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.