I left them playing there with Chuan chuan and went back to our house to do a little more unpacking. In the late morning I rang my friends Li Kun and Uncle Yellow. Li Kun was working so said he'd meet me later in the week. Uncle Yellow was just around the corner from our house with his wife and three month old son, and said he'd come to pick me up as I'd not seen his son before. In the lift a family from a few floors below us got in and a girl said "hello" to me. It transpired she was an English teacher in Nanning, but Pingguo was her hometown. We exchanged some conversation in English but quite frankly it was easier in Chinese. I thought of Awl possibly coming over here to work in Pingguo or Nanning and asked her if she knew any schools. She said she would find out and let me know, so we exchanged phone numbers outside the building. Then I noticed Uncle Yellow was waiting for me on his bike so I gave him a big slap on the back and climbed on behind him, bidding goodbye to the English teacher and her family while they laughed as I shouted to Uncle Yellow to "wai di wai di!" which means "hurry up!" in the local language.
Uncle Yellow's son was indeed having his photos taken by a professional. Here it is normal to spend a lot of money on making a professional album of your child when they are around three months old, and here was no exception. Xiao Chong (his wife) and her parents were all there and seemingly very pleased to see me. We stayed for half an hour, during which I also took some pics of the cute baby. I had been wondering how the photographer's camera had made all the lights in the room flash when she took a photo. I guess it was some clever wireless thing triggered by the capture button. But I soon found when I was taking photos of the proceedings that when I took a picture and my camera flashed, it caused the other lights to flash too. During this time I'd managed to ruin many of the professional photographer's pictures by causing flashes at the wrong time. Embarrassing.
I couldn't get a "normal" picture of Uncle Yellow's wife and son as my camera flash kept invoking all the flashes in the photographer's place...
Uncle Yellow said we would drink some beer and called his uncle to come. He arrived later in a tiny yellow car to take us to a new place in Pingguo. I wasn't expecting much but this place was amazing. It was in the opening of a cave; you had to climb up stairs for about 50 feet then you could actually see the cool air emanating from within the cave, like you can sometimes see the air conditioning in an aeroplane. We sat at a round table and in time-honoured tradition over the next few minutes a few other blokes arrived to eat and drink with us. Uncle Yellow ordered some lovely chao fen (fried flat noodles), then as the afternoon grew older we had more dishes and drank some beer. It was basically five blokes having a laugh in a way not much different to how it would be in England. Most of them I'd met in previous years anyway so it was not just a case of having fun with a foreigner. I learnt another new expression: "you mo" (friendly banter), basically meaning you know you are mates when you can take the piss out of each other. Uncle Yellow then called me a "hui dan" (bad egg) as he had seen me exchanging phone numbers with a pretty girl when he picked me up. Ha, it was perfectly innocent with that teacher but I'd have said the same thing to him too. Uncle Yellow appreciated the 5 packs of Marlboro fags I bought for him and gave one pack to each of his friends. I would have brought more but Tan took half the packs I bought as presents for her own friends.
Preparing the table in the mouth of the entrance of the cool cool cave
What makes me know that Uncle Yellow is a genuine friend is that he saw that I was getting very tired at around 2.30pm. He didn't hesitate to tell me so and offered to drive me to our flat as it would be "safer" than me taking a san lun che. "Safer" was probably the wrong word to use. "Much much more dangerous" would have been more appropriate but I was in no mood to argue and they only drive at 15mph here anyway so if the worst happened I would have spilled my drink if we had crashed (not that I was drinking anything).
Having a laugh at the mouth of the cave (hope Tan doesn't watch)
I did appreciate the lift and actually got some sleep when I got home. All the more so because after seven years of coming here I finally learnt my lesson and put my phone on silent. I woke up at 6pm to see eight missed calls and my refreshedness negated any guilt I might have felt, especially as four of them were from Tan. I had agreed yesterday to go out with Yang Heiwei and his wife and other assorted friends to a swimming pool a few kms out of Pingguo. But Tan had other plans now and told me that Lin Hong had invited us for a meal at her new house. Well, sorry but I have been in this situation many times before in Pingguo and the prior invitation gets precedence. You can't call someone an hour before a meal and expect them to drop all other plans.
I was picked up from our house at 6ish by Yang Haiwei and received another call from the trouble and strife. This time I let Yang talk to her to explain we were going swimming and that this was planned yesterday. Before going swimming we stopped off at a newish outdoor restaurant where we walked through a veranda-like passage under hanging vegetables of various interesting shapes. Our purpose was to order the food for an hour's time apparently. The swimming pool was unsurprisingly an outdoor effort. It was a figure of "8" shape with a metal fence separating the two halves into a a kids' and adults' section. The water was a very comfortable temperature but as I was getting in the lifeguard looked doubtful and asked if I could swim. To prove I could I set off and did a length in front crawl as well as I could. Then Haiwei challenged me to a race and I won by half a length, although I trapped my toe in the metal fence at the beginning and think I may have broken it. Finally I've found a sport that I'm probably better than most Chinese at. We got out half an hour later and the lifeguard looked at me and called me a frog...I've never been so insulted in all my time here!
Hanging vegetables of interesting shapes
Stupidly I'd forgotten to bring a change of clothes so I got back in the car in sopping wet shorts, but it didn't seem to matter to anyone. The meal was naturally delicious and the company good. There were many greens that had probably been picked while we were in the pool - you can't get fresher than that. As is the way, the meal went on for some time until I realised I needed to get my hair cut at Lu Hai's and he closes at 10pm. It was getting on for 9.30pm and the meal was winding down anyway so we got in the cars and drove home, where I changed into something dry and took the bike to Lu Hai's. After I paid him the 20 kuai for the cut and wash he gave me a high quality shampoo as a present, but didn't refuse too much when I shoved another 20 or 30 kuai in his hands. I then invited him to go to a bbq place run by one of Tan's aunts by the guang chang...Haiwei and his friends had moved on there to extend their eating and drinking from the swimming pool place. There we did the usual cai ma for a while until I was called to pick up the kids from Er Jie's house. Da Jie (Tan's eldest sister) was there too; she has also recently bought and furnished a house here in Pingguo. I don't think either of the kids had had a siesta but neither looked particularly tired. However, they didn't take too long to get to sleep after their shower. I did go back to the bbq place for a bit but was rather tired too so didn't make it a late one.
Haiwei's little emperor
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