Chapter 274

I woke up with my alarm at the same time I usually do, and slowly got ready. I packed my bag and got in the car for the drive to the train station, listening to The Age of Dumb by Afgrund. Afgrund is a Swedish band that plays Nasum-worshipping grindcore with a bit of crust punk infusion into it, and they get me pumped. I parked in the vast underground parking lot and soon after I was on the Shanghai-bound train.

I started reading The French Suicide by Eric Zemmour, a collection of essays chronicling the 1970s and all the events that happened in that decade that led to the weakening of French politics and identity, starting with De Gaulle’s death. A lot of it sounded very familiar to anyone following the clownisation of the Western world, and you could see parallels or connections between the present and those happenings from half a century ago: the rise of feminism, the diminution of the role of the father (Zemmour often compares De Gaulle to the father of all Frenchmen, which I found a bit weird), class warfare dichotomies shoved where they don’t necessary belong, mass immigration of non-Europeans to suburban areas, and while the whole thing was very, very French in content and form and there were points that don’t apply much to other political theaters or cultural landscapes, it’s interesting to see where Zemmour stands in case he does make waves in the upcoming presidential bid, and what it means for other Western liberal democracies stuck with similar issues.

The train arrived in Shanghai after an hour or so, I took the subway heading north, then rode a rent-a-bike for the remaining three kilometers. I arrived at the sports complex where the jiu-jitsu tournament was to be taking place, as part of the Shanghai Amateur Games. I was there too early, so I sat down and watched the children matches, some were tiny but throwing each other around with perfect timing and technique. I’m jealous they got such an early start and are on track to be 20-year-old black belts.

After the medal ceremony and a lunch break for the officials, the adult tournament started. They published the brackets a few days ago, I had registered as a <90 kg but got put in the heavyweight division, I thought it was a mistake but then I saw that they just didn’t have enough people who signed up so they fused some weight classes. A training partner of mine also got put in the <80 kg though he’s closer to 72 kg. I went to the front desk to check-in, and met my opponent, a big boulder of a man. We shook hands, and I asked him how much he weighs. “Close to 94 kg” Damn, a 15-pound weight advantage.

We watched a short demonstration by referees about the rules and legal or illegal moves, then a brown belt match-up. The matches got underway, it went by pretty quickly, a few of them had a no-show and ended in forfeit. I stretched and watched the fights on the three mats, then it was my turn. We got on the mat, shook hands with each other and the ref, and then, “combate!”

I didn’t have much of a plan, but since the guy was so damn big I wanted to avoid being at the bottom. I went for the single leg takedown I had practiced with the Italian and got it, falling into his half-guard. Two points. Woohoo! I got this! He did a good job at keeping space, preventing me from passing, then he recovered guard and swept me. He was sitting on my arm, and I spun around, got on all fours and wrestled him to the ground but I put too much forward momentum and he rolled me over him. I locked the half-guard and eventually got my knee in and recovered full guard, but he soon passed and got mount. I hip escaped, got half-guard, and he got mount again, which means he got a bunch of points, with the structure of sport jiu-jitsu. Then he got my back, scoring even more points, and attacked with a belly-down armbar.

I was now in desperation and defense move, unable to buck his big frame off me. Among the noise of people cheering on our match and the others on the neighboring mats, I started hearing a voice that stood out, giving me clear and concise instructions in English. “Grab your own collar with your left hand. Use your right hand to pry his legs open. Good. Turn towards him. Get your elbow out.” That was tremendously helpful, and I was thankful for this unknown Good Samaritan. The other voices that stood out in the crowd were “Let’s go, daddy, let’s go!” in sing-song Chinese, from his two daughters who also had competed in the morning tourney. He flipped me on my back and I escaped the armbar, but was now fighting against a choke. The five minutes elapsed, we got brought to the middle, he had his hand raised and I clapped. Ah well. Win or learn. I didn’t get tapped out, which is some kind of moral victory I guess.

I shook hands again, and high-fived his cute chubby daughters. Catching my breath and wiping my face with a towel, I asked who’s the English speaker who cornered me, and a rough-looking man spoke up, he’s one of the coaches at SHBJJ, and because we’re affiliated with them, he saw the logo on my gi. I thanked him, and he gave me a bit of a debrief. He suggested I make game plans and have go-to moves for every situation, and I self-deprecatingly said I suck everywhere so I usually don’t aim to be in a particular position. Still, it was fun, and now I regreted not signing up for the nogi competition as well.

I kept watching the matches, with extra attention when it was someone I knew. My training partner from back home went 1-1 in his blue belt division, and one Russian guy with a jarhead haircut I’d be sitting with won all his fights quickly and decisively. There was also a British guy with a huge hipster beard, I engaged a conversation in the changing room asking if it gets in the way, my facial hair is now getting long enough to get pulled or tangled when I’m defending against chokes. We started talking and hit it off. He lost his match, and then I proposed we roll a bit on the warm-up mats. A good time was had by all. He had his moments, but I got the better of him a few times with my weight and experience advantage.

Then he changed back into his nogi gear for the medal ceremony, and saw that he had colorful shorts with ON ON on them. “Don’t fucken tell me you’re a hasher too?!” He was as surprised as I was. I invited him to our hash the next day, but he already had plans, he had come from Guangzhou for the tournament and to celebrate his birthday in the big city.

I got interviewed by a volunteer, she said I could answer in English and they’d find someone to subtitle it but my ego was too big for that. So I answered in piss-poor Chinese, and my vocabulary was insufficient to say what I wanted. Also there were a lot of loud announcements on the microphone during that time, I don’t think a lot of segments from my interview will be usable. I just hope they don’t take only the crappiest bits and make me look stupid. Then we got the medals, I got bronze, in a three-man bracket. The boulder got gold by smashing the guy who got a bye to the finals in a much more dominating way he did against me, which is also some kind of moral victory. I also watched him choke out a Russian dude to win the nogi heavyweight gold medal.

I got changed and took a taxi downtown. I met an old hashing friend at a bar, The Accelerationist from Hong Kong (see Chapter 123), we embraced and caught up on our respective summer trips. She just came back from Inner Mongolia, on an organized trip that was a bit bittersweet since most people in her group were shitheads or just people she didn’t get along with. Always risky. The bar had free beer, a sour on tap, and I drained two pints. They tasted particularly good on my empty stomach and after more than two dry weeks. I was ravenously hungry, I only had some dried mango slices and a granola bar all day, not wanting to fight on a full stomach, so I looked at the bar’s menu. They had “baozza”, which intrigued me, a hybrid between baozi (Chinese steamed stuffed buns) and pizza, something I’d been wondering for years if it would make a good mix. Well it did.

Then we took the subway to the Hongqiao train station, went through the rather unpleasant shit that comes with commuting in such a packed city (notably having to wear a stupid little fayssah mursk) and sat in the waiting room with half an hour to spare. The Hutongster (see Chapter 185), down from Beijing for the holiday week, soon came to meet us, having landed at the Hongqiao airport a few hours prior. I love that dude, after a big bro hug we were soon engaged in vulgar yet intellectual conversation.

I had a standing ticket for the train, since I bought it last minute when I knew that both of them would be coming to my city. I found an empty seat, and since it was a bit far away from my companions, I just listened to music and read. Then we got to our destination, and had to go through a very dystopian cyberpunk maze of cattle fences, zigzagging at slow speed with a packed crowd of face-diapered haggard zombies, with large TV screens showing us in a distorted color palette due to the infrared cameras, each individual zombie’s head framed by the facial recognition software. Bullhorns were repeating the message of “Dear passenger, get your dumbphone and scan the QR code” in a loud, distorted voice over and over and over and over and over, while a goddamn written sign would have sufficed. How do the shurgwaydingers working there not get filled with an urge to bash their head against a wall?! My phone was out of power, but that didn’t get them to just say fuck it and wave me through, like I expected and hoped for, instead they told me to go charge it at their main computer desk. I was right next to a bullhorn, loudly haranguing the herd, and I tapped my heel on the ground in impatience while my phone slowly booted. My brain was a few seconds away from imploding.

Finally freedom was mine. The Hutongster and I got in my car, the Accelerationist having another hasher pick her up, she was all excited at the idea of driving his Porsche. I put on the country music station from GTA San Andreas and we cruised down towards the city, exchanging news. He asked me if I know what happened to another Beijing HHH member I know, it sounded ominous. He was smoking pot with a Chinese friend, the guy’s wife called the cops on them and now he’s deported and blacklisted from working in China again. Big Brother doesn’t take kindly to narcotics consumption.

We dropped the car and went to my apartment to drop my bag and pick up the dog and my longboard. Then we walked to the main bar, stopping to get a road beer halfway at the new microbrewery. We sat outside, drinking and swapping crude jokes and having a jolly good time. Then I rode home on my longboard. Quite an eventful day.