Chapter 2

 The dog woke me up my jumping on my head and rubbing his drool-covered stuffed toy on my neck. He has several toys, and likes to play fetch. A simple game for a simple creature. If only I could be as care-free.

I had more driving practice to do, and because a lot of sitting around would be on the menu, I wanted to bring something to read. Like a derp, I forgot my Kindle at the office on Thursday, so I reached in the bookshelf for one of the paperbacks that I didn’t get rid of. Michel Houellebecq’s Soumission was my choice, though I read it three or four times, like all of his seven novels. He truly is the greatest author alive, master of form and substance, and nobody has ever captured with such aplomb the nihilistic despair that afflicts modern western men as their civilisation slowly collapses.

The driving instructor was waiting for me at their head office, and we hopped in one of their vehicles. Normally, he would be driving until we reach the closed-circuit practice field, but he let me take the wheel. I won’t lie, I kind of missed driving. I’m as far as you can be from a car guy and I see tons of problems with how our societies are centered around the mighty automobile (even, or especially so, in a place like urban China where a car is not needed at all yet social pressure pushes the average Zhou to get one anyway) but I’ve always enjoyed the process of driving.

...which made my whole session of rehearsing for the practical exam, driving in first gear and practicing parking between the lines, particularly fucken boring. But I stoically went along. The instructor left me alone for a while, and when he came back, it was getting a bit more difficult to be stoic, as he was playing Douyin videos on his phone full volume. If you’re fortunate enough to not be familiar with Douyin, it’s entertainment for sub-80 IQs, delivered in 10-second bursts replete with looping techno music, laugh tracks and BOING sound effects. In fact, I think TikTok is modeled exactly on Douyin, from the same company, but can’t be fucked looking it up. The bane of my life, and the reason why it’s earbuds in as soon as I step foot in public. Noise is one of the unfortunate annoyances inherent to living in China, whether it comes from 6 AM fireworks, honking, yelling, Douyin videos, or 88 other sources. Thankfully I only had a few more minutes to go before lunchtime, and didn’t want to antagonise the instructor, no matter how slightly.

I had a whole two hours between sessions, so I walked a kilometer or so a street with a few eateries. We were pretty far out of the city, in a rural area that hasn’t been touched by the Blade Runner-style modernization of eastern China, in fact it was a truly third-worldy environment of rusty corrugated iron plates, crumbling concrete, mud, and my path was alongside a canal filled with foul-smelling sewage water. At least the weather was very nice, a sunny 4 degrees Celsius, a nice respite from last week, when some lows of -7 were hit and we even got a cute layer of snow. I’m a man form the boreal north, I enjoy this weather more than sweating my testicles off.

I had some Muslim noodles for lunch and it was delicious. Muslim noodle joints are ubiquitous, even in rural areas, I have been to several hundreds all over the country, and always order the same thing, the ones with chunks of potatoes and beef. True comfort food, and my plate only cost me 13 yuan (2 USD), you can’t beat that with a stick.

I sat in the sun and read some Houellebecq while waiting for my turn. The instructors and trainees all looked at me curiously, being a foreigner, some even HALLOUed me and I nodded or gave a small wave back. One woman asked me if I’d be interested in teaching her kid English once a week, I politely declined. In the past I’ve had a few sidelines of the sort, tutoring kids or hustling online in various ventures with different levels of success, but now I’m happy with just having a day job and using my free time how I want it. Plus, it’s illegal, in the past it felt more like it was on a “don’t ask don’t tell” basis as nearly every expat I knew had a part-time job or two, but in previous years there’s been crackdowns and people have gotten in trouble for this.

The car came to the edge of the car park, the instructor told me to just sit in the passenger seat as the girl driving needs more practice. I gladly did just that, and carried on with my reading. He still put me on the clock, using an app on his phone, that must scan my face before and after each two-hour session. In fact, funny anecdote, I’ve always had a bit of trouble with facial recognition software in China, whether this one or the one they use at my bank, and several tries are always needed while Chinese people just need a quick scan. I wouldn’t be surprised if it has something to do with the way those softwares are calibrated and my different facial structure throws them off.

I got a few laps in then drove back to the city. So a lot of this day and the previous one has been eaten by that driving practice, at least it’s a three-day weekend, and tomorrow (Sunday) I can truly plan on doing a whole lot of fuckall. And speaking of which, when I got home in the late afternoon, the girlfriend was all tucked in, telling me about her day of napping and phone playing. Nothing wrong with that.

I sat down at the computer and wrote about my day thus far while listening to an EP from Aesop Rock. Aesop Rock is a rapper from Portland and apparently he’s got the most extensive vocabulary of any rapper, by far, but I can’t say I’m enamored with his bizarre flows and alternative hip-hop beats, so when the EP was over I put on Action Bronson’s first mixtape, titled Dr. Lecter. So yeah, I just opened the hip-hop folder on my external hard drive and didn’t go further than the letter A. The last few weeks I’ve been putting on albums or playlists from YouTube, but the VPN and/or my building’s internet has been acting out recently, I hope it sorts itself out.

At 7 PM I went to a kickboxing gym and did calisthenics and grappling with a Ukrainian buddy of mine, who practiced judo and wrestling in his youth. The temperature has gone down to subzero levels at that point and the gym was positively freezing, so we had to warm up properly to not get injured. Then I cycled home, meeting the girlfriend and the dog halfway.

I poured myself a brown Chimay beer which got me buzzed pretty much upon first sip, with the high alcohol content, my empty stomach and having just exercised. I made a stir-fry of garlic, spinach and scrambled eggs, that I generously salted and peppered, and a plate of sweet potato fries. I ate my vittles in front of the TV, with the last episode of The Pacific playing. This HBO series was a pretty poignant portrayal of what the US Marines had to go through in diverse battles of that theater, based on several first-hand memoirs. I finally got around to watching it and am glad I did.