Chapter 149

I was shacking in a hostel dorm and questioning my life choices. I clearly can afford a hotel room, but still pinched my pennies and went for this ghetto-ass option, on a shaky bunk bed with four Chinese roommates, one who snored, one whose morning breath filled the whole space, and one who slept through his alarm, to the point that I had to go shake him awake. “Sorry”, he muttered in English, all confused.

They all left early and I slept until 11. At least the room was well climatised (not too hot, not too cold), it cost me only 40 yuan, and when I book hostel beds, I know that they will let me in without fuss, unlike many of the budget hotels in China who enact racist policies and don’t let filthy overseas barbarians in.

I had ramen, fried chicken and a sparkling mango juice at a Japanese restaurant across the street, then drove across town to a jiu-jitsu gym. I thought I might as well maximize my time on this little trip, I contacted  their head coach a few days ago and he said I’m welcome to go to their Saturday afternoon class. I showed up an hour early, as they were having a kids’ class, so I sat there relaxing, stretching and watching 5-year-olds rolling around before the adults’ class started. We warmed up, did a few drills, and I rolled three six-minute rounds with some of the guys. I mostly got dominated, but at this point in my journey, the goal is not to be better than my opponent, but better than I was a few weeks ago. Everyone was welcoming and nice so I will return for sure, especially since the 100 yuan I paid is for two sessions.

I got back in the car, put the GPS on, and drove back home. I put on some albums I hadn’t listened to in a while and had forgotten how fucking good they are, first Dominion VIII by Grave, it doesn’t have the same cult classic aura as their first two (Into The Grave is my favorite death metal album) but it’s still an excellent piece of Stockholm death metal the way it’s meant to be played. When it finished I switched to Exodus’s Bonded By Blood, a masterpiece of 80s thrash, whose imperfections just make the whole thing more endearing and addictive. I made it to the apartment block just when the epic track Deliver Us To Evil was drawing to a close, and waited for the guitar solos to finish before turning the car off.

“What are we eating?” the girlfriend asked me, before I had even taken my shoes off. That’s a pretty important consideration, for the hedonistic gluttons that we are. She proposed we drive to Wuxi, an hour away, and eat at the Indian restaurant there.

“But I just drove 160 km this weekend!”

In the end, the appeal of all those fragrant curries was strong enough so I took a quick shower and we went back on the road, bringing the dog along. We have a car now, might as well use it. I put on the album Blood On The Tracks by Bob Dylan, which she calls perfect road trip music, and then some tracks by various Chinese-language artists. We talked about food, and all the stuff we’ll eat during our trip to western China during the summer. At some point she talked about Taiwan, and I said I thought the food in Taiwan was OK, but I much prefered Chinese food. She flicked me in the nuts.

“Ouch! What was that for?!”

“Taiwan IS in China!”

Oh yeah, right.

“One day we’ll go to Taiwan and eat boluofan, it will be haochi”

“You’ll have to bring your passport, and get a visa first”

“It’s not a visa, it’s a travel permit!”

“And everything will be in Taiwanese dollars, and your phone card won’t work, and you won’t be able to pay with WeChat”

“Cuba also has two types of money, remember?”

Sometimes I wonder if she’s trolling me. Same with nearly every Chinese person who talks to me about Taiwan. Soon we pulled in Wuxi’s downtown area, tried in vain to get a free parking spot, and eventually just went to an underground parking. Then we walked to the pedestrian zone with all the bars and restaurants, and I made a beeline for the beer fridge. The restaurant serves great Indian food but also doubles as a jazz bar with live music nights and has a fridge stocked with rare craft beers, I got a Belgian stout I’d never had before, which buzzed me quickly, clocking in at 9.5%, and then a NEIPA by Almanac in California, which was also quite strong. They were a bit expensive, but what the hell, I just received my juicy summer pay.

We sat outside and ordered various dishes. It was delicious and worth the long drive. Then we had a bit of a walk around the area and to the Buddhist temple across the river, before driving back. The girlfriend took the wheel, inebriated as I was, and an hour later we made it home.