Chapter 296

Woke up at 9, and slowly started my day. The girlfriend and I went to her school building to gather study materials, and once again I was shocked at how it looks like an actual high school, as opposed to mine, which looks like a medium-security prison. Still, though they have art classes and other things outside of a rigid humorless cram curriculum, her school is no better than a lot of the shitty McEnglish mills I had the misfortune to teach at in the past, and everyone I know who works there hates it.

I ate a big brunch of leftovers and then headed to the hash. I drove the car there, because I want to go to another city in the late afternoon, which meant it would be a dry hash run for me. I considered leaving the dog at home but he enjoys those long walks so I dressed him in the hash group sweater we had made for him and brought him along. About 15 of us gathered in farmlands about half an hour north of the city, and zigzagged on the shitty trail marked by the hares. Today was World Peace Through Beer day, and groups all over China and the world were on trail. The weather was nice, and a great time was had by all. After the circle, everyone headed to a restaurant in the mushroom city we ended up at after walking through rice fields, and I headed back to the starting point. A South African friend who had been babysitting our dog a year ago when we went out of the city volunteered to keep him,  and that meant I didn’t have to detour home and drop him off. Win-win!

I walked about 3 km on a country road, and considered hitchhiking but just walked the whole distance. Then I got in the car and went towards the city of Changzhou, stopping halfway at a village to get a big plate of Muslim noodles. I learned yesterday about a Nine Treasures concert happening in that city, so I drove the 60 km. I have to say, as much as I didn’t miss at all having a car during the past decade (I rarely even thought about it) I do enjoy it now, though I only use it once a week. And that’s the way it should be, no? Unless you live in a rural or remote area, you shouldn’t need a vehicle, and it’s the way the suburbs and cities are shabbily designed that create that need, with all the negative consequences that come with it. I recently read about collectivisation, basically the idea that instead of having suburbs full of bungalows with one or two cars per households, populations are a bit more concentrated and instead of needing their own car, they can work, shop, play without one and have access to a fleet of rent-a-cars. The problem with such an idea is that people like me who use their car once a week tend to use it on the weekends.

Anyway, I got to Changzhou after a very smooth and uneventful drive, parked in the underground lot, and took the elevator to the venue. There was a huge line-up, and I was a bit scared, but it moved fairly quickly and I got in. I went to talk to a group of foreigners gathered in front of the stage, and introduced myself to the guy who posted about the show in a WeChat group we’re both members of. They all seemed pretty cool, in that boisterous and elitist small-town laowai kind of way, unused to see people coming to their turf.

We didn’t have that much time to do much small talk, as the lights dimmed at 20:30 on the dot. Everyone in the packed venue cheered, there was an astonishing 550 people in there, a sold-out crowd bigger than the attendance in the last ten shows I’ve been to. Nine Treasures are very popular now, the Mongolian quintet has been touring nonstop for seven years and making a name for themselves. Their ultra-catchy folk metal is palatable enough for normies, while being legit as fuck and getting all the cred from actual metalheads. I’ve been a fan since the beginning, and this was the fourth or fifth time I was seeing them live.

They walked on stage under copious cheering, all dressed in normal clothing, as opposed to some of their shows in the past where they were wearing Mongolian robes and hats. After an intro, the drummer started a beat, and the frontman played a riff on his guitar... that was completely silent.

False start. They stopped, and people hooted. “The soundman is a cunt!”, someone yelled in English. The sound tech, who had been eating paste and picking his nose, flipped on the switch and the distorted riffs finally came out. The band started with Arvan Ald Guulin Honshoor (yes, I copy-pasted it), one of the catchiest songs in the history of mankind, and the whole floor went apeshit. It wasn’t a mosh pit per se, more a whole movement of people packed shoulder-to-shoulder jumping back and forth. You know people love your stuff when even though they don’t understand the words (which are all in Mongolian) they sing along phonetically.

Nomin Dalai was next, and once again I was ecstatic, pumping my fist, yelling “Hey!” and pushing around all those skinny Chinese teenagers. The whole show was pure joy, the band played a total of 18 songs, according to the setlist I could spot at the musicians’ feet. I’m now an old fart and can’t mosh like I used to, so with a parched throat and a t-shirt soaked in sweat, I made my way to the front and watched the rest of the show leaning on the fence. The sound wasn’t bad, but as always it was a bit hard to hear the Mongolian instruments (a square guitar and a vertical violin of some sort) when they were playing at the same time as the guitar, bass and roaring drums.

The band wrapped it up with an ultimate Hei Xin followed by Sonsii, which got everyone singing along. What a great band, what a great show.

The hour-long drive home was smooth, and I got home just before midnight. I chugged a bunch of water, took a shower and crawled into bed.