Chapter 234

I dreamt that I lived in Japan. I had an office job and was riding cramped public transportation for long periods of time. It was one of those very immersive dreams that felt real.

I did 45 minutes of yoga, then watched the UFC main card. It was pretty good, culminating in a close middleweight fight between Jared Cannonier and Kelvin Gastelum. I ate the last piece of the khachapuri and watched Clown World news. In the wake of the Afghanistan fiasco, a Ukrainian adviser mentioned that the USA failed to export its political model as well as the idea of forcing “diversity” in cultures that are not receptive to all that LGBT imagery, feminism and black characters shoved in Netflix shows. So instead of working around Afghanistan’s culture and political landscape (I use the term “Afghanistan” loosely here; the very fact that it’s treated like a nation-state in the Westphalian sense rather than a collection of tribal lands is in fact one of the roots of the problem) they tried to just make them become like the USA, and of course it was doomed to failure.

That got me thinking about cultural solipsism, and how indeed there are many things that might work well in Culture A but don’t work in Culture B, and vice versa. China would be one clear example, very relevant to current events and also one I obviously have a perspective of, having had my feet on the ground and my eyes and ears open for close to twelve years now. A lot of the macro- and micro- cultural aspects of China seem totally incompatible with the western liberal framework, and get labeled as “authoritarian” and “inflexible”. A limp-wristed democracy here would lead to absolute chaos and the collapse of the country, and people hold some kind of collectivist views that initially struck me as a bit weird, coming from an individualistic, atomized culture. And yeah, of course, it’s nuanced and complex, when taking into account generational changes, technology, inevitable globalism, regional variations, outcasts who don’t fit in the stereotypes of their country’s culture, and paradoxes arising, like how a so-called collectivist society like China can still lead to some of the most fucken blatant displays of selfishness. But overall, yeah, one of the great failures of foreign policy is to just see the whole world as a USA 2.0 just because Canada and Australia and parts of Western Europe fit the bill, and that the only differences are that some of them foreigners wear funny hats or dress according to their climates or eat with sticks instead of forks.

The one trap we have to be wary of falling in, though, is the one of cultural relativism. Some cultures are better than others, and if you reject the idea, you haven’t traveled. Some behaviors and cultural norms are objectively despicable, and that’s why I don’t feel bad for calling out cunts for littering, and shit on the idea that “it’s just their culture” rather than what an uncivilized fucknugget does. So telling Afghans to stop raping boys is fine, imperative even, while trying to push the idea of gender equality and 50% representation in government is maybe a bit too much. And there are zillions of examples obviously, some between cultures that are overall not that different but have points that are not compatible, like the wokels who try to import and force-feed American critical race theory into Quebec and look at the nation through an American black-vs-white lens rather than the struggle of French Canadians against their anglo overlords.

Anyway, I’m just some guy rambling, but this stuff is on my mind quite a bit, seeing how some of the destructive Clown World ideas peddled by the western media and academia don’t apply to the rest of the world and that attempts at forcing them down the throats of reticent cultures either fails epically or leads to backlash.

And I guess we could look at this from the opposite direction, with “vaccine passports” being the talk of the town. Obviously Quebecers and Americans generally oppose the idea, citing individual freedom and privacy, while the Chinese just go along. I have this tracking app on my phone that gives me either a green, yellow or red code based on regions I’d been to in the past 14 days, in case one of them has an eclosion of covid cases. And... I’m fine with that. I don’t really care if Xi Jinping can track my movements to the nearest ± 10 meters, what I do care about is the microbrewery and the grocery store and the BJJ gym staying open. So yeah, in short, I care more about convenience than privacy, and you have the right to disagree, but don’t call me names, I can also play that game, and probably more virulently than you do.

But net positive results to all that tracking has to be part of the equation. I was talking about that with an Australian friend who also used to be a long time resident of China and now holds nuanced schizophrenic political views like I do, mixing libertarianism with a rational realization that some of the collectivist measures in place in a country like China actually work. He said that as a result of that tracking and surveilance of its citizens, China has low crime and efficiency, in the way that you wouldn’t have it even if Australia implemented such measures. That’s why I’m so opposed to partial, conditional lockdowns, they just bring the worst of both worlds.

When darkness fell, the girlfriend, the dog and I took a long walk, first stopping at a florist shop and then at the Italian restaurant. A lot of booze and food was consumed. A good time was had by all.

Chapter 233

There was a funeral just outside my window, with the old-timers marching band playing dissonant music while a woman cried her heart out on the microphone. Then at around 9 AM they blew up a bunch of bombs. As long as they don’t do it at 6, better than a kick in the nuts.

I browsed Facebook for a bit. There are a few people I know who get mad when there are instances of Quebec-bashing in the squarehead Canadian media, and one guy pointed to some dumbass housewives daytime show in Toronto. They had a panel discussing the future of the French language in Canada, and unlike most roundtable discussions that (quite sensibly) include black people for black issues, gays for gay issues, etc., only four anglo women were present, and they just spouted some shitty ignorant takes. I was surprised that the vermin called Jan fucken Wong was present, I thought she had been canceled to oblivion before getting canceled was cool. She penned an editorial many years ago in which she blamed school shootings in Montreal on laws put in place to protect the use of the French language, and even her racist anti-peasoup overlords thought it was too much.

It’s weird to hear or read what foreigners think of Quebec. On one hand I understand that we’re just 8 million rednecks in a lost frostbitten corner of North America, but aside from squareheads (anglo-Canadians) and Murkins who live in the northeast and maybe a handful of French people, most seem to think we’re a relic of the past, like those small towns in Texas where some German dialects are kept on life support. My coworker was astonished when I told him Quebec City is a metro area of one million where 100% is done in French, he thought people did everything in English and French was far in the background, like in Louisiana. But I also meet people who think every Canadian is bilingual.

On a semi-related note, I started watching a TV series called Bad Blood, on a friend’s recommendation. It’s set in Montreal and is based on a true story about the mafia and biker gangs fighting, something that runs deep in the cultural psyche of that city and is the premise for a lot of good movies and series. I’m two episodes deep and it’s pretty good, but I can’t help but being annoyed at how they shit on the immersion factor by having everything done in English. We’ve already seen Mexican gangsters speaking to one another in Spanish-accented English, Russian mobsters speaking English with Russian accents, and now it’s the turn of Quebec bikers. It’s so fucking dumb. But then again don’t they have black actors portraying medieval European characters nowadays? Suspension of disbelief be fucken damned.

I also played a fair bit of Mount & Blade: Warband, and at night I trained BJJ. A good time was had by all, I was truly drained afterwards. Then I went home, ate the dinner the girlfriend prepared, and watched the Oakland episode of Hip-Hop Evolution.

Chapter 232

I woke up late, enjoying the ACed room like the lazy walrus I am. I checked my e-mail, we’re starting to get news from the school about work soon resuming. It’s been a long vacation, it will feel a bit weird to get back in the groove.

I went to buy frozen chicken breasts, that I left in the sink to thaw, and other food items we need. I kneaded dough to make a khachapuri, a god-tier underrated cheese-filled bread from Georgia, and while it was rising I got on a weekly Zoom group discussion between fans of metal and craft beer. I was home alone, so after it was over I heeded recommendations for some good growly music and listened to albums by Primitive Man, Galvanizer and Flesh Hoarder. All three were magnificient juicy slabs of metal.

I rolled the mix of mozzarella, feta and cream cheese in my dough, baked it, and ate way too big of a piece while watching Clown World and MMA news. Then I went to the bank to pay my rent for the year. It took only 10 minutes, despite the fact that it’s a Chinese bank, and also they are undergoing renovations so the whole operation is temporarily cramped in a back room. Long gone are the days where I’d spend all day at the bank just to do the most simple of shit, I cherish the fact that my current bank is staffed by competent clerks and not fucktards. Also they didn’t ask me to wear a fayssah mursk, which is always a plus in my book. I can’t wait for that dumbest of trends to go to the garbage can of history where it belongs, and that we only see those things at the dentist.

Back home, I did the calisthenics routine, getting nice and sweaty and pumped up. I cut the chicken breasts and simmered them until they fell apart, then made “sloppy chicken” sandwiches using hamburger buns. It was delicious. The mix of onions, ketchup, Dijon and hot sauce gave the whole thing a nice flavor profile. We started watching The Office again, Michael is on the verge of getting fired for his immaturity and incompetence so he’s starting his own paper company.

We took the dog out for a bit, cleaned up and had a relaxing night in. Life is good.

Chapter 231

I woke up fairly early, because I was to be a guest reviewer on the Metal Minded podcast. Usually it’s another guy doing it, but he can’t this week, so my old friend running the show invited me on. We talked about four new underground releases: Killer Souls and Graveslave were rather generic and unimpressive in their thrash and modern death metal slots respectively, Dimman really annoyed me with their limp and uncohesive and uninspired mix of melodic death metal and female opera voice parts, and the only album I thoroughly enjoyed was by Fawn Limbs, a three-piece from Pennsylvania transcending genres, expertly mixing up chaotic and incredibly violent mathcore and technical extreme metal parts with a creepy ambiance and a narration using spoken word. My boy Yolin and I dissected the albums for the small but loyal audience over a bit less than two hours, and they responded well to my performance, it was nice to hear. And despite the early hour due to the time difference between China and Quebec, I indulged in some good beer as per Metal Minded tradition. I had a white beer from a Xinjiang brewery and a Contender pale ale from Boxing Cat, an extremely pintable brew from one of the country’s premier micros.

The remainder of the day was spent resting, after a busy Wednesday that saw me run in the morning and grapple in the afternoon. I ate English muffins for lunch, I hadn’t had English muffins in years and they used to be my favorite breakfast items. When I saw a targeted ad circulating on WeChat from a supplier of British food I jumped on it and made an order. Then I played a bunch of Mount & Blade: Warband, building a badass mercenary army with mamelukes and crossbowmen and hired infantrymen, and getting into battles and sieges.

In the afternoon I went out with the dog to buy groceries, I wanted to try a chicken recipe but the small stores I went to didn’t have chicken that wasn’t frozen. I pondered going to a bigger supermarket, but it was further away, and just bought a whole chicken that I tried to debone myself. Bad move. It was way too fat and didn’t have enough lean meat on it, so my stew didn’t have the expected consistency. Nonplussed, I just put it aside to use all the rendered fatty goodness the next day, and baked some chicken wings instead. I also made a potato salad, quesadillas and steamed asparagus. The girlfriend had one of her grade-12 students over for some kind of school project, and I gave her a plate. Hopefully she won’t get addicted to my cooking and come every month like some of the girlfriend’s previous students.

Chapter 230

I knew I wouldn’t beat that video game addiction out of me, but I could also force myself to do other shit. So I was on my feet before 6 AM and ran to the lake and back, a good 8 km. It felt great. I even got the nod and thumbs up from a sinewy old man who looks like he’s been running marathons since 1952.

I took the dog out for a bit, took a shower and then we went to the Marriott hotel for the breakfast buffet. A British pal goes there once a week so we joined him, gorging ourselves on eggs, bacon, noodles, fruit juice and various Chinese and western staples. A good time was had by all. We talked about various topics, one being the recent news about the government imposing rules on education, banning (or seriously impeding) after-hours cram schools from operating. Chinese students are squeezed like sponges from age 3 onwards, staying in school from the crack of dawn until 10 or 11 PM, and getting dubious tutoring on the weekends and holidays, anything to get a slight competitive edge for the cut-throat university entry exams. Well, no more, Big Brother says. Apparently this comes in the wake of the slacking of the one-child policy and other population control measures; in fact, now the government wants people to make more children, and the main objection was “How are we gonna afford all those cram schools then?!” So they do have the interests of the middle class at heart, sometimes. And maybe also they considered how goddamn unhealthy the whole system is.

Now, of course, this will greatly affect a significant portion of the foreign population, many of whom are employed as English teachers in training centers that operate exactly in the type of after-hours slots that are targeted by that new regulation. And on top of that, the big wall of text that’s been shared on social media (a confusing and clumy translation in English, and the original Chinese that uses too much legalese and complicated terminology for me to want to squint and decipher) talked about restricting teaching jobs held by foreign nationals and to prioritize the Chinese. Ah well. We’ll see what will happen with that. I think my job is safe for the time being but there’s been rumors about those types of “international” high schools that have been mushrooming in China over the past decade also being red taped to death. What can a boy do?

I went back home, played Warband all afternoon and then took a nap before going to the gym. We had a great jiu-jitsu session, and I did some light boxing sparring too. Afterwards we all went to eat Xinjiang barbecue. I don’t like the place that much, it’s always crowded and deafeningly loud, the service is of adequate speed considering how busy they are but the Uyghur waiters are always a bit surly, but they have an ideal location downtown so people often want to go there when it comes time to consume grilled mutton skewers. I much prefer the other Xinjiang restaurant, but hey, a great time was had by all.

Chapter 229

It’s been a few days in a row where my favorite people on Earth came out and blew up bombs by my window, and every time it’s been at 8 AM on the dot. It used to be at 6, perhaps there’s a new rule in place. Baby steps, I guess. Every time I just rolled over and went back to sleep.

Coincidentally, a friend of mine in a shitposting WeChat group posted an article entitled noise pollution rules, and being my usual snarky self, I replied “They mean it as a verb, right? Noise pollution, it totally rules!” The article talked about dancing grannies who roll out a big speaker on public square at dusk, put on some bangin’ music, and do a choreography, apparently their days are counted and now the Powers That Be want to crack down on that. I for one think it’s a pretty cool aspect of Chinese culture, seniors get to exercise a bit and socialize, and yeah they can be loud and the music is more often than not godawful (sometimes it’s some dissonant dubstep though, which is hilarious) but if they want to alleviate noise pollution in the undending campaign to make the peasants more 文明, I’d say explosions in the morning, speakers playing advertisements on loop in front of stores and cunts with their cell phone videos in public should be a higher priorities than the dancing grannies.

I read the news, the story of the hour was about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. The whole thing was an absolute farce from the beginning, a little sprinkle of neocon interventionist put-your-fingers-in-others'-pies to impede China from dealing with Iran, lost in a trillion-dollar scam engineered by cartoon villains and their "reconstruction companies". There was zero chance of ever "stabilizing" the country, and even calling it a country in the Westphalian sense is inaccurate and Eurosolipsistic.

Some of the comments I've seen have a bit of sunk cost fallacy in them, in the sense that even people who agree it was a fiasco (ie: anyone except bumbling retards) say the transition/removal of troops should have been done better and that "American/Canadian/Afghan lives have been lost for nothing". Perhaps. But we could have stayed there until 2025, 2050 or 9000 and it would still be the same shit.

That's why I don't think Trump, or even Senile Joe, deserve that much blame. For the former, "bringing the troops back home" and stopping all this nonsense world police shit is in line with his isolationist/nationalist/America First platform. And for the latter, he doesn't know what he had for breakfast so let's cut him some slack. I dislike the whole blame game the way it's knee-jerkedly played, in this bipartisan arena, so as much as I hate the metric tons of undeserved shit Trump got thrown his way, just as infantile and unintellectual it is to just go "Biden bad" like some libertarian/conservative/right-wing commentators are doing since he got in.

Hell, I considered going on a tour in Afghanistan when I was still enlisted. Would have been a nice 50 000$ in my pockets for 6 months, plus all the reg force pay in the build-up. But getting potential PTSD or getting shot at for that cause I didn't believe in for a second after a bit of reading on the topic, nah. (Some guys in my unit went and were on base the whole time, barely hearing a shot fired and the hardest thing they did was drink an unrefrigerated Coke, but some saw pieces of human hamburger fall on their windshields after unsuccessful suicide bomber attacks) So I came to China instead.

At least the memes are spicy, like that person who pointed out that the Taliban will strictly enforce mask wearing and social distancing for 51% of the population.

I spent most of the day playing Warband, as a mercenary navigating some kind of fictional medieval world. You gather a band of warriors and go on missions given by lords and random people, making friends and enemies along the way, which can impede your movements through the map. You can also do trade and diplomacy rather than brute force attacks, and there are layers to the game I haven’t seen yet. It’s really fun, and very addictive. I had semi-plans for the day but none of them materialized, engrossed as I was in the game. After dark, the girlfriend peeled me from my screen to go take a walk, we went downtown with the dog and bought some odds and ends at a cheap goods store, before stopping at the wine bar like the urban hedonists we are. We shared a bottle of Riesling, a sweet white wine from Germany, chatting with the owners. It was a bit expensive but hey, are we urban hedonists looking for a quick endorphin rush or are we not?

We went back home, ate a late dinner of creamy pasta and a scrumptious salad while watching an episode of Close Enough. Then I played Warband until way too late.

Chapter 228

I woke up late, not really hungover, but with the kind of bloated and hazy feel that follows a night of heavy beer consumption. Bleh.

I did mostly fuckall for a few hours, then went out on my skateboard to go pick up the car at the garage as mandated by the girlfriend. The clutch has been acting weird and the car does a little herky-jerky at low speed, but it’s expected, it’s an old machine now. On the way, I went to investigate saunas and bathhouses, the Kazakh asked me about it. Most are closed because of anti-covid measures, but I found one that’s mysteriously open.

Back home, I fired up the PC game Warband: Mount & Blade, that I installed a few months ago but didn’t get into it. Well, now I’m truly addicted, and roamed the medieval open world with my mercenary character for the remainder of the afternoon. I had to peel myself away from the computer to go to BJJ practice.

It was raining but fuck it, I’d rather have that than 38-degree days. Six of us were on the mats, and I had some hard rolls. I tried an armbar escape I saw on YouTube and it worked, I was all giddy, until I realized I wasn’t out of the woods yet and still had a strong blue belt trying to fold me like laundry.

The Kazakh and I went to the sauna place. It felt good but I was already completely drained and in need of food and beer, next time we’ll go in the afternoon and enjoy the facilities, the place has rest areas, board games, a buffet, and plenty of unisex and mixed-gender areas for pampering oneself.

I dragged my exhausted carcass home and made pasta with some leftover stew we found in the freezer. I watched a bit of comedy and clown world news videos and then played Mount & Blade for a bit, and by for a bit I mean until 3 AM.

Chapter 227

During the road trip, especially the segment with the in-laws where we had to cover long distances every day, we often had to get up early and I was longing for a lazy morning where I could sleep in a bit. Well I got it, and then some, I’ve been abusing a bit in the past few days.

I reheated and ate the Thai soup, and like a lot of flavorful soups or stews, it tasted even better the next day. Then I mostly sat around, doing a bit of writing, a bit of reading, a bit of YouTube watching, a bit of music listening. The girlfriend was at her desk, making dumplings by scooping a little mound of ground meat in a thin layer of dough and folding it. I’d have volunteered my help but I suck ass at folding dumplings.

In the early evening, we went out with our bicycles to the roasted fish restaurant. It was packed and festive as always, but we didn’t have to wait, we got a table right away and the fish was on our table within three minutes of us ordering. Efficient operation. I forgot to bring a small container of dog chow, so the dog was begging for bits of fish under the table.

Then the girlfriend went to retrieve a package she got delivered at her workplace, and I went to the bar. A bunch of my British pals were there, with an ever-expanding collection of empty beer and cider bottles. Their goal was to fill up a whole rectangle on the table, I got some Chang beers from the fridge and helped them out like the altruist I am. We played poker games, with sips instead of money, and I drank way more than I initially planned.

Chapter 226

I woke up late, with a smile on my face. I ate the leftover fried rice, with a tall glass of grapefruit juice, and did random stuff on the internet. Browsing Facebook, something caught my eye. My cousin is a hardcore endurance athlete, having completed several Ironman triathlons. She must be somewhat insane, like all the people who put themselves through such a grueling ordeal. Well her boyfriend (or at least I think it’s her boyfriend) is doing a 100-mile run, and she posted pictures of him at the starting line. Fucken hell, 100 miles?! 160 km?!?! I looked down at my beer belly, put on my running shoes and headed out. It was overcast and a bit chilly, perfect temperature. I did a loop around a lake, mostly on cute pedestrian/bicycle paths, it must have been around 8 km according to my estimation on Baidu Maps and it was enough for me.

Back home, I rehydrated and took the dog out for a bit, until it started raining. In the afternoon I watched a movie called High Life, about a bunch of death row prisoners sent on a spaceship to work on extracting energy from a black hole or some shit. It was slow, and quite creepy, with an unsettling scene of aging starlet Juliette Binoche getting her post-wall flabby body naked and masturbating with some kind of big mounted dildo. I didn’t like the movie that much, in a similar genre I much prefered Moon, and at least that movie has a denouement, it doesn’t just “end”.

I took a nap, then went to the gym and wrestled with the big Kazakh. It was grueling as all hell, freestyle wrestlers are another breed of humans, like ultramarathon runners. It’s already hard enough to try to move a body the same weight as yours around, but when he’s also trying to move you around and with better technique and the kind of gritty spirit of a nomad of the great steppes who’s been doing it all his life, well, you’re in for a smeshing. Interestingly enough, some of the words he used were directly from French, a testament of the francophilia of the Russian world and also because apparently modern wrestling has been brought to Kazakhstan by some tough French bastards at the turn of the 19^th century. For instance, the drill where you start on all fours and must resist takedown attempts from your opponent is called par terre.

I got home, dropped my sweaty clothes in the laundry, and made some a Thai soup. I browned onions and garlic and scallions, added ginger and various hot peppers, chicken broth, coconut milk, tofu, shrimp, bean sprouts, and a seasoning package I got in Bangkok last year. It hit the spot. We ate while watching a new adult cartoon called Close Enough, about a couple of millenial parents and their young daughter getting into all sorts of weird shenanigans. Then I watched another episode of the hip hop doco series, about 2 Live Crew and the Geto Boys putting southern hip hop on the map in very different ways.

Chapter 225

I had a strange dream: I was sitting in the office of an English teaching mill, surrounded by gossiping, sneering coworkers. I was new there, and when I’d ask a question, they’d be crabby and unhelpful. The photocopy machine didn’t work, or rather it was an old piece-of-shit model that made barely legible copies at an extremely slow speed. I tried to fix it, but ended up making it worst. Then, Joe Biden himself shuffled into the office and summoned me to the photocopier. In his senile, muffled drawl, he condescendingly pointed at the faulty pieces and showed me how to put them back together, but it still didn’t work. Throughout the whole ordeal, there were no classes, the classrooms were empty and there were only vague rumors about when the students would arrive. One of the rumors emanating from the gossip machine was that the students were pretty bad and disruptive.

So yeah, I guess it was a big mish-mash of things I’ve seen and read and thought about recently, put together in a semi-coherent narrative by my bored subconscious mind. Then I woke up around 11, and spent another glorious day doing very little. I cooked fried rice and dropped some torn clothes to be sewn at one of those small dry cleaning and mending shops in the ghetto part of town. It was only a five-minute bicycle ride but it counts as an errand anyway.

I watched several YouTube videos about clown world news. It was depressing but also entertaining in a Schadenfreude way. Some people made a big deal about Obama celebrating his birthday in a lavish party where none of the jet-set cunts attending wore fayssah mursks. I say good for him, fayssah mursks are retarded. Yeah, maybe there’s some hypocrisy at play, but what should we expect? And then there’s the whole thing about vaccines, there’s still a small segment of the population who categorically refuses to get the shot for various reasons, and now the propaganda outlets are working double time to incentivise them to get it, by all means necessary. There’s coercion, bribing, fear, and one campaign that amuses me quite a bit, in which some extremely gay young TikTokers make videos with the airheaded White House press secretary and interview Dr. Fauci on their shitty platforms normally used for junktertainment for primary school kids, with the goal of making the vaccine look “hip” and “cool”. So the last bastions of unvaccinated, the urban blacks, the rural whites, and the Latinos, are going to be convinced by that? Fat fucken chance.

The West is falling to smithereens under our eyes, there’s no question about it. That said, when I’m actually there, I mostly see normal shit, normal people doing normal things, and men and women, whites and ethnic minorities getting along just fine, and all the ethnomasochism and destructive commie currents are barely an afterthought, encountered only on the rare and unpleasant occasions when I interact with an overweight person with unnatural hair color and facial piercings born close to the year 2000. Same thing with my life in China, which is (as the daily autistically obsessive chronicling done on this very blog shows) pretty damn far from the dystopian vision that a lot of foreign media outlets depict.

I spent most of my day doing stuff on my computer, like upgrading from Windows 7 to Windows 10, and moving my stash of cryptocurrency from one platform to another. Whoopdeedoo.

I briefly, very briefly considered going to the pub, as it was Friday night. Staying in with the girlfriend and watching cartoons, hip-hop documentaries and wrestling matches was a much more judicious use of my time.

Chapter 224

Yet another day of doing a big bag of fuckall. Should I feel bad about it though? We constantly hear about productivity n’ shit but I don’t have anything on my to-do list, I do make money for every minute spent sitting on my ass (I’m on paid vacation), and I don’t do anything too destructive like drugs or eating colossal amounts of junk food or spending money uselessly. I did do the calisthenics routine early in the day, giving me a nice pump and a boost of endorphins, so it’s still a net positive.

I listened to three albums by Chinese black metal bands: Vitriolic Sage, Acherozu and Vengeful Spectre. They all kicked ass, there’s some seriously high level black metal in the Yellow Country. I read chapters from Musashi. I browned pieces of meat and put them in the slow cooker.

I started watching a Japanese anime called Aggretsuko, set in a world with anthropomorphic animals, the main protagonist being a raccoon working a soul-sucking accounting job and blowing off steam by singing death metal songs at a karaoké bar by herself at night. I also watched a movie called Jusqu’au Déclin, about a bunch of survivalists in Quebec going to a training seminar in the woods. At first, everything goes well, but then something fucked up happens and their bottled up paranoia and the stash of weapons around exacerbates the problem. Pretty good movie, check it out, it’s on Netflix under the name The Decline.

A friend also recommended me a documentary series called Hip-Hop Evolution, I watched the first two episodes, about the genesis of the genre in The Bronx in the 1970s. Pretty good stuff, and they had lengthy interviews with everyone involved, from Kool Herc to Africa Bambata to Grandmaster Flash among many others. I was a teeny bit surprised the word “Jamaica” wasn’t mentioned once in the whole episode, after all Kool Herc was an immigrant from Kingston and there’s a clear connection between proto-hip-hop and dancehall. Still, it was pretty thorough and interesting, looking forward to the rest of the series.

Chapter 223

Again, a fairly lazy uneventful day in the crib. I watched a documentary on boxing called Counterpunch, it’s only available on Netflix so I got a membership, in the next month I’ll try to watch more interesting stuff on there. I am so picky when it comes to movies and TV series though and don’t want to take the plunge blindly, there’s way too much crap to plough through. I’ll ask friends who have good taste for recommendations.

I watched tons of BJJ tutorials on YouTube, then I went to BJJ practice. We did a few drills to activate muscle memory, and then rolled some rounds. There’s a blue belt I did pretty good against, even catching an armbar after a side control reversal and the ensuing scramble. I outweigh the guy by 50% though, it definitely played a factor. Still, my positional awareness is improving and that feels good.

Then I went to the new microbrewery, they used to operate out of a tent by a stinky tofu cart but now they opened their own small brewpub, with a minimalist decor of wood and aluminium. I had the saison and the gose, two styles I haven’t had in a while. I foresee myself spending quite a bit of my easy-earned cash at that brewery.

Chapter 222

Sometimes this diary spins its wheels in the mud. What did I do on this sunny August 10^th? Not much. I read chapters from Musashi, I listened to music, I watched documentaries. I walked the dog in the early afternoon, and I walked him again. I rested my sore muscles.

We got an e-mail from the principal, he’s in a quarantine hotel for three weeks. Three weeks!!! With that, and the heightened price of airfare to get out of China, and the uncertainty, you’d have to really, really want to go on vacation elsewhere. But like I said before, for many of my coworkers, it wasn’t even a dilemma, they had to go see their families whom they had not seen for over a year. Forgive me for waiting a bit.

Chapter 221

I woke up at 8, just in time for the Metal Minded podcast to start. The boys were talking to two musicians from the melodic death metal band Aeternam, which is based in Quebec City and has had a rather long and fruitful career. I never heard their material, so before the podcast started I gave one track a listen and it wasn’t my cup of tea, a bit too much on the prog side of things, with the Moroccan vocalist doing things that are definitely original but failed to tickle me. Still, the interview/conversation was a fun one, and afterwards I joined the offline after-party and bullshitted (bullshat?) with them for a bit before they all went to bed.

Lunch was a big slice of that savoury cheesecake, while watching an episode of 7 Jours Sur Terre. The main topic was the contentious relationship between Australia and China, in the grand scheme of the rise of my adoptive country as a superpower, and I liked the analysis, I didn’t feel a knee-jerk “China baaaaahd” bias like you often see. Still, the fate of that insignificant kangaroo- and bogan-infested remote large island is a bit of a sad one, being more or less forced to play ball with China like that. I’ve seen some anonymous report from an alleged real estate investor who said that China plans to assimilate Australia completely by 2060, it’s probably a hoax but it was quite interesting to read how the plan was laid out.

I put on an album by Polish black metal band Czort, which I saw recommended more than once, and started reading the behemoth of a novel called Musashi. After a few chapters I was already confused by all the characters’ names, Otsu, Osugi, Omi, Oma, Omu, Otsa, damn it to hell, every time I read something Japanese I get the same problem (except when I read Haruki Murakami, in which the problem isn’t the high number of homonymic characters but just the fact that fuckall happens). Still, it’s not enough to stop me from powering through.

I was all sore and stiff from accumulated stress on my old muscles and joints in the past few days so I had a thorough stretch and took a nap. I slept for most of the afternoon, then went to the gym a bit early, to get a nice stretch and warm-up. The big Kazakh came, and we trained together. He’s built like a boulder, and has been wrestling since a young age, in rough-necked Soviet/Central Asian programs, so I felt like an absolute useless weakling in comparison. I have some okay jiu-jitsu chops at this point but he would put too much pressure for me to apply sweeps or create enough space for attacks, and even when he made the egregious mistake of underhooking my thigh to pass my guard, I couldn’t finish my triangle choke over his big shoulders. Still, a good time was had by all, and it emphasized the importance of physicality in grappling.

I was completely drained, so I rode the short distance to the bar, in the pleasant evening coolness and along the tree-lined streets. It was empty aside from the boss and a Chinese couple in the corner, I wolfed down a cheeseburger with a bottle of Goose IPA then went home. The dog was all excited and wanted to chuquwar, so I leashed him and just as we were going out we ran into the girlfriend who was coming back from hanging out with her colleagues. We went to a grassy pitch to watch the little spaz run around in circles then went back home and had pink cocktails. I watched a bit of YouTube then went to bed early and read more Musashi. A pretty uneventful day but I can’t say it wasn’t a nice one.

Chapter 220

I woke up around 9 and fired up the live UFC event. After a somewhat forgettable bantamweight clash between two Mexicans, a striker from Kyrgyzstan named Rafael Fiziev got his fourth victory in a row in an exciting banger with the ever-game Bobby Green. That concluded the prelims, and then two of my British pals showed up at my apartment for the main card.

Song Yadong broke the 2021 Chinese losing streak with a pressure attack over the promising Casey Kenney, Tecia Torres outpointed Angela Hill (but it was more exciting than a usual Torres fight), Vicente Luque reversed Michael Chiesa’s deep choke with a choke of his own, and José Aldo showed he’s still got it.

I cooked a big greasy breakfast in time for the main event, with eggs, bacon, toast, hash browns, baked beans and fried cherry tomatoes. Not quite a full English but my British homies seemed satisfied. Then Ciryl Gane completely outclassed Derrick Lewis, negating the big gorilla’s one-punch chance. His athleticism, movement and technique are quite unique among heavyweights, and he has a very humble, fun-loving and endearing personality, I’m looking forward to his fight against destroyer of worlds Francis Ngannou.

The fight was for an interim belt, even though Ngannou won the title in March and isn’t injured. The UFC promotion threw the Cameroonian under the bus, saying “he doesn’t want to fight”, which sounds like horseshit to me. Sometimes I hate myself for being a MMA fan and giving so much attention to a scummy org like the UFC, but they’re the ones who put up the big fights so I tune in.

I chilled a bit during the early afternoon, and went outside to get the 20-L bottle of water. Usually the guy delivers but now because of those half-measures for the new covid scare he can’t come to our apartment building. I also bought vegetables at the market for a recipe I wanted to try, I applied myself for an hour in the kitchen doing just that. It’s a “savoury cheesecake”, similar to the original dessert recipe but with no sugar and with fried peppers, bacon, ham and tons of fresh herbs. Let’s see how it turns out, I put it in the fridge after baking time, it has to be completely chilled before we cut it.

I went to play soccer at night. Part of the old gang was there, and a bunch of new guys from Africa. We played for an hour and a half, sweating buckets, a good time was had by all. Two guys couldn’t make it, they got hit by a car on the way to the pitch, but word is they are okay, just a bit bruised.

The savoury cheesecake was pretty damn good, I can’t say I ever had anything like that before. It was like a quiche in some ways, but creamier and heavier, and eaten cold with a big salad (and a white beer).

I looked for something to watch and saw I have the first seasons of The Sopranos on my external hard drive. I watched 20 minutes of the pilot and got bored as hell, I just couldn’t feel anything for the obese balding main character, and for some reason, that kind of New Jersey Italian-American accent grates me to no end.

Chapter 219

I woke up leisurely, chilled for a bit, reading the news and writing my diary. I listened to the first three albums from Satyricon in order, their opus Nemesis Divina is one of the highest points of Norwegian black metal and an absolute must listen. Then I went to Metro to buy imported groceries. I briefly considered going by bicycle like I did dozens of times but it’s so damn convenient to just use the car.

Back home, I made baloney and cheese sandwiches in a baguette bread, and ate it with steamed broccoli on the side to make it a bit “healthier”. I watched a documentary called Fighting In The Age Of Loneliness, a great two-hour piece about the history of MMA with political context of the times mixed in. Some of the parallels were a bit far-fetched and had a clear left-wing bias to them but it was a very well done doco, recommended.

I went to BJJ practice, for the first time in six weeks. I was all excited. There were some new guys, so we drilled some basic moves that I “already know”, quotation marks are there to emphasize that it’s still very useful to practice them to tweak out the small details that make it successful. Then we rolled, one of the new guys is a big bulky Kazakh with wrestling and judo experience, I tried to get him in a triangle choke but it felt like grappling a car, and he smothered me until I tapped. Fair play to him! Good times were had by all, I’m looking forward to get back in the groove.

The girlfriend made eggplant fried with ground pork, and cold noodles. The meal was fantastic. We ate while watching Training Day, one of my favorite movies ever. I must have watched it ten times, and yeah there’s a bit of plot armor and the unrealistic “one in a million chances” clichés I usually dislike but I still love it.

Chapter 218

I woke up even more stupid late than yesterday, in the PM hours, for the first time in ages. I wasn’t hungover, but I was stiff and sore from the calisthenics workout, so I drank a lot of water and tea and stretched a bit.

It was a lazy day, I didn’t go outside during daylight hours except to walk the dog a bit and buy food at a neighborhood store. It was damn hot, the kind of heat that makes you wonder if humans are even meant to dwell in such conditions. Not hairy white-skinned humans, at least.

So I watched history documentaries and videos about the upcoming UFC event this weekend. It’s headlined with an interim heavyweight championship, which is a bit meaningless since the undisputed champ won his belt in March. I hope Ciryl Gane takes it, not just because he’s French and a nice guy, but also because I’m intrigued by the idea of his athletic, movement-based style stacking up against the destroyer of worlds that is Francis Ngannou, I’d rather have that than a rematch against Lewis. But Derrick Lewis is also one hell of a cool fighter, and hopefully if he and the Cameroonian lock horns again, this time it won’t be the literal most boring fight ever.

I also started reading a book called Time Crumbling Like A Wet Cracker, written by an American guy I was working with on my first China posting in 2008. It’s about a mad scientist who developed a time travel machine to go kill bad people before they do their bad deeds, but it ends up unraveling the fabric of time. Pretty fun novel thus far.

At around 18:30 I went to play badminton. It’s in a new venue, and I rode the 2 km there with a beautiful sunset to the west. I played for an hour and a half with randos, and it was great. Badminton is life.

The girlfriend made thick savoury pancakes with ground meat and beans embedded inside, it really hit the spot. We watched the new Rick And Morty and then read a bit before going to bed.

Chapter 217

I woke up stupid late, but whatevah, I’m a strong independent black woman who don’t need no man. Most of our luggage from the trip was strewn all over the living room floor, the only stuff we took care of upon coming home was the food in the icebox. I did laundry and unpacked, and did the calisthenics routine.

Our storage space in the basement is full of garbage and has been since we moved here. I’ve been wanting to ask the landlord to clean it up and the girlfriend disagreed, because “Chinese harmony” or whatever. She finally caved in, and it was no big deal at all, the old lady and her son came, removed all the dusty hoarded crap they had left there, and now we had much more space. Yay. It was extremely hot, I feel like I’ll be taking a cold shower after every time I go outdoors in the upcoming months.

I ate a plate of scrambled eggs and then the girlfriend and I drove to a hospital to get the nucleic acid testing. It sucked shit. I’d give it a 7/10 on the scale of shit sucking, knowing how high the ceiling is. In fact, I’d dock a point since we were a bit lucky and got in line at the right time, only a few minutes later the queue behind us was a hundred meters long.

After a bit more tidying up and sitting around at home, the dog and I rode the longboard to the bar. I had beers with some British pals, then the girlfriend met me at the sushi place, and then I went back to the bar. More of my British pals were there, but the bar was very quiet. The owner said they might be forced to close in the next few days, or stop serving food.

They closed early, just as some more of my old pals came in. They all packed a cab to go to another bar, and I jumped in, why not? The other bar, for whatever reason, was packed, and didn’t seem to be subjected to the covid limited hours of operation. We made a beeline for the pool table upstairs, and since there were five of us, we played a game of protect your balls, that I miraculously won. A Chinese middle aged man, who looked like an art teacher with his shoulder length grey hair, challenged me to a game of 8-ball with 100 yuan on the line. I was dumb enough to accept, and though I played much better than I usually do, he got me. Then he played another one of my homies, and pocketed another red Mao Zedong bill.

One of my buddies who was there is Portuguese, and so is his friend who came over from Macau. I happen to speak Portuguese. They disagree. In their minds, I speak “Brazilian”, and at a very low level, since I can’t understand every single slangy mambo-jambo thing that comes out of their mouths, when they don’t just flat-out refuse to speak to me in their language and reply in English instead. It grated me more than a bit, but not to the point of starting an argument other than pointing out that of course foreigners are more likely to learn Brazilian Portuguese rather than the old country version, since Brazil is a massive country that exports tons of culture while Portugal is a little insignificant corner of Europe.

Still, a good time was had. I made it to bed at 3 AM.

Chapter 216

Distance covered: 1250 km (grand total 13 253 km)

I was up around 6, and took the dog out so he’d get a bit of exercise ahead of the day sitting in the car again. Our inn was in an old town that wasn’t without charm, next to a big pond full of water lilies. It was definitely worth a deeper exploration but we had over 1000 km to cover today so we left as soon as we could, and when we stayed here on the way west it was raining.

We bade farewell to the in-laws, who made their way to Hefei, a good 800 km away. And then we headed home through Shaanxi, Henan, Anhui and Jiangsu provinces. Not much to say here, it was a long unglamorous day. I can’t say it was really unpleasant at any point, with the little traffic and good quality of Chinese highways. The heat sucked, and I was wondering why the hell I was going back to eastern China and its muggy 36-Celsius days.

We got to the big neon-slattered cities of the YRD (Yangtze River Delta) just after it got dark, paid the huge highway toll, and entered the city. I was a bit surprised there was no police checkpoint, with the surge of the pandemic and all. We could be driving a van full of Nanjing airport workers shooting snot rockets everywhere and nobody would stop us.

When we got to the apartment complex, the expropriated farmers in uniforms didn’t want to let us in, and told the girlfriend to call a number. From the half of the conversation that I was overhearing, it seemed like the guy at the end was a massive yinggaishurrer who was making up stuff on the spot, and he didn’t know what to do with us. We came from out of town, but directly from the areas that are still unaffected. They then told us to go get tested, it was past 9 PM and all I wanted was a shower and some rest but we went along, driving a few blocks to a hotel where one wing has been requisitioned by the health authorities. The nurses in thick plastic burqas looked at our tracking apps, and said they only test people coming from the list of affected cities.

So if you’ve been to a hot zone, you get tested for free by the city, but if you haven’t and need a test anyway to be able to travel freely in and out of your own goddamn apartment complexe (or at least, yinggai you need one), then you need to go to the hospital and pay for it? Seems logical. We should have gone to one of those cities for a few minutes, just to get the free test.

So we went home, unloaded the car, and finally got some nice rest. I whipped up a quick pasta meal and watched some YouTube junk videos, enjoying the comfort of my couch. It has been a very nice trip and I’m looking forward to enjoy the rest of the vacation.

Chapter 215

Distance covered: 920 km (total 11 803 km)

Home stretch. Our plan wasn’t set in stone, initially we were supposed to go all the way to the Kyrgyzstan border, and after being refused access to Xinjiang, there had been talks of going southeast into Sichuan and up through Hubei province, or perhaps more camping and exploring southern Gansu and Shaanxi, but now, given the new covid situation, it’s been decided we’d just head to our respective homes. I can’t disagree with that, it had been a kickass and fulfilling trip, especially for me, who left home seven weeks ago. And it will be nice to have a few more weeks at home before resuming work.

But first we have to cross half the damn country. We had a fantastic breakfast at a Tibetan eatery, their yak dumplings were to die for. Then we drove, and drove, and drove. After a stretch on rural mountain roads, we hit the highway for a few hours, then had to ride on another segment of winding rural road before getting to the highway again. Both had their pros and cons, the most obvious advantages being a lot of distance covered in a short time on the highway, and a more interesting drive on the country roads, with its bends and patches of varying quality and proximity to beautiful rural scenery.

“Look at all those mountains and lakes! Why do we live in Jiangsu? It’s so boring and flat over there”

“Because Jiangsu has money”

That’s the bottom line. Those landlocked provinces might be picturesque, but their economic engine isn’t running at nowhere the speed of the eastern seaboard ones.

That got us talking about our jobs. I’m wondering if my coworkers who left China for the holidays will be able to come back at all, and if shit continues to go downhill, if the school will even open. In February and March of 2020, I taught online classes, and there are worst deals than getting full pay to teach seven periods a week from the comfort of my apartment. I don’t want that, though. I want a return to normal, with gyms and restaurants open and teaching face to face, especially if they’re students I haven’t established a rapport with.

I drove the last segment, going through the endless urban expanse of Xi’An and then heading to the town where we had left our small car. It was still there, to our great relief, but then again it had been less than two weeks, and I can’t imagine the placid little town of Dixia has a lot of car thieves. We transfered our stuff from baba-in-law’s Subaru into our Nissan, the rubber lining on the doors was dry and they made a funny velcro sound when we opened them.

Then we got to the hotel we had booked, took showers, had a beer and crashed hard. When the girlfriend had called ahead to inquire about the possibility of filthy foreigners staying there, the lady just said “It’s fine, I won’t register him”. I wish more people would have this attitude in the face of joyless restrctive bureaucratic crap.

Chapter 214

Distance covered: 180 km (total 10 883 km)

We got up early as always, got a quick breakfast and walked to the famed temple Langmusi draws its name from. We had to pay a small entrance fee, walked through the dilapidated village among young and elderly monks in crimson robes sneering at us. I was volunteering to take care of the dog in case we can’t bring him in, as I’ve already been to a buddhist temple (and therefore have been to them all), but nobody stopped him from entering the courtyard. We did take turns with him while the others went to check out the rooms with idols and artefacts and golden buddhas though. In one of the side rooms were older monks loudly arguing (or having a casual conversation, not sure), I peeked in and they were sitting on cushions, making cheese from metal bowls full of curdled milk. Rarely have I smelled anything that foul, and I was a few meters away.

Like everywhere I go, curious people came to talk to the strange bearded foreigner. 100% of the Tibetans were bare-faced, like normal rational people, and maybe 20% of the Chinese tourists were wearing a stupid little fayssah mursk. One woman took it to the next level though, with some kind of electronic thing strapped to the lower part of her face that made her wheeze like the bad guy in Batman and gave her a robot voice. I asked her why she’s wearing that, and she replied “For safe” in Chinglish. But then she took it off to show the girlfriend and I the little fan inside and the USB port to recharge it. Man oh man. We’re always urged to “wear a mask according to science” and as someone who teaches actual science for a living, this shit makes me cringe so hard. Very little of it is scientific and rational, it’s all so goddamn dogmatic and dumb.

Past the temple was a big grassy yard with a creek, where I let the dog run around like a spaz. Then we went up a hiking trail, it was a bit of a tough one, with lots of huge rocks and creek crossings. The dog loved it, hopping from one stone to the other. There was a bit of a commotion ahead, the tourists splitting to let a herd of sheep go through on the narrow flooded path. The Tibetan family was whipping them with branches, and when one of the poor wooly animals would have trouble negociating the big boulders, he’d be grabbed and tossed ahead, landing with a confused “baaaah”.

“Oh no! Poor little yang”, the girlfriend said. Yeah, it sucks, but it’s not as if those little guys are not all destined to slaughter.

I climbed in a cave, using a knotted rope allowing me to get up the steep sandy slope, and then we made our way out to meet the in-laws.

We hopped in the car and got on the road for a day trip. I snaked on an impossibly picturesque road at the bottom of a valley, dodging or stopping for the cows or yaks who would cross the road.

Looking for a nice spot to rest and have lunch, we stopped at a village which had a walled park with some kinds of stupas. We asked a man if we can go in and he said yes, but after we set up our folding table and all the stuff we need, some random parasite came and said we have to pay 2 yuan (lol) each. I wanted to tell her to go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut and stop bothering us, but mama-in-law just paid the paltry sum to get rid of her. I remember how my first interactions with Tibetans in 2009 were mostly negative, I found them not nearly as friendly as the Chinese and constantly asking me for money (and I wasn’t a fan of the stench coming from the rancid butter tea they were guzzling by the gallon), but either the culture has changed or has been beaten out of them, as I didn’t have to deal with much of that nonsense this year and last year when we went to the Tibetan part of Yunnan province.

I heated the rice, bean and meat mixture, plopped a spoonful or two on a tortilla, added salsa, and made burritos that were very well-received. We also had nacho chips, the last of the honeydew melon from Guazhou, and soup made with the beef broth. A group of kids were amassed along the wall, curiously looking at us, no doubt finding the pale-skinned eastern Chinese almost as strange as the overseas barbarian. I went to play basketball with them for a bit, laughing and high-fiving when one of them would score. Great fun. Then I shared some of our food, they were very polite, saying “xiexie” after each piece they took. They spoke Chinese without any trace of an accent (to my ears) but also babbled in Tibetan among themselves and with the adults, that’s nice.

When I went back to have a sip of my now lukewarm beer, there were two donkeys by our table. We fed them melon peels and that only emboldened them to overstay their welcome, inching closer and closer. The dog was in a state of confusion in front of those two imposing herbivores.

Then we made our way to Zhagana (a lot of place names are a bit odd here, as they are Tibetan names turned into Chinese), one of those superfluous tourist sites I described in yesterday’s entry. After an hour and a half driving for free through yet another superb valley with imposing rocky peaks on the horizon, I questioned the point of going there, but the price was fair and my companions really wanted to go, having been sold the hype by the popular travel TV show Baba Qu Nar?, which features young hip dads going on trips with their almost inevitably annoying primary school children.

Well, one can’t deny that the place is seriously breathtaking, even after all the traveling I’ve done on all corners of the world. The village is nestled in a valley with huge steep mountains all around, and the asymmetric buildings on a slope are very reminiscent of those touristy but magnificient towns in Italy, like the in-laws (who went there last year just before covid hit) pointed out. And despite what the ominously packed parking lot suggested, it wasn’t packed with tourists and the horse flies who typically follow (and annoy the fuck out of) them, we walked in the quiet narrow streets before going down an ad hoc hiking path down a barley field, across a stream and up a long staircase, only encountering occasional adventurous tourists, and hardy Tibetans harvesting bundles of barley.

After circling back, we stopped for victory cold drinks at a rustic hotel managed by a young skinny Tibetan guy with a mullet. The in-laws wanted to stay until the sunset, a few hours later, so I drank beer over beer in the meantime. I had a Yellow River, which had a surprising subtle spiced aroma to it that reminded me of the Coup De Grisou (but much less potent), and then a Qinghai Lake, a white barley beer with fruity notes. It’s rare you stumble upon locally made beers that are not run-of-the-mill Chinese light lagers or the occasional chocolatey stout.

Mama-in-law looked at the menu of the downstairs restaurant, with a selection of Tibetan and Sichuanese, and said we should all pick one item for dinner.

“Mapo tofu”, I said, sipping my third beer.

“You want to look at the rest of the menu? They have...”

“Mapo tofu”

“We had mapo tofu yesterday. Don’t you...”

“Mapo tofu”

I love mapo tofu.

After the meal, we went to a viewpoint, which involved a pretty long ascent up a long staircase. I was feeling nice and bloated, after all those beers, and had a cold one in my small backpack for when I arrived up top. The round platform was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with people waiting for the sunset, but there was a big expanse of grass where we could sit, picnic style, and watch the sun disappear over the rocky peaks. The sky then took a bunch of orange hues. Nice.

On the way down, I kept farting unconrollably, something that had been afflicting me a lot in the past few days. The girlfriend said:

“I’ve been fangpiing a lot too! I think it’s because we’re at an altitude of 4000 m, the pressure outside of bodies is lower than the pressure inside.”

That’s... not the dumbest hypothesis I’ve ever heard. I’d say it’s more likely to be the meat-heavy diet but who knows.

The way back to Langmusi was smooth, aside from a near hit with a yak that baba-in-law swerved around at the last second, the dumb jet-black long-haired cow being nearly invisible in the night. We got in past 9 and went to bed soon after, tomorrow is going to be a long day.

Chapter 213

Distance covered: 421 km (total 10 703 km)

Up at 7:20, we had breakfast at the same muslim restaurant across the street and went to retrieve the covid tests. I waited in the car while the girlfriend went in, and she forgot my passport inside. That could have been a huge pain in the ass if I didn’t notice just as we were about to get on the road.

We all have been reading the news, the pandemic is in full swing again, first there were a few cases among workers at the Nanjing airport, but then it spread like wildfire, which makes sense, as it’s summer time and a lot of people are traveling. Now my friends in Nanjing are in a world of suckitude, and everyday more cities report confirmed and asymptomatic cases. So far it hasn’t really reached the remote west, but we have to be extra careful regarding where we go and how we go there. We’re on our last leg anyway, preparing to do the long drive home.

We entered Sichuan province through a quick and easy police checkpoint, after mama-in-law had done her research and confirmed that the cases in the province are limited to the densely populated east and that the far western Tibetan counties don’t have any restrictions or anything that would affect negatively our health QR code.

The scenery was of verdant valleys, with sometimes a village built on the hillside, and of course thousands and thousands of grazing animals. It was absolutely magnificient, words wouldn’t do it justice. I don’t think at any moment through the day did I look at something not incredibly picturesque, even the towns we crossed were cute as hell, with squat square buildings and Tibetans walking around with their wide rimmed hats or red robes.

Consequently, the government officials in charge of tourism are in a bit of a pickle: since the attraction of the region is its natural beauty, how can they set up tourist sites to extract as much money as possible from obedient domestic visitors? You can’t really build Ming Dynasty structures or tacky theme parks. Sure, there are those low-key spots where people can go horseriding and camp in a yurt, but they only attract a certain demographic and you don’t want too much money going into the Tibetans’ pockets, do you? Fencing off the whole province or implanting a chip in people’s brains to charge by the minute every time they look at a beautiful mountain or grassland valley isn’t feasible (though I’m sure it’s been brought up in brainstorming sessions), so then what they did was quite smart, they found a place with particularly dramatic rocky peaks, turned it into some kind of national park (not with preservation in mind; quite the opposite, instead they just overbuilt a site around it), slapped a ridiculous price on it, and got a hype machine rolling.

“Hey look! Lianbaoyezi is that way, down this side road, only a 36 km detour!”

“Well, 72 km if we have to come back to this road. What is Lianbaoyezi?”

“It’s a famous site”

“Why is it famous? What’s there?”

“It’s famous! There are mountains, a river valley, and a Tibetan village”

“Like... what we’ve been driving through for the past hour?” It’s hard not to be snarky and cynical sometimes.

We went, decided it was too damn expensive, and did a U-turn. It wasn’t a waste of time though, the road along the river was beautiful and fun to drive. Some of the lightly sloped green plains reminded me of the Beauce region of Quebec (the golden buddhist temples not withstanding) and the valley with thick coniferous tree cover also reminded me of my homeland. We stopped by the river for lunch, mama-in-law bought a piece of beef from the muslim restaurant and cooked it in the electric pressure cooker they had been lugging along, the meat was very good but tough, it should have been braised for much longer. After we ate, I chopped the leftover beef in tiny chunks, mixed it with leftover rice and beans, that I’ll use tomorrow to make burritos. We chilled there for a bit longer, my driving duties were completed for the time being, so I had a beer and a nice glass of apple pie Bailey’s, something the Venezuelan had in his fridge in Nanjing, and that I fell in love with.

After a whole afternoon driving on those remote, but excellent quality country roads, we got to Langmusi. Unlike the backwater dusty towns of Jiuzhi and Dulan, Langmusi is a full-on tourist city, with guesthouse after guesthouse after knickknack shop. Some even had English signs, hoping to cater to a foreign backpacker crowd who’ll likely never come, backpackers are notoriously lame and tend to stick on a very beaten path, especially those who come to China.

We had a meal at a Sichuan restaurant, all the classics, and then got back to the hotel. I had a Skype convo with my dad, my brother and his two kids, the connection was a bit spotty at times but I’m still grateful we’d been able to use the internet at all, in this faraway corner of the mountains. Also the dog peed on the bed, something he hadn’t done in a long long time. I punished him and he bared his teeth at me like an insolent teenager, which looked more silly than threatening, with his underbite that separates his front teeth by a good centimeter.