In the U.S., April is National Poetry Month. It was introduced in 1996 and deserves much more recognition than it currently gets. For those of you currently in the U.S., The Academy of American Poets has an interactive map on its Web site that lists events for the month (and beyond). You can access the map at http://www.poets.org/page.php/prmID/382 .

We encourage our readers to write at least one poem every day for the month of April. That should give you enough for a chapbook by the end of the month. You should also read poetry daily no matter what month it is.

Terracotta Typewriter would like to wish everyone a happy St. Patrick’s Day–even if you aren’t Irish, you can pretend to be for the day. We know how difficult it can be to celebrate the day with a good pint of Guinness and some corned beef in China (we never did find corned beef anywhere in the Middle Kingdom), but there are always substitutes. If you live in a city with a Wal-Mart, you can at least find bottles of Guinness Foreign Export (which just doesn’t taste as good as draught, but it’ll do).

If you teach English in China, we encourage you teach a few lessons in Gaelic.

For those of you looking for a writing prompt for today, we suggest channeling one of the many great Irish writers. And if you happen to be in Dublin, go visit the Irish Writers Museum and take a literary pub tour of the city.

For those interested in how to say St. Patrick’s Day in Chinese: 圣帕特里克节 Shèngpàtèlǐkèjié

This is the last call for submissions for issue number 4, which we hope to have finished in the next two weeks. We are still reading fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to be included. Please review our guidelines before sending your work.

As this will complete our first full cycle of publishing for the year, which coincidentally coincides with Spring Festival, we have decided to ask for submissions of black and white photos from Spring Festivals past. All photo submissions can be made to the same e-mail address: tctype[at]gmail[dot]com. Please include a caption and short photographer bio.

Terracotta Typewriter would like to wish our Australian readers a happy Australia Day. We are trying our best to get the toilets to flush backwards in honor of this day, but they don’t want to cooperate. We’re fairly certain that Crocodile Dundee will be on TV again today, and we’ll watch it for the 50th time. We can only hope that Fox shows The Simpsons Australia episode again.

Terracotta Typewriter would like to wish our readers a happy new year. May 2010 be better than 2009.

Resolutions for this year:

1. Write more (quantity and quality)

2. Update our news section more often

3. Read more

4. Make Terracotta Typewriter the best literary journal with Chinese characteristics

By Brian Kuhl

Christmas in China can be a surreal experience. At an English club Christmas Party once, Santa Claus told me he liked my straight nose. Skinny college kids dressed in familiar red suits, but without even a hint of Santa’s portliness, slouch through the streets passing out sale flyers. In the Hainan jungle village where I lived one year, a Chinese beer was hawked from a yuletide-decorated cottage. On wheels. And Christmas carols—in English—are everywhere. But who’s listening? Who even knows the meanings of the songs, be it the words alone or the warm feelings they conjure up?

Several years ago I was in a big supermarket with three friends who were helping me buy a space heater for my drafty apartment. The store has since been bought out by the British retail chain Tesco, but at the time it retained its Chinese name, which unwittingly fit the season: “Le Gou,” or “Happy Buying.” We were walking through an aisle of cleaning products en route to the heaters when one Christmas song ended and a new one began: “White Christmas.”

I realized we were listening to an entire recording of Christmas carols, sung in English by American performers. While we shopped that afternoon, we heard such popular classics as “Jingle Bell Rock,” “Hey Santa Baby,” “Silver Bells,” and “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.” The Jackson Five even belted out “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town.” But when Bing Crosby began to croon, I slowed my pace and laughed. It was amazing to me that such touchstones of my American Christmases past would appear in the small Chinese city of Huzhou. I turned to my friend Xiao Zhang, who wondered why I was laughing, and said, “You know, this is a very famous Christmas song in America, maybe the most famous.”

“Really?” he said with a blank smile.

“Yeah. It says, ‘I’m dreaming of a white Christmas’—white meaning snowy—because snow is considered very Christmasy.”

“Really?” he said again, his look unchanged.

I asked if he could understand the words, and he paused for a moment to listen. Now Xiao Zhang has about the best English skills of anyone I’ve met in China, and if he couldn’t understand the lyrics nobody could. No, he could not make them out, he said, but noted that the song was slow and not upbeat as he thought Christmas music should be. It was supposed to be happy, and it didn’t sound that way. That’s when I realized I was probably the only one in the store to whom these songs meant anything and that playing them was likely just a mandate by some corporate manager somewhere. Here is some Christmas music—play it.

This was a little disconcerting to me. In America, while the business side of Christmas dominates, at least the spirit and ideals of Christmas that have been usurped by business are still there, under the surface, and people know them if they really stop to think about them. But here in China were just the remnants, casually slapped to this alien holiday imported for the sole purpose of selling goods. That’s what struck me: it looked the part—Christmas trees, fake snow on merchandise displays, sales clerks in Santa hats—but it was all surface effects, nothing more.

As Christmas Day approached that year, people asked me how I planned to spend the holiday. I didn’t really want to pretend to celebrate Christmas in China if I wasn’t going to be with my family, which I wasn’t. Christmas fell on a Monday, and the college told me I could have both the 25th and 26th off. But I planned to teach all my classes those days—I already had enough perks and just wanted to be treated like any other member of the faculty. Chinese teachers didn’t get those days off, so I wouldn’t either. It fell then to decide how to spend Christmas Eve. Hangzhou, an elegant center of Chinese culture, is one my favorite cities and I hadn’t been there in some time, so that’s what I would do: go to West Lake and walk around a bit, have a leisurely lunch, and then head to a cafe to sip coffee and read.

When I got to the bus station, in the northern outskirts of the city, I took a taxi to the central area by West Lake. I went first to a DVD store to look for movies I could use with my classes. From there, I had to walk some distance to get to the rest of the stores. What I saw could have been in New York or Boston: people dressed up as Santas walking along in pairs giving out free balloons as promotions, hordes of people on the sidewalks and in the stores, and a long line snaking out of Pizza Hut at three o’clock in the afternoon. Unreal. Too unreal for me. I knew that the cafe would be crowded and that I’d have trouble getting a taxi later to return to the bus station. I decided then and there to leave, after only a couple of hours, and go home.

I had sought an Eastern peace and found instead a Western pace. A couple of days later I complained in an e-mail to a Chinese friend about how the hectic commercial nature of American Christmas had followed me to Hangzhou. His reply came on New Year’s Eve. Yes, he wrote, Christmas had become very popular in China of late, especially among young people and “merchants.” He explained that, in response, a group of Chinese intellectuals at several top universities had written an open letter against Christmas in China—urging Chinese, in part, to place more emphasis on their own holidays and traditional religions. My friend, however, dismissed their argument, saying the scholars “should have more important things to do, instead of acting a show.” He then ended his e-mail with these words:

“I didn’t celebrate Christmas Day, and I even have no feeling about the New Year Day. I like Spring Festival, the traditional new year for Chinese. In my hometown, it is the most important and maybe most happy festival in all year. But I will not object that other people like Christmas or the New Year Day. No right to choose is the most terrible thing in the world.”

Brian Kuhl, originally from the United States, now lives and teaches in Zhejiang Province.

For those of us who become successful in our writing, it may be useful to learn a few words and phrases to describe our careers.

Publisher: 出版社 (chūbǎnshè) This is specifically a publishing company or publishing house. A person as a publisher is 出版商 (chūbǎnshāng).

Agent: 经纪人 (Jīngjìrén) This word for agent is specific for those working with writers, musicians, and actors.

My agent just sold my new novel to a publisher in New York.
我的经纪人刚把我的新小说卖给了纽约的出版社。(wǒde jīngjìrén gāng bǎ wǒde xīn xiǎoshuō màigěile niǔyuēde chūbǎnshè)

Every now and then I come across some amusing commentary about the publishing industry. A short while ago, I encountered what is probably the most amusing satirical Twitter account around (much better than the fake Mao and Hu Jintao that used to be around). Fake AP Stylebook (@FakeAPStylebook) writes some rather ridiculous advice about AP style, none of which will ever be found in a real stylebook.

While it is probably more amusing for editors and journalists, it may also be fun for other writers. It will certainly provide a bit of entertainment and possibly a little creative spark for those in need of a humorous idea for a story or poem.

A sampling of the Fake AP Stylebook:

“Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair should be referred to as ‘he’ despite being a hermaphroditic alien reptoid.”

“Infinitives may be split only after extensive counseling and a trial separation.”

“U.S. Constitution – Formerly the nation’s founding document, now refers to whatever you want it to be.”

“There is no term for a person who likes beets. (See: bicycle for a fish)”

“The rules for numbers below ten do not apply to 6. He is not a number, he is a free man.”

We’re not really interested in reading Sarah Palin’s memoir (though after reading a recent article about her use of “facts,” we are inclined to classify her work as faux-moir). We do, however, like her title, Going Rogue–it sounds like it should be political thriller (another reason why you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover or title). The title does make us wonder about Sarah Palin’s grasp of the English language.

From Merriam-Webster

Rogue (n.):

1 : vagrant, tramp
2 : a dishonest or worthless person : scoundrel
3 : a mischievous person : scamp
4 : a horse inclined to shirk or misbehave
5 : an individual exhibiting a chance and usually inferior biological variation

Is Sarah Palin calling herself worthless or a misbehaving horse? Is this really how she wants to depict her political career?

We would like to remind all you writers out there that titles are important. Please, choose your titles carefully.

This has been a public service announcement from Terracotta Typewriter.

I have never had any respect for Kanye West. Were it not for the incessant celebrity news reports that are incorporated into what should be real news, I would not know who he was. Now, instead of being indifferent to Kanye, I loathe him. And it’s all thanks to his honesty.

According to this article on Reuters, Kanye has written a book and is out promoting it. Had I known Kanye wrote a book (probably with a lot of help from a ghostwriter), I would’ve been sure to ignore it. I’m fairly certain that I will never read it. I may use it as a door stop should someone give me a copy.

Kanye was quoted as saying, “I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books. I like to get information from doing stuff like actually talking to people and living real life.” And he still expects you to go out and buy his book (and possibly read it instead of using it to level that uneven sofa in your living room).

Now I’ll let you all get back to reading books that are worthwhile. If you have any suggestions for books that would be better than Kanye West’s book, please leave it the comments section (I’m sure I can think of a few hundred).