Chapter 181

After a tough start due to errant mosquitoes in the tent, I fell into a deep slumber and woke up around 9. My friends were already up, except the Caboverdian, who was completely passed out still. We sat around for a bit, discussing sci-fi novels and the dystopian reality we live in among other topics, then we packed up and hiked down the mountain. Lunch plans were discussed, we drove in a convoy to the Belarusian’s apartment complex. I parked and we went to a tiny restaurant across the street and ate fish in a spicy sauce, with cold beers. It hit the spot.

The Caboverdian left, I went with the Amazonian to the Belarusian’s apartment where I took a shower and buzzed my hair with his clipper. We hung out for a bit longer, watched a Rick And Morty, and then the Amazonian and I got in the car. The sky had become an ominous dark grey and the wind was throwing dead leaves and litter around, seems like a storm was brewing.

By the time we made it out of the apartment complex, it was clear this was no ordinary storm. Entire rows of bicycles and scooters were knocked down, and whole lanes were blocked by thick branches that fell. And it was getting worse! Some entire trees got uprooted and crushed cars, and now there were traffic jams everywhere. The both of us were not that affected, in fact we thought it was kind of cool, and I slowly and prudently drove around while my jungle-dwellingg pal was taking pictures and videos. Grave’s masterful death metal was blaring through the speakers, a perfect soundtrack for the occasion.

The gate to his university was blocked after a large temporary police building got knocked over, smashing an electric car with a Pokemon painted on it and obstructing the entire way. So we drove around all the way to the back gate and walked the rest, by that time it was raining but most of the wind had calmed down. We had a victory beer in his pad, watching the carnage outside.

I watched some UFC fights from a few weeks ago in a vain attempt to catch up, took a nap, then we watched the movie Moon together, about a guy who works in a remote lunar station. It was pretty good, with an interesting premise and ethical questions, but I thought the ending was a bit rushed. Dinner was chicken legs, potatoes and zucchini that the Amazonian’s wife prepared, then he stayed in, tired from his long week, and I rode his e-bike to a bar. Jinan’s coolest bar used to be located in a hutong, a small artsy place with good vibes and a bohemian couple running it, but as the old town was getting gentrified the rents rose astronomically and now they moved by a university. I found the new place and walked in, the bosses immediately recognized me and we had a bit of a chat. The new place was a bit different, with a much more modern look compared to the old slummy place with paintings and graffiti all over the walls, and the extensive record collection was on display. I got a craft beer from a Sichuan brewery, made with honeydew melon, and sat with the Caboverdian outside. One of his pals, a guy with dreadlocks from Detroit, joined us. The Caboverdian mentioned that he played a small role in a movie I directed six years ago, pulled out his iPad to show his friend a scene, and we ended up watching the whole 56-minute movie. It’s about an alcoholic PTSD-ridden Eastern European criminal on a revenge mission, and features ninjas, a transgender Triad boss, a sexually predatory psychiatrist, and a teleportation portal. It’s awesome. The movie is called Pocketsand Jesus and you can watch it in its entirety on YouTube.

Then we discussed hip-hop, a topic all three of us had a lot of expertise in. We played a few tracks on a Bluetooth speaker, vibing on this beautiful night. It was almost long sleeves weather, and it felt good to be outside.

Chapter 180

Distance covered: 360 km (total 1701 km)

I woke up at 7, did the tai chi routine, and got on the road by 8 as I planned. My friend and her cute niece saw me off and helped me carry my luggage, I waved them goodbye as I drove off. The road was mostly empty on this Tuesday morning, and I made it to Jinan just after noon. Jinan was the city I called home from 2013 to 2015, so I had a pang of nostalgia and excitement as I approached and saw its skyline, led by the famous Penis Building, the most phallic skyscraper in the world.

I drove to a college campus, parked, and met one of my friends, a white guy with an American accent but who grew up in the middle of the Amazonian forest in Brazil. He was walking his dog, an inoffensive-looking sausage thing, but warned me she is a total bitch and can get very territorial. Sure enough, as soon as we got into the tiny apartment he dwells in with his wife and infant daughter, the two dogs started fighting. We’ll have to keep an eye on them.

We drank beer and caught up. One of the things I keep hearing is how “Jinan has changed”, and judging by the resigned facial expression of those who say that, it’s not for the positive. Some of the cool student bars from yesteryear are long gone, the old town is being turned into a gentrified bland piece of shit and replaced by some fake pseudo old towns, and the most alarming part, the Muslim district has gotten bulldozed to build a shitty glitzy business district around the Peen’ Building. Guys who’ve been there for a long time also talk of the attitude of the residents towards the foreign populace souring and of racist incidents, especially in the aftermath of the pandemic. I had a lot of fun during the years I was here, but I also know that it’s impossible to completely recreate the past.

The Belarusian came in from his nogi BJJ practice, and of course, being the eccentric wacko that he is, he was wearing an outrageously funny rashguard. He had a British guy with him, wearing a jersey with the Bangalore Tigers on it.

“Is that a cricket team?”, I asked.

“No, it’s kabaddi. Look it up on YouTube”

I’d never even vaguely heard of it, but it’s a super weird Indian sport in which one guy goes against five, his goal being to touch one (like in a game of tag) and retreat to his zone, and the five guys try to tackle him. Apparently there’s even a world cup for it. We learn new things every day.

We watched the new Rick And Morty and ate pizza. That particular pizzeria was solid as fuck, and wasn’t around back in the day. Just to show you not all changes are for the worse. Then I took a nap in the neighboring empty apartment, there wasn’t a bed but I stuck a bean bag next to a small couch and snoozed for an hour. Then I got the Amazonian’s e-bike and rode to the eastern ring road, where the local BJJ gym is located. The Belarusian was there with his yellow gi (of course he’s not going to wear a black or white one like a normal person) alongside eight or so Chinese students and a Brazilian black belt, the first black belt I’ve met in China. We warmed up, did some drills from the back control position, and sparred some rounds. I had a good ol’ spazzy war with the Belarusian, then went five minutes with a grey-haired blue belt, and got dominated like a child by a young muscular purple belt. I was exhausted at the end. I’m losing my grappling stamina, and I guess a big cheesy pizza isn’t the best pre-workout meal.

Back home, I took a quick shower, packed a food bag, and put the Amazonian’s camping gear in my trunk. We drove to a trail head a bit south of the city, where the Belarusian and his two dogs were waiting. We lugged all of our shit up the mountain, which included a 10-liter bottle of water, a 5-liter keg of beer, a whole capoeira bateria of musical instruments and a small barbecue. Not the easiest task, even though it was a bit cooler than on previous nights I was sweating like a pig for the 40 minutes or so we hiked up. I was wondering if it was a bit overkill to bring my camping chair up there but as soon as I unfolded it and had a confy seat all my doubts evaporated. After setting up the tents, we cracked open the keg and drank good Taishan beer from plastic cups, it felt wonderful. Dinner was cherry tomatoes, canned sardines, crackers, sauerkraut and vegan sausages on the ghetto barbecue.

Two more friends joined us, a shy bespectacled Chinese girl and a loud-mouthed dude from Cape Verde I knew back in the day. He came in late so he had to put his tent a little bit away from our little camp, he joked about segregation, and how all them white people force him to sleep in a secluded area. This was the first of about 3725 racist jokes thrown around, most of them by him.

Just up the path there was a clearing with a seriously sick view over the city, all lit up. We couldn’t camp there though because there were cameras and if we light a barbecue there, we’ll get quickly shurgwaydinged out of there, well, as quickly as it would take for the joyless chengguan cunts to hike up and tell us to fuck off. I imagine they would be extra angry, too. We stayed up till 3, swapping crude jokes, playing music, and enjoying the woods.

Chapter 179

Distance covered: 198 km (total 1341 km)

As often when I sleep in the tent, I had a night of shallow sleep and remember most of my dreams, which were mostly about being at school and being late for class. Then I woke up and realized I’m on vacation, and drifted back to sleep.

I got awakened by sounds that were like trying to start a lawnmower, as some farmer was trying to get uphill and his small tractor kept stalling. I looked through the mosquito net and it was a magnificent sight: on the other side of the valley were two mountains surmounted with small pagodas, and the sun was rising just over one of them. I fumbled for my phone and rushed outside to snap a picture of this rarity in China. Usually, with the grey smoggy skies, all you see is the sky slowly dimming and it’s a very underwhelming sunrise.

I had a chocolate protein shake and a peach for breakfast, and had a chat with an old friend, an American I worked with back in 2008. He’s now back in Vermont, and I gave him updates on Gongyi and we reminisced on the good ol’ days.

Then I packed and got on the road by 8. I drove about four hours on mostly smooth and no-nonsense country roads, once in a while I went through a town and had to be extremely wary of fucktards crossing the road without looking or throwing themselves and their overloaded three-wheeler peasantmobile in traffic. It seems like they have no instinct of self-preservation, like those toads you sometimes see in the middle of the sidewalk and don’t budge even if you poke them or nudge them with a stick. By midday I reached the small city of Daokou. My Chinese tutor, who was also one of my students at the college in Gongyi, is from there, initially I contacted her when I knew I’d be going to Beijing but after nine years toiling in the big joyless fascist city, she moved back to her hometown and as it happens it’s right in my itinerary. She’s one of the first people I met in China back in September of 2008, and we’d been keeping in touch, meeting every year or two. She used to be an extremely soft-spoken university student, now she’s an extremely soft-spoken thirty-something-year-old.

I parked on the street just outside her complex, got my bag and walked to her home. It’s a pretty spacious two-story house with a small gated courtyard, and her brother was there. I remembered him from my visit to Daokou over twelve years ago and shook his hand, he also had a daughter of eight years old who was staring at me mouth gaping, not knowing how to react.

I took a quick shower to rinse off the filth from the road and the night camping and then we walked to a nearby restaurant. The mom was there, as well as the older sister and her two boys. My old friend has three siblings, her father is quite rich, he broke the one-child rule on purpose and just paid the hefty fines. Or you could look at it as he bought a permit to have extra kids. The food was absolutely magnificent, with the local specialty roast chicken as the centerpiece and tons of side dishes as delicious as they were aesthetically presented. That obnoxious bleeding heart leftie cuckold Anthony Bourdain said a lot of stupid shit on his TV show for suburban moms, but he was right on one point, if (when?) the Chinese take over, at least we’ll eat well.

I downed a few beers with the meals, and had a jolly good time catching up and also riffing with the three children there, making them laugh to tears. We went back home in the out-of-this-world heat, it was so hot the dog had a hard time trotting on the concrete, he’d rush to shaded areas. I wrote yesterday’s diary and then took a quick nap in the AC.

The nieces and nephews woke me up, and said all the other kids had arrived. My old friend runs a small English after-hours school as a side business, and invited her students to a little party. She basically wanted to use my presence to give her school some credibility, and I’m prefectly fine with doing her this little favor. So I went downstairs and there were about thirty kids aged 5 to 10 in there, gasping and giggling at the sight of their first foreigner. Some with stronger English came to introduce themselves and ask me questions, others were bundled around the low table eating snacks. My old friend introduced me, then I played Simon Says and musical chairs with them, it was good wholesome fun. Not that much English was produced, but hey if that group of children can grow up and not freak out when they see a non-Chinese person, it’s mission accomplished in my book. The dog also got a lot of attention, half the kids wanting to pet him and the other half being dead scared, I kept a close eye on their interactions.

The kids left, and we went to eat hot pot. My friend’s father was there, when I met him in 2009 he looked like Mao Zedong but now he’s buzzed his hair and the resemblance isn’t there anymore. He brought a bottle of baijiu and we had a few shots. I used to like hot pot but I have had a few bad diarrhea-related incidents in the past few years so I’m a bit wary now, but this one was both delicious and not flipping my stomach too much.

Chapter 178

Distance covered: 68 km (total 1143 km)

Up at 7, I went to the car and got myself a protein shake to supplement the breakfast mostly consisting of steamed buns, bean sprouts and hard-boiled eggs. Again, the routine, after some painful stretching I went to practice the routine with the teacher, adding new moves until we completed it all by the end of the morning session. We made a few videos of us doing it in unison, of course we’d need to drill it quite a bit if we’d want to be perfectly synchronized but it was pretty damn good if I dare say so myself.

We ate noodles for lunch and then went to the tai chi museum. The shurgwaydinging attempts at keeping the dog out failed miserably, it’s good to be a gangsta. We walked around the gardens, checked out the halls, drank tea and took pictures of us doing poses at the various gates or on the giant yin and yang sign in the middle of the large plaza. It was an interesting visit but it was 39 degrees Celsius, at any time I felt like I was going to melt.

We packed the car and got ready to leave as the masters and students were heading to afternoon class. They bade us farewell and said we’re welcome anytime. Very nice people. I dropped the Chilean at the neighboring town so he could go to a bank, went to the ATM myself, and then drove the Venezuelan to Gongyi South station for his Nanjing-bound train. Might as well be called “middle of nowhere station” as it’s way out of the city like most if not all new bullet train lines, back in my day it didn’t exist. We’ll see each other in Beijing at the end of the week.

Then I drove to the area near my old college, and blindly followed a dirt track going up a mountain. Soon after I stumbled upon some empty caves right by the road, with a kickass view over mountains and valleys, which would be the absolute perfect spot to camp. Well, I say empty, of course they are full of garbage, but mostly old discarded burlap bags and rubber, nothing that reeks. I looked at the cracks in the walls and ceiling of the clay caves and wondered about the chances of it collapsing, now that would suck, wouldn’t it?! I imagine it’s tiny, people have been dwelling in such caves for a long time.

The thing is of course I’d be a bit conspicuous, with the car right there. There was one old woman sitting nearby with a whip and a large bottle of water, watching her herd of goats. She didn’t seem very dangerous but who knows if she has brothers whom she could tell there’s a dumb laowai with a car and a bunch of expensive shit that they’d never afford on the money they make selling goat milk. I waited for her to go before setting up the tent.

I was all set and ready to eat dinner, but didn’t have cold beer on hand. The ice packs in my cooler had long melted, and now it was like a sauna in there. I got in the car and thought about going down the hill to buy some, considered it, but refrained. Baidu Maps told me the nearest supermarket is 3 km away, and by the time I’d come back it might be too dark to go safely on that bumpy dirt path. Plus, there’s always the chance they don’t have cold beer and I’d hate myself for going all the way there for fuckall. So I went beerless, though I had a few sips of gin. I heated some leftover roasted eggplant and flatbread from last night’s barbecue, wolfed it down, and read a chapter from Andy Ngo’s book. The dog was completely passed out in the dirt, the heat took a toll on him. I washed his paws and belly with a wet towel and then we got in the tent at 9 PM and crashed hard.

Chapter 177

Up at 6:30 for a walk with the dog behind the tai chi school. It was mostly a dirt field full of construction materials, as the Chen Bing Tai Chi Academy is still in the process of being built. So it was a bit anticlimactic overall, instead of learning the ancient Chinese martial art in one of the numerous beautiful heritage buildings of the nearby village, we were in an unfinished concrete cube.

Breakfast was eaten communally at 7:30. I changed into capoeira pants and a white t-shirt to look at least a little bit tai chi-like, and waited for my two friends, the Venezuelan having arrived during the night. I initially planned on leaving the dog in the room but his abandonment issues kicked in hard and he solidly disagreed, whining and barking as soon as I’d close the door. The building in which we were housed had a bunch of “Please respect the silence” signs so I couldn’t just let him be noisy like that, after a few unsuccessful tries punishing him I conceded defeat and brought him along. It was a bit weird having him around while I munched on my breakfast and did the tai chi warm-up with the other students, but he was pretty quiet if I was within sight.

After the pretty painful stretching, directed by a female master (first surprise there, I thought tai chi, like a lot of pre-commie Chinese things, was super patriarchal) barking orders like a drill sergeant, I went with a young teacher to a room downstairs where he taught me basic posture. I warmed up to it eventually, but I have to be honest and say I really hated it at first. He was extremely nitpicky and kept correcting the position of my hands or other body parts, and I was wondering what the hell was the point of it all. Only a bit later I realized it’s fairly important to have a solid base with no bad habits, and that yeah, every skill I’ve learned in the past (from martial arts to new languages to musical instruments to military drill) comes with repetitive practice and the first few hours are especially boring. I have a base in tai chi, somewhat, but most of it was self-taught and now I was getting feedback so I should welcome it instead of dread it.

Eventually we started learning a routine, the thirteen moves of Chen Tai Chi. There are tons of different styles, no idea what the differences are, I assume they all think they’re better than the others. Some of the moves were a bit explosive, the Chilean explained it is about “elastic energy”, yin and yang and all this esoteric stuff. While the Venezuelan, myself and a middle aged Chinese lady practiced the basic routine, the Chilean was doing more advanced stuff that looked pretty badass, including moves with a long spear.

I went to fill my water bottle in another room and saw old men in loose clothing practicing self-defense moves. It looked so grossly unrealistic, no way 5% of it would work in a “non-compliant opponent” scenario. All the moves from the sequence I was learning (or any other really) are inspired by real strikes or holds but I’m afraid the cat is out of the bag now and ever since the first UFC events the world knows what works and what doesn’t. I like tai chi, I respect tai chi as a form of low impact conditioning, a relaxing spiritual practice and a window into Chinese culture, but it’s clear to me it has very little real-life combat application. People who still cling on to the idea are delusional, and that led to the infamous Xu Xiaodong story, the MMA fighter who responded to claims by tai chi masters that they were invincible, beat the shit out of them in at-times very sad to watch contests, and is now a massive pariah for allegedly bringing shame to the country.

Anyway. Lunch was in the same mess hall, and one master politely asked that I take the dog out. They’d been accommodating so far so I obeyed, eating my bowl of R n’ S on a chair outside. Then there was a long mid-day break, I went to take a nap in the AC and resumed the training with another three-hour session. The three of us went to the village and ordered a barbecue feast, that we ate on a table outside as the hellish heat of the day subsided a bit. The lady kept piling up skewers and side dishes and we washed it down with beer. The Chilean left after an hour, he had a one-on-one session with Master Chen, the direct descendent of the lineage’s founder, and he was all excited.

I stayed a bit with my other pal, nibbling on barbecued meat and vegetables, discussing the state of his native Venezuela. All his family left and relocated elsewhere on the American continent, his mom was about to be a naturalized US citizen. All Venezuelans are getting the fuck out of that failed state, those with a bit of money ask for citizenship in other countries, and those without (most of them) are walking to Ecuador or Peru, Colombia letting them pass through but with a clear “fuck off we’re full policy”. What a sad situation. I went to Venezuela in 2016 and it was already a complete mess, but I enjoyed my trip and especially enjoyed how cheap it was with my black market acquired bolivares.

We went back to the academy, I had a quick videochat with the girlfriend and then went to buy more beers, as the Chilean said he’d want to drink after his class. When I got back he was there, all red and shining with sweat but with a huge smile on his face, as a long-time tai chi practitioner he was all star-struck from meeting and training with the big boss.

Chapter 176

Distance covered: 190 km (total 1075 km)

I eventually drifted into shallow sleep, and had a few unsettling dreams. In one of them, I was walking with the dog, he chased a duck and got eaten by a crocodile. The most fucked up part is how even in the dream I was trying to convince myself that it was just a dream, so it felt much more real. But I eventually drifted back to reality, and reached across the tent for the little fur ball, and was thankful he is alive.

Midway through the night it started raining gently, which had a calming effect and also brought the temperature down. I slept well, and emerged in the early morning among the sounds of insects and birds, with only the occasional truck on the neighboring road. I made tea, ate raisins and packed before walking to the parking lot.

It was a tourist site of some sort, and now the gates were open so I walked in. I thought someone would tell me to buy a ticket or shurgwayding my dog out of there, but the three employees sitting around on low benches just welcomed me with a HALOU. In front of me was an estuary of the Yellow River, with parked boats and vehicles to go around the area. That early on a Friday morning there were almost nobody, I walked to the embankment and looked at the mighty river, very wide and fast flowing. It draws its name not from the color of the skin of the people who dwell on its shores, but because it is very sandy, and now that it had been raining, the dog was covered in mud from all his happy strolling. I went back to the parking lot, took a nasty shit in a filthy public bathroom, and washed his paws in a sink before carrying him back to the car.

Then I drove to Gongyi, and the closer I got, the more excited I was becoming. This was a pilgrimage of sorts, Gongyi being the first Chinese city I lived in, back in 2008! I left in 2009, came back in 2010 for a short visit, and more than a decade has passed since. There were a lot more high-rises, and the central train station had been renovated, but a lot of downtown looked the same, with the KFC still at the bottom floor of Star And Moon Plaza, the only non-Chinese food option in those days and probably still. Speaking of food, I knew I was close enough to Wuhan’s sphere of influence to get proper sesame noodles, and my search for reganmian in Baidu Maps yielded a dozen results. I went to the closest eatery and it was delicious.

I then went to the Song Dynasty Mausoleum, a huge plaza surrounded by ancient buildings, one of my favorite places from back in the day. Gongyi is now an insignificant backwater dead in the center of China’s most struggling province, but for a short period of time a fuckton of centuries ago, it was actually the capital seat of Xia Dynasty. The tomb itself, a mound of dirt and grass, is not accessible, but you can see it through the crack of the perpetually locked gate. The nice thing there is just to wander around the gardens or the plaza, and it’s cool to think that if such a place was in Beijing, it would be surrounded by a fence, slapped with a 200-yuan price tag, and infested with large tour groups and guides gangraping your ears with their microphones, but now it’s completely free and as low-key as you can get.

Last step was a visit to the campus of the college that was employing me twelve years ago. I took the road east that I rode hundreds of times on my scooter, parked the car and walked to the gate. It was a bit less hellishly hot than on prior days so I left the dog in the car, and the shurgwaydinger at the entrance just let me waltz in. The campus was the same as when I left it, and it was a good walk down memory lane. I took a bunch of pictures and sent them to my old students (now in their thirties) and coworkers from those days.

I was now only about forty kilometers from my final destination, the village of Chenjiagou, birthplace of tai chi (well, one of the places with this claim) where the Chilean from Nanjing is now training. It was a leisurely drive, windows down, Hank Williams III blaring, looking at the scenery. We went through hills peppered with large holes, this part of Henan is full of cave houses, I went to several when I lived here, I even attended a wedding in one. They look very unassuming but some are really nice, with hard wood floors and huge TVs and all the modern amenities, just that they are built in a hole dug from the clay of the mountain. Then we crossed the wide expanse of the Yellow River, and eventually I got to the pinned location my friend sent me. It was dead in the middle of a dried up field, I sent him a message asking what’s up with that, and it was an error, I’m supposed to go to the main road a few hundred meters away. I still stayed there for a while, drying up the tent in the now scorching sun, sitting on my camping chair in the shade with a bottle of water and my computer to write this diary.

At 18:30 I went to the tai chi school, just when class finished. Dozens of people in loose clothing were walking down, I told one of them that I was coming to visit my friend and he said “Ah, I know who it is”. Among all the Chinese faces was a white dude with long hair, after our bro hug he said we are the first two foreigners to come here since the outbreak of covid. I got my room and then we walked on the village’s main street to a restaurant, where we had a nice meal with cold beers before taking a long walk home. It was really picturesque and quiet, the kind of China that people fantasize about, and nearly every building was a tai chi school or a tai chi store. We had one more beer in the room and then retreated to have a rest and get ready for tomorrow’s practice.

Chapter 175

Distance covered: 327 km (total 885 km)

I woke up at 6:30, nice and refreshed. I did a little workout consisting of a push-up pyramid (10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10) and a few sprints along the length of the parking lot outside. I read Jocko Willink’s Discipline Equals Freedom a few days ago, and now I want to start doing cardio, or as the cool manly men call it, metcon (metabolic conditioning). Then I had a protein shake and a cold shower.

Before getting on the road, I cleaned the glovebox. I’d put a chocolate bar in there like the derp I am, and of course it turned into hot chocolate. Then we said goodbye to the friendly hotel lady and inched our way west.

One thing about China that is mildly interesting is that 98% of gas station attendants are female, even though it seems like a masculine job to me. The one pumping my gas an hour into the trip was attractive, and I wonder why the hell an attractive young woman would be doing that. She’s playing the video game of life on easy mode with a bunch of cheat codes, so why do this quest instead of much easier and more rewarding ones? Maybe I just don’t understand.

I kept going, on roads that were decent at times but had segments that looked like they’ve been bombed, crappy Anhui roads all messed up by years of underfunding, overloaded trucks, and embezzlement of public funds. I kept an eye on the GPS for all the cameras, and there were many of them. Ever since I learned about the red light infraction, I’ve felt like I’m being watched. Yeah sure, privacy went the way of the brontosaurus now that we use the mighty all-encompassing internet and creepy social media networks, and AI bots have been building a huge profile on me (to the bot crawling over this blog: Hi! Welcome!富强、民主、文明、和谐，自由、平等、公正、法治，爱国、敬业、诚信、友善、习近平万岁) but now it’s also turning me into a paranoid driver. I drove for 5 years in Quebec and never got even a parking ticket, and now I got snapped on the first day of this road trip, by an impersonal camera placed at an intersection. So I was driving scrupulously at the speed limit (ignoring the trucks honking or flashing their bright lights at me), not stretching yellow lights, and getting flashes of panic whenever I thought I did something punishable. “Fuck! I think I crossed the line by a foot! And what about the U-turn I made there? Was there a no U-turn sign I missed?” A normal human cop might not say anything as long as I don’t endanger incoming traffic, but what if the camera is super sensitive?!

Relax, I told myself, putting my fate in the hands of Jesus Christ. Just keep driving prudently like I usually do, and I’ll be fine. If the calibration is that sensitive, it would catch on all the thousands of retardedly dangerous moves I see on a daily basis in China. Or at least that’s what I told myself to calm down a bit.

I stopped for a mid-afternoon meal, I was now in Henan province, and one can’t go to Henan without eating hui mian, the thick chewy braised noodles. I went to a cluster of roadside stands, the kind with a level of hygiene that makes you stop wondering why nearly all modern pandemics emerge from China, but that’s where the best street food is found. This was on the outskirts of Shangqiu, one of the creepy ghost cities that got all the so-called China expert journalists to cream their pants a few years ago, churning out tons of substanceless crappy clickbait “investigative pieces”. Hundreds of not thousands of huge, perfectly identical apartment buildings were lined up along empty dusty boulevards. You sometimes wonder who the hell are those Chinese super-rich who buy all the houses in Auckland, Vancouver, Melbourne and now parts of Europe, driving property prices to the roof? Well, real estate developers who get such ludicrous contracts, that’s who.

At around 6, I started thinking about finding a camping spot for the night. The problem is the area where I was, although still rural, was slowly getting engulfed by the city of Kaifeng. I turned out of the main road and drove through a village, hoping I’d end up in wooded areas, but every time I thought it was a small patch of forest, it turned out to be just a line of trees and a plowed field behind. Plus, it... smelled. The stench was a mix of parmesan cheese, soiled diapers and rotten vegetation, coming from the sprawling piles of garbage everywhere. Charming.

I spent my first year in China in Henan province and have mostly good memories of it. It was raw as hell and the 23-year-old adventurous me thought it was quite stimulating, and I’m glad I saw this aspect of China first. But now that I’m older and feel like I’ve done my time, all this third-worliness was getting to me, in that area more reminiscent of Bangladesh or India than my placid eastern Chinese city, with dilapidated buildings, car-high piles of litter and crowds of unhealthy-looking emaciated brown people snaking around carrying huge burlap bags or riding three-wheelers spitting clouds of black fumes. The Henanese make up a big bulk of the migrant working populace toiling away in northern Chinese factories or doing menial jobs and have a terrible reputation around China, seen as uneducated, uncouth (even by normal Chinese standards), thieving and ugly (because of their dark skin). Not my words, theirs. Yeah, you too you’d be shocked hearing how openly prejudiced the average Chinese can be. I for one found them very friendly and down-to-earth, and I was somewhat glad to be “back home”.

I circled around for a bit and then decided to go north, after seeing green sections on Baidu Maps. I was relieved to find a patch of woods and drove the car carefully on a narrow dirt path until I reached a clearing by some kind of pagoda. I got my camping chair out, plopped in it, and thought about it for a while. I can pitch the tent away from curious eyes, but the car was very conspicuous. What if some shurgwaydingers stumble upon it, or some thieving Henanren with metal bars? Again, maybe this was overly paranoid from my part, but this meticulous care is part of why I never got mugged or robbed even after traveling to dangerous shitholes the world over.

I took a walk around and saw a parking lot by the river, so I unloaded the stuff I needed, stashed it under the trees, and parked the vehicle. There was an area with tables and hammocks nearby that I went to check out, but three dogs came to block our path, menacingly. There was a big one, a medium one and a small one, the smaller one barking the most, all you’d need is one more to have something like the Dalton brothers. They didn’t seem to take kindly to my little out-of-town dog coming through so I gave them a wide berth and got to my camping spot.

Darkness had fallen not long before. I heated a garlic, sausage and bacon soup that I ate with crackers and a cold German beer, read my Kindle a bit and went to bed. I was naked in the tent, sweating profusely, and wondering if I really like camping or merely the idea of camping. I compared my sleeping conditions compared to the ones yesterday. Although it was in a crappy basic motel, I had a mattress, a powerful AC unit, and a door that locked, without a care in the world for feral dogs or curious eyes. Now, well, I couldn’t really fall asleep. I’d had some of the very best nights of sleep camping in the past, but it was usually in the cold and after I’d done something physical like canoeing or hiking. Now, it was hot like the folds of a ballsack and I’d been sitting in the car driving all day. Maybe I’m just too soft now, too used to the comfort of air conditioned rooms? Well there’s only one way to beat this out of me.

Chapter 174

Distance covered: 343 km (total 558 km)

I knew our night would be short, as it is the summer solstice and days start early and finish late. Last week when I camped I was up before 5, when the sun illuminated and heated my tent. What I didn’t expect is them coming out so early. I was drifting in and out of sleep, and then the intermittent noises startled me awake. The first wave arrived at 2 o’clock! At this point, do you call it waking up early or just staying up late? I know they’re old and retired, but don’t they sleep? Talking about the elderly Nanjingers who come for their morning swim, here.

From then on, it was pretty much a non-stop assault, we couldn’t see them but heard them coming from all sides. There’s a theory hypothesizing that since Chinese people have been peasants for millenia, spending their days picking rice 100 yards apart, their way of communicating by yelling across the rice paddy has ingrained itself in their DNA. Not sure if there’s any scientific backing to this slightly racist (albeit hilarious) claim, but for sure that would explain a lot. You don’t even have to come to China to observe this phenomenon, just go to the closest international airport and watch as Chinese couples yell at one another from one end of the duty-free shop to the other as they fill their shopping carts to the brim, rather than moving closer.

Some had friends on the other bank of the lake and they hooted at one another like wolves, at some point one woman shone a flashlight in our direction and said “Uh?! A tent? Somebody’s sleeping here?” but then resumed yell-chatting with her companions. I can’t say I was that mad, though, it’s not as if the place was an established camping spot, we were in their world. My two buddies also seemed in good spirits (if a bit hungover and sleep deprived) when we emerged at 5:15, the sun already high in the sky. Dozens of retirees in speedos were stretching, drying up after their swim or doing pull-ups from tree branches, gasping at the sight of three hairy foreigners and a goofy little dog coming out of the mysterious tent. We swam a bit, ate plums for breakfast, and packed up. It was still damn early when we got to the parking lot, the American from Hefei leaving on his scooter and me dropping the Belarusian at the subway stop so he could make his way to the train station, giving me rendez-vous a week from now in Jinan.

So now I had three days to cover 800 km to the village of Chenjiagou, where I’ll meet my Latino pals for a weekend of tai chi classes in the village where it originated. I set up my GPS to motorcycle mode, which avoids highways. I can’t go on highways by myself for the first year I have a license and I’d better not risk it. Of course it means it’s much slower, but hey. The elevated expressway took me out of Nanjing via some of those insane Blade Runner-style new developments, and then I inched my way northwest in the countryside.

The short night and the high activity output of yesterday caught up with me in mid-morning, and even with the AC cranked high and the selection of aggressive music, I started nodding off. I stopped in front of an abandoned building giving me shade, reclined the seat, and fell asleep for much longer than I initially thought I would. The sun creeping its way vertically was now turning the car into a sauna, so I chugged water and kept rolling.

I stopped for beef noodles in a roadside shack, and after my quick meal, the boss asked me how it was. “Delicious”, I replied, with genuine feelings, it was pretty damn good indeed. “Can you say it again on camera?” He pulled out his phone and asked me again. It was quite wholesome.

I was now moving away from glitzy, dynamic, developed eastern China and moving towards the sinister and sad hinterlands of northern Anhui province. Every other building was abandoned, taken over by weeds, rust and decay. The type of desolate place everyone with more than three brain cells and a speck of ambition fucks off from to go find luck in a big city. I had asked my friend earlier if he knows anything about this region and he said “There’s a city called Bengbu, which is a funny name, but that’s all I know. I’ve never been north of Hefei. People usually go to southern Anhui, where the mountains are”. That echoes my experience.

One thing about the deep nong though is that there are less rules, and they are seldom enforced. Just past the city of Suzhou (Sùzhou, not to be mixed with its much, much, much less insignificant quasi-homonym Sūzhou) I tried getting a hotel room, and to my surprise, it worked. I thought that the chances of a filthy foreigner AND a dog being accepted would be so negligible they might as well be zero, but after telling the confused lady for the fifteenth time that I don’t have a Chinese ID card number, she shrugged, took a look at my passport, repeatedly muttered “I don’t understand what it says” and brought me to the room.

“Where is the dog going to sleep?”

“On the floor”, I lied. No way in hell he’d let that happen, he’s a predator, but one who is used to comfort. I’ll wash his feet though before he curls on the bed next to me.

The room was only 60 yuan and it was small but clean, and it was motel-style, with the door leading directly outside, so I could park my car right opposite. Good deal. Just two weeks ago I paid twice that amount for a dorm bed in Shanghai.

I got a cold beer from the fridge and took a walk along the road until I reached a cluster of shops. It was super third world, still, it was nicer than the nicest bits of India I visited a few years ago. People who spout nonsense about India one day taking over China as the big Asian superpower are completely out to lunch.

I bought some cold dishes (dry tofu, peanuts, pickled cucumbers) and a duck leg, then I went to the motel and heated some of the chicken broth I’d been carrying since I left home, alternating between my cooler and my friend’s freezer. I had a videochat with the girlfriend, wrote my diary then went to sleep at 9 PM.

Chapter 173

I woke up around 10:30, with a bit of the accummulated soreness from the exercise done in the last days. The Belarusian and I had oatmeal and melon slices while watching BJJ videos, then we rode rent-a-bikes to the gym. He recently started training as well, so just before capoeira class, we rolled a bit and it was great fun. Then the Venezuelan got in on his lunch break from the hospital, along with the Togolese, the Uzbek Korean, and the young Chinese guy. Five continents represented. The Belarusian directed the practice, we drilled a few moves and then played in the roda for a long time, including a capoeira-BJJ hybrid game that went back and forth until he eventually caught an armbar.

The two of us rode to a small pizza restaurant that he loves, a hidden hole-in-the-wall that looks very unassuming but makes great pies. I had one with salami and olives and he got two vegan ones, without the cheese and with a high pile of various vegetables. We devoured all this food and got some supplies for tonight’s planned camping.

The American from Hefei invited us to go play ball hockey at his school, we went there just as they were about to start. He works alongside a bunch of Canadians, and they have weekly games, I was quite eager to join. It was great fun, we played for almost two hours, I was pounding Gatorade to replenish the gallons of sweat I was losing.

We went back home and finished packing everything, stuffing all our luggage in the car now parked on the street. A dim-witted guy came on a scooter and said we have to pay 10 yuan for the parking. A total parasite. He had some kind of uniform and gave me printed receipts, no idea if his authority is legitimate but I also know that if I ignore him and speed off he might cause much more trouble than 10 yuan worth.

It had been quite an active day but it wasn’t over yet, I drove the car to the mountain, parked, got all the camping stuff from the trunk, and we hiked the 20 minutes or so to the lake. The gate is unmanned past 18:30, so there no shurgwaydingers trying to prevent the dog from getting in, or noticing the tent we were carrying. We set up camp and jumped in the water, which felt awesome, and then I opened my first beer of the day, which felt even awesomer. I fired up the camp stove and cooked sausages and onions in one pan for the carnivores, and mushrooms and tomatoes in another pot for the vegetarians. The Belarusian had the idea of adding a glug of baijiu in the fungi stew, afraid that the tomatoes on their own wouldn’t provide enough moisture, but then it overpowered everything. He then balanced it by adding beer. A true gentleman’s culinary experiment. Eventually the Venezuelan joined us and we had a little party, downing beers and singing songs, before he took the trek down the mountain. Great times with great friends.

Chapter 172

I woke up a bit after 8. I couldn’t find the teapot in my friends’ messy kitchen so I used a French press coffee pot to make myself some jasmine tea. The Metal Minded podcast was live, I listened to the second half, an interview with a death metaller from a band called Disembodiement. Then I had a bit of a chat with the guys on Zoom, always a good laugh to be had. My late breakfast was pan-fried leftover dumplings and scrambled eggs.

The girlfriend forwarded me a message that her father (the title holder of the car) got, I went through a red light on the first day of my trip and Big Brother caught me with one of his 1 000 000 000 000 traffic cameras. Fuck!!! I think I remember how it happened, I was following a big freight truck from too close and couldn’t see the traffic light. 6 points gone out of 12, I’ll be walking on egg shells for the rest of the trip.

I rode a rent-a-bike to the BJJ gym. They have a lesson at 12:30 so might as well go instead of idling. Just as it was about to start, I got startled seeing that none other than my gym nemesis, the British white belt from my home gym, just walked in. He was just as surprised, he thought I was out camping deep in the woods, and I knew he was moving to Nanjing but only at the end of the summer. He was in town to scout out apartments so he checked out the gym. The lesson was good, some nogi stuff, not the pyjama fighting I’m used to. There are overlaps obviously, but as I figured out rolling with different partners at the end of the class, the biggest difference is how slippery it gets. I sparred with my old nemesis, with another spazzy newcomer, and with a recently minted brown belt against whom I could do absolutely nothing. A good time was had by all.

I went back home, had a victory beer, showered, changed, and soon went back out, with the dog this time. I got another rent-a-bike and he jogged happily alongside, and we went to visit my old friend, the guy who came to my city for the big hash, and whom I visited last week at the Hefei Hilton. His wife and kid are in good ol’ Hefei so he only spends Monday to Thursday in Nanjing for work, residing in a bare apartment in a ghetto-ass neighborhood.  We sat around drinking whisky for a bit then went for a walk through a really cool park near his place, with remnants of the imposing city wall, pagodas, and impressive views over the nonsensically big city.

We caught a taxi and went all the way to a southwestern suburb, where the Venezuelan invited us all to a restaurant that does a 99-yuan all-you-can-eat taco buffet. What’s there not to love?! A multiethnic crew of old and new friends assembled and we attacked the buffet, filling our plates with tacos of the hard and the soft variety, drinking beers and margs. One of my old friends had just arrived, a Belarusian from Jinan who is now the highest ranking member of our old capoeira group, he was supposed to spend some time in Shanghai with his girlfriend but sent us an ominous text saying “his trip isn’t going well” so he just hopped on the bullet train west and came to see his homies. Seems like we boosted his morale successfully enough.

After a long cab ride back to the pad, we sat on the couch and watched the new Rick and Morty episode, which just dropped. It was excellent. Life is always a teeny bit better on the rare occasions, every two or three years, when a new RnM season is underway.

Chapter 171

I slept in quite a bit, first order of business was to go out with the dog for a little walk and to move the car, late at night when we came back there were no spaces outside so I went to the underground parking in someone’s spot. I went to a park to stretch and exercise a bit, three senior citizens were sitting around talking about them young people nowadays and how they all leave China to study abroad. No idea if it’s my presence that prompted this topic of conversation.

Then I went home, brewed tea and sat at the computer to write my diary. My Latino roommates were gone and I was home alone, so I plugged the aux cord and listened to some metal recommendations that had been piling up on my Facebook feed: Wanderer, an American mathcore band that rocked my socks, and then Demonarchy, an old-school death metal band from Trois-Rivières, Québec that had a sound right up my alley but left me on my hunger with their four-track demo. Then I clicked on a Bandcamp link to The Day Of The Beast, which was a listenable but bland as hell modern melodic death metal band.

In the early afternoon the Venezuelan came back from his job and we went to the lake again. The traffic was pretty insane for the first bit after getting on the main boulevard but then we got to the mountain, and along the way we picked up an old buddy of mine, a Korean-Uzbek guy I knew back in 2013 and was one of the original members of the Jinan capoeira group. The night before the mountain was deserted, but now there were thousands and thousands of people and the gate was manned. The Venezuelan has a year pass and he made a crude photoshop with my picture, and that worked, the next obstacle was to get the dog in. The shurgwaydingers jumped on the opportunity to wave their teeny specks of authority around, a grand total of three tried to stop me but I ignored them and waltzed in, and once I was past the gate, what are they going to do, chase me?! It’s a similar situation to the one with the Africans crossing to Spain on a raft, you’re not allowed in, but once you’re in, you’re good to go.

We walked the 20 minutes to the lake and had a jolly good time. I swam across the lake, which can’t be much more than 100 meters in diameter, and I was dead tired at the end. It’s hard to believe two years ago I did a triathlon starting at this exact lake, with a circular route of around 800 meters. We stayed for about two hours, playing music, doing a bit of capoeira, dipping in the lake, chatting with elderly men who were a bit curious about our presence there.

Then we walked back to the parking, and I was overjoyed to see that it was closed for the night and the gate was open, which meant I wouldn’t have to pay 5 yuan per 15 minutes parked there. We drove to another district of Nanjing that might as well be a separate city, 30 km away, where the Venezuelan was to teach a capoeira trial class. It took place in a tricking gym all decked in thick mattresses, I had no idea what tricking is and it turns out to be some kind of mix between gymnastics and martial arts with guys jumping and doing backflips and spin kicks in the air. So, a lot of overlap with capoeira, and the thirty or so skinny guys there got the beginner techniques we taught them quickly, it was a great class with great energy. Then we watched them do their tricks, some of them were pretty impressive, doing double backflips.

We drove back to the city, doing a huge detour when I got off at the wrong exit on the highway. My friend’s phone uses tiny fonts with the roman alphabet “subtitles” so I couldn’t read it while driving, and there was a confusing bit where I had to get off the highway and immediately swerve left at a Y-turn. Ah well. We got home at 10:45, there was talk about going to eat barbecue and even to a bar but it was aborted, we just got home and ordered takeout. I had a beer and he made some honey and ginger tea, and then we sat on the couch eating the fried chicken and the dumplings we ordered. The Venezuelan was exhausted, he studies medicine and works at the hospital and teaches football on the weekend, on top of capoeira. He rarely has full days off, and when he does, it’s because he took some leave to take part in weekend activities that leave him more stretched thin. He seems content though, even if he’s looking forward to have enough money to quit his part-time job.

He went to bed and I stayed up waiting for the laundry to finish, which took forever. I watched a documentary about the Hundred Years’ War, the English were besieging Orleans but then Joan of Arc and the valiant badass French warriors ruined the rottentoothed inbreds’ shit, massacring thousands like God intended and sending the survivors back to their little island. A glorious moment in history.

Chapter 170

I woke up around 9. The Chilean and I went to a rooftop in the apartment complex to do tai chi, a good way to start the day. Then he had to go teach a private lesson, I went out to buy groceries. The little corner shop only had processed shit packaged in plastic, and when I asked where I can buy vegetables, it’s as if I asked them where to buy clown shoes. “Woooouuuffff, hmmmmm, eeerrrrr, there’s a market, you can take bus number 59 but hmmmmm, it’s far...” Fuck. I found myself in a shit-fucking food desert, the kind you have in the shittiest American suburbs.

I decided to try my luck on foot, it’s not as if I’m in a rush. The walk on Zhongshan Road was mostly pleasant, with those old heritage buildings (rebuilt in the past 15 years after the Japs and then the Commies leveled them to dust) and the dog was having a jolly good time, sniffing all the puddles of urine and learning about the small subtle differences between the local dogs and the dogs back home. Eventually I got to a slum area of old crumbling buildings and they had a tiny market. It looked grossly insalubrious but the vegetables were fresh and plump so I filled my bag and slowly made my way home.

I cooked myself a lunch of scrambled eggs and broccoli that I blanched and fried in a bit of oil, and then started making rice and beans. I boiled the small black beans for an hour, sautéed onions, carrot and pepper, added uncooked rice and coated it all with the oily mixture, and then added a vegetable broth I’d been simmering. Normally I use chicken broth but my two Latino homies are vegetarian now. I also made a spicy salsa to accompany it and it was a great lunch. The Chilean had also made quinoa with mushrooms and I tried it, normally I hate mushrooms with a passion but those black chewy ones didn’t trigger my gag reflex the same way little shitty grey mushrooms do.

The arroz con frijoles pot was gigantic, enough to feed an army, and when I sent a picture to the Venezuelan, who was at work, he suggested we bring some to the lake later that night. Hmmm, good idea, so I packed a Tupperware, removed some stuff from the trunk of the car and made space.

In the late afternoon I got in the car and drove to the gym where capoeira practice takes place. There was a bit of traffic along the way, and at some point, I was in the right lane and when I approached the red light, I saw the arrows painted on the asphalt saying that it’s only for right turns. So I squeezed diagonally in the gap between two waiting cars and the guy behind me started hurling insults. I cranked up the volume of the Exodus album I was listening, and his passenger threw something that made a loud CRACK sound and got the people in the left lane look at my car with concern. What the fuck?! I considered taking the camping shovel I stash under the passenger seat, getting out and smashing the cunt’s hood, but is it really worth getting deported over that shit?! Yeah, cutting line like that is a bit of a dick move but doing so I cleared the right lane and frankly it pales in comparison to the hundreds if not thousands of retarded moves you see every time you’re on a Chinese road. At any rate there was no damage to the car.

I parked in an underground lot, the dog wasn’t very happy he had to wait but sometimes life isn’t all rainbows and bubblegum waterfalls. I went to the Nanjing BJJ academy, a MMA sparring class was taking place and then we split the mat space in two for our capoeira practice. We warmed up, practiced moves in isolation, then with a partner, and then a whole sequence. Afterwards we had a small roda, I played music for half and played a few games, my timing is all off due to lack of regular constant practice but it was fun nonetheless.

Then I drove to the lake, a small reservoir on Purple Mountain that is one of the coolest things about Nanjing (some might say the only cool thing about Nanjing). We had to take a bit of a trek from the parking lot but eventually made it. A lot of locals swim there during the day, I remember the first time I went was for a triathlon. At night it’s very quiet and a nice place to hang out and have a little picnic. I brought my little camping stove and christened it, heating portions of rice and beans and passing it around, some people mentioned it was a bit spicy for them but it hit the spot nonetheless, a good refuel after a training session.

We hung out for a bit, ten of us now that some other friends of my friends came to join. Half of us jumped in the water, which felt amazing, and we sat around jamming a bit, playing the berimbau and capoeira percussions and singing.

At some point, a funny little incident happened. One Chinese guy started trailing his sentence with 那个，那个那个那个, which sounds like nigganigganigga, and then turned around to the African dude in our crew and said “Oh I’m sorry!” Everyone erupted in laughter. The African is fluent in Chinese and obviously knew the guy wasn’t throwing around racial slurs, it was a case of “only awkward now that you brought it up”, like that Bojack Horseman joke in which a character says “I’m getting married because I don’t want to die alone... no offense” and the reply is “None taken! Until you said no offense”. That started a discussion on the n-word, some Chinese people and other second-language users of English can be a bit confused regarding that infamous word, and who can blame them?! On one hand you’re told it’s an absolute no-no and you must never utter it under any circumstances, but then you put on a hip-hop album and you hear it 348 times. That particular Chinese guy is a big ball of muscle and plays for the Nanjing American football team alongside a few African-Americans, and he initially thought it means “brother” and he could just call his teammates that way. Of course it’s a bit more complicated than that. The Togolese guy didn’t have much of an input one way or another, having grown up in French West Africa and having a very different perspective than black Americans.

Either way, a good time was had by all. We walked back to the car and made our way home, where I finally had a beer, a tasty wheat weiss by Shandong province’s Taishan brewery.

Chapter 169

Distance covered: 132 km (total: 215 km)

I slept OK, all things considered. I don’t have an air mattress yet and the ground was a bit hard and uneven, and also it was damn hot at first. But then I fell asleep and slept through the night, only waking up when light rain was falling, a good test for our new tent. No water got in.

Footsteps were heard outside, and the dog started barking. It was an old man who went fishing at the pond, I saw him later. Maybe the discarded fleshlight was his.

It was barely 5:30 when I got out. I got some dog food, a pomegranate juice and granola clusters from the car and had a little breakfast, reading Andy Ngo’s book. At 6:15, the dog barked again, there were three cops on the ridge looking down at us. I asked them if there’s a problem with me camping there and they said no, they just asked if the car is mine and made small talk, asking where I’m from and that kind of stuff, no doubt a bit curious that a foreigner was there. They left soon after on their scooters and after an hour or so chilling and reading, I also packed up and left.

I drove to Nanjing via country roads with mostly large trucks and tons of traffic lights. About 97% of them were red, it was a bit annoying but I wasn’t in a rush at all, in fact I was going to arrive in Nanjing much earlier than I need. So I took my time, enjoying the slow drive and the music I played on the stereo, stopping at a gas station to top up, though my tank was ¾ full, to take advantage of their free car wash.

I got to the former capital, ate some Wuhan-style sesame noodles, and then got to my friend’s apartment complex. He and his roommates were gone for the day, I let myself in my the hidden key and took a shower with the dog, to remove the mud and funky camping smells. Then I sat around for most of the afternoon, writing this diary and browsing the internet, I would have gone out but it was raining intermitently. I took a nap on the couch until one of my old pals came in, a Chilean guy studying Chinese alternative medicine and tai chi. We embraced in a big bro hug and had a bit of a chat, but he had work to do so I waited for my other old pal, a capoeira brother of mine from Venezuela studying medicine in a local university.

He told me about how he spent the day doing an internship in the trauma department, witnessing all sorts of gruesome shit and helping out the doctors there, and was in need of a change of pace. So after sitting around and catching up and sharing one of my homebrews I brought in from the car cooler, we all piled up in a taxi and went to an Irish pub in the city. I bought them both beers to thank them for their hospitality, and got myself a pint of IPA to quench my thirst and then a Guinness, as well as a chicken Caesar salad and a burger. Both of the portions were big and could have been a meal in and of themselves, but I was hungry. The dog was having a good time, going to strangers’ tables knowing that his cuteness will be rewarded by morsels of food. A good time was had by all.

Chapter 168

Distance covered: 83 km

I woke up at 11 and finished packing. After a lunch of scrambled eggs and hash browns with mozzarella, I double-checked and triple-checked to make sure I brought everything, and the dog and I got on the road. I wanted to get to Nanjing by Friday and spend the weekend with my friends there, I left one day ahead to camp along the way. Just from looking at the map it’s a bit hard to find a spot in advance, I just knew I’d roughly go towards the Yangtze river and hope to stumble upon a suitable spot in the countryside. So I made my way west via country roads and muddy paths that got our white car all covered in brown dirt, looking up places at random on my phone GPS. The problem is very few of the river banks are usable, most are taken over by farmland or industrial areas or are just swampy, so my utopia of parking the car by a beach and camp by the river is all but impossible. Man-made parks are a no-go, I’d get shurgwaydinged out of there by joyless security guards within minutes. And villages or areas near villages might be OK, but most of the land there is used for farming.

Eventually I drove along a road that had a patch of forest on its left side. Now that would work! The road itself was too narrow to safely park the car, but eventually it branched and I could park a little out of the way and go down a small slope to a clearing. It seemed nice, so I got the tent out of the trunk and set it up. The dog was running around happily, and after a bit I tied him to a tree with a long rope, I didn’t want him to wander around too much, who knows if there are some feral dogs or whatever in the area.

I brought the ground pad, sleeping bag, change of clothes, and other things I might need from the car, and sat down on my camping chair. I considered getting a beer from the cooler but it was still light out, and though my tent wasn’t really visible from the road unless you look for it, the possibility of having unwanted uniformed shurgwaydingers tell me to fuck off was there, and that’d mean I’d have to get behind the wheel.

It felt good to be in nature a bit, even though it was by a country road with occasional cars or motorbikes and a few pieces of litter left by cunts who’d been here before. The dog was sniffing something that looked like a plastic jar, I gave it a kick, and some white foamy filling came out, with a hole in the middle. A sex toy, left there to rot by some pervert! I pushed the foam back in with a branch and chucked it over the fence.

First order of business was to change from my flip-flops into shoes and long socks, and even then, the mosquitoes managed to sting me through the wool. I knew I’d forget to bring something, the question was not if but what, and now I regreted not having my baggy sports pants. The only long pants I brought are nice dress pants for if I want to look decent in the city.

The dog and I explored the surroundings a bit, on the other side of that ditch we were in was a large pond with groups of ducks of different sizes. Then I read my Kindle for a bit and had a dinner of Doritos, tuna paste and tortilla bread. When it started getting dark I did get a German beer and sipped it, annoyed by the mosquitoes but content nonetheless.

I went to bed a bit after 8. Not that I was that tired, just that there was not that much to do.

Chapter 167

I woke up around 10. My Facebook was flooded with birthday wishes in various languages, it warmed my heart, and I gave a quick reply to every single one of them.

The grand departure was planned for the next day, so I went to run some errands on my skateboard with the dog trotting along, first I went to a big department store full of cheap stuff to buy a big storage box, camping utensils, duct tape and whatever else caught my eye in the aisle. Carrying that stuff in my backpack and in my hands, I went to the car mechanic. We dropped the car there yesterday so they’d make us spare keys, and I got them. Then I drove home and spent most of the day packing. When I go on a “normal” trip, I can stuff my odds and ends in my 35-liter backpack quickly, I know exactly what to bring and where to put it, after travelling so much in the past fifteen years. But now, for a road trip, I didn’t quite know how to operate but I took my time and when 5 o’clock rolled around, the car’s trunk was full of camping gear, bags of clothes, food and other useful stuff.

I went to pick the girlfriend up from her work and after getting home I left for BJJ practice. It was a good one and after rolling, all five of us were sitting or lying on the ground, speechless, exhausted as we were. I changed my clothes and rode to the bar, where a big group of my expat friends were sitting around a table outside. One guy asked me if I was sunburned, but no, it was a red rash in my neck from getting choked with the rough fabric of my gi.

I got a German white beer and joined them, after my second beer the girlfriend came back from her chess class and we ate at the Japanese izakaya across the street. Afterwards we went back to the bar, I was too full for a beer but a coworker bought me a Laphroaig peaty scotch for my birthday, it was delicious.

Some people mentioned the possibility of going to karaoke, I tagged along. Five of us got a room and sang a bunch of songs and then I left at around 2. I got home, put my sweaty BJJ rags in the laundry and watched a bit of YouTube at a low volume while I waited for the load to finish.

Chapter 166

Up at 7, we packed our stuff in the car and had breakfast at a won ton fast food chain by the in-laws’ apartment. We had an appointment at the DMV to do the car’s annual inspection, a bit of an annoying bureaucratic process but one that has to be done. Then we drove the 400 km home, the girlfriend did the first bit and I did the rest. I put on random non-metal music, she particularly liked an album by Sizzla, a Jamaican dancehall reggae singer, and asked me for his name. Let’s just say that this kind of stuff doesn’t happen that often, the overlap between our musical tastes is a very thin line.

At some point there was a short traffic jam on the highway, the cars were funneled into one lane because a gnarly accident. At least ten cars and one truck were involved and scattered around the shoulder and the left lane, some with bumps and broken lights but at least two that were crushed like a soda can. If the people in those cars survived it’s an absolute miracle, it’s a wake up call as poignant as any and a reminder to drive prudently, especially on roads full of inept Chinese drivers constantly swerving lanes and doing dangerous shit.

We made it home in thhe mid-afternoon and I immediately hopped on my bicycle to go to the bank. I got a new bank card fairly painlessly, and there was a little bonus. The lady behind the counter asked me questions about my account to confirm my identity, one of them was “How much do you have in your account?” and I told her based on the text messages I get when there’s a transaction. But then she transfered about 2500 yuan more on the new card, because there was also a 400 USD in my foreign currency account I didn’t know the existence of.  

On the way home I got my new sunglasses, and then kicked back with a nice beer. I did laundry and cleaned a bit while watching the other fights from the UFC main card. We ate steak, asparagus and garlic food for dinner, and I had a pretty lazy evening watching stuff on YouTube and cartoon episodes. I watched a Dark Side Of The Ring episode about British wrestler Dynamite Kid, in the first 10 minutes I was wondering if I had seen it already because the premise was so familiar, with a young up-and-coming wrestler ruining his legacy with drug and alcohol abuse, conflicts with other wrestlers, and domestic violence.

I went to bed a little too late. Ah well, it's my birthday, and I'm on vacation.

Chapter 165

I slept in quite a bit and had a hangover, such is life. Lunch was a spread of reheated food from yesterday and MIL’s delicious signature bone-in pork ribs, and they gave me a black beer they bought from a neighboring store, some old guy started a tiny microbrewery. It was pretty good, like a lot of German-inspired Chinese black beers it had a bit of a chocolate taste.

I sat around writing my diary and listening to Clown World news. The world leaders got together in England for a G7 conference with climate change as the main focus, and of course they are massive hypocritical cunts. A huge number of trees were cleared just so they can have their circlejerk in a scenic spot, and UK’s prime minister Boris Johnson flew there in a private jet though he could have gone by train or by car. Classic shit.

Then I watched the two UFC championship fights. Brandon Moreno was impressive as hell, I remember him as a middling contestant on The Ultimate Fighter Mexico and then he lost a few fights on the big show, which got him released and eventually brought back. You’d never know that watching his Saturday performance, it was flawless, and he dominated the God Of War, who seemed like he was destined to be champion for a long time, with his well-rounded skillset and ridiculous power at flyweight. Moreno ruined his shit and it couldn’t have happened to a better man. Then Israel Adesanya dismantled Marvin Vettori, stopping all his takedown attempts and piecing his up on the feet with his sublime striking.

In the afternoon the four of us went to the university campus where the in-laws work and where they used to live, they had errands to run so the girlfriend, the dog and I walked around and went to the tall tree under which the old family dog is buried. Then we went to a big glitzy shopping mall to meet friends for dinner, we were there one hour ahead so I went skating and the girlfriend went shopping. I hadn’t been skating since February of 2020 when I was in Quebec for the holidays and I love skating, I used to go quite a bit when I lived in Hefei. I paid, got my rental skates and waited for the Zamboni to finish. One guy put up a plastic fence to separate a small section of the ice for a hockey class, and while the small kid was getting dressed, I excitedly went to the coach and asked if I can play a bit. He lent me his stick and I skated in circles, dribbling a puck and shooting goals. Fuck I miss it. I’d give 10 000 yuan for hockey to be back in my life. After a few minutes the one-on-one hockey class started and I went back to the general section to skate laps for about an hour.

Then we had dinner at the Tex-Mex restaurant overlooking the skating rink. Some of my old coworkers joined, that used to be our Friday night hangout, we’d get the big table and drink tons of margaritas and rant. The girlfriend and I shared potato peels, a burrito and a big sizzling plate of beef fajitas. I thought maybe I ordered too much, but my Texas buddy said “No such thing as too much Mexican food!” and he’s 100% right. We had a great dinner and then went to the fancy imported supermarket on the ground floor of the mall. It was close to 9 o’clock at that point but the mall was still packed, with all this upper-middle-class flexing its consumerist muscle. It’s hard to imagine at times that Hefei used to be a third-worldy city, it took an astronomic leap in the past decade.

We got road beers and walked the half hour home. A great day.