Chapter 15

I thought the soreness in my forearms would be worse than what it is, but still, it showed up as expected. My grip strength is gone, I wonder if I could even squeeze an orange. I also had the tiniest sliver of a hangover due to the four Xibang beers, but my body is a fine-tuned beer-processing machine, unless I go hard on Belgian ales or touch hard liquor, I’m fine the next day.

I listened to Styxhexenhammer666’s political analysis while I took a nasty shit and then a cold shower. He pointed out the total hypocrisy of Twitter taking a stance for free speech and against internet shutdowns in the context of the Ugandan election, while they’ve been suppressing political voices in the USA. I looked up the results, they’re not in yet.

I pedaled to work, listening to Jocko Willink talk about the Vietnam War. Wars are always full of horror stories but somehow it feels that the one in Vietnam was particularly gruesome and doomed, to the American psyche. Perhaps it’s the nature of a jungle conflict in isolated small units, against an invisible and ubiquitous enemy, combined with the recency and the fact that they ultimately lost, that made such an impression.

I was supposed to invigilate an exam in the first two periods but I switched with a coworker who had errands to run yesterday afternoon. So I sat around the office, browsing Facebook. Some of my metalhead friends were discussing the legendary German thrash metal band Kreator, I joined the conversation, and it made me want to listen to their album Violent Revolution. Kreator were among the absolute pioneers of the genre and released five albums in the 1980s that are widely regarded as classics, but then they faceplanted hard in the 1990s with weird experimentation towards synthesizer gothic rock, before coming back to their thrash roots at the turn of the millenium. In fact, as much as I do appreciate their old classics like Pleasure To Kill and Coma Of Souls, I’d say Violent Revolution and Enemy Of God (released in 2001 and 2006) are superior.

During final exams, students are supposed to be accompanied if they go to the toilet. An invigilator sent a message on the WeChat group, and off I went. The student in question was one of those who got caught cheating on my exam. So on the way there, I asked, in as much as a disappointed father voice as I can muster:

“Did you cheat on the chemistry exam?”

“No, my phone was in my pocket and it made a noise. I forgot to turn it off.”

“You’re not supposed to have a phone in your possession. You know that.”

“I need it to contact my parents.”

I am always irritated at those excuses. I didn’t own a cell phone until well into adulthood, and it’s not as if he can’t be reached in the school in case of emergency.

“You’ll get a zero on the exam. It’s not worth it.”

Two boys were by themselves, in the hall. I asked them in Chinese why they’re not doing their exam. “The further maths exam hasn’t started yet, teacher”, one of them replied also in Chinese, then they burst out laughing. Very few things to them are funnier than interacting in their strange language with a foreigner. At least their tone was polite, at times they would talk to me rudely or with some dumb fake accent, which of course grinds the fuck out of my gears. In fact that’s one of the topics of conversation we covered yesterday at the Uyghur BBQ restaurant, my friend who’s a principal at another “international” high school in town told me he harshly scolds students who make fun of his or another teacher’s Chinese pronunciation. Though I’m as peeved as he is by that disrespect, I tend to be a bit more stoic about the whole thing, I’ve taught them long enough to know that they’re just immature, unused to crosscultural interaction to say the least, and don’t mean much ill intent. Also, well, my general goofy nature transpires through my teaching and my relationship with the students, which would make me slightly hypocritical if I had zero tolerance for goofiness. Still, at times I call them up on it, telling them it’s hurtful, and that I don’t go around making fun of them when they make English mistakes, that approach works better than getting angry at them.

I supervised an eleventh-grade math exam. It was about mechanics, addition of vectors, stuff like that. I looked at the questions, some of them I could answer I guess, if I prepared accordingly and brushed up on my rusty knowledge of sinus and cosinus and shit. But their economics and further maths exams might as well be written in ancient Slavonic. Our students have to learn so much heavy material, no wonder they’re always so tired, I admire them for still managing to cling on to whatever speck of childish innocence is left after spending pretty much all of their conscious life in a brutal schooling system that keeps them in its grip 350/12/7.

I bought some shrimp noodles at a fast-food restaurant, then went home for lunch. The dog had acted out again, destroying three cardboard boxes. He got thrown in jail immediately.

On YouTube, The Amazing Atheist answered a fan question about why anti-feminist videos are so popular. His take was that a lot of feminists are crazy, hateful, intransigent and easy to make fun of. TAA is a left-wing progressive but has no love for that woke crowd. In fact that got me thinking about a section of Reddit I stumbled upon while mindlessly browsing, called “Witches Against Patriarchy”. These women are into actual witchcraft, and really, really, really hate men. I spent a few minutes reading some discussion threads, the whole thing was so bizarre. I also watched a video about high-level MMA fighters who were honest and candid about how they struggle psychologically with the stress and pressure of that brutal sport.

The little brick building where the dump used to be is almost finished, and two elderly men were shoveling sand from a wheelbarrow. I asked them what is this building for, they replied in thickly-accented Chinese that it’s a garbage depot. A lot of oldsters and/or rural folks in my part of China don’t speak Mandarin, but rather some strange local dialects that I seldom understand.

In the afternoon I listened to an album with the strange title of Cobra Speed Venom, by Swedish death/thrash band The Crown. It’s their most recent offering after a long hiatus, I’ve always liked their stuff but never was super crazy about it. Some friends told me they found it disappointing, but upon one listen I thought it was right in the same vein as their classic album Possessed 13, but a bit too long, clocking in at one hour. I also listened to a compilation mixtape of French hip-hop duet Dicidens, I had never heard of them but it turned out to be great old-school stuff.

I got home, opened a König Pilsner and a bag of Japanese crunchy rice cakes, and enjoyed the beginning of my weekend watching a NJPW wrestling match. A muscular Japanese babyface with shoulder-length blond hair thwarted the submission attempts of his powerhouse of a Mongolian opponent, and then pinned him after two quick splashes from the top rope in succession.

The girlfriend arrived, and the three of us went for a walk. We made it to Haochi Street, the place with all the restaurants, and gorged ourselves with spicy Sichuan food. The classics: 酸豆角炒鸡胗, 土豆丝 , 麻婆豆腐, 辣子鸡. Then we went to the bar, some of our pals were already there, and we played a few card games. I drank a Laphroaig whiskey, and then a Guinness, the girlfriend had two girly cocktails. More people poured into the bar, as there’s a wig themed party tonight, but we left at around 11 and walked about twenty minutes until we got home.