As it won’t happen again for a long time, for lunch at home I enjoyed a couple of cold beers with some jiao zi from across the way, which led to a refreshing siesta before it was time to get the kids. This evening Xi Li had invited us to a meal. For a (refreshing) change this was not at Li Jia He Xian, but another restaurant, nearly as plush, near to A Wu’s office. Actually A Wu was in Nanning so couldn’t make it, but I was happy as for the first and probably only time this year they had my equal favourite: fried bees! Oh, I’ve been asking for this at every place we’ve been to, as we used to have it all the time before we were constrained to only coming here in the summer due to school holidays. They are a seasonal treat for September and October I understand.
On a similar note, the long yan (dragon eye) fruits are also drying up. Literally and figuratively. I waited until August until they were finally in the markets, and since then we’ve bought them on a regular basis. It almost goes without saying that if you go to someone’s house you bring a bag of fruit, and it is always welcomed – proven by the fact that it doesn’t last long. Now, but a score of days later it is pretty much the end of the season, but not the end of the long yans – you can now see them spread out on pavements and roads outside houses, in our car parks outside the building and in just about any cranny than is big enough and gets the sun, which is not difficult as most of the day it is directly above you. What they are doing is drying the inside of the fruit so that they will keep longer. They either sell them with the hard skin still on – looking like, but weighing much less than their fresher, fleshier counterparts, or shelled and ready to eat as an expensive treat.
This seasonal nature of eating, be it bees or dragon eyes, is a flashback to what it must have been like in Europe and the rest of the modernised world before we had cheap shipping and refrigeration. Although it means I can’t get my bees, or fresh mangoes, or fresh long yans when I want them, it does mean that when I do get them they are as fresh as the day they were picked, because they quite literally probably were. Ditto for so much of the food here. A lack of choice is something I am very willing to pay for the freshness of the food. Who knows? Maybe it is organic too….
Back at Xi Li’s meal, the restaurant actually had bees and I was enjoying them and the pi dan, but I already had rumblings from below. As Xixi was there I’d already visited the toilet a couple of times as she drinks the local orange juice like it might not be fashionable the next day. So I knew there was no tissue and the floor was very wet. And I was somewhat prepared when the signs came for an impending evacuation and although I made it in time I had forgotten how long it takes to remove a pair of long trousers and boxer shorts when you’re sweating. I suppose I could, like most Chinese, bring them down to knee level pre-squat and do my business, but I fear too much that something will spill over and spoil and soil my clothes. So off came everything below naval, and I had to balance my trousers and boxers on my flip flops to avoid wetness. I managed this just in time before an explosion I have no desire to recreate physically or mentally. Strangely, that’s all there was, and I only managed to wet the bottom of the left leg of my white trousers when putting them on again. I didn’t dare use my phone while squatting, unlike Andge, who two years ago managed the enviable feat of attaining three stars on Angry Birds on every level while squatting over a Chinese loo.
I felt like a new man upon my return, and was able to cai ma with A Dong and Lao Lin. And then another couple of blokes came in as the meal was ending and the womenfolk were leaving, and we had another couple of beers. Lu Hai rang me as we were leaving the meal to invite me to go out to eat “xiao ye”, meaning “night snack”. I told him I wasn’t sure as my stomach was dodgy and full. I had thought about going for a nice head wash instead as time was running out. But he is a good mate I have known since we stayed at his place in 2003, and I proposed to Tan there (not the most romantic of places in retrospect, but it was a fitting time for other reasons). So rather than riding home I stopped off at his salon where he was in the process of preparing some greens by the looks of things. That took about 20 minutes, during which he also managed to cut a customer’s hair, then he led me to the bbq place near the river where I actually haven’t been for a couple of years.
It’s a great thing that you can come down to a place that makes its money on the food it sells (rather than the drinks) and bring your own food. Lu Hai had brought a specialty I hadn’t had this year in raw fish, that you dip in vinegar flavoured with garlic, peanuts and other lovely stuff. I wasn’t at all hungry, and after the toiletry experience of an hour or so previously I didn’t want to tempt fate by basically daring my gut to project out its contents again, but I couldn’t resist the raw fish. Not only does it have a great taste, the texture is something to behold, and for me texture comes before taste in food.
What started out as five of us soon doubled as we brought a second table as you might do in a pub. Lots of Qi du was imbibed, but we also bought a lot of food from the bbq place we were sitting at, thus making the proprietor happy I suppose. I have asked the question before (on Awl’s behalf) about coming to a bbq place and bringing your own booze as I know Awl probably can’t do 3.1% beer, and apparently there is no problem at all – no corkage. But corkage does exist if you go to a bar and bring your own drink – I’ve never done that but I’d be interested in how much they charge.
One bloke I was chatting to (and apparently had drunk with before – a common, but embarrassing thing when you forget them), had a Nokia N8 and an iphone4. Such riches, he must realise that the former was for photos, and the latter for letting the wife play with. But no! He said that the iphone4 had the better camera. After weeks of research I could not let this lie! I explained that the 12Mp camera with professional lens and proper flash made pictures far superior that his iphone. He actually listened to my explanations of why, and would you Adam and Eve it he actually agreed! His opinion had been based on what he’d been told; he’d never printed a picture in his life. I was so happy to have met someone with an N8 and also to have told them about the wonders of its camera, I felt like the first Christian to have converted somebody in South America.
Later, after I forced myself to leave blaming a dodgy tummy and fatigue, I got home and realised that my explaining about the Nokia is an integral part of the human condition; we need to tell people how their lives can be better. If you are religious this is obvious. But if not, you still do the same in every breath you take. I think it’s impossible to avoid – you are always trying to advertise your way of life unless you are suicidal. Well maybe it’s not so black and white but I have a feeling it’s close.
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