Today I left Hangzhou and arrived in Nanjing, which means south capitol in Chinese. Beijing means north capitol and tokyo (dongjing in Chinese) means east capitol. Nanjing has actually been the capitol of China twice, first during the Ming dynasty and most recently at the beginning of the 20th century.

This is my second time today at the internet place down the street from my hotel since I don’t have to work today. Except when I came this time it was in the middle of the night and I had to travese another network of dark alleys through which I could hardly see. There was one guy picking through trash, and it wasn’t a casual affair; serious scavenger business. Respect

It’s hot as a motherfucker in this internet place and the girl next to me who’s now eating noodles has been bugging me for the last hour. She’s constantly adjusting her webcam and pointing it at me so her friends can see the caucasian that’s SITTING RIGHT NEXT TO HER OMG I’M SERIOUS LOOK FOR YOURSELF 🙁 I wave and then flick them off and smile and then adjust the camera back towards here to which she reacts violently and immediately adjusts it back. Fuck it, I give up.

This afternoon I was here and I met a girl named Ivy who’s in school to learn english, although we spoke in Chinese the entire time. She understood everything I said, which was sweet. Often I have trouble with people not understanding my Chinese through my American accent, which I do my absolute best to mask. I asked her to watch the Korean movie Sex is Zero with Kim and I, but she had family business to attend to and said we should meet tomorrow. She told me that this city has a giant wall around it and apparently a large number of smaller great walls which she’d show me. Okay, cool.

I just got finished listening to Maiden Voyage by Miles Davis and now I’m tuned to Ry Cooders El Cuarto de Tula on the Buena Vista Social Club soundtrack which is outstanding. It really suits the unbearably-hot atmosphere of this place, and if I wasn’t surrounded by Chinese people I could almost imagine myself in Mexico.

My hotel is really pretty great. According to the elevator I’m on the 5th floor, but by my count I’m on the third. Maybe they’re hiding two floors somewhere that I can’t see. When we arrived Kim was goddamn ecstatic because the hotel brochure indicates that they have a game room with ping pong, billiards, and cards and chess, an exercise room, and two restaurants; one Chinese and one Western. When he asks where all of this is located they, without a trace of shame, tell him that they don’t actually have any of that shit. I almost had to pull him away from the concierge as he was completely stunned:

Concierge: We don’t have any of that stuff.
Kim: What do you mean? It’s right here in the brochure.
Concierge: Yeah, sorry.
Kim: What do you mean you don’t have it?
Concierge: We don’t have it.
Kim: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE IT?
Concierge: …..
Kim: HOW CAN YOU.. WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON’T HAVE IT?
Me: Okay Kim, lets go now.

Ten days and I’ll be in Thailand.

These have been the names of the last three clubs that I’ve played at. They all start with T. I will be watching closely for tonights club to make a quintuplet.

I really have a lot to write about them, but I’m short on time as I’m about to meet up with Danny who’s leaving for Shanghai today.

Trendy Club was unbelievable. In true trendy fashion, they absolutely flipped out when I didn’t play house music. I came into there with an agreement with myself that I would play music that they don’t hear in places like this. I wouldn’t stick to protocol, I would break all of the rules as flagrantly as possible. I played Gin & Juice first and ressurrected the dead dance floor and before Award Tour was finished the manager of the club was up in the booth yelling at me. Here’s approximately how it went:

him: WHAT ARE YOU DOING
me: HI. DJ’ING
him: THIS IS CHINA
me: THANKS
him: YOU MUST PLAY HOUSE HERE
me: I DON’T WANT TO PLAY HOUSE HERE. PEOPLE ARE DANCING NOW
him: NO, I PAY THOSE PEOPLE TO DANCE
me: WHY THE FUCK DO YOU DO THAT?
him: THIS IS CHINA THIS IS CHINA
me: OKAY I’LL PLAY HOUSE

I played Smack my Bitch Up next and then Kim ran on the dancefloor and started breaking. I hit stop on the song that was playing and dropped Rappers Delight to make the place more conducive to dancing, but the manager of the club literally pulled Kim mid-windmill off the dancefloor and forbid him from breaking. I got really agitated at this point and played Mary Jane by Rick James to cool off a bit. I knew their heads were about to explode at a club as musically xenophobic as this one, so I went through some other tracks quickly and then prepped the Gypsy Kings cover of Hotel California (the one played when Jesus is bowling in Big Lebowski). The guy came in the booth and cut me off¬†and I dropped the mighty Gypsy Kings which played for about 90 seconds until they started with some awful Chinese house music which instantly cleared the floor and reclaimed the clubs Trendy namesake. After Hotel California I was going to play the end sequence of Killing in the Name of by RATM with the “fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me” sequence which would have undoubtedly been the most rebellious single moment in my years of DJ’ing. Being in 10 clubs in 20 cities over 2 months makes me realize the ridiculous overabundance of clubs in China; 90f them are all the same and play the same music over and over; I’d much rather play what I want to play and be kicked off while playing AC/DC than have some chump businessmen dance with 16 year old prostitutes while I play Chinese lovesong techno remixes like some of them want me to. Oh, also. Even though my set was cut short, my Coors boss said that she had a friend in the club who owns another local club and wants me to DJ there, and she gave me his number to call him when I’m back from Thailand. Funny how things work out sometimes.

Touch Club last night was a lot of fun, though. The place was like a loft-style club, but really dope and much less stuffy, in terms of the crowd, the music, the atmosphere, and so on.

Today I’ll negotiate with Ronny, a DJ/promoter in Shanghai that has 4 gigs that he’s lined up in September. I’d consider him a friend, so if the dates work, I’ll do it.

The guy next to me in this internet cafe is singing pretty loudly while checking his email. Sweet.