Back to Nanning for Xixi's first birthday!

I decided to take the train again to Nanning in the hope that this time I would get a seat. Either way I prefer to be on tracks than a road here - less chance of human error. Although I must say the new road from Pingguo to Nanning is of high quality, though rather expensively there is a 40 kuai toll each way for the one hour journey. That's about 3 pounds something and I reckon would be expensive in UK too. Even taking the coach is 35 kuai, compared to the 19 kuai for the train that takes the same time and isn't subject to traffic jams. Anyway, this time at the station I waited near the front of the train. I needn't have worried as there were plenty of spaces and I was able to get the laptop out and do some work.

I got the taxi to Tan's 2nd sister's house and as I was walking towards her block of flats I heard a "baba!, baba!". Well this little boy who was supposed to be in bed in hospital with a drip hanging out of his arm was at a neighbour's house and thoroughly enjoying himself. Either that was a remarkable recovery or he wasn't as bad as was made out. In my experience most Chinese are hypochondriacs. Despite the great amount of traditional Chinese medicine, every house I've been to is stacked with various pills for various conditions - veritable mini-pharmacies. As soon as someone coughs, or complains about a headache it's off to the cabinet to down a couple of pills, or worse, go straight to the doctors to have a drip injected into your head (if you are a child) - that happened last time with Leilei so I'm not just making it up. Whatever happened to letting your body get better itself? Maybe I should import some bovril or marmite here - this could be the only country outside the UK where they'd actually like it. Have you ever seen a French person eat marmite without swearing about the British? I rest my case.

I had brought the biggest birthday cake I could order in Pingguo. It cost 148 kuai so getting on for 15 quid. Chinese birthday cakes are the best in the world. Fact. It doesn't matter how much you eat before, you can always manage a slice or two after (unless you have asucrasia).

Baba and Xixi

Xixi enjoying her birthday at the restaurant

In the evening we went for a walk to a lovely restaurant not far away. Of course we had our own private room. I don't normally like that but at least you avoid others' smoke. Leilei and Xixi were both a bit fractious and it was quite annoying. After a while they were taken home and we were able to eat our meal in peace. I expected them to be asleep when we got back but at least Leilei was still up waiting for me as I'd promised him a present if he was good (which he wasn't but I wasn't ready for another tantrum). At least he really appreciated his fake lego cement mixer.

Leilei's cement mixer on top of the red flag he received for being "hen guai" (very good) at school (those characters are his own work).

We woke up Xixi to sing Happy Birthday (Sheng ri kuai le) and she didn't really seem to appreciate it as much as she might have done three hours previously. I hadn't intended to spend the night in Nanning but it was already nearly 10 so I did. Tan got a phone call from her friend A Ni asking why we were celebrating Xixi's birthday on the 11th instead of the 12th. Ah. Please don't tell Xixi in the future - I thought Tuesday was the 12th and had been planning so for a couple of weeks. Well at least I would be in Nanning for it, with plenty of birthday cake left. I didn't tell the rest of the family though :)

Xixi's early birthday cake