I left Xixi with Tan at home, and Leilei was with A Da, and drove the 50 yards to Lao Tu. We spent about five minutes drinking tea before A Wu's driver drove us to A Wu's work. I thought we were going to see some bangers but he didn't seem to know what I was talking about. Then when we arrived at the stone place I found that there were some blokes unwinding some thin red wire, and one blowing a whistle now and again. It transpired that they were getting ready to blow away part of the mountain to provide more stone fodder. Ah, so I wasn't completely wrong about bangers - just the size and reason and...well yes I was very wrong about them.
It took a bit of time to get organised, and A Wu left his camera perched on a chair facing the side of the mountain. He said I could turn the switch to cause the explosion and I was rather excited at that, but suddenly there were a couple of shouts and A Wu started filming then told me to run down the track to the bottom as stones could fly anywhere. We got down to the entrance of the place and crouched behind one of the pickups as other employees crouched behind other vehicles. I had my camera filming too. We waited for a bit, then a bit more, getting more and more excited as to how loud it may be. Eventually after two minutes like this A Wu announced that there was a problem with the wire, so we all went back up.
I was a bit annoyed that I wasn't going to do the explosion, but they'd decided someone needed to be closer to the mountain as the wire must have been broken nearer to where we were. After 20 minutes faffing about they were ready and once again A Wu turned on his camera and we sprinted down to our hiding place. This time it worked. It was not particularly loud, or even that impressive, but it did the job. No stones flew anywhere within 200 yards of us but I suppose it's better to be safe than stoned.
Blasting away part of the mountain, second time lucky
It was now 2pm and I was getting rather hungry. A Wu said we'd go for lunch but at that moment about five blokes turned up. This meant we all had to traipse upstairs to the office to drink tea. One of the blokes was from the police. That meant he was probably a friend of A Wu's so I helped pour out the tea for the next half an hour or so before getting up and going for a walk as I don't understand the local language they were talking in. Maybe A Wu got the hint because a couple of minutes later all the blokes went downstairs and we finally started on our way back to Pingguo.
I got in touch with Leilei, who was with Nong Kaicheng, and we all went to the place that is now known as the "toilet bucket food" place since I apparently named it that last week. As it was well gone 3pm I didn't eat any rice, so as to be hungry enough for later, but I did have everything else. By half three I took Leilei and the boys back home to play on the Wii.
I had received a text from Uncle Yellow a bit earlier in the afternoon, when the explosion was going on, asking me to call him when I'd woken up (it was thoughtful of him to think I was sleeping during the afternoon). I was just calling him when he called me to ask me to come and eat dog again. I explained I needed to sort out the kids, and would come when possible, and would they still be there at 7pm? Yes they would. The boys had to go so I took Leilei to Waipo's, Waipo invited me to eat but I said I'd already been invited out and she didn't seem to mind. I actually got to the cold cave by around 6.30pm but judging by the amount of beer bottles underneath the table I was very late. I asked, and was told that they'd started at 4pm. I don't know whether that meant eating or drinking or both, but it seemed rather early. But it sort of made sense as most people had to work the next day (myself included) so an early start meant an early night.
We had a great time and I ate quite a lot of dog again, though I went easy on the beers as knew I'd be picking up Xixi soon. I made a joke about making love in the local language, which got rather more laughs than it deserved. And to show that he understood what I was talking about Uncle Yellow made a ring with his left hand and then put the index finger of his right hand through it rather vulgarly. Then the bloke to his left made a ring with one of his hands and the first bloke "entered" it with his finger to laughs all round. I told them they were homosexuals, which was neither clever nor funny, but it really brought the house down. I was with good mates as there was no pressure to drink up quickly etc., and I left around 8pm to great smiles, though I could have happily stayed longer.
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| Some of the empties by the time I came to eat dog |
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| Uncle Yellow's car (I don't know if he chose the colour) |
Well Xixi was out with someone, so I went home for a bit. Then A Da and Leilei came, the former announcing he was staying the night. Fair enough, I got them both showered and into bed by 11pm though I'm sure they went to sleep much later. Tan then came home with Xixi at midnight, meaning Xixi was sleeping in our bed. She actually fell asleep reasonably quickly considering she'd already slept during the day, leaving us a bit of nice time together. As tomorrow I'd be back at work I decided to use the last of my free time watching some Olympic footy on the Internet as I'd happened to leave my UK proxy server on by mistake and the video worked ok.
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