriptive to definitive. Asian. White. Muslim. Jewish. Female.

Male. LGBTQ. Conservative. While each label can be an invitation to open a door to explore a wider world, it can also shut its community into a prison of ignorance. Even the language of political correctness can erect walls by closing off discourse.

Pieces in this issue of the Asia Literary Review explore a variety of forms of politics between individuals – identity, gender, love, loyalty. In ways that only literature can, the writings examine the fragile, fraught nature of interpersonal relationships that defy labels. Three of the fiction pieces are excerpts taken from the winner and finalists of Singapore’s 2015 Epigram Books Fiction Prize, a privately-funded competition that celebrates literary excellence from the island state. The stories are refreshingly different from one another, and in a country often labelled as an autocratic ‘nanny state’, it is encouraging that such diverse talents can thrive. Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! is a Singaporean Midnight’s Children of sorts, and it pushes the boundaries that define gender. Now That It’s Over explores the calamitous impact of the 2004 tsunami on the lives of a few young professionals.

Sugarbread lays out a piquant offering of personal dramas and food inside a Sikh temple.

In ‘Underground’, South Korean author Seo Jin delves into the anguish of losing one’s own identity, as his main character finds himself trapped in a loop of amnesia while riding the New York City subway. Hong Kong’s Xu Xi and her That Man in Our Lives distils the evolving geopolitics between China and US into the power play between a few long term friends.

Catherine Menon’s ‘Watermelon Seeds’ is a touching story of two young Asian girls that demonstrates how idealistic expectations can undermine even the closest of childhood friendships.

Though human nature has not fundamentally changed in millennia, our perceptions of one another (not to mention our efficiency in manifesting compassion or hate) are morphing at ever-increasing speed. The 2016 Man Booker International Prize winner, The Vegetarian, written by Han Kang and translated by Deborah Smith (whose essay on Korean contemporary literature appeared in ALR 30), illustrates that a thorough portrayal of any individual is possible only through a close scrutiny of multiple facets and perspectives. Sadly, the frequency of terrorist acts and hate crimes, and the

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Editorial

pervasiveness of fascist rhetoric suggests that such empathy does not feature prominently in the mood of the day.

There is no Matrix blue pill that can return us to nostalgia’s idyllic but illusory world of clear and prescriptive ideologies. Political philosophies, once so clearly delineated in an array of distinct colours, lie crumbled before us as grey rubble. As the UK politician Michael Gove recently declared, even the ‘experts’ struggle for new paradigms – and expertise is now widely derided. Given these uncertainties, trite slogans and catchphrases shouted out from flag-draped daises provide no lasting remedy for society’s ills.

Without substance or deep thinking behind them, the words are simply blasts of hot Orwellian air. Or worse, in times when lives are increasingly dislocated, they can fan the flames of rancour.

The need to address the social inequality that fuels so much dysfunction has reached a critical point. Endless debate may be tiresome, and not all responses are to our liking. However, without the steady, stiff breeze provided by sincere dialogue, stagnation and rot are inevitable. And good literature, such as that presented in the following pages, always serves as an essential catalyst towards promoting understanding. With luck and effort, the winds of change that blow can act to refresh the old, rather than sweep out so much good with the bad.

Phillip Kim Martin Alexander

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from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! from Let’s GiveSebast I t Upian forSim Gimme Lao!

Sebastian Sim

T

here were three things Gimme Lao did not know about himself.

The first occurred at his point of birth. The second happened way before he was born. And the third repeated itself many times over his life.

Strictly speaking, the third was not about him. It was about the pivotal impact he had on other people, which he never found out about.

Take, for example, Yik Fan. Gimme Lao and Yik Fan went to the same primary school. Being two years apart, they were not in the same class, nor did they end up in the same extracurricular sports team. As far as he was concerned, Gimme Lao never knew Yik Fan existed.

Yik Fan, on the other hand, would never forget Gimme Lao. Specifically, Yik Fan would never forget the spectacle of Gimme Lao’s public humiliation on stage during school assembly. Not the fierce sobbing of the subject of ridicule, nor the malicious smirk of the disciplinary master as he made the boy put on a frock and applied cherry-red lipstick on his lips. The entire assembly was collapsing in riotous laughter, and no one noticed that Yik Fan was trembling with fear.

When Yik Fan reached home that afternoon, he quickly retrieved the lipstick he hid in his sock drawer and threw it down the rubbish chute. For the following two Sundays, after his mother left for the market, he refrained from slipping into her high heels and prancing around the house as he usually did. By the time the third Sunday rolled around, the suppressed urge had become an unbearable itch. The boy succumbed. But the thrill of slipping his feet into the familiar comfort of his mother’s high heels was sullied by a new apprehension. He saw his eventual downfall with clarity

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and certainty. It was only a matter of time before he would be paraded on stage, a subject of ridicule for the entire world’s entertainment.

Yik Fan countered the fear with pain. He brought out his mother’s nail clipper and clipped deep into his toe, tearing off a tender chunk of skin and flesh along with a sliver of toenail. His mother chided him for being careless.

The boy continued to be careless. As a teenager, he was always scraping his heels against the teeth on his bicycle chain-ring. When he was riding his first motorcycle, the exhaust pipe must have seared his thighs a dozen times.

After he got married, his wife was shocked at how easily Yik Fan could hurt himself. There were always razor blade cuts on his lips and bruised nails where he had stubbed his toes. She sighed and accepted the fact that her husband was hopelessly clumsy.

Yik Fan accepted the penalty of pain for the right to continue with his secret fetish. After his firstborn arrived, his wife was so preoccupied with the baby she left him very much to himself. That was when Yik Fan became emboldened. He bought a new kimono cardigan, a crêpe gown and a split dance dress in sultry red to expand his repertoire. On Sunday afternoons when his wife brought the baby to the in-laws, Yik Fan decked himself out in elaborate outfits and enacted scenes of fantasy. He was supposedly a damsel in distress chained up in a dungeon on that fateful afternoon when his mother-in-law came in unannounced to retrieve the tin of baby formula.

He panicked at the sound of the key at the front door and dropped his key to the handcuffs. The look of horror on his mother-in-law’s face searing into his psyche was many times more painful than the multiple burns from the motorcycle exhaust pipe. After she left, he extricated himself from the bondage and sat in a daze for a full hour before realising that it was all over.

The last image he saw before he applied the blade to his wrist was that of Gimme Lao on stage at the school assembly twenty years ago, sobbing fiercely as the crowd roared with laughter.

Gimme Lao did not know that. Neither did the disciplinary master who had humiliated him on stage. Both of them went on living their lives, oblivious to the fact that their actions had planted shame and fear so deep in a little boy’s psyche, it led him to end his own life twenty years later.

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The second thing that Gimme Lao did not know about himself happened way before he was born. Both his parents decided it was better that Gimme Lao not know. Grandma Toh, the only other person who knew, was sworn to secrecy.

Grandma Toh was a widow who lived next door to Gimme Lao’s parents in their single-bedroom flat unit. She was entrusted with babysitting duties while Gimme Lao’s parents worked. She understood the gravity of the secret she was supposed to keep and agreed wholeheartedly that Gimme Lao should never be told. But the secret grew like a throbbing tumour in her throat. It was a relief to her when Aunty Seah, who lived two doors away, accidentally scraped her foot against the lid of the secret and proceeded to pry it open with curiosity.

‘Don’t you find it strange that the boy’s grandparents never visit?’ Aunty Seah mentioned casually when she came visiting one afternoon.

Grandma Toh bit her lip as she rocked the baby suckling the milk bottle in her arms. She prayed that Aunty Seah would veer off the topic and not tempt her.

‘When the young couple moved in a year ago, I thought it was nice to have newlyweds join us in the block. The husband was especially amiable.

Mild-tempered fellow. Can’t say the same for the wife though. I am pretty sure she’s the one who wears the trousers in the house.’ Aunty Seah continued with the gossip: ‘But what irks me is that the couple is so secretive.

No one in the block knows about their past or their background. Seriously, what is the big secret that they cannot share?’

Grandma Toh felt an actual, physical constriction in her throat. It was such a torture to know and be forbidden to tell.

‘And then when the young wife got pregnant, all the neighbours were happy for them. We kept a lookout for the inexperienced couple and gave them all the help they needed. You even volunteered to be her confinement nurse after the baby was born. But don’t you find it weird that the couple receives no visits whatsoever from their parents or their relatives? I mean, how would the couple cope if you had not stepped forward to take over babysitting duties when they went back to work?’

‘Well, I did promise my cousin I would look after the young couple,’ Grandma Toh muttered.

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from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao!

‘How did your cousin come into the picture?’ Aunty Seah asked, confused.

Grandma Toh sighed. It was simply too difficult to hold her tongue. ‘My cousin works as a maid for the Lao family, the one that owns the Three Rifles fashion brand. They have a massive mansion in Grange Road.’

Aunty Seah’s eyes widened. ‘Wait a minute. Are you telling me that Lao Sheng Yang, the father of this baby, who works as an administrative clerk in an insurance company, comes from one of the richest families in town?’

Grandma Toh nodded. It was so satisfying to be in a position to dispense secrets by the spoonful into a willing ear and watch the amazement grow.

‘Was he kicked out of the house and disowned by the family because they were against his marriage?’ Aunty Seah ventured a guess.

Grandma Toh frowned. It was a let-down when the listener was too quick to guess the ending. ‘It is a long and complicated story.’

‘You have to tell me.’

‘You have to keep it a secret.’

Aunty Seah nodded eagerly.

‘My cousin has worked for the Lao family for decades. She practically watched Lao Sheng Yang and his two brothers grow up. She was there too when the boys’ mother succumbed to tuberculosis and became bedridden for many years. That was when Huang Rhoo was brought into the family as a goddaughter to look after the ailing mother.’

Aunty Seah’s eyes widened again. ‘You mean to say Huang Rhoo, the baby’s mother, was Lao Sheng Yang’s godsister? That is kind of scandalous.’

‘There is more to it,’ Grandma Toh continued. ‘Huang Rhoo’s father, who worked for Sheng Yang’s father, was a compulsive gambler. He had to beg Sheng Yang’s father constantly to cover his debts. In a way, he was selling his daughter to the family. Tuberculosis is contagious, and Sheng Yang’s father would rather have someone from outside his family look after his wife.’

‘So that was how the couple met and fell in love,’ Aunty Seah nodded.

‘Both were in their mid-teens then. Huang Rhoo was doing very well in school before she had to quit and take on the nursing role. She begged Sheng Yang to continue tutoring her in the evenings. In fact, my cousin told me that between the two, Huang Rhoo was the smarter one. She could tell because whenever the two played Chinese chess, Huang Rhoo often lost

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her temper and chided Sheng Yang for making badly calculated moves. It’s a pity she never went back to school. Otherwise she could easily get a better job now, instead of the pharmacy assistant job she currently holds.’

‘Don’t we all know about her temper,’ Aunty Seah raised an eyebrow.

‘Remember the time she kicked up a big fuss with the family living upstairs who hung wet laundry out over hers that dripped on her drying bedsheets?

This is one woman with a fierce temper.’

‘Well, not unexpectedly, the young couple developed feelings for one another over time.’ Grandma Toh ignored the rude digression from the story she was telling. ‘When the mother eventually passed away two years ago, they decided to inform the family of their intention to get married.

That was when all hell broke loose. My cousin told me that Sheng Yang’s father chased the girl out of the house and gave his son an ultimatum. Either he break off the relationship, or he would be disowned and cut off from the family inheritance. That was how the couple ended up fending for themselves in our neighbourhood. Now you should understand why the two are so secretive about their past. And remember that you gave your promise.

Keep this secret to yourself!’

‘Of course I will,’ Aunty Seah said. ‘But what I do not understand is, what is the big deal about the marriage? Granted the girl is poor and her father is a compulsive gambler. But is that reason enough to disown the son?’

Grandma Toh bit her lip hard. She was hoping to get away with sharing only half the secret.

‘Is there more to the story?’ Aunty Seah was as sharp as a brand new pair of scissors.

‘I have told you that Huang Rhoo’s father is a compulsive gambler. Why do you think Sheng Yang’s father keeps him on the payroll and covers his debts?’

‘Why indeed?’

‘Because they are half-brothers. The patriarch of the Lao family has more than one mistress hidden outside. So Sheng Yang’s father has no choice but to keep him and two other half-brothers on the family business payroll.’

Aunty Seah’s eyes widened for the third time. ‘Which makes Lao Sheng Yang and his wife cousins? That is incestuous!’

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from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao!

‘Which is why you must keep this secret to yourself,’ Grandma Toh reminded her in a hushed tone. ‘The baby must not know. Ever.’

Aunty Seah looked at the suckling baby with sympathy. ‘Poor little bastard. He could have inherited such a huge family fortune but for the sins of his parents.’

Grandma Toh slapped Aunty Seah on the thigh and warned, ‘Enough!

Don’t make me regret telling you this.’

Aunty Seah did deliver on her promise. Gimme Lao grew up not knowing that he was born rich, yet robbed of his inheritance by true, defiant love.

The first thing that Gimme Lao did not know about himself occurred on the day he was born. That was the day half the population on the island was glued to the television. Not their personal set at home, for most of them could not afford one back in 1965. They were hanging around various community centres, where television sets were mounted on wooden pedestals, from which arced stone benches fanned out. Rumour was abuzz that the prime minister was going to announce a momentous piece of news at any moment.

The other half of the population was engaged in their quotidian affairs: clipping their nails, picking their teeth or scratching that persistent itch in their arse-cracks. Positioned at the outer circle of the rippling shock wave, they received the terrible news an hour or two late. Some of them had the audacity to question the news bearers. Did they hear it right? Did the prime minister really mean something else? But the news bearers were indignant in their own defence. The prime minister choked and shed a tear on national television. There was no doubt about it.

The entire population on the island had been unceremoniously kicked out of their own country. They were no more a part of Malaysia. The Mother had disowned them.

For some strange reason, Gimme Lao the unborn baby must have experienced prenatal cognisance. He refused to be purged from his mother’s womb. For nine whole hours, his mother shrieked and howled, scratched his father till she left claw marks on his arm and at one point even punched the nurse who was screaming at her for making too much noise. Eventually, Gimme Lao had to exit. He emerged looking bewildered, unsure whether

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the world that awaited him was hostile or benign. But the nurse was mad at the mother and took revenge by giving the baby a merciless pinch on the thigh. That was the moment Gimme Lao recognised hostility and bawled.

Gimme Lao’s father was a soft man who shed tears easily. He whimpered with pain when his wife’s nails dug deep and drew blood on his arm. He snivelled with joy at the sight of his firstborn bawling his tiny lungs out.

He would later choke up with emotion when he found out that the island would no longer be flying the Malaysian flag.

In the midst of all the excitement, Gimme Lao’s father did not realise that his was the first baby to be born in independent Singapore.

At that point in time, this significant little detail caught no one’s attention. Gimme Lao’s mother was too exhausted, his father too excited and the doctor who delivered him too caught up with the next three babies arriving on his shift.

Three days had passed before a journalist finally called up the hospital and wanted to know which baby was the first born past midnight on 9 August. The hospital administrator flipped through the nurses’ schedule and summoned the nurse who was on midnight shift. ‘Go check the records on your shift and let me have the name.’

The nurse was annoyed to discover that according to the records, a Chinese baby named Lao Chee Hong was born one minute past midnight on 9 August to a mother named Lao Huang Rhoo. She was pretty certain that this was the woman who had punched her in the face.

Flipping to the next record sheet, the nurse saw that a baby girl was born six minutes past midnight. That was the moment the idea struck her. She extracted a Zebra-brand ballpoint pen from her pocket, tested to make sure the ink matched and carefully added a horizontal stroke to the figure one.

Gimme Lao became the second baby to be born, seven minutes past midnight.

It was by this insidious horizontal stroke that Gimme Lao was robbed of his rightful title of the first baby to be born in independent Singapore.

No one ever found out the truth.

*

*

*

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from Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao!

All seven of Mary Lao’s sales agents were familiar with the Subramaniam story. Mary Lao used it to illustrate the third and fourth of her Five Rules of Success.

Gnash your hottest chilli. The one that brings tears to your eyes and triggers a coughing fit so severe your windpipe feels like bursting. For, once you learn to handle the hottest chilli, you can feast on dishes that are out of reach to those who cannot handle their chilli.

That was the third rule.

Had Mary Lao assumed the Subramaniams could not possibly afford to buy insurance and chosen not to approach them, she would not have been able to close four cases in one go. In fact, Mr Subramaniam subsequently referred two of his fellow prison wardens, to whom Mary Lao sold three more policies.

Thus the fourth rule: do not judge a covered dish.

After the tearful introduction to the Subramaniam brand of spicy curry, both Mary Lao and Gimme became enamoured with Indian spices and dishes. Every other week, Mary Lao and Sabitha’s mother would bring one another dishes to sample. Gimme Lao became fast friends with Omala in school too. During lunch break at the canteen, Omala would slip Gimme Lao a piece of dharwad pedha from her lunch box, and Gimme would share his ang ku kueh. When they moved on to year three, both children enrolled in the school band and became recorder buddies. While waiting for the school bus home, the pair would whip out their hard plastic recorders and practise their band pieces together. The girls in their respective classes mocked them by calling them a kopi susu couple, which directly translated to ‘black coffee with white milk’. Peeved, Gimme Lao and Omala simply launched their counter-offensive and called the girls various demeaning nicknames.

Although the two often joined each other for lunch breaks, Gimme Lao almost never got to see Omala during the morning tea break. That was when Omala retreated to the secluded corner of the garden behind the janitor’s storeroom to play zero point. Gimme Lao played various games with the boys. There was hantam bola, police and thief and the ever-popular hopscotch. But none of the boys played zero point. It was a girl’s game; one that Gimme Lao secretly wished to play.

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Zero point was a game played using a rope made of intertwined rubber bands. Two girls, acting as height markers, held one end each and stretched the rope taut at ankle level. The rest of the girls took turns to straddle the horizontal rope and perform a set of skipping manoeuvres with incremental complexity using their legs to draw patterns out of the rope. Once everyone had had a go, the rope was brought up to knee level, and the game replayed.

By the time the rope reached waist level, most of the weaker players would have been eliminated. The last girl standing won the game.

For weeks Gimme Lao hid himself behind the janitor’s storeroom to watch and study the game. Omala was quick on her feet but too short to tackle the rope at chest level. Two of the best players were in year five, tall, rangy girls who dominated the game. Of the two, the one with a mole on her chin was a harrier. She ordered the other girls around, decided the queuing sequence and determined forfeits and penalties. Her name was Gan Ah Sai, but the girls called her Garnasai, or ‘like shit’ in Hokkien, behind her back. The other girl, Kai Li, was Garnasai’s loyal sidekick. The two had the last say when it came to the game of zero point.

Eventually, Gimme Lao could not bear it any longer. He stepped up to the two of them and announced that he wanted to play too. Garnasai gave him a dismissive glance and shook her head. Kai Li added, ‘Zero point is for girls only. No boys allowed.’

‘But I want to play,’ Gimme Lao persisted.

‘You can play if you are a girl. Are you a girl?’ Kai Li teased. Some of the other girls started giggling.

Gimme Lao kept quiet but would not leave. He stood to one side and watched as Garnasai executed a flawless pattern with the rubber band rope held at chest level. When she finished, Gimme Lao announced stubbornly, ‘I can do that too.’

Garnasai glared at him and snorted. Omala decided to put in a good word for her buddy, ‘Let him play. He can take my turn and I will just watch.’ Kai Li objected, ‘No, he cannot take your place. Only girls can play this game.’ Omala threw up her hands and challenged the other girl, ‘But why?’

Before Kai Li could answer, Gimme Lao remarked coldly, ‘Because they are afraid I will beat all of them.’

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For a while, a frozen silence descended on the group. Garnasai glared at Gimme Lao, who stood a full head shorter than her. When Gimme Lao returned her glare and did not flinch, Garnasai decided to issue him a challenge. ‘You can be the first boy to play zero point if you can beat me.

Until then, you will play as a girl. Omala can lend you her frock.’

All the girls broke out into paroxysms of laughter. Even Omala laughed, until she suddenly remembered Gimme Lao was her buddy and quickly hid her grin behind a cupped palm. Gimme Lao himself frowned, silently contemplating the challenge. When he eventually made up his mind and nodded his agreement, all the girls gaped in astonishment. Even Garnasai found it hard to believe Gimme Lao had actually accepted her challenge.

‘Quick, let him have your frock, Omala!’ Kai Li urged gleefully. Omala looked doubtful, but Gimme Lao nodded to reassure her. All the girls wore the same white shirt and blue shorts the boys wore, but had an additional pleated blue frock worn over the first layer. Gimme Lao took Omala’s frock and quietly slipped it over his head. All the girls started to giggle hysterically.

Gimme Lao folded his arms, bit his lip and waited patiently till the game resumed. The moves he had observed and studied from afar were not as easily executable as he had imagined. By the time break ended, Gimme Lao had never once managed to move past the waist level. Garnasai snorted at him and pointed her thumb downwards. The other girls scuttled back to their respective classes and eagerly spread the news that Gimme Lao had worn a frock to play zero point.

When Gimme Lao returned the next morning to the secluded garden, there was a handful of boys from the other classes who were gathered there leaning against the wall of the janitor’s storeroom. They alerted one another once Gimme Lao approached and cackled loudly. Gimme Lao felt the deep burn of his own blush. He did not know then, but there was a betting pool among the boys as to whether Gimme Lao would have the guts to put on a frock in their presence.

‘Are you going to join us, Princess Gimme?’ Kai Li teased. The girls giggled and the boys cackled.

Gimme Lao strode over to the girls but shook his head when Omala gestured to ask if he needed her frock. For this morning, he would just observe the game. He was certain the boys would grow impatient and leave

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soon. But Garnasai understood his strategy and shred it asunder by throwing him an ultimatum. If he did not put on a frock and play zero point right away, he could forget about playing the game ever again.

Gimme Lao bit his lip and thought hard. The boys by the wall started a chorus of wolf whistles. The girls giggled. Omala was about to put in a good word when Gimme Lao suddenly turned to her and held out his hand. The boys erupted into spontaneous cheering as Omala uneasily took off her frock and handed it over.

His face tense but determined, Gimme Lao strode over to the group of boys, glared at them belligerently and quietly slipped on the frock. At first, the boys laughed out loud. Gimme Lao remained silent but took a step closer. Some of the boys became unnerved by the proximity and belligerence of their subject of ridicule, and their laughter quickly dwindled. An awkward silence ensued. The head of the gang finally realised that Gimme Lao had effectively robbed them of their fun and with a scowl, gestured for the rest of the gang to retreat.

The game of zero point was constantly interrupted for the rest of the session. Every time curious onlookers came to gawk or ogle, Gimme Lao would stride up to them and stare them down till the element of fun was completely eroded. In no time, the girls were so frustrated with the interruptions they began to shoo the onlookers away before Gimme Lao had a chance to react.

By the third day, word had got around to the teachers. The principal, together with the disciplinary master, decided to investigate the matter.

They recruited a mole from among the zero point players and received confirmation before they launched their surprise visit to the secluded garden. All the girls froze and looked worried.

‘Why are you in a frock?’ the disciplinary master asked in a severe tone.

Gimme Lao turned pallid. The disciplinary master had a reputation for ruthlessness when he dealt with recalcitrant students.

‘Boys do not wear frocks,’ the disciplinary master declared. ‘Only an Ah Gua would wear a frock. Do you want to put on lipstick and wear high heels and become an Ah Gua?’ Some of the girls giggled. There was a handful of effeminate boys in school that were badly teased and labelled as Ah Gua. The disciplinary

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master quickly singled out Omala, who was conspicuously missing her frock.

‘And why did you lend him your frock?’

Omala looked around helplessly. Gimme Lao had his head bowed, while the other girls remained silent and unsupportive. Garnasai glared at her ferociously, daring her to mention her name.

When the disciplinary master realised he wasn’t going to extract any confession from the pair of recalcitrants, he decided to escalate it to the next level. ‘I want both of your mothers to see me tomorrow morning before the assembly.’

On the ride home in the school bus, Omala nudged Gimme Lao and asked if he was going to comply with the instruction. Gimme Lao shook his head. It was embarrassing enough to be called an Ah Gua by the disciplinary master in front of a group of girls. He did not want his mother to hear that too. Omala thought about it and decided she would meet the disciplinary master’s injunction midway. She would bring her cousin Sabitha, but keep her mother out of it.

Omala’s strategy did not work. When the disciplinary master saw Sabitha, he simply waved her away. ‘I asked to see your mother. Not your sister, not your cousin. Which part of my instruction was unclear?’

At the assembly that followed, the disciplinary master took to the stage and summoned the pair of misfits. To Gimme Lao’s horror, he made Omala remove her frock and hand it over. ‘Since you obviously like it, you will wear it in front of the whole school.’

The giggles and cackles in the assembly rippled from the front row backwards as those behind stood on toes or leaned sideways to catch a glimpse of the spectacle. Riotous laughter erupted when the disciplinary master produced half a dozen clothes pegs and proceeded to pinch small tufts of Gimme Lao’s hair upright. By the time he whipped out a lipstick and drew on Gimme Lao’s lips, the assembly grid had collapsed. All those behind were pushing their way forward to get a better glimpse. Some of the teachers laughed too, although there were a few who looked perturbed.

The disciplinary master allowed the students to have their fill of laughter before ordering them back into their assembly grid. Pointing his finger at Gimme Lao, who was by then sobbing with acute humiliation, he delivered

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his message through a loudspeaker, ‘This is how an Ah Gua looks like. If you are a boy, dress like a boy. Boys do not wear skirts, or frocks, or gowns or dresses. Only if you want to be an Ah Gua, then you dress like Gimme Lao. Do you want to be an Ah Gua? Do you?’

The disciplinary master kept pressing until the entire assembly gave him a resounding ‘No’. He then turned to Gimme Lao and proclaimed, ‘Let this be a lesson to you, Gimme Lao. There are boundaries you do not cross.

You are born a boy. You will grow up a man. One day in the future, you will recall this day of humiliation and thank me for stopping you in time before you turn into a wayward Ah Gua.’ Gimme Lao was weeping inconsolably when the disciplinary master had a teacher help remove his frock and lead him to the toilet to wash up. For the rest of the day, he hid his head in his folded arms on his desk and sniffled intermittently. His class teachers let him be. On the school bus going home, Omala sat next to him and ferociously stared down anyone who dared hurl a snigger at her buddy. Gimme Lao was too distraught to put up any form of defence himself.

By the time the bus deposited them below their block, Gimme Lao and Omala had come to an agreement. This episode of humiliation would be kept a secret from their families. The two sealed their agreement with a tug on their little fingers, not knowing that the bird was already out of the cage.

Unbeknown to them, Sabitha had stayed back and witnessed their humiliation from the far end of the assembly field. Both the Subramaniams and the Laos soon learnt all about it.

Over dinner, Gimme Lao was grilled by his parents. Both Mary Lao and her husband wanted to know the details. Strangely though, the two interrogators had entirely different focuses. His father wanted to know why on earth he put on a frock, while his mother wanted to know exactly how the disciplinary master had punished him in the assembly. As the dinner came to an end, the two interrogators arrived at vastly different conclusions.

Gimme Lao’s father concluded that Gimme Lao had it coming and hoped that the public humiliation would dissuade him from ever crossing the boundary again. Mary Lao however stared at her husband in disgust.

‘Have you not been listening to our boy?’ she gasped. ‘He had been issued a challenge, and he took it up. That was why he put on a frock!’

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‘And you think that makes it right?’ her husband retorted, incredulous.

‘I am saying he had a reason.’

‘He has to learn to do the right thing.’

‘If we all had to do the right thing, the two of us wouldn’t be married in the first place, would we?’ Mary Lao snapped and almost immediately regretted it. They both blushed deeply and stole a furtive glance at Gimme Lao. The boy did not appear to have caught what she said. Mary Lao heaved a sigh of relief and muttered to herself, ‘I need to speak to the disciplinary master.’

‘About what?’ her husband asked, alarmed.

‘About calling our boy an Ah Gua!’ The next day, Mary Lao timed herself to arrive just as the school bell rang. She collected Gimme Lao and marched him to the principal’s office.

Gimme Lao felt a heady mix of apprehension and excitement. He knew his mother was fearless and felt a secret pride that she was pitting herself against the principal for his sake.

The principal had to summon the disciplinary master upon Mary Lao’s request. Once he arrived, Mary Lao asked him point blank if he had called her son an Ah Gua in front of the entire student body. The disciplinary master sniggered and replied derisively, ‘Your boy was wearing a frock. What else do you expect me to call him? A good example?’

Mary Lao reached into her tote bag, extracted two library books and slammed them onto the table. She flipped through the first volume until she came to a chapter on the attire worn by ancient Chinese emperors.

Tapping her knuckles on the page, Mary Lao glared at the disciplinary master and challenged, ‘From Tang dynasty to Ming dynasty to Qing dynasty, tell me what the emperors are wearing? Are you calling them Ah Gua? Is that what you are teaching the students in class?’

The disciplinary master frowned at Mary Lao’s belligerence. Before he could reply, Mary Lao flipped through the second volume until she came to a chapter featuring Elizabethan attire for men and asked again, ‘Are you telling me these men are Western Ah Gua? All of them?’

The principal saw that the disciplinary master was flushed with anger and decided to step in quickly. ‘Mrs Lao, perhaps we shouldn’t have used

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the term Ah Gua on your boy. For that I apologise. But we do have rules in school. Boys are simply not allowed to wear frocks.’

‘Show me then.’

‘Sorry?’ The principal looked confused.

‘Show me where it is stated that boys are not allowed to wear frocks in school,’ Mary Lao requested stubbornly.

The principal had to hide his look of agitation as he turned to reach for the volume of school rules and regulations. His agitation quickly turned into embarrassment as he realised there was no statement in the volume that spelled it out. It was simply understood as an unwritten rule.

‘So you are telling me my boy was punished for breaching a rule that does not exist in your school rules and regulations,’ Mary Lao stated coldly. The principal and the disciplinary master exchanged looks of silent fury. They knew they were right, but could not prove it.

Mary Lao glared at them a little longer before she swept the two library books back into her tote bag. Turning to Gimme Lao, she spoke in a clear voice so the two could hear her. ‘What did the disciplinary master tell you again? That there are boundaries you do not cross? Remember this. People who follow rules blindly are people who are too lazy to use their brains. You have your own brain. Use it. Question the rules. Question the boundaries.’

With that, Mary Lao stood up and left the office with her boy.

The same night, Mary Lao’s husband blew his top. He was aghast at the bad example his wife had set for their child. What was she thinking? How could she possibly teach the child to disrespect school authority? When his tirade gained momentum, Mary Lao sent Gimme Lao next door to play at Grandma Toh’s place. But the walls were thin, and Gimme Lao did not miss a word of his parents’ thunderous argument.

When Harrison the sales manager drove by to pick Mary Lao and her husband up for work the next morning, he could sense the palpable frost between husband and wife. Unwittingly, he enquired and was instantly ensnared and pressed for an opinion.

‘If your boy crossed the line, I guess we should trust the school authorities to discipline him.’ Harrison cleared his throat uneasily. ‘The principal can’t possibly have all the boys running around in frocks in school, right?’

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‘It was not stated in the school rules and regulations,’ Mary Lao insisted icily.

‘Some boundaries are drawn with invisible ink, but respected nonetheless.’ Harrison attempted to make his case. ‘Take, for example, insurance sales. As a man, I can walk into the red light district at Geylang to make cold calls and suffer no consequence to my safety or reputation. As a woman, you can’t do the same. There is a boundary. It may not be spelled out in our company rules and regulations, but we all know it exists, and we all respect it.’

Mary Lao sealed her lips in defiance and thought hard. Despite the logic in Harrison’s analogy, she was not convinced. But Mary Lao was not one who was adamant about winning an argument. She would rather prove her point. And the name that sprang to her mind was Black Cougar.

Let’s Give It Up for Gimme Lao! is published by Epigram Books (Singapore).

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Interview: Xu Xi

Int erview: XuInt Xi erview: Xu Xi

X

u Xi – an Indonesian-Chinese born and raised in Hong Kong who went on to university in the US – is one of Hong Kong’s leading writers.

Her transnational background gives her insights into the impact that shifting geopolitics and intertwining cultures have on individual lives. She has both written and edited compilations of short stories and essays, many set in Hong Kong. Between 2010 and 2016, she was writer-in-residence at City University of Hong Kong’s Department of English, where she founded and directed their low-residency MFA creative writing programme.

Her fifth novel, That Man in Our Lives, was released in June 2016. The story is centred around a character – Gordon Ashberry – who appears in three earlier novels, Hong Kong Rose (1997), The Unwalled City (2001) and Habit of a Foreign Sky (2010), a finalist for the Man Asian Literary Prize.

Her writing has been widely acclaimed, described as ‘beautifully refined in

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both intelligence and prose’ by Robert Olen Butler, winner of the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

The Asia Literary Review recently spoke to the author about the themes in the book and her views on Hong Kong, China and the changing balance of power between East and West.

Your new novel was originally inspired by the opera Nixon in China. What is it about that work, or that event in 1972, that motivated you? What relevance do you think it has to the current political environment between China and the US? When Nixon met Mao, it was a bit like when Harry met Sally – the beginning of a long relationship that would prove to be fraught with tension and arguments, but also involved cooperation, mutually beneficial trades and cultural, artistic and personal interaction. It was also the beginning of a challenge to US supremacy as the world’s superpower, because China’s subsequent economic rise proved so startling and fast, much faster than the world expected. When I first heard Nixon in China, something exploded in my head. Art has always interpreted history in unexpected ways, but here was one that was close to my heart. I was a college student in the US in 1972 and was fascinated by Nixon – both his paranoia and passions – and later, was living and working in Hong Kong when the US formally recognised China in 1979. Adams’ opera, which premiered in October 1987, placed history into the context of our global cultural life. The opera also happened to come out in the month I pledged allegiance in New York and became a US citizen, and a couple of years before Tiananmen happened. Today, the US and China are on more of an equal footing economically, and the political balance of power is changing the way we think about our future world. For me as a novelist, this history as art and the evolution of the balance of power is riveting, especially in relation to long-term personal friendships and relationships, which is in large measure what That Man in Our Lives addresses. On an artistic level, the novel’s tropes are gender, love, romance, sex, power, marriage, family – everything a novelist needs to observe the world at an intimate level. What happens in the larger world – politically, economically, culturally – is simply an extrapolation of private lives, writ large, warts and all.

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Describe your character Gordon Ashberry, the ‘man’ in the book’s title.

Who or what was the inspiration for him?

No ‘Gordon’ or ‘Gordie’ exists in my life as a single person, although he is drawn from a number of men I’ve known, both real and fictional, from a variety of places and cultures. He first appeared in my 1997 novel Hong Kong Rose as a boy whose father brings him to Hong Kong. He falls in love with all things Chinese. I invented a back story and life for him, although he was a minor – albeit important – character. He’s a failed entrepreneur on Wall Street with a somewhat questionable or shady side, as well as a romantic wise guy. He then re-inserted himself into my next novel published in 2001, The Unwalled City, set during the years prior to the 1997 handover of Hong Kong back to China. Again, he was a minor character, though more about Gordie’s character and life emerged. Gordie had a much larger part to play in my 2010 novel Habit of a Foreign Sky. Now he has his own book, mostly to finally shut him up and to write him out of my over-active imagination. Some of the inspiration for him is jazz, the music I (and Gordie) love. But if I had to trace Gordie back to his ‘original sin’ source, as it were, it would be my fascination as a child with Bugs Bunny. I loved Bugs – the way he spoke, his wise-guy personality, his nonchalance as everything explodes around him, his irritation at all disturbances to his equilibrium. He is the nemesis for a host of characters, especially Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. Bugs’ accent is Bronx-Brooklyn – a more literate Archie Bunker – which is of course not Gordie’s natural accent (he’s from a wealthy, patrician East Coast family in Connecticut) but it is one he delights in imitating. One of the more profoundly memorable moments of my adult life was to arrive in New York in 1986 and hear people (including colleagues who were former NYPD colleagues) who actually spoke like Bugs.

This was when he transformed from a cartoon character to his origins in real life, and it proved one of my conduits into understanding American culture. So Looney Tunes, and Bugs in particular, were the earliest inspiration for the man in my life that became Gordon Ashberry.

What are the core themes in your story and in your work?

The core themes in my work have evolved over my ten books and other published stories and essays. Among the central concerns in my writing are

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the Chinese diaspora family, feminism and the Asian woman, America’s influence on global culture, the politics of sex, and being Chinese in the world today. I’ve always been interested in politics, and after an eighteenyear former career as a marketing professional for multinationals and other businesses, I am concerned by the impact of capitalism on culture, society and individual lives.

In That Man In Our Lives, the idea of the balance of power in the larger world is examined through that more intimate power balance amongst friends, lovers, spouses, acquaintances. This novel took me a very long time to complete – a little over nine years, actually – because I found myself revising, complicating and expanding the fictional universe where Gordie hung out. My MFA advisor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, the Hungarian novelist Tamas Aczel, told me that my early attempts at novels needed more complications. I’ve heeded that advice over the years, never settling for the predictable or the easily explained or just the mechanics of a clever plot. The world deserves better than that from its novelists.

Why is ‘transnationalism’ such a major element in your novels? Is it simply because it mirrors your own life, or is there a broader point you are exploring?

My writing does of course mirror my own life, but my interest in transnationalism goes far beyond my personal experience. Many of the transnational lives I write about are quite different from my own, some significantly more privileged in terms of wealth, opportunities, intelligence and talent. Partly it’s to invent what I perhaps wished I had, but more importantly, I am extremely interested in the imbalance of wealth and opportunity in the world. Growing up in Hong Kong, and having lived and worked there, I am very aware of the huge divide between those privileged to be ‘transnational’ versus those who are ‘local’ because that is the only choice that life presents them. Modern urban reality is extremely stratified by class, even in the presumed democracy of the US. In Hong Kong, there are also many small traders of daily goods who transit through Chungking Mansions, many from African nations, as well as the sex trade – primarily Thai, Filipino, Mainland Chinese – or the Filipino, Indonesian and South Asian domestic helpers. In other words,

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there are many from third-world nations who can profit from the disparity of income with the first world. I’ve written about Filipino domestic helpers and their lives in some of my work, just as I’ve written about the intersection of local lives with transnational ones. It can be very easy, as a writer in English who is also read by third-culture kids in Hong Kong and Asia, to forget that not everyone gets to learn Mandarin or English well enough.

Many, many are left behind because of globalisation. The current US presidential election, as well as the rise of right-wing political parties in Europe, offer evidence of this divide.

What is your view of Hong Kong as a place for creative writers, given the sudden shutdown of the City University MFA program? What concerns do you have for Hong Kong?

My concerns for Hong Kong have less to do with whether or not creative writers can write here (writers can write anywhere they wish, Hong Kong included, and always will), but rather, whether or not Hong Kong will have a future that furthers the position it’s achieved as a major international city.

Right now, I hear, Hong Kong is the top competitive city according to some study (I think it’s Swiss), beating out the US. As a city, we are consistently ranked with nation states for all kinds of international indices – competitiveness being one – but also happiness, stress level, liveability, etc. The city is right now experiencing what is arguably its most political moment ever – topping even the 1967 riots.

Years ago, I wrote a novel about Hong Kong called Proximity. In it, a local political party arises that wants independence for the city, calling itself The Free China Movement. No one would publish the novel back in the seventies; no one cared about the Handover then. Fast forward and guess what, here we are, a little later than I perhaps anticipated, but certainly not far off. The first version of my novel projected a future-shock moment when Hong Kong sank like Atlantis. Such a dystopian ending has been echoed in a video that went a little viral after the Umbrella Revolution and also in an indie film about Hong Kong (Ten Years). Reality is often even more bizarre and stranger than fiction. Am I hopeful for the city’s future? Right now, I really don’t know. Trepidation is the prevailing mood in the world, not just in Hong Kong, as many uncertainties and mass movements of

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people daunt us. Meanwhile noisy people shout nonsense into our airwaves and cyberspace.

Do you think that it’s possible for Hong Kong to maintain its own identity separate from the PRC, given the gradually strengthening hand of Beijing in the SAR’s affairs?

I think Beijing would actually like Hong Kong to maintain a somewhat separate identity from the PRC, as long as the economy is stable and society is not in a state of turmoil. My reading of the tea leaves (i.e. what the PRC officially says) suggests that they want us to read between the lines, because that way everyone can pretend that they did not mean X or Y if the wrong things come to pass, which is just so Chinese. The Chinese leadership has enough on its plate to worry about without having to waste either ‘too much saliva’ or grey matter on tiny little Hong Kong, this ‘pimple on the backside of China’ as I once described the city. There are plenty of creams to get rid of zits, but right now, the zits won’t go away – they erupt and grow ever more explosively red. For me it comes down to the local Hong Kong government, and whether or not it can rise to assume the mantle of real local leadership, as opposed to shutting out the voices of the people. There are real social problems in Hong Kong that need to be addressed locally, and is it any wonder that political movements have risen up through frustrated people who feel they have no voice that the local government appears willing to hear? Never mind the PRC.

That Man in Our Lives is published by C&R Press.

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from That Man in Our Lives That Man in Xu OurXiL ives

Xu Xi

March 2003

T

he flight delay from JFK into Tokyo meant that Gordon Marc Ashberry (born Gordon Haddon Ashberry) missed his Hong Kong connection and spent the night, without luggage, at a hotel near Narita, courtesy of Northwest. His travel companion Larry Woo was billeted at a different hotel as a result of alphabetical logic. In the morning, Larry Woo boarded Japan Airlines flight 731 for Hong Kong. He looked out for his long-time friend, the man he met some forty years earlier on board a flight from Hong Kong when Larry was still an eager ‘foreign student’, leaving home for the first time for college in New York. As boarding ended, he listened, concerned, to the announcement that departure would be delayed due to a no-show, because that passenger’s baggage had to be offloaded. Procedure in the best of times, but post 911, the travel world took fewer chances. Larry flagged the purser and suggested the airline page Gordie one last time because his friend must be around.

‘Perhaps he didn’t wake up in time,’ the purser remarked, although she made no attempt either to stop the offload or issue an announcement. Larry sat back, trapped, unable to decide whether or not to disembark. In all the years of their friendship, he had never known Gordie not to wake up, Gordie, the man who never slept.

Gordon Ashberry meant to board JL 731. The check-in counter was frantic when he arrived, because some dignitary had lost either his passport or

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wallet, or so Gordie ascertained from the Putonghua conversations among that Chinese party. Japanese agents were bowing; Chinese faces looked perplexed. Sino-Japanese relations were at their usual impasse, their minimally shared language notwithstanding.

It was, as Chairman Mao might have said, a moment to be seized.

Gordie had been prepared for the past year and a half. In the men’s room, he chose a stall at the far end, away from the entrance, to delay discovery.

There, he removed from his calfskin travel wallet the driver’s licence, social security and credit cards of one Marshall Hayden, as well as a US passport that listed his occupation as a jazz singer (baritone) with a work visa for Japan. The passport and wallet of Gordon Marc Ashberry he left in the stall.

From his carry-on, he pulled out a pair of black Levi’s and a grey sweater (never his colours anytime), took off his dark-olive Armani suit, and effected the change. Shoes! He had not considered shoes, but then he remembered sneakers in a locker from his last trip, two months prior, too-bulky sneakers he had stuck away without further thought. Fortuitous. The locker had not expired and, in what he later considered his most brilliant move, he locked his leather shoes and overcoat inside. For a second, he regretted the coat, a camel cashmere, one he had owned for at least twenty years, purchased at the Peninsula Hotel’s shopping arcade in Kowloon. True to form, he did not think either too long or too hard, and folded the coat neatly for airport employees and detectives to puzzle over in the months to come.

Just before heading to the Northwest customer services desk, he discreetly tucked the carry-on containing his suit and shirt behind a row of seats. Then Marshall ‘Mars’ Hayden presented his credit card and identification to purchase a round-trip ticket for Tokyo to Detroit.

‘It’s a family emergency,’ he explained, his boyish features poignant. ‘My mother’s cancer took a turn for the worse. They say she won’t make it. I’ve had to cancel all my performances.’ The Japanese woman behind the counter was sympathetic, but mostly she was charmed by this green-eyed gaijin with the Reds baseball cap and sexy smile, who spoke halting Japanese and said he sang jazz (Kool! She would tell all her jazz club friends, how jealous they’d be!), this man who was so upset that he at first gave her his US driver’s licence (State of Ohio) instead of a passport. She glanced at his age: forty-two, but he looks so much younger. A willing vagina does many

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things, not the least of which was that she charged him the cheaper medical emergency fare which, technically, she shouldn’t have without proof, but what use was being thirty-something and a ‘supervisor’ if you couldn’t occasionally act that way?

‘You’re a sweetheart,’ Gordie-Mars exclaimed, blowing her an air kiss. She blushed pink as a dyed turnip on a sushi platter and giggled like the schoolgirl she still, at heart, was.

D.O.B. on Gordon M. Ashberry’s New York State driver’s licence was 1948, as the detective noted in his report the next morning. The police did not talk to the Northwest customer services supervisor because there wasn’t any reason to. Had they done so, she would have recalled those magical green eyes, which might have tipped them off. She might not have remembered the dirty blond hair peeking out of the baseball cap, but she would have remembered the eyes. Eye colour in Marshall Hayden’s passport was declared to be grey, and the photograph showed his hair a dark auburn hue. Gordie had hesitated a second as he jammed the cap on his head in the men’s room; he had forgotten his kit with the hair dye and grey contacts. So it was a gamble, one of his last.

By the time his calfskin wallet had become ‘evidence’, as had the carry-on (although these two items remained unconnected for months afterwards, almost a year, because Larry Woo could not recall what Gordie was wearing, other than, oh, I don’t know, what he always wears) Marshall Hayden was long gone.

And that was how Gordon Marc Ashberry disappeared, became invisible, vamoosed once and for all down his rabbit hole, where he could croon like a lounge lizard and mimic Bugs, forever, in peace.

That Man in Our Lives is published by C&R Press.

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Interview: Krys Lee

Int erview: Krys IntLerview: ee Krys L ee

K

rys Lee’s highly-acclaimed 2012 collection of short stories, Drifting House, was shortlisted for the BBC Short Story Award and was awarded the Rome Prize. Praised at the time for the ‘stark beauty’ (Daily Telegraph) and ‘rare clarity’ (Economist) of her writing, and for plumbing ‘the darkness on both sides of this divided nation’ (Financial Times), Lee’s latest work builds on her earlier achievement, this time in the form of a novel.

How I Became a North Korean, published by Faber & Faber in August 2016, has received similar accolades from such writers as Adam Johnson, whose novel about North Korea, The Orphan Master’s Son, won the Pulitzer Prize. Yiyun Li speaks of Lee’s ‘empathy and insight and a deep sense of place’. That’s high praise for fiction based in the border areas of North Korea and China, about which there is much speculation and little informed

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knowledge. Krys Lee has worked closely with escapees on that border, and her own experience imbues her fiction with a startling sense of moral truth.

Lee’s three protagonists – a Chinese-American of Korean descent, a North Korean woman desperate to protect her unborn child, and a member of the Pyongyang elite whose father was murdered by Kim Jong-il himself – find themselves on the Chinese side of the border, where the novel follows their converging lives as they try to escape from their disparate pasts and find a route to freedom.

The Asia Literary Review recently spoke to the author about how she came to write the novel, and how she approached the challenges of conveying accurately the difficulties faced by refugees from North Korea.

What got you started on How I Became a North Korean?

I started How I Became a North Korean early in 2010, after I had been asked to help set up a safe house in the Chinese border area, between North Korea and China. Though I’d been good friends with North Koreans and activists for nearly ten years, and involved in the community, I had had no intention of writing about it because I thought it was a story that North Koreans should write themselves. But upon the prodding of North Korean friends as well as the growing sense that maybe I should write about what was central to my life and concerns at the time, I finally gave myself permission to begin the novel.

How did you come to write a novel rather than non-fiction? (Though the given assumption in the West is that the country is inscrutable, is it so opaque that it can be approached only through fiction?)

I chose to write the story in fictionalised form as it’s always been most important to me that the people I know are protected and no more is revealed about them that they would desire. And though North Korea is largely unknown to many, we still know so much, especially now compared to the past. I’m more interested in the North Korean people as individuals, frankly, and the identities we impose on them are the deeper concerns of How I Became a North Korean. Non-fiction would have required many betrayals or revelations that people might regret later, and though I’m aware

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that the memoir is a huge market, I’m far more interested in protecting the identities of real people.

You’ve said your work isn’t autobiographical, but the title suggests personal involvement. Tell us about the ‘I’ in the title of your book, and about the process of researching for the novel.

It is and isn’t autobiographical, like much of my work. All my work is inspired by autobiography, and my concerns and themes well up organically from my life, but I’m a fairly private person. I was directly involved in the world I am describing. The situation in the North Korean–Chinese border area and its relationship with the Christian churches that operate there is very complicated, and made more so by the exchange of money and the dangers faced by those who are involved in the daily running of a safe house.

Being a pastor’s daughter, I grew up in the church, which means I also grew up inspired both by the good people one meets in the church and also horrified by the power-play and hypocrisy that is rife.

The ‘I’ in the title, as well as the Danny character, is actually a version – and variant – of myself though, unfortunately, I lack his academic brilliance and energy. His concerns and his stance as witness, as well as his curiosity, his desire for a morally upright and equal world, his self-directed questions about sexual orientation and about home, nationhood, and belonging, are all issues that I have grappled or am grappling with. Like Danny, though I grew up in the church, I have been fundamentally changed by it but no longer attend services. I’ll stop there.

In terms of research, I did read many books and articles, but because I have known North Koreans and activists intimately for so many years, long before I ever imagined writing a novel or even considered myself a writer, my novel is more or less based on what I saw and experienced and knew personally, inspired far more by conversations and events that I either partook in or was witness to, than in traditional forms of research that only confirmed what I had known. That, however, doesn’t make those books any less valuable. My current novel in progress, which is not based on a world I know, has been my first book requiring intensive amounts of conventional research.

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Interview: Krys Lee

The plight of refugee women, in particular, is a key theme of the novel, along with that of sexual identity. How important are these issues to you as a writer and a woman, and to the perception of North Korea in the outside world?

The plight of refugees in general is important to me, whether they are men or women. Unfortunately, however, women are always incredibly vulnerable because they lack the physical strength of men and are more likely to be victims of physical aggressors. I believe most women, especially petite women like me, have experienced dangerous situations where their sexuality, or even their life, has been threatened by those who can physically overpower them. For North Korean women who cross the border, life becomes a relentless, exhausting and terrifying journey of such danger.

Being uncertain of one’s sexual orientation, or being deemed by the church as having the ‘wrong orientation’ is devastating for a Christian because you’re essentially told you’ll burn in hell. And if you’re a believer, as I was, it creates fear and guilt. There are some liberal pastors and denominations, but that wasn’t my experience or the experience of many.

It’s already hard enough being pressured by society at large and sometimes by one’s family to fit into the so-called ‘norm’. I’ve always felt, and still feel, that it is a violation of one’s human rights to be told who you can love, whether that be a man, a woman, or a houseful of cats. The right to love is a fundamental part of being human, so long as you are not hurting other people. Sexual identity is a hugely contested area in Korea right now, and I think about this often as I have many friends who have been pressured to hide or flee in order to be themselves.

There’s no doubt about the regime’s vicious oppression of its people, but you have other villains in the novel. How did you come to see the ubiquity of evil in the political, religious and personal realms?

It’s impossible to think and write about individuals without the greater context, as it’s all connected. After all, families, organisations, corporations and nations are composed of individuals who are shaped and influenced by their society. I grew up in a complicated family where we as children were clearly reminded that we were at the bottom of the family power structure, that we were property, and that our very troubled but well-intended parents

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had the right to do anything they wanted to with us. I saw that structure of power and hypocrisy replicated in the church that I grew up in, then later, everywhere in society where Darwinian assumptions seemed to dominate. It frustrates me and sometimes makes me angry but, on the other hand, I’m also inspired by all that is good and true around me.

It seems that the device of Danny, a Chinese-American of Korean descent, both allows you to speak through him and to use him as a bridge between the outside world he comes from and the experience of North Korean refugees.

This is very true. He was my entrance into the book because Danny is me at an oblique angle, trying to come to terms with all I had seen and experienced over the years.

I began by asking you about how you got started. How do you think this will all end, and what effect would you wish your book to have on its readers?

I have no idea how it will end, and though many have been predicting the end of North Korea for years, the country has been remarkably resilient.

China’s active financial support of the nation has helped to keep it propped up, though China has become warier of its unreliable ally. I hope very much for the sake of all the separated families that reunification happens soon, no matter the financial cost on South Korea, a burden that I would also share since I returned to South Korea and have lived there since graduating from college. To be separated from one’s home, one’s family and one’s culture – it’s the most terrible form of exile. The historical, artificial division of the nation needs to be righted, no matter the cost or the competing interests of more powerful nations. It’s a very old-fashioned, trite thing to say, but I strongly believe in justice, good, and doing the right thing, whether that is in one’s personal relationships or on a national scale. The people who inspire me most are not those largely considered successful, but those under the radar who have quietly done the ‘right thing’ though it may not have always been to their own advantage.

How I Became a North Korean is published by Faber and Faber (August 2016).

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Poetry

John Thieme

John Thieme

Chinese Checkers I make steady progress across the board.

‘Imperious’ is the word you use to describe it, While mounting a nonchalant defence, Against my hopeful, hopping pegs, Pygmy soldiers in the Shanghai dusk.

In a moment of distraction, as I sip my tea, Broken orange pekoe from Sri Lanka, I venture to remark that China Has given much to the West, and you reply, ‘Oh yes, but taken so much more.

You taught us all your rules of trade, How to give and take. We gave, you took.

That habit will be hard for us to break.

And this game? Japan gave us this German game, So now we make smart sets to send to you.’

While you say this, I strive to cross the board And steal a victory through a pincer-like advance, Hoping that your mind may be wandering to

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Your husband who left you a year or two ago, Or your lover, arrested for cheating at checkers With the sharp-faced Russian ambassador, Whose diplomatic immunity saved their skins.

‘Of course,’ you say, ‘The West has given too, But let’s not talk about the Opium Wars.’

There’s little humour in your voice.

‘One way of avoiding that past Is to put it in the margins of a longer, Finer history of walls and warriors and woks.

Oh yes, we sent you woks too, didn’t we?’

The game looks to be moving towards stalemate, As you pull backwards from the board, Grating your chair-legs on the tiled floor.

I see a chance to win the day And swiftly push my pegs towards your space.

You deftly thwart my move, not by ingenious defence, But by rising to your feet. You whisper softly, ‘Our pandas seldom mate in Western zoos.’

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Contributors Contribut ors Contribut ors

SHUJA ALHAQ was born in Pakistan in 1952 and has lived in the UK since 1987. He also writes under the pen name Raakha Javaar and is the author of four collections of poetry, in Urdu and Panjabi. He has also published a work on the history and philosophy of religion, A Forgotten Vision: A study of human spirituality in the light of Islamic tradition (Vikas, New Delhi, 1997).

BAE SUAH was born in Seoul in 1965 and graduated from Ewha Women’s University with a BA in chemistry. She is the winner of the Hankook Ilbo and Dongseo literary prizes, and has over ten short-story collections and five novels to her name. She translates literary works from German into Korean, particularly those of W. G. Sebald. She has participated in the PEN World Voices festival and the Worlds Literature Festival in Norwich, UK, where she was also writer in residence. English translations of her work include Nowhere to be Found, translated by Sora Kim-Russell (Amazon Crossing, 2015), A Greater Music (Open Letter, 2016) and Recitation (Deep Vellum, 2017).

O THIAM CHIN is the winner of the inaugural Epigram Books Fiction Prize, the richest literary award in Singapore, with a prize of S$20,000 and a publishing contract with Epigram Books. He is also the author of five collections of short fiction: Free-Falling Man (2006), Never Been Better (2009), Under The Sun (2010), The Rest Of Your Life and Everything That Comes With It (2011) and Love, or Something Like Love (2013, shortlisted for the 2014 Singapore Literature Prize for English Fiction).

NADA HOLLAND is a London-based former journalist of mixed Indonesian descent, currently working under a pseudonym. She produced features about books and culture for a leading newspaper and has lived and worked on several continents, reporting on arts, digital culture and literature. Her work deals with how our intimate canvases – sex, families, loss – shape the bigger picture: ethnic bonds, transience, equality.

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Contributors

JANET HONG’s fiction and translations have appeared in Words Without Borders, The Malahat Review, Kyoto Journal, Azalea, and The Korea Times. She received PEN American Center’s PEN/Heim Translation Fund for her translation of the novel The Impossible Fairy Tale by Han Yujoo, forthcoming from Graywolf Press in March 2017.

SREEDHEVI IYER has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize for her literary work. Her writing has appeared in Hotel Amerika, Drunken Boat, Asian American Literary Review, Ginosko Literary Journal, Two Thirds North (Stockholm), Free Word Centre (UK) and elsewhere. She has also guest edited Drunken Boat’s Hong Kong Special Folio and the March 2016 issue of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

BALLI KAUR JASWAL is the author of Inheritance (Sleepers Publishing, 2013), a universal story of family, identity and belonging, newly re-released by Epigram Books. Born in Singapore and raised in Japan, Russia and the Philippines, she studied creative writing in the United States. She has received writing fellowships from the University of East Anglia and Nanyang Technological University, and was named Best Young Australian Novelist of 2014 by the Sydney Morning Herald. Her next novel, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows, will be published by Harper Collins/William Morrow in 2017.

SEO JIN was born in Busan, South Korea, in 1975. He majored in electrical engineering and worked as the managing editor of the literary magazine VioLa. In 2007, his book Welcome to the Underground won the Hankyoreh Literature Prize. His other works include Heartbreak Hotel, New York Book Wanderers, and Atomix.

ABHAY K. is an Indian poet-diplomat and the author of five collections of poems. He is also the editor of CAPITALS (Bloomsbury, 2016) – a poetry anthology centred on capital cities of the world. Widely published, his poems have been translated into a dozen languages. His latest collection, The Seduction of Delhi (Bloomsbury, 2015), is a poetry bestseller. His song, Earth Anthem, has been translated into twenty-six languages. He received the SAARC Literary Award 2013.

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DIMMI KHAN is a graduate of the London School of Economics and has master’s degrees in Islamic Studies, Information Systems and Creative Writing.

He is currently studying for an MLitt in Terrorism Studies. Khan also has a lifelong passion for archaeology, human evolution, ancient history and Bollywood.

A published short-story writer, he is also part of The Whole Kahani writers’ group.

KRYS LEE is the author of the short story collection Drifting House (2012) and the novel How I Became a North Korean (2016), both published by Viking, Penguin Random House. She is a recipient of awards including the Rome Prize and the Story Prize Spotlight Award, and was shortlisted for the BBC International Story Prize. Her writing has appeared in Granta, San Francisco Chronicle, Corriere della Sera, The Guardian and elsewhere. She is an assistant professor of creative writing at Yonsei University, Underwood International College, in South Korea. Her website is www.kryslee.net.

DONG LI was born and raised in the People’s Republic of China. His honours include fellowships from Akademie Schloss Solitude 2015–17, the German Chancellery/Alexander von Humboldt Foundation 2015–16 and the PEN/Heim Translation Fund. He has work in Kenyon Review, Conjunctions, manuskripte (Austria, in German translation), and elsewhere. His book of the Chinese poet Zhu Zhu’s work The Wild Great Wall in English translation will be published by Phoneme Media in late 2017 and his trilingual anthology of contemporary American, Chinese and German poetry in response to a poem by the late poet C. D. Wright is forthcoming from Matthes & Seitz in Germany.

C. G. MENON is a winner of the Asian Writer prize, The Short Story award and the Winchester Writers’ Festival award. Her work has been broadcast on radio and published in a number of international journals and anthologies. She is currently working on her first novel and studying for an MA in creative writing at London’s City University.

SIMON PATTON translates Chinese literature. He lives with his partner, two cats and Sealyham the Terrier near Chinaman Creek in Central Victoria, Australia. An essay on Yu Jian appeared in Australian Poetry Journal in 2014, and his translations of five poems by Yu were published in Renditions 84 in 2015.

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Contributors

RUSHDA RAFEEK was born in 1990 and is currently based in Sri Lanka. Her poetry and fiction have been published or are forthcoming in Harpoon Review, The Rumpus, The Bangalore Review, Monkey Bicycle, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, Mandala Journal, The Missing Slate and elsewhere. She serves as a fiction editor for The Missing Slate.

RAJESH REDDY holds an MFA in creative writing from Indiana University and is pursuing a PhD in creative writing at the University of Georgia. He is currently also a JD candidate at Lewis & Clark Law School, where his focus is in animal law. His fiction has appeared in Mandala Magazine, Interlochen Review, and the Yellow Book, among others.

SEBASTIAN SIM spent his twenties backpacking around the world to soak up different experiences and cultures. He has since published three Chinese wuxia novels between 2004 and 2012. As a former prisons officer, with a strict schedule that had little room for writing, Sebastian remembers having to ‘wake up early, open a can of Red Bull and start writing’. Let’s Give It Up For Gimme Lao! (Epigram Books, 2016) is Sebastian’s first English novel. He is working on a second, which will have a contemporary Singapore setting.

JOHN THIEME is a British author, of part-Canadian parentage, whose journalistic, academic and creative writing has been published in some twenty-five countries. He has held chairs in British universities and has also taught in the Caribbean and, as a visiting professor, in Hong Kong and Italy. His most recent book, Postcolonial Literary Geographies: Out of Place, has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan.

JASON WOODRUFF is a literary translator based in his home town of Salt Lake City, Utah. He graduated from the University of Utah where he studied Anthropology and English. His translation of the writer Kim Kyung-uk’s short story ‘Spray’ was runner-up in the 2016 Close Approximations translation contest hosted by Asymptote Journal.

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Contributors

XU XI is author of five novels and five collections of fiction and essays.

Forthcoming books include an ekphrastic essay collaboration, a memoir and a story collection. She has also edited four anthologies of Hong Kong writing in English.

A Chinese-Indonesian native of Hong Kong, and a US citizen, she currently lives between New York and Hong Kong. Her website is www.xuxiwriter.com.

YU JIAN is one of China’s major contemporary poets. He has published several collections of poetry and a five-volume collection of poetry and essays. His poems have been awarded prizes in China and abroad, and widely translated. Flash Cards (Zephyr Press, 2010) – selected poems from his collection Biantiao shi (Poem notes) – was published with an introduction by Simon Patton.

ZHU ZHU was born in Yangzhou, China. He is a poet, critic and curator of art exhibitions and has published numerous volumes of poetry and prose, among them Drive to Another Planet, Salt on Wilted Grass, Blue Smoke, The Trunk, Stories, Vertigo, and Grey Carnival – Chinese Contemporary Art since 2000. Zhu’s honours include Liu Li’an and Anne Kao national poetry prizes, the French International Poetry Val-de-Marne Fellowship, the Chinese Contemporary Art Award for Critics and the Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry Fellowship at the Vermont Studio Center.

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Available in all major bookstores www.shop.epigrambooks.sg

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ASIA PACIFIC WRITERS & TRANSLATORS PRESENTS

IDEAS & REALITIES (2016) CREATIVE WRITING IN ASIA TODAY

GUANGZHOU (CHINA) NOVEMBER 24-26 HONG KONG NOVEMBER 27 MACAU NOVEMBER 28 Find us - apwriters.org contact us - admin@apwriters.org join us - apwriters.org/apply-to-join

Poster illustration ‘Nomads 2015 (detail)’ by Mongolian artist Baatarzorig Batjargal, courtesy of the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art’s 8th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art and Griffith Review.

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Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing The Sun Yat-sen University Center for English-language Creative Writing is the first and currently the only one of its kind in China for teaching and promoting creative writing in English as a second/foreign language. It combines the teaching of English with creative writing techniques to enable students to write about China from an insider’s perspective.

Under the Sun Yat-sen University Creative Writing Education Program, the Center organizes readings by international writers and a book club to promote the reading and writing of world literature. From October 2015, it will start the Sun Yat-sen University International Writers’ Residency, which moves from the campuses of Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and Zhuhai to Jiangmen in Guangdong Province and Yangshuo in Guangxi Autonomous Region, and gives between ten and fifteen writers the time and space to write as well as providing them with the opportunity to get to know Chinese people and culture. Contact: daifan@mail.sysu.edu.cn

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The political winds of 2016 rage in from the extremes of right and left. Too many latch onto labels that blow away the subtleties that define and differentiate opposing platforms and the individuals that stand on them. Yet no person can ever be less than a unique and complex nation-state in microcosm. Literature, at least, provides a means for expressing this diversity.

No. 31 SUMMER 2016

Featuring: Extracts from the winner and finalists of Singapore’s Epigram Books Fiction Prize Korea’s Seo Jin on the anguish of an amnesiac trapped in the New York subway A virtual gigolo falls prey to love – Dimmi Khan Interview – Krys Lee on How I Became a North Korean Hong Kong’s Xu Xi searches for a protagonist who disappears Poetry from Yu Jian, Zhu Zhu, Abhay K., Rushda Rafeek, Shuja Alhaq and John Thieme ‘The ALR fills an important gap. We’ve grown used to reading about Asia. But through a kaleidoscope of stories, essays, poems, polemics and photographs, finally we can hear Asians talking about themselves.’ – David Pilling, former Asia Editor, Financial Times

Fiction | Non-fiction | Essay | Poetry

Asia Literary Review | Essential Reading

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