Chapter 3

I woke up at 9:30, when the dog poked me on the cheek with his triangular face. I lazily stayed in bed for a bit longer, reading some Houellebecq. I was now about halfway through Submission, and the main character was musing about how the fact that he lives in Paris’s Chinatown is likely to protect him from the civil unrest going on in the wake of the political change in France, as the Muslims are taking over the government. He says something along the lines of “the reins of power will change hands, but nothing will disturb that immense civilisation”, I for one don’t really see China and the overseas Chinese communities playing that passive of a role in any sort of political paradigm shift, but either way that’s not the focus of his great novel.

The girlfriend wanted to make muffins, and told me we’re out of buttah. She did her undergrad in London, which imparted some weird British accent in her spoken English, something I always mock mercilessly.

Most local stores in China don’t stock butter, so we need to go a bit further afield. She wants, and needs, some driving practice so we took advantage of the low amount of traffic on this Sunday morning to go for a drive with our newly inherited Nissan. We first went to the car wash, got the car sparkling, and bought some new wipers. Then we drove south, to the Metro supermarket. Metro is a boon in every expatriate’s life, with its selection of imported products. I think it’s a German chain, and though we also have a supermarket chain called Metro in my native Quebec, they have nothing to do with one another, the former using a blue and yellow color scheme and big square capital letters, while the latter uses rounded red letters on a white background. Anyway. Metro is great, and even greater is the possibility of going there with a car, I usually go with a bicycle and come back loaded like a mule, stuffing a backpack and the basket on the back of the bike and carrying the rest with heavy-duty plastic bags hanging from the handlebars.

So we absolutely loaded the cart with beer, liquor, canned products, pasta, bread, and other goodies. Then we drove to the ghetto. My city in eastern China is one of the most developed and wealthy in the whole country, and parts of it look futuristic, but like I said yesterday the surrounding villages truly feel third-worldy, and there are also patches of old China scatterred around the city, like Brazilian favelas, quasi-shantytown blocks surrounded on all sides by glitzy condo or office towers, with squat dilapidated concrete buildings, narrow grabage-strewn alleys, and the reason of our visit today, cheap eateries serving regional specialties that sometimes can’t be found elsewhere. The girlfriend and I are both big fans of reganmian, the noodle dish that was Wuhan’s biggest claim to fame until the end of 2019, and we wolved down our spicy sesame noodles gleefully, like the degenerate hedonists that we are.

To exit the ghetto and reach the main boulevard, we had to climb a slight incline, which caused a few problems to the clutch-impaired girlfriend. She managed to put the car in gear on the third try, but as there wasn’t a proper traffic light, we cut into the incoming flow of vehicles as they were pouring in the intersection. I’ll be the first to admit that her driving has gotten much better, but I often have to give her pointers, mostly about swerving lanes and proper flasher etiquette. When I told her she should have yielded, she replied “Well it’s China, people expect others to drive like cunts”, not sure how sarcastic she was, but that made me laugh. If I said that she’d have called me racist, but being Chinese herself, I guess she can get away with it.

We got home, put all the groceries where they belong, then poured some giant gin-tonics. The rest of the day was spent leisurely, reading, writing, looking at memes online, and drinking various alcoholic beverages, while listening to music. My kind of Sunday. The blueberry muffins that the girlfriend gave me, still warm from the oven, plunged me in an even further state of laziness.

At night I made burgers, that we ate while watching The Office. We’re now a few episodes in Season 3.