A Wu's stonery and another head wash

In a change from the normal schedule I picked up the kids from Waipo at Er Jie's house and took them to school with A Wu at 10am. We then moved on to A Wu's office before driving the 15 minutes to his work to see how things were progressing there. Things were indeed progressing nicely, and he is making a tidy sum on a regular basis. While I was there I saw a few small blue lorries turn up and pay 160 kuai for a load of coarse stones, then some red lorries, ten times the size, pull up and get filled too. The finer the stone, the more expensive apparently. Anyway, most of it goes into the building of new apartments, which are sprouting up at a seemingly relentless rate here.


A Wu's stonery still going well


Loading up a small lorry with stones worth about 160 kuai

So much for the inspection, we went back an hour later at midday and had a meal of pork, beef and egg fried greens with one of his boss friends before heading off for the highlight of the day - a "foot wash".

Much like going to "drink tea", or "sing song" a foot wash is much more than you might expect. We went to the Ming Dian hotel and took the lift to the top floor, before taking the stairs another flight up to the massage area. After some chatting with the ladies at the reception we got our own private room with two beds and I changed my trousers to a pair of the massage place ones so I didn't need to roll mine up. What ensued was 100 minutes of mostly pleasure, interrupted during the first half an hour by some foot massaging that was rather rough and tickly at the same time. My feet were plunged into near-boiling brown water (I'm told it was medicine) while the lovely girl rubbed and massaged all areas before attempting to take off a layer of old skin.

I could have done with 100 minutes of massage without the feet as after that she proceeded to the rest of my body for the next hour or so. So good was it that I managed to get a bit of kip afterwards on the couch. This is pure decadent luxury that I hope to repeat a few more times during my stay here. 100 minutes for 58 kuai - I will return!

We left the place at 5pm and Lin Hong rang to say the kids were with her and would stay the night there. Well, ok, I said, as long as they're fine with that. Then we went back to A Wu's office where I was told we were to have a meal in a bit. "A bit" can mean anything from 30 seconds to 3 hours so I set out to find a wifi adapter for A Wu's laptop so I could set up a wireless router and rid him of his ethernet cable. Well that proved to be a bit harder than I imagined but I finally happened upon a computer shop where they cut a 5 metre ethernet cord for 7 kuai so I could configure the router, then I also bought a 3.5mm to 3.5mm connector so we could have tv sound from the laptop at our home. I found that a USB wifi adapter would be 250 kuai so I said "bu yao" to that as you can get them back home for a fiver and I had a spare one with me anyway. As I was chatting to the girl in the shop I got a call from A Wu to hurry back to the office as they were ready to eat. Ten minutes later I was there and they were already eating, all of the workers from the carwash place behind the office, about 20 in total - men at one table, women at the other.

A Wu's office's 1st anniversary party - Mr Liang in the foreground. Note the ingenious way of opening a beer bottle by the bloke at the back

Apparently it was A Wu's office's first anniversary, and my friend Mr Liang, the bloke from Baise with halitosis came too. I haven't seen him for the last year or so, but he is one of the people I know from my early visits to Pingguo in 2003/2004. The food and company were good, and there was a fair amount of cai ma before I started feeling full. Someone went out in A Wu's car to pick up some more beer, and then again a bit later. I eventually made my excuses and left, walking the 15 minutes back to the house in an attempt to burn off some beer calories.