We went down to Nanning to see Tan's eldest sister and a couple of relatives today. It was really nice to see Tan's eldest sister and she really got a lot out of seeing Leilei. The other two sisters were not really sisters at all, more like cousins, but I didn't have the heart to ask how far apart.
Tan's eldest sister, an aunt, Leilei, an uncle, Tan
Two of Tan's cousins, me, Tan, A Da, A Ni, Lao Ma
One of Tan's cousins in a slightly scary pose
We stayed for a nice evening meal. I noticed that, as in some other Chinese apartments, there was an expensive-looking bottle of XXXXX0 Cognac. I guess the more Xs the more expensive. The father may have glimpsed me looking at it as he brought the round bottle down and poured me himself a rather large glass. For some reason the colour was more dark red than dark yellow. That reason was wine. Chinese wine at that. He'd basically decanted a bottle of hongjiu into this bottle for some reason that I expect meant to impress. I only took the one glass.
Later I went with the girls to sing song. At least they sang song...I took a couple of mini-films, wishing my camera took longer and brighter ones....
She can actually sing quite nicely...and this is a nice song
It was worth going to karaoke as it woke me up a bit and I needed it as Venky was coming soon. At least that was the plan. We got to the airport but I received a text from him (to my English number annoyingly) that he was a tad delayed. It was annoying as I responded and probably used up a quid of my credit doing so. It wasn't such a big deal; we went to get a bite to eat somewhere and came back later. But we noticed his flight was delayed again and we didn't have a definite time. Eventually he texted me again to say he'd got halfway to Nanning before the pilot decided to turn back again for some technical reason.
Finally, gone midnight, he texted to say he was off again, and it was not long before 1am that we actually met up. But no speak of immediate sleep. The first thing was to find some food, which we managed easily at something like 1.30am. Here we had some delicious bbq fish and other vegetarian delights that A Wu and I also tucked into, together with the ubiquitous Li Quan. It was good to see Venky in Guangxi, just two and a bit years after the last time time in Beijing and Shanghai!
Uncle Lu took this picture of A Wu, Venky, and me tucking into bbq fish, squid, and sweetcorn...just what the doctor ordered for a 1.30am snack
Welcome to Guangxi Venky!
We dropped Venky off at his hotel at gone 3am and I got back to Tan's cousin's house even later much to her chagrin, but I explained we couldn't do much about aeroplane delays (though I'm not sure I mentioned the bbq and beer).
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