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| Tai Chi in the morning |
It seemed like this bloke didn't want us to cross his path. Actually he was very friendly
Xixi enjoying the park and the weather
Zhang Yong came to pick us up for lunch at 10.30, just as I was starting to digest a boiled egg, a fried egg, three sausages, bacon, greens and a bowl of fruit (to balance the meal). He took us to a rather good restaurant he took us to two years ago that specialises in crabs. We managed to get through the crab and prawn dishes fairly easily for an 11am lunch. I was a bit disappointed they only served Budweiser beer, and more so that it was only 3.1%, as I was hoping to be a bit tiddly before catching the plane to Nanning. Still, after three bottles I was feeling the effect that was quickly to wash away.
We got back to the hotel where our mian bao taxi was waiting – basically a van (mian bao means bread – as the van looks like a loaf of bread). We said goodbye and thanks for all the crabs to Zhang Yong, then made the half hour journey to Shanghai’s 2nd airport, Hong Qiao, which serves internal destinations. While checking in the security woman asked me to open one of our bags which I duly did. She rummaged around and found a bottle of vodka and one of whisky, which I explained were presents. She shook the vodka and seemed happy, then began going through everything asking what it was (Tan had taken Xixi to be changed so it wasn’t easy to translate everything). Eventually she laid her hands on some hand cleaning gel that purports to get rid of 99.9% of germs. I explained this was important for the children’s health as it reduced the chances of them them catching diseases but this woman was out to get something from this bag so she decided to prove how “dangerous” the gel was by dipping some cotton wool into it and lighting it. Guess what? It stayed alight. Wow. It’s not like it exploded or anything. Stupid bitch, by that logic she should have confiscated the vodka and whisky, I mean this wasn’t even hand luggage. I reckon it was just to do with not losing face after asking someone to open their bag for inspection. Well at least no-one noticed the bottle of hand gel in Tan’s hand luggage…
Anyway, the plane was delayed due to “mechanical trouble” according to the sign in the departure lounge, to “aeroplane maintenance” according to the announcements over the tannoy, and to “late arrival of aeroplane” according to the announcement in the plane itself. I suppose all three could be true though it doesn’t do one’s confidence any good. At least after the first hour’s delay you can show your boarding passes and get a free bottle of tea, and after the second hour you get a free meal and a can of tea. Fortunately (not for the airport cleaning staff) the delay was only a few minutes over two hours, so just as everyone was tucking into their food there was a rush to queue to get on the plane, which meant the bins quickly filled with half-eaten trays of rice, pork etc. During this time three ladies introduced themselves to us – they were friends of Tan’s big sister, returning to Ping Xiang near the Vietnam border where they all live. They’d seen us and wondered if we might be Tan’s family so they rang big sister to find out. So there was a lot of cooing over Xixi – not for the first time this trip I expect…
We arrived at the airport and Tan’s 2nd sister arrived half an hour later to pick us up with about four friends. We just about managed to get all our stuff into the two small cars, and made the 45 minute drive to her house with no back seatbelts and kids squirming all over the place. Tan’s 2nd sister (we call her Er Jie – sister 2) has a modest two-bedroomed apartment about a 10 minute drive from central Nanning. There were some other people – friends, neighbours and relatives – in the house to greet us so I went out with A Heng (Tan’s brother’s son) to buy some barbeque then got to bed at around 2am.
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