Chapter 106

I woke up at 6, a little sleep-deprived and hungover but I went through my morning routine anyway, with tai chi, cold water and a walk with the dog. I also got on the internet and booked myself a hostel bed in Shanghai for the upcoming night.

I had classes with the eleventh-graders in the morning, and they went well. The weakest class had some students ask me questions during the break, that’s good, oftentimes they just go ask a Chinese teacher instead to avoid speaking English as much as possible. I patiently expained the concepts they needed help with.

I also listened to the Lotus Eaters podcast, they talked about race grifters and racial hate crime hoaxes, which is a very puzzling phenomenon but hardly surprising once you realize that victimhood is now a valuable currency, so of course there would be some counterfeiters. They also broke down a newspaper article decrying how some of the black characters on BBC shows are in fact “not black enough” because they have mostly white friends rather than constantly surrounded by other black people, and don’t engage in stereotypically black behavior, whatever that means. Carl Benjamin and his sidekick pointed out how horribly racist this is, coming from those who center their whole identity and in some cases, their (very lucrative) career on being anti-racist crusaders. Total clown world.

At lunch I ate a burrito with melted cheese, pulled pork and sour cream, and packed my bag so I’d be ready to bounce right after work. I went back to the school, taught Attitude Class, came back home, got my bag, and rode my bike to the bus station. It was almost deserted, and I got a ticket for a Shanghai-bound bus leaving in 15 minutes. Just enough time to get the 12-minute package on a massage chair. Massage chairs are my favorite perk of inter-city travel in China, nearly every bus or train station has a row of them now.

There were only three people on the bus, and despite a bit of traffic on the highway, I alighted at the south station two and a half hours later and took a taxi to my destination. It’s always nice to be in the giant metropolis, with its shocking infinite skyline, its perceivable economic turgid boner, and the tree-lined cute streets of the French Concession, a relic of the time when the Qing Dynasty clowns got punished for their pathetic attempts at disrupting mutually beneficial trade by handing over small swaths of land in a then-insignificant seaside fishing town to European powers (and Japan).

The reason I went to Shanghai is for a capoeira event. Capoeira is a rather esoteric Afro-Brazilian martial art mixing acrobatics, dance, rhythmic music and devastating kicks, all packaged in fun-loving and funky Brazilianness. I practiced it for a few years and though I don’t train regularly like I used to, it’s part of who I am and if there’s a workshop or an event I can attend, I go. So I made it to the third-floor dance studio where the opening roda was about to take place, just as it started. I slapped hands with and hugged some old friends, some of whom I hadn’t seen for five years, and then went through a warm-up session called the mata fome, “killing the hunger”, before we all formed a circle with the bateria of musicians at the front, banging drums and a cool-ass primitive instrument named the berimbau. People entered the circle in pairs, play-fighting for a bit, before some others would come in. Very fun stuff.

A late dinner was had at a restaurant a block away. I made a semi-conscious effort to not sit with my friends whom I see semi-often, in order to meet new people, capoeira being a very social affair. Plus, some of my pals were at the vegetarian table, no thanks. A pile of tasty Hunanese food was consumed, lots of beers were drunk, fun conversations in various languages were had. One Beijing capoeirista who’s known to be a hard-partying night owl got people to go to a bar, I declined the invitation, still a bit tired from staying up past my bedtime the night prior, and just rode a little rent-a-bike to the hostel a few kilometers away. I had a bed in a dorm, but it didn’t come with the possible drawbacks this deal sometimes entails, my neighbors were civilized and didn’t make much noise, and I had a curtain to give me almost total privacy. So, not bad for 90 yuan (15 dollars).