Not avoiding Spanish red wine

Up lateish at tenish, to be told that we been invited out to eat lunch with Fan and his wife. I got a shower while Tan took Leilei to his grandma’s to babysit as he can get quite bothersome at meal times with adults, especially if he is tired. We took a taxi to the Pingguo aluminium company area. This company is one of the biggest aluminium mining places in China, and a target for American ownership, although they have only sold 8% to the Americans as there is a big need for aluminium in China itself. The reason we sometimes go to eat here (it is on the outskirts of the town) is that many of the employees of the company live there, and are catered for by numerous restaurants.

Horse boss and his wife came along for the meal, and Fan’s son was there too, so in total that made nine people. We had our own private air-conditioned room, as is quite normal now, and the table was already resplendent with coriander grass root, cow ligaments with fried boiled eggs (yes, they boil them and cut them into quarters before frying them), boiled peanuts and the like.

Then the bombshell…Fan took out four bottles of yesterday’s Spanish plonk and set about opening them with a variation of corkscrew, chopsticks, fingers and lighters. I suggested that we open one first to see how it was (just in case), but this just fell on deaf ears as Fan cumbersomely managed to open four bottles, then give one each to me, Horse boss, Xiao Li and himself (chivalrously avoiding the women), each with a crumbling, floating cork inside.

After I had exchanged my wine glass for a clean one, I poured myself a small glass, as the others filled theirs nearly to the brim. The wine had a slightly orangey hue, which, along with the pungent smell, the year and the country of origin, didn’t bode well.

Well, yes, it tasted rank. Of course I couldn’t say this, although Xiao Li did remark, “it isn’t sweet”, which would have been almost a compliment in Europe. In order to keep face, but also keep myself from looking like I was eating a lemon, I poured a small amount of lemonade in to reduce the bite. This made it bearable, and Xiao Li did the same, although Fan wouldn’t taint his pride and joy. To add to the awkwardness of the situation, as each man had his own bottle, you couldn’t just sip slowly as it would be quite evident that your bottle wasn’t going down. On the contrary, Fan seemed happy to drink half a glass at a time, which meant we all had to too. After half an hour, Horse Boss’s face was as red as his drink, although he seemed quite jovial. An hour later, more food arrived, then more and more. Suddenly we realised Fan, Xiao Li and myself had finished our bottles (I was on half lemonade by that time), but Fan noticed Horse Boss still had three quarters of a bottle left. Oh, phew, just what I wanted…how we laughed as we quaffed the rest of it down.

We got back at 3ish and I went to pick up the photos I’d put in for developing the previous day. They turned out really well, although most will be appropriated by visitors to Xiao Li’s house, as happened to forty or so of the fifty I brought from England.

Going back after red "wine" lunch - Horse Boss's wife, Tan, A Ni in the middle and I think that's Fan on the right

Slept from 3.30 to 6.30pm on a bellyful of wine, then got up to eat, before being whisked off to the hair salon by Xiao Li. I had a new masseuse this time as this one specifically asked to do me, and my usual one did Xiao Li. Wow! This one was even better and really made me feel comfy with a fantastic head massage. When she started doing my neck, another girl joined in to do my arm and I was in heaven for twenty minutes. When my hour was up I felt so good I did ten slow press-ups on the couch to impress them, then jumped down to have my hair brushed and gelled. In the meantime, Xiao Li’s elder sister’s husband had turned up to take us out to “drink tea” again.

So we ended up at the same KTV bar as last time and although I was served tea, I never got the chance to drink anything else but 3.1% beer with a load of friends/business partners who seem to take delight in having a foreigner amongst them. Actually I was quite sensible and didn’t drink too much and got home at midnightish.