Chapter 183

Distance covered: 420 km (total 2121 km)

I woke up a bit before 8 and packed my meagre belongings. The Belarusian rode his motorbike to where we were, and we got to my car. I had parked it in an alley by the back gate of the school, after the main gate got blocked by the storm, and there was a parking ticket on it. It was crudely misprinted and could just be some kind of scam, as there are no No Parking signs anywhere.

We got on the highway, all three of us in good spirits on this good old “boys road trip”, with music blaring and conversations animated. The highway driving was quite smooth once we got out of the city and the remainder of the morning traffic, and after a stop for muslim noodles in a small town on the way, we made it to the outskirts of Beijing by mid-afternoon. There was an enormous line of cars at a police checkpoint, it took about half an hour before we made it to the front. Of course the sight of three white guys in the car confused them a bit, and we had to go park the car and go through some annoying registration procedures. One cop would take pictures of all my relevant passport pages, then another cop would enter all the details manually on a form by hand, and I’d also be asked to scan a code with my phone to go access some malfunctioning bloatware in which... I’ll have to enter the same information the cop is copying. Bureaucracy, man.

Then we kept driving and entered the enormous, sinister capital city. Drivers were, if it’s even possible, much more inept and cuntish than anywhere else in China, constantly cutting one another and doing reckless maneuvers. I had to really stay concentrated. We stopped at a pet shop I had called a few days ago, to confirm that they can provide day care. I had tried to find a way to not get separated from the dog but exhausted my options: AirBnB is closed to stinky foreign barbarians, CouchSurfing is pretty much dead, hotels that accept pets are rare and too expensive, and the only friend in town who is willing to host me and a hairy animal is out. So I reluctantly parted ways with him, promising I’ll be back Sunday.

Then we went to our hotel, checked in (an annoyingly long bureaucratic process, 北京欢迎你 goes the song), rested for a bit and then rode rent-a-bikes to the gym where the capoeira event was to take place. Capoeiristas from Beijing or other parts of China were there, some newer faces, some I’d met two months and a half ago in Shanghai, and some I’d known since 2014. We had a workshop with the tall Norwegian guy who runs the group, then a big roda. It was quite fun and there were a lot of smiling, sweaty faces.

We had a late dinner in a microbrewery called Arrowhead, where we had discounts, drink tickets and a set menu to share. Each table had a platter of hummus, a pizza, mini-burgers, spring rolls, chips and salsa, and pitchers of beer to share. The Venezuelan came from Nanjing, he’s recently single and was “on a mission”, changing into a nice collared shirt and hitting on girls in the group. I was sharing a room with him and told him I can give him 45 minutes but not more. His efforts didn’t bear any fruit but not being the type of guy to give up easily, he accepted immediately when a cheerful Palestinian capoeirista proposed to go to another bar. It was getting late but what the hell, I was also in the mood to keep going a bit. We first piled up in a taxi to go to another bar nearby where another Venezuelan is hanging out. Normally on the capoeira events I tried to practice and socialize more with people from other cities than my old partners, but now as the party was winding down, I was surrounded by my crew, with the Belarusian, the Amazonian and the Venezuelan in the back seat.

It was a small gay bar, with a big rainbow flag and gay couples sitting around. We stayed for a short time, I was bloated from all the beer so I ordered a whiskey, and we also had some shots with a bit of gay undertones. I’d been with those guys for a while now and we all have tons of inside jokes, at some point the Venezuelan fell off his chair from laughing too hard.

The Belarusian and the Amazonian walked to the hotel, the Venezuelan and I continued partying, now accompanied by a young gay guy. We went to a bar in the hutongs to meet the Palestinian. The Venezuelan immediately disliked the place. He was still on his mission and while there were attractive women present, the environment didn’t suit him as much as a Latino bar would have. The DJ was a long-haired guy in a vintage faded t-shirts playing nihilistic, thumping electronic beats and the few people on the dance floor were swaying more than they were dancing. I thought the music and ambiance was at least interesting, but after one gin-tonic, my homie pulled me by the arm and we left.