Chapter 192

Distance covered: 130 km (total 2868 km)

The Ukrainian woke me up when she was about to head to work, I went with her to move the car. I considered going back to sleep but I was rested enough so I just sat down, wrote in my diary, and watched the big UFC PPV. Sean O’Malley fought a random last-minute guy named Kris Moutinho and outclassed him completely but couldn’t finish him, Irene Aldana dropped Yuni Kunitskaya with a slick hook and grounded-pounded her, and then I had to go downstairs to let the Ukrainian in so I missed the 30-second slugfest between infamous wife-beating NFL D-linesman and the big fat Aboriginal Australian. Gilbert Burns and Wonderboy had an anticipated top welterweight match-up, and the Brazilian’s pressure fighting and grappling overcame the NMF’s unorthodox karate attack.

Then it was the big one, Poirier and McGregor exchanged brutal strikes and the Irishman fractured his leg from a blocked kick and the following stress he put on it by stepping or rotating. It was petty gruesome, and though Poirier came to shake hands, McNugget went on a tirade of insults and threats, which was doubly pathetic given that he was on the ground with a dozen medics attending his severe wound. One one hand it means we won’t hear of that cunt for a while and Poirier can go fight for the title, but it also means that this “fluke” ending won’t be seen as a satisfying ending to their strange trilogy and it’s possible the division will get jammed again.

The Ukrainian made eggplant with garlic and olives and scrambled eggs with bacon for lunch. Very kind of her. I got on the road, dropping her at the next district so she could do some shopping, and aside from serious rain that slowed down the traffic, the road to Langfang was smooth and took me just over two hours. Langfang is a city an hour away from Beijing, and aside from knowing I have a friend who moved there, that’s where my knowledge of the place ended. I parked in a dingy alley with cheap eateries near the old train station, which reminded me of the China of my old days more than the overbuilt brand new city I expected, being so close to the capital. As I was learning, Langfang still has a lot of industry, and is also a commuting town for a lot of white collar workers who work in Beijing but can’t afford the high real estate prices, so they take the train in and out every day.

My old pal Dancing Davey, bizarrely, does the opposite. He lives in Beijing but works in Langfang, so he goes to the capital to see his wife on the weekends and lives in a furnished apartment on weekdays. I picked him up from the train station and we drove to a duck restaurant, but they didn’t want to let the dog in. So we tried a Russian barbecue place and it was great. The meat, served on huge skewers or individual ones, was succulent, and they had a selection of imported beers from Russia. Our favorite thing was some kind of quesadilla with chunks of mutton in it, the meal was glorious.

We caught up, it had been about 6 or 7 years. He is also one of my oldest Chinese friends, from the Gongyi days in 2008. We kept in touch somewhat but he was headquartered in the north of China and I’ve been in the east for a while now, rarely going north. So when I met him he was just out of his teens, and now he works for a pipeline company.

He likes to talk about politics so he asked me what I think about some current events. I hadn’t been watching the news that much since I started this road trip but I do catch clips on YouTube from time to time, and yeah it’s hard to argue with Dancing Davey’s assessment about the west falling. And he’s not coming in on a Chinese nationalistic, antagonistic “gotcha!” position, he’s a “westophile” who learned English as well as a little French and Japanese and has been traveling for fun ever since he could. He recently traveled to the USA, driving around by rental car, and was astonished at how run-down and dangerous it looked. Meanwhile, he grew up in a dilapidated part of Henan, in a lower middle class family, and studied at some third-string rural college while the chewed bubblegum kids went to Australia or US state universities. Now, he works a decent white collar job that pays enough to afford two nice apartments, a car, trips abroad and modern amenities. Criticize China if you want, but you can’t deny this is upwards mobility.

We went to his apartment, walked the dog around, chatted with his neighbors, and I drank two of the Russian beers. We went to bed early, I got to his guest bedroom and started reading an Isaac Asimov book.