Now it had just started raining before I left. So I made the intelligent decision to take a brolly with me. Unfortunately it didn't attach to the bike as so many do here, so I had to hold it. This worked ok for about 10 seconds until I was out of the apartment complex and within the blink of an eyelid it decided to deluge. So much so that the streets were nearly deserted. Ha! Funny how water can make something deserted (desert - geddit? - ok I don't write wedding speeches). Anyway, being British, or maybe simply stupid, I decided against turning back and only being half soaked, and headed on towards our place. Predicatably, despite the umbrella, I arrived soaked to the bone as I had been attacked by raindrops the size of pigs eyeballs from every angle.
So I got to the apartment/flat/house - actually I think I'll just call it "fang zi" as they do in Mandarin - and found my guitar. My lovely, if rather small and not fantastic quality, guitar. Maybe it was to do with having been on the 14th floor but it was dreadfully out of tune, something slightly weird as it had held its tune since last year when I found it back in June. I used the only way I know of tuning up a guitar by ear alone and hummed the first note of "Stairway to Heaven" by Led Zeppelin, and got the 'A' string more-or-less correct, if an octave lower. Then I did the low 'E', then the 'D', the 'G', the 'B' and finally the "ping!". Damn, the little 'E' string had snapped and I couldn't even sing the blues.
I looked around, and saw that as well as no guitar I had no television, no computer, nothing to power with the electricity that actually worked. I should have been happy in my element but I really hankered after playing the guitar. I noticed that the rain had eased off, and even my shirt, hanging out on the balcony, had somewhat dried. So I went back down the lift to the music shop where I'd purchased the guitar two years ago to get some strings. I recognised the girl there and I guessed she recognised me. For some reason she thinks I'm slightly loopy. At least that's the look in her eyes she gives me when she talks to me. But I managed to request the strings, and the fact that it was an acoustic and not an electric guitar. She went to get what I needed and I found one of the tiny piano rooms in the place. It had been months since I'd tickled the ivories so I sat down and bashed out a rather rusty "The Entertainer". The piano was somewhat out of tune, but I'm sure my fingers tortured Joplin's ghost* more than that, and then possibly laid it down to rest with a rendition of "Maple Leaf Rag". I don't know if the shop assistant appreciated it or not, but she came in and turned on the light to the room during "Maple Leaf Rag" - maybe she thought I couldn't see the keys - how embarrassing!
* I ripped that from John Fowles's "The French Lieutenant's Woman", which I had to study for English Lit. A level.
Before going back to the fang zi, I went to have a look for a couple more stools to complement the two we already have there. Ma Laoban said I should order them from Nanning, but I didn't have time, and eventually found a couple of second hand ones in a second hand furniture shop. They also had tables and desks there and I made some measurements as I'll need one for my study. I said I'd pop back in the afternoon and rang Boss Yang to see if he and his pregnant wife and his son could meet me for lunch. He said they'd be there in 15 minutes, so Leilei and I went to the place that just opened up last month where they do a very good chilli frog hotpot. It was a nice meal, although Leilei only ate zhou, and Boss Yang's son gave Leilei a model kit of something that looked like a transformer but had about 200 pieces - slightly too much for his years at the moment. Although Leilei was painfully shy at first, by the end of the meal he was inviting Yang's son back to our house to play. Before that, though, we all went to see our new fang zi, and they were all impressed.
Leilei and Boss Yang's son
Anyway I did manage a bit of a siesta. I don't know why these last few days have been so hard - it's as bad as I can remember since having babies waking you up at all hours - someone here said it was my body getting back into UK time. Well, whether that was true or not, Li Kun woke me up at 4ish to invite me to have a drink that evening. Of course I said yes. But first I went for a meal with Er Jie and a few other people I didn't know. I actually drank Cocacola with sugar for the first time in years in an effort to wake up and enjoy the beef rib hotpot. Then Li Kun came to pick me up. He is pretty sensible in that although he has use of a van, he came in a san lun che as we were going for a few beers, and wouldn't drink and drive. Good man.
We decided on a bar called "1951". It was one of the very few actual bars I've been to in Pingguo, and was resplendent in US-style decor, complete with a central bar containing a number of bottles of Western spirits, the likes of most I hadn't seen in Pingguo before. Although I fancied sitting at the bar, Li Kun was insistent that we have our own table, and went on to explain that when you invite a friend out it is customary to have your own space and not share with strangers. I explained that that was part of the fun in UK pubs (at least if you're single), and we both shared a laugh about our different "wen hua" (culture). We had a bucket of small bottles of Li Quan Qi du, meaning the 3% beer, and a portion of fries with ketchup and slices of cucumber and carrot with a soy sauce and wasabi dip, plus a portion of crab legs too! It seems you never go out just for a drink here! Another of his friends turned up an hour of so later, and I recognised him from a couple of years ago. We chatted till gone 10pm but Li Kun could see that I was flagging, so he kindly said he could see that and he'd take me home no problem. We got a san lun che back to Er Jie's place, where I got out and he went back to finish the beers with his mate. A nice, if exhausting day came to an end five minutes later when I crashed out on the bed at 11pm
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