Chapter 54

Up at 6 again. I brewed a pot of Yellow Mountain tea and sipped a cup after dropping an ice cube in it so I wouldn’t have to wait half an hour or burn my lips on the rim like a worthless imbecile. Then I did a 30-minute yoga routine. The dog often came to poke me with his triangle face or nibble at my ears, a common comical scenario among dog-owning yoga practitioners it seems, based on video compilations floating around the internet.

On my short commute, I finished an episode of Ryan Long’s podcast, in which he talked about what he saw at the riots he attended in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Then I started another podcast, with Carl Benjamin (AKA Sargon of Akkad) talking to another YouTube guy who goes by Shadiversity about masculinity. It’s an interesting and relevant topic, with the young men of today being demonized or led astray or lacking strong role models or being crippled by nihilism and a sense of impending doom. Neither of those two are macho types, more fitting the stereotype of the history nerd, and though one is an atheist and the other is very religious, they had a very good discussion about what it means to be a man, the main tenet they were agreeing on being a sense of sacrifice for those who depend on you. They argued that therefore, the ultimate expression of manliness is fatherhood and the sense of purpose it imparts. For the longest time I thought of manliness as independence, and while it’s definitely part of it, the flipside is that if nobody depends on you for anything, you just end up being an atomized speck, a lone wolf rather than an alpha male.

I had two hours in the office before my first class of the day. I messed around on the internet a bit but had some work to do, preparing upcoming lessons. I listened to a Big Pun compilation, I think that rotund rapper is a bit frustrating in the sense that he had some of the best verses or lines in the history of hip-hop, overflowing with an intimidating Latino swag and terrific technical ability, but his albums are also full of forgettable filler.

The first two classes went okay. At times my review feels like a reteach but what can I boy do? Then I went to a noodle shop and got my usual order of fried noods with shrimp and pieces of dried tofu, no mushrooms, to go. Upon entering my humble apartment, I saw that the dog had shredded some cardboard boxes and was looking at me sheepishly. I didn’t punish him then, just gave him the silent treatment.

I watched videos about the history of internet humor from a channel I just discovered called Wavywebsurf. I learned to my great disappointment that the old mustachioed guy with a black hoodie running to a TV reporter and shouting “Fuck her right in the pussy!” was a hoax and not a real local news segment. I also learned about “Sminem”, the mildly handicapped Russian teenager who became the mascot for a bunch of cryptocurrency enthusiasts without even knowing, based on a few pictures of him circulating. The internet is a strange place. I then finished the 19^th episode of Dovahhatty’s history of Rome, about the fall of the western empire to barbarian hordes and the beginning of the Dark Ages. It was really well done, his animation skills have improved leaps and bounds since his intentionally amateurish first videos.

I taught an eleven-grade class in the afternoon, and a pile of papers on the podium caught my attention. I co-teach my classes with a Chinese teacher, officially we’re supposed to teach different parts of the curriculum but oftentimes they step on my toes and teach my chapters behind my back. It might sound trivial or even something to celebrate but in fact it annoys me to no end and makes me question what the fuck am I even there for, besides posing for promo materials “Look! We have white teachers! Our school is legit!” and also it peddles the implicit message that I can’t do my goddamn job.

So I was a tad irritated to see a pile of homework about something I’m supposed to be covering... next week. I went to confront my colleague, for the millionth time. It always results in them saying “Sorry” and then doing it again the next day, in a very Oriental non-confrontational manner, or some childish pouting. This time it was the latter.

“What’s this?”

She gave me a scared look not unlike the dog’s when he got caught after destroying old boxes, then averted her eyes and went back to the pile of homework she was grading.

“We talked about this. Why do you keep doing that?”

“It’s just some review”

“No, I haven’t even taught this yet! I’m starting this chapter tomorrow!”

“Some parents asked me to help them with organic chemistry during the holiday. They’re worried.”

We do have quite a lot of students who spend their weekends and holiday periods in cram schools in the city, of the kind that’s advertised in the elevator of my apartment building. There, they mysteriously tend to unlearn the chemistry I teach them, as if they went to a fat camp where the only food served is donuts.

“But why you didn’t talk to me about it?” I can hear my fellow current or former long-term expats in China chuckle as I type this.

Her English is limited (to be polite) so she switched to Chinese: “We have the same goal, you and I. To make sure the students can get good marks. If you review my material in class, I won’t complain, I’ll be happy. You should be happy too, tomorrow you’ll show them and they’ll already be able to do it!”

I gave her the reasons why I think it’s annoying, how it makes me feel useless and as if I can’t teach the material myself. Our school program is supposed to be one that favors an immersive environment to fully prepare the students for university abroad, and once in a while we have big shots from the parent company coming to give workshops using the latest jargon about “embedding English”, but the Chinese teachers would rather be waterboarded than use English as the language of instruction in their classes, even the few who can string five words of English in a row. Therefore their classes are more about “hacking the exam” by recognizing patterns and memorizing the marking schemes of past papers and I wouldn’t be surprised if they see all the logic and rational thinking I and my fellow foreign teachers are trying to instill as a waste of time.

Anyway I’m not here to flip the world on its axis and change the way Chinese people have been operating through their 3500 years of existence, I’m here primarily to save up a bundle of money to eventually go on another round-the-world trip. Nah, that’s not fair, and I take that back. I like teaching and as I said before and will say it again, it’s mostly a good gig I found myself in and am grateful.

I went back to class (it was a double period with a break in the middle) and it went well. It’s the weakest group of students by far, but they are friendly, a bit goofy but put in the work and it’s fulfilling to see them improve.

I had an hour in the office reading up on nuclear magnetic resonance and preparing my PowerPoint. I opened the tab on Google Chrome that had been permanently set on the Top 500, next up was a vocal quartet named The Four Tops. It was really good, at times I wonder how the musical landscape would be if black people from Detroit never recorded a single track. The answer: infinitely sadder. The album was too short though, and I didn’t want to put on another full-length on knowing I only had a bit of time left, so I clicked on the link for the Fever 105 FM playlist in the YouTube sidebar. It’s a fictional funk and soul radio station from GTA Vice City, and the first song on it is And The Beat Goes On by The Whispers, one of the catchiest songs in the history of mankind.

I got home and liberated the dog from the prison I put him in for the afternoon (the bathroom). He was all excited and grabbed his leash himself, as soon as we were out, he started running and pulled me so fast on my longboard I had to put my foot down and decelerate a bit. He’s pretty strong for such a little pooch.

At the gate of the complex, there’s a small convenience store and the owners have a little puppy they leave outside tied to a motorbike with a long leash. I always make a little detour so that the two dogs play a bit together. The puppy repeatedly tried to mount my dog and was swaying his hips back and forth once he secured the position with his hind legs, not sure if he’s gay or playing, either way it’s hilarious.

I put on more music when I got back home, next up was Hüsker Dü, I had heard the name before and thought they were German or Swedish or something, with the umlauts. But they’re from Minnesota apparently, and their 1985 album New Day Rising was a pretty cool piece of old-school punk rock. Then it was soul singer Al Green, the first guy (I think) to appear for a second time on the list. I enjoyed it, and enjoyed even more Lucinda Williams’s twangy country. Then it was Paul Simon (without Garfunkel), another great album. So a pretty good streak.

I made myself two burgers and a plate of asparagus that I steamed for a bit and then fried with garlic. It was delicious but salty, a beer would have been perfect but nah, I’ll play along and abstain until I had incubated my next dose of the ‘Rona vaccine. A yearly “sober month” is all the craze among craft beer hipsters, just that mine will cradle the second half of February and the first half of March rather than being a 1-31 affair.

By the time I finished writing this piece of shit it was 8 PM. I did some Chinese studying, the topic of that upper intermediate ChinesePod lesson was traffic and public transportation. The bus and metro system in Shanghai and China in general is A+.

I watched John Oliver’s segment from last week. I hate John Oliver but a friend recommended that particular episode so I gave it a go, it was titled The Next Pandemic. The focus was on the destructive and careless way mankind treats the environment, through deforestation, factory farming and encroaching on wildlife habitats. All of those, added to the interconnected globalized world we live in, increases the risk of having another infectious disease run amok sooner than later. It was mostly interesting and well-researched but I sighed so hard at all his shitty jokes, holy fucking shit, he’s gotta the least funny person in the whole universe. He must have cracked about 120 jokes in the span of 20 endless minutes, constantly fucking up the flow of his presentation and cheapening the otherwise serious tone. The only two that were a teeny bit funny were a dry humor quip about factory farms and an obnoxious animated virus asking “Hey if there’s another pandemic, are there going to be a bunch of celebrities singing Imagine?” The only silver lining is that he was alone in a studio, if he was in front of an audience of NPCs cackling every time he made a face or spouted one of his retarded non-sequiturs I wouldn’t have lasted a minute in. I have to give it to them though, as a sinophile it’s always nice to see western media set the record straight about “wet markets” and how the majority are just, well, places I and my fellow Chinese go to buy meat and fish and vegetables.