Chapter 22

I listened to an old-school Japanese hip-hop compilation this morning while getting ready to head out. I love hip-hop in foreign languuages, I love hip-hop in general, but with the different flow and cadence and pronunciation and rhyme schemes, it can get quite interesting.

I’ve been listening to episodes of the Boyscast by Ryan Long, he usually goes solo and I like his high energy comedy as well as his commentary on male-female relationships, but on the eighth episode he had a guest on. He talked about covid conspiracies, a topic that’s clearly a bit dated and has been beaten to death since (I listen to the podcasts in order and this one was recorded last summer or early fall) and that mouthbreather was droning on and on about the Wuhan virology laboratory, claiming that the virus was engineered by “the Mandarins” to eradicate “the Cantonese” in Hong Kong, as if these were ethnic groups. That’s one of the very dumbest takes I’ve encountered since the whole pandemic started. I stopped listening soon after.

The only thing remotely related to work that I had to do was to send a reference letter for a senior student’s university application. I had sent it months ago, but just now the university asked me to print it on letterhead paper and send it from my work e-mail. So I had to create a work e-mail first, with the help of someone from HR in Shanghai. I was surprised that it worked, in some previous schools I worked at they would get me to use an intranet or professional e-mail platform that was always a clunky malfunctioning piece of shit.

I spent the rest of my morning in the office compiling questions for the upcoming pub quiz. Once in a while the main expat bar in town does one, and I volunteered to be the quizmaster next Thursday. Plenty of time left, but might as well do it now. During that time, I listened to Kyle Kulinski and Gavin McInnes, two commentators who probably agree on very little politically, but both of them were condemning Trump for not pardonning Julian Assange, the Wikileaks guy, on his way out. Gavin McInnes is pretty much banned from every platform in existence so you have to go on his own website, they say it’s because he “incites violence” but it’s mostly because he is a provocateur who says meanie things. And though I don’t agree with a lot of his libertarian politics and his typical Canadian smug comtemptuous views on Quebec (you don’t have to dig very deep to find out that those squareheads are just bitter and jealous), I like his punk rock DIY ethics and find him absolutely hilarious.

We got summoned to the library because some senior students wanted to film the foreign teachers say “happy Chinese new year” and other stuff. Because I can actually speak Chinese, she gave me the hardest bits, so I just recited my lines to the camera like a good dancing monkey.

For lunch I made some pasta with sun-dried pesto, black and green olives, chopped salami and prosciutto, and shredded gouda cheese. I drank it with a König Pilsner beer, it was heavenly. I was in fact uncomfortably full after finishing my bowl, I tend to overeat, but all the exercise I do and the fact that I only eat two meals a day keeps me at a healthy weight. Still, I should avoid that, it’s not fun to clutch my stomach in pain because I’ve been stuffing myself like a sausage casing.

While I was eating my meal, I watched a video by music critic Anthony Fantano, in which he answered questions and addressed hot takes from his audience. I like Fantano’s erudition, eclectic tastes, hard work and entertaining approach to music reviewing, and have discovered a few artists over the years watching his content. But last year he gave a very favorable review to the track WAP by Cardi B, going as far as putting it at number 2 on his best songs of 2020 list. I for one think it’s one of the absolute shittiest pieces of music ever recorded, and thus I have a hard time to take Fantano’s opinions seriously from now on.

There’s an investigating journalism video by Le Monde that’s been circulating around, about alleged concentration camps in Xinjiang. It mostly consisted of triangulating info from social media accounts, government websites and satellite pictures, that showed that some Uyghurs have been transported from one city by the border of Kyrgyzstan to agricultural or industrial areas, through government-sponsored work programs. Far from a smoking gun that proves their allegations of ethnic cleansing or slave labor, there are tens of millions of migrant workers all over China, going where the jobs are.

Let me be as fucken clear as I can here: I’m no commie shill and I’m not saying it’s impossible there is some fuckery going out there in the far west. I’ve been to Xinjiang, more than 10 years ago, and there was a lot of segregation, sinicization and a heavy police presence that felt a bit creepy. But I’ve also talked to plenty of Uyghurs, including a doctor practicing in Shanghai, cops, students on scholarships for being Uyghur, people married to a Han Chinese, businesspeople who seemed pretty damn well off. And as I said a few days ago, there is a small community of Uyghurs in my city and in nearly every city of a certain size in China. If there were efforts to eradicate them, they would be pretty damn half-assed.

Let’s just say it’s a nuanced, complicated thing. And pardon me for being a bit cynical of whatever Western media outlets say about China, with their piss-poor track record of bias and fallacies.

My afternoon was mostly spent double-checking calculations and entering exam scores in a spreadsheet. I listened to an album by Cleric, who plays “avant-garde metal”. It was a chaotic riff soup alternating between fast and very slow parts with little build-up or rhyme or reason, layered with inhuman screams. I felt like I was falling down stairs for an hour nonstop. It was still a pretty interesting listening experience, I just wonder how those musicians remember how to play those songs.

I got home and drank an espresso stout from Kiuchi Brewery while watching the prelims from the Wednesday UFC card. It had quite the international flavor: Manon Fiorot, a hyped French newcomer to the women’s 125-pound division, gave a striking clinic and finished her opponent with a sweet no-switch front kick to the head followed by a barrage of punches against the wall; Umar Nurmagomedov, Khabib’s cousin, made his UFC debut and showed a complete game, striking in the first round and wrestling in the second before choking his Kazakh opponent to sleep; two unranked lightweights had an incredibly gutsy and skillful back-and-forth fight, showing the incredible depth of that division; Sumudaerji, a skinny Tibetan, kept the hype train rolling with a dominant decision win.

The girlfriend got home, but wasn’t feeling well so she wanted to stay home. I went by myself to our South African friend’s birthday dinner, well, me and the dog. He trotted beside my bicycle for a bit, then I carried him in the basket I have tied on my back rack. I listened to Katalepsy on the way, a slamming brutal death metal band, I enjoy this style but find it very formulaic and repetitive.

The restaurant was a bit out of the city, and the road I used was under construction, with huge cracks and puddles. I rode in the light rain, drops of water obscuring my vision through my glasses, and eventually made it. About 25 people were there, most of them fellow expats I know from around, and the evening was pleasant, the dog received a lot of attention, with all those people who wanted to pet him. I ate roast chicken and a small piece of cake, drank three beers, then rode home.