Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Bad shave but unlikely 12-in-a-row "Year" win at cai ma

Found out from Anzhe that his room in Shenzhen was the equivalent of the Presidential Suite, and he could have got one for well under half the forty quid he paid. That will teach me to speak to the hotel receptionist in English... He took the ferry to Hong Kong, got on the plane and then waited three hours on the tarmac with free beer while they sorted out a problem he soon forgot existed...

I needed a haircut. Actually I needed a shave more. Although the Chinese blokes think it's cool to have a week's worth of Caucasian beard the wife doesn't, and I don't want to sleep with my mates so the growth had to go.

I went to see Xiao Lu, the bloke who used to be married to Lao Ma, who used to be one of Tan's best friends. Well he is still my mate and he has his own salon, so I went to kill two birds with one stone and get a cut and shave at his place. I took the electric bike down to the salon in the most sweltering day it's been so far. Now he does a good haircut (even the wife approves) but today he decided to use a cut-throat razor to take off my week's facial hair. To cut a long story short (awful, but unintended pun), he did cut my throat. In several places. Eventually when the pain was too much to handle and I'd lost a couple of pints of blood we admitted defeat and I went home to the relative safety of my Wilkinson Sword where I got the job finished in a couple of minutes. He still charged me 25 kuai though.

Me and my friend Xiao Lu

Me with a look of fear after seeing the cut-throat razor

That night we went to another new restaurant to celebrate A Hua's birthday. There are so many "new" establishments here it's scary...have a feeling there's a bubble about to burst such is the building that's going on.

Such a typical scene in/around Pingguo at the moment - something big is happening

A Hua's wonderful birthday meal

The food was excellent and the company complemented it perfectly, except that this was the first evening without Anzhe. The reason I most missed Andge was the mathematical unliklihood of what transpired during the meal when I was challenged to play "One Year" of cai ma by Chen Mei's husband (a cai ma master by all accounts). "One Year" means you play 12 rounds of cai ma, with the loser of the first round drinking one finger of beer (January), then the loser of the second round drinking two fingers etc until you get to the loser of the last round who has to drink twelve fingers of beer to celebrate December. Really simple.

I won the first four rounds to my surprise, though that only meant my opponent had to drink 10 fingers of beer in total. Then the fireworks started. Literally. Outside there were many apartments being built, and as one stage had been finished it was decided to have a huge fireworks display close to the restaurant that scared even the local kids at the meal. Leilei had to go out to the corridor for half an hour for some respite from the noise.

Fireworks outside the restaurant - went on for far too long

When we got back to playing "One Year" I was understandably quite thirsty. But I won the next round, and the next, and before I knew it it was October and my opponent was actually quite pissed - the first time I'd ever seen him in such a state as he is normally a very cool character. Of course he didn't want to lose face, so after another delay for some more duck and raw fish we got to the penultimate round, or "November" as it is obviously called. I had a slight feeling of pity, but the thought of winning a whole year on my first go gripped me. "Lai....hclee!!" I won on my first go with a "four". It took flipping ages for him to down his eleven fingers and by now I was parched so I poured myself a beer in a separate glass and downed it. I wished I could help him with his. By now I wondered if I could lose if I tried, but when we got back to the game he seemed focused and settled...twelve fingers would be 3 glasses of beer (they are pretty small over there...)..."Lai...chek....yi du!...chek...hoi!...chek...lok lok!...chek...gum!...check...yi du!!!!". Shit a brick I'd done it! Twelve rounds in a row I'd beaten this bloke. January to December....four seasons.... If this was random I would have had a 1 in 4096 chance of a perfect game (I think). At least I have him as a witness if he remembers it. The whole thing lasted well over an hour all told, but will live in my memory forever.