Ok, so I moved around a couple of jobs. Because I was not doing well in Wenzhou but they liked me, they sent me to Yangzhou. Yangzhou is another super interesting city.
In history it was where all of the salt on the Yangzthe was taxed, in the old days salt was way more important than money, all the way up until refrigerated transport, you could not transport meat without salting it. Because old China was based on these two huge rivers being the salt town on one of the major rivers made it a huge deal.
Now what is it famous for? Cooking of course, there’s a Chinese dish called ‘Yangzhou Fried Rice’ which is just fried rice to everyone else, little bits of pork and egg and onion in boiled rich that is somehow delicious (the secret is to boil some milk in the rice, the Chinese stole it from English rice pudding when King Arthur went there)
Anyway in Yangzhou I did a lot better, I got out of my own head and made an effort to be too nice to everyone. Someone actually said that people thought I was weird because I said hello to everyone, but in Wenzhou sometime I accidentally just moped around, so that was better.
Yangzhou is also famous for whores. One of the famous emprerors used to go there on holiday every year and being a relatively humble city, they apparently imported top class whores from all over the kingdom to make sure the emperor kept coming back.
They also used to send divers to put fish on his hook when he went fishing.
Whores in those days were high class ladies though. They would be able to sing and tell stories and speak languages and so on, coooool.
Anyway, I did well here, I was there for a year and had a weird love affair with a bar girl. It was not really that weird at all, we both liked each other, but her job was flirting with men and I was a drunk.
I did like being a member of a bar though, they probably still remember me, I used to come in on Tuesday and Saturday. It was lush
Was this the town that I let down? No! (well maybe)
See I did let them down, like I did have mates there and was a character in their story, but I was drinking absolutely loads and also being a dickhead, and it happened twice I was this loud really drunk foreigner, it got back to the school, they were pretty angry.
I’m one of those people, like I genuinely do mean well, and I’m not thick at all, but I have this very toxic streak which I just have no idea how to address. So people like me, and then I do something awful and it’s still me, but it just makes people wonder who you really are.
This is all self humiliation and antisocial aggression, not killing or stalking or anything dangerous by the way. I did scare people by accident when I was young, but I never got off on ‘i’m taller than you’ . Nobody knows themselves/
Anyway. So what happened, the police got in touch with the school, I don’t know what was said, but I mean that sentence is enough.
Because they liked me, after almost a year, a failed love affair, some hard drinking and whoring, I was moved by my employer to a third location. Will this be the town that I let down?
Find out next week
I was canny mad when I was young. Like I was 30, not a kid, but I was always agitated and up for something. I can imagine in theory just going to a city like Shanghai with no plan and just having a great weekend, but the reality, I can’t be arsed
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