China Man by Henry Tonn

by Henry F. Tonn

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Jasmine tea and incense stir the senses in the Chinatown sector of Shanghai—yes, there is such a place—on a clear, fall evening with the many residents milling about, eating, snapping pictures of themselves, talking animatedly to each other, and our group has been instructed not to give money to beggars and aggressive hawkers, an admonition I have dutifully obeyed for three weeks, but now I spy a tiny figure in the swirling crowd, not a beggar, hunch-backed, in a rumpled blue shirt and baggy pants, a woman’s handbag curiously slung over his shoulder, face hideously burned, one eye closed, staring about in wonderment—what is he doing here?—and I work my way through the throng to his side, offer a rolled up American dollar bill—the average Chinese peasant lives on two dollars a day, I have learned—which he takes in a gnarled hand and slowly unrolls, stares at it with perplexity, then lifts his round head with its few remaining tufts of hair and peers at me through the slit of his left eye, placing his hands together in Buddhist prayer, in gratitude, and bows deeply, forever sealing a memory for me to share.

Henry F. Tonn is a semi-retired psychologist whose recent work has appeared in the Front Porch Journal, Weave Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, and NewPages.com.

The Editors

Eckleburg was founded in 2010 as an online and print literary and arts journal. We take our title from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and include the full archives of our predecessor Moon Milk Review. Our aesthetic is eclectic, literary mainstream to experimental. We appreciate fusion forms including magical realist, surrealist, meta- realist and realist works with an offbeat spin. We value character-focused storytelling and language and welcome both edge and mainstream with punch aesthetics. We like humor that explores the gritty realities of world and human experiences. Our issues include original content from both emerging and established writers, poets, artists and comedians such as authors, Roxane Gay, Rick Moody, Cris Mazza, Steve Almond, Stephen Dixon, poets, Moira Egan and David Wagoner and actor/comedian, Zach Galifianakis.