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.