August 2022 Fiction Contest: The Bund | Teen Ink

August 2022 Fiction Contest: The Bund

August 17, 2022
By Anonymous

Record-player squeals, Asian woman, boredom quencher. The boys jam a few bucks in their cheongsam and they go all out. Navigate wan bamboo hands, cracked cranelike flutes, plum-bloom-kissed mangle of fabrics. Spices grind the sandalwood air. The hardest part was smuggling them inside the whites-only garden gate. Her eyes swell, pulped inky orchids and I quickly forget the milk-skinned farmgirl waiting for me to return from war, rip that ancient silk. Night as young as our sweat-licked bodies. Knocked over a jade vase. Spent the entire high-tea in a porcelain bathroom stall. Thought I would leave but god knows, it’s Shanghai.


The author's comments:

This is a piece of flash fiction written for the 101-word-story contest wrestling with the impact of systemic white supremacy and colonization, set in 1920s Shanghai.

*Note: all words conjoined with a hyphen "-" are counted as a singular word.


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