Trifecta of massages ain't that great

I got a wake up call from A Wu around 10am asking if I wanted to eat dog with the bloke that called me last week. Against what I felt like saying, I said yes. At 11.30 I got picked up but instead of going to eat straightaway, we went to an estate agent where A Wu went on to apparently buy a garage. I know he bought a house last year that he is yet to decorate, so I suppose it makes sense. However, given the state of the tiny, messy place he calls home at the moment, I'm surprised his priority wasn't to decorate and move into his new place. I was asking the ladies about the price of the flats, and was told 2300 kuai per square metre, which isn't that much more than the 2000 we paid three years ago, and certainly less than the 3000 I'd been told about last year. Given the glut of new blocks of flats being built I'm still having problems working out how prices are still rising. Assuming it's true, it must be that Pingguo is sufficiently big that it is drawing in more people from the countryside, and that people here are getting richer. I've seen nothing to contradict this so I should be right at a simplistic level. But it seems strange when you read about the various Chinese ghost towns, which have many familiar looking blocks of flats, but no dwellers, like Chenggong http://blogs.worldbank.org/transport/rise-of-the-chinese-ghost-town.

At midday we went to drink tea for a few minutes in the place where I have my own teacup. But this time as we literally only had a couple of minutes A Wu told the lady not to bother with tea so we just drank hot water instead. I nearly asked why we went to drink tea in the first place but thought better of it. We then drove to a place near the goose restaurant and I found out it was Boss Tao's place, he of the iron ore business who had worked with A Wu six years ago. He told me I'd put on weight (why, thank you) as he shook my hand. Then a few more blokes turned up but there wasn't yet any food, so I decided to go on a little wander around.

Other than boss Tao's house just about every other building in the road was either a cheap hotel or a massage parlour, with a ratio of about 2:1. The hotels charged from around 60 kuai a night, and had "o'clock" rates (the hotel translation, not mine) from 28 kuai, which I guessed were per hour, given the nature of the other establishments. However, they all had families sitting about inside them and didn't actually look seedy.

I then got a call from one of the blokes to eat. Back at Tao's place the food was on the table. Centre stage was a big bowl of duck. I had been expecting dog, but someone said that the dog had run away. I gathered that this was a joke, and it didn't matter one jot as the more important thing about these meals is the company. But there was something different about the beer-drinking - rather than just pour out people's glasses and gan bei, everyone was given their own bottle, which was kept under the table by feet (very kickable and yes at least once was one toppled). Whenever you gan bei'd you filled up yourself from your own bottle, which I gathered was a means of keeping tabs on how much you'd drunk. Once, Boss Tao filled up my glass with his bottle and I caught him in the act, exposing him to the table and forcing him to drink his before filling his glass with the contents of mine and forcing him to drink again. I'm not sure this was actually a drinking game but for the rest of the meal there were various attempts by some to fill others' glasses, which I found pretty amusing.

Gan bei'ing at Boss Tao's

But coming up to three bottles downed, I was feeling the bubbles and explained I needed to go for a walk to settle my tummy. When I mention things like this honestly there is never a problem as they know I'm coming back. Even the other streets around here were littered with more cheap hotels and I almost got lost. I had a slightly weird experience when I came across a number of dumped dummies in an alleyway behind some restaurants (and presumably clothes shops), and thought I might be on the set of some science fiction film. 15 minutes later I rejoined my friends to continue. I managed a few more bites and another bottle before going for a wander again. I looked inside the massage place with the pink curtains and it looked totally innocent. Then Boss Tao came to me and insisted I went for a foot wash. I was absolutely fine with that as it meant I wouldn't have to have any more beer, and indeed it was a totally innocent foot wash and massage, which I really appreciated by nodding off for a couple of minutes in-between the blokes coming round to see how I was.

Legloss in Pingguo

By the time I'd finished it must have been 4pm. A Wu then said we'd go for a massage. Having just had one as part of my foot wash I wasn't in need, but neither was I in need of arguing with the idea. We rolled up to a place 30 seconds away, which was more of a "professional" massage place and walked to the third floor with Driver, who I since know is called A Shan. Once in our room we each laid on our massage bed and A Wu promptly fell asleep while A Shan and I were massaged for the next hour.

Maybe because he hadn't had a massage, or he really needed to pay attention to his hair, when we finished, and A Wu woke up, he decided to go for a head wash. Well I'd just had a double decadent two hours, was I going to turn down a trifecta massage mayhem? This time A Shan didn't come in, and the head wash half of the 50 minutes was lovely. The wet massage on the back and neck wasn't quite so amazing as usual, and the rest of the massage part was, quite frankly, unnecessary and bordering on painful. I'd managed to reach the threshold of pleasure and started to turn the circle back. It is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Though it was getting on, neither of us were hungry. My only important goal for the evening was to watch City v Southampton to start their Premier League campaign, and opined that we should go to a bar to watch that. A Wu had agreed, but by the time we were ready to go to the bbq place it was already 10pm, having faffed about as one does. We picked up Lu Wen and his daughter, and I got an order for some bbq from Tan too. By 10.50pm the bbq was still being cooked so I went home to see if I could find the match on telly or t'Internet. I was still searching when they came back with the bbq. Then a few minutes later A Ni and A Da turned up too so we had a fairly impromptu gathering in our living room, which is what it is for, really.

As we noshed on the duck tongues and fatty beef I searched in vain for a decent picture, while A Wu insisted on trying his bottle of Spanish "Porto". Those words don't go well together, and the "wine" did not go with anything other than lemonade, unfortunately. So the three of us blokes chugged it quickly so we could wash it down with beer. If it had been the UK we'd have poured it down the sink. We finally got a reasonable stream of the match so I stopped cai mai'ing (as I was losing badly) and focused on the football. Shockingly, we let a 1-0 lead turn into 2-1 just as we had against QPR. I had a similar gutted feeling as I had on the last game of last season, only not so deep. Similarly, when we managed another comeback to win 3-2 the relief paled in comparison to winning the Premier League! It was a deserved three points but our defence is certainly suspect, after performing so well for the first half of last year.