800,000 kuai and satellite TV

Another early morning, and this time to make a change from normal I took the kids to eat in the breakfast place before school. Maybe it was the change of scenery but they ate a bit more than usual. Leilei said he didn't want to go to school today, but soon changed his mind as he remembered that yesterday one of the kids had given him some cool frogs he'd made out of paper. You can even make them jump, such were his origami skills.

I worked all morning till A Wu called to ask if I wanted to eat lunch. I said ok but I couldn't be too long. I met him close to our place in a house-selling business where it looked like he was buying a house. I asked what he was doing and he said he was buying a floor, with eight buildings for a total area of 800 sq metres. I wondered what this really meant, but it seemed to transpire that he was talking accurately as out came eight contracts that were signed and fingerprinted. And I also saw 800m2 written on some other document. I just don't know when to take things as said these days. The process took half an hour, which was a bit annoying, though interesting at the same time. Then A Wu asked me to pick up his leather bag, and showed me that it was full of bunches of 100 kuai notes. Apparently there was 800,000 kuai in total, so I presumed it must be a deposit for the properties he was buying, but no. We took the bag with us into his car, where he explained this was to give as salaries to his workers at the stone quarry. I tried to work it out in my head - 80k quid for one month's salary at the wages I'm familiar here had to mean around 400 workers, and I swear there are no more than 25-30 there. Something else had to be going on - surely he doesn't pay yearly in cash. I decided not to probe further at that moment.

What 800000 kuai might look like

We drove a minute to the place we had goose the other week and left the bag in the car, but with the car parked very much in view outside the restaurant, where we enjoyed another fine goose, with more kong xin cai. I would have liked to have a nap afterwards, but needed to complete work.

But before then I remembered I needed to sort out a satellite dish. The set top box Waipo had lent us did not appear to work. This was apparently because we needed to pay to access the service, which would probably be a yearly contract, and didn't make any sense while we're not living here full time. So I rang Ling Ming, who has a satellite at his new place to ask if he could help me sort one out. Tan had said that the whole set up was only 150 kuai and I had my doubts, but I met Ling Ming at Waipo's house, and after waiting 20 minutes as it had just started raining, we set off to the centre of town to a small tv shop selling old style tvs from 350 kuai up to much more. Apparently the woman there was an ex-school colleague of Tan's in infant school, and called herself Pan Jie. Indeed, we picked up a smallish satellite dish, a smallish set top box, and a longish length of co-axial cable, then waited a couple of minutes for a bloke to come who would follow us back and install it all for 20 kuai.

Within 20 minutes we had satellite tv at home! About 46 channels too (though not the sport channel unfortunately). The bloke set the dish on its stand outside by the washing area and laid a few broken tiles on it to stop it moving. I intend to see if I can find any other satellites in the vicinity to maybe pick up some more interesting channels. I gave the bloke 25 kuai for his efforts, but couldn't take advantage of our new entertainment bundle as I needed to do more work...

Setting up our new satellite dish

Then at 5pm A Wu called to invite me for a meal at 6 with some friends at the seafood place. Tan had picked up the kids at 5 as I was in a meeting and said she would feed them. So I went alone and we chose what we would eat from the various tanks. I now understand better why this place moved from the previous bbq area place last year. They now have proper air-conditioned rooms and you can have a proper sit-down meal (at greater expense). I tried to call Tan to see if the kids were fed but she was in the shower so I came back to pick them up as the women who were present all wanted to see them.

Choosing what seafood delights to eat...juicy!

One of the women had brought three bottles of red wine. Unfortunately the place didn't have a corkscrew so eventually two of the blokes set upon the bottles with chopsticks. This clearly didn't work and after I'd offered to pick up my corkscrew at home (and was told not to bother) they just gave up and said they'd drink beer. How strange, I thought. Then as we were about to tuck in to our seafood delights one of the waitresses came in with a corkscrew. I guess she must have gone to the local supermarket. The wine was a lot more palatable than that in Tian Dong, but I limited myself to one glass due to work, and just had a couple of weak beers instead. The kids actually ate some seafood stuff. If only I knew what it was I'd order it again next time. They also had two sweet mantous each, which meant they must have been hungry.

I finally finished work at nearly midnight and went out to get a bit of bbq for Tan and myself. For what may be the first time ever, I wasn't dragged over to drink beer with strangers at another table, and rather spent the time waiting by chatting to Mat on skype.