Chapter 6

I hopped on my bicycle and rode to work, like the salaried drone that I am. The weather got a teeny bit colder but is still hovering just above zero, very manageable with proper clothing. There used to be a huge dump right next to my building, a concrete rectangle as big as three parking spots, surrounded on three sides by low walls, where people would just throw garbage and discarded construction materials. Once in a while a bulldozer and a truck would come and clear it. Now, they’re building something there, no idea what it will end up being.

I got to the office and made tea. I drink tea throughout the day, and have a little stash of loose leaf boxes on my desk (fuck teabags). My favorite is pu-er tea, which is as dark as my soul and as bitter as libertarians and right-wingers who still don’t want to admit that Trump lost.

My schedule on Wednesday is a bit erratic, four classes, none of them consecutive, so I spent time in the office in between, finalizing the exam paper and preparing some review questions. I share an office with nine coworkers, and it can get loud at times, so I always retreat into the musical cocoon that is provided by my Beats headphones. I browsed a Facebook group for recommendations, and they were some great ones: a pair of Australian death metal bands named Intellect Devourer and Deliquesce, the former having an extremely cavernous old-school sound and the latter sounding exactly like the first Suffocation albums (ie: pure ear candy), as well as a droning stoner metal band from Atlanta named Big Oaf. I’ll revisit all three for sure. I also listened to another album by metal noir quebecois two-piece Sorcier Des Glaces, it was a tad generic but enjoyable nonetheless.

I got home for lunch, reheated some spaghetti carbonara, and polished the plate while watching the Rizin event from last weekend. Rizin is a Japan-based organization putting together MMA and kickboxing matches, and their biggest show is always on New Year’s Eve, as per Japanese tradition. The vast majority of MMA top-tier talent is locked in by the UFC, but Rizin still manages to put on compelling high-level fights, co-promoting with fellow B-league org Bellator FC, and with the white ring, long entrance ramp, fireworks, and all the pageantry, it has an unmistakeable JMMA flavor that can only trigger nostalgia to a guy like me, who became a fan of the sport more than 15 years ago, when Pride FC was at its peak. They even employ Pride lady, the cult hero bilingual announcer with the booming voice, to add to the nostalgia.

It’s an eight-hour long card, and I plan on watching it bit-by-bit throughout the rest of the week. Retired fighter Frank Trigg is the color commentator for the English team, I was a bit taken aback when the play-by-play guy called him a “UFC Hall Of Famer” but then remembered that the UFC also inducts fights, not just fighters, and that his legendary bout against Matt Hughes, which he lost, is in there.

The first two fights ended early, with a dude from Azerbaijan and one of the 500 fighters nicknamed Pitbull knocking out their opponents in less than three minutes. They’re part of a four-man tournament, so they’ll meet in the finals on the same night, fatigue and damage shouldn’t be much a factor. The second KO was particularly nasty, the guy got dropped on his butt in the corner by a punching combo, then finished with an upwards kick to the face, as if he was a football getting punted. Japanese MMA rules are different than those adopted by the UFC, where that would have been an instant disqualification and probably a ban for life. I especially like that in Japan, fights are scored in their entirety instead of the round-by-round model leftover from boxing, and I do think knees to a grounded opponent are a good equalizer against wrestlers, but I still think soccer kicks and stomps are crossing the line in an already brutal sport and are not necessary. I also prefer the cage to the ring, it’s a bit grating to see fighters slip between the ropes and getting restarted by the referee.

The third fight, a women’s atomweight affair pitting a 45-year-old pink-haired Japanese veteran against a Thai girl half her age who goes by Amp The Rocket, was quite entertaining, with the grandmother (an actual grandma!) controlling the fight with her wrestling. I was in fact too absorbed by the fights and didn’t see time go by, 1 PM had passed and I had to go back to work. The dog looked at me with sad eyes, I usually take him out for a short walk during my lunch break but now I selfishly neglected him. I’m writing it down as part of that whole self-improvement process, I have to keep myself accountable and call myself on my failures, such as when I fail to take care of my little triangle-faced fur ball.

A student from the Attitude Class, one of those with the biggest unchecked attitude, came to the office and gave me a handwritten note apologizing for being absent yesterday. A lot of my students can hardly string three words of English in a row (but are taking A-level classes, go figure) but they can write more than semi-coherently. I asked her why she didn’t come, she said she went to the head teacher’s office between two periods and was going to be late, and thought I’d be angry. I said that yes, I’m angry when people are late, but she had a good reason. And I’m more angry if they don’t show up at all than when they’re just late. I also told her I’m not impressed by her attitude in class over the past few weeks, and that she should amend her behavior. She was defensive. And then I said “You’re good friends with [the nicest girl in the universe] right? She’s a very good student, you should be like her” and she started crying. Good grief.

One of the Wednesday periods is usually spent doing extracurricular activities, but today it got cancelled. Of course nobody bothered informing the foreign staff, despite all the millions of promises from the school administration to “foster good communication”. My American colleague who runs the cooking club was especially pissed, as he had bought ingredients and had started to prep already. Myself, I normally supervise the skateboarding club, but when it’s too cold nobody shows up anyway.

Nonplussed, I went to the economics and physics teachers’ office and had a chat with a coworker from Croatia. I told him the story of the girl I just brought to tears and how I feel semi-bad about it, he said that one of his senior classes is also giving him major attitude. Some of the particularly douchebaggy students are insulting him in Chinese right in his face, and when confronted, they just deny it. When that happens, he replies with harsh Croatian words, thinking that the culprit would realize how annoying and insulting it is and stop doing that.

“Well that would require a sense of introspection, not a characteristic that Chinese people, especially Chinese teenagers, have a lot of”

We both shrugged. A few minor attitude problems aside, especially from the twelfth-graders, we have it pretty good here. Chinese high schoolers are pretty well-behaved, especially once you’ve established some kind of rapport with them.

I taught my last class without incident. Then on the ride home, I stopped at a red light, where a British coworker was also waiting on his scooter.

“Did you hear, Cambridge is cancelling all exams this year?”

“Yeah, yesterday the girlfriend told me. How do you think it’s going to affect us?”

We teach an IGCSE and A-level program, a British advanced curriculum.

“Last year we did our own exams, in-house. That’s probably what’s going to happen again.”

“Oh fuck me, does it mean we need to grade them ourselves?”

He gave me an “I know uh?” smirk with raised eyebrows. He teaches English, and I don’t envy him, his final exams are long essays and take way more time and effort to grade than my chemistry problems.

I took the dog out. He ran around a patch of grass, and we went to a neighborhood restaurant. I realize that since starting this diary, I pretty much have been eating only non-Chinese food, and don’t want to give the impression that I’m one of those foreigners in China who hate Chinese food. Chinese food is one of my favorite things on this whole godforsaken planet. Just that, I like to cook, I like to stay at home, and though I can make a lot of Chinese dishes, I don’t do them nearly as well as the restaurants, plus they’re really cheap. Eating out is a very social thing in China, and the other tables were occupied by large groups, but I was by myself (and a leashed four-legged companion I tied on a table leg). The girlfriend is working late and going to the gym directly, and I asked the Croat if he wanted to come with, but he already had plans with his girlfriend.

This particular restaurant serves cuisine from the south-central province of Hunan, which is famed for its liberal use of sour and spicy flavors. They use a lot of pickled hot peppers, similar to those jalapeño rings we put on nachos, as well as garlic, cilantro, and various fresh peppers. It’s one of my favorites cuisines in all of China, and the world. I ordered enough for four hungry people, and packed some leftovers for the next two days. And the bill, with two beers, was only 198 yuan, 30 USD. That’s the magic of China.

I got home, plopped down on the sofa, and watched Rizin. Since it’s a Japanese MMA event, I poured an espresso stout from Kiuchi Brewery. One American heavyweight named Jake Heum beat the brakes off his local opponent, then took the microphone and said “I love you Japan! I’m coming for that title! 2019 was a great year, 2020 will be even better!” Not only has this aged terribly, but it made me realize that I downloaded the event from exactly a year ago like a derp. But hey, I missed it last year, so I just kept watching. So far the fights have been great.