Eventually we were picked up by Driver at 12.30pm and we went straight to eat just outside our house, not quite the lunch in Nanning with friends I'd been expecting. After lunch we went to pick up A Wu from a hotel, where he was "doing business" with Er Jie and another bloke, who Tan said was a very rich relative who owned some mines. That took a few more minutes and then it seemed we were ready to go, albeit with eight people in the five-seater Toyota - Xixi and A Wu in the front passenger's seat Tan, A Ni, me and the boys in the back. Needless to say it wasn't very comfortable but before we got out of town we stopped again to fix one of the tyres, which took another 15 minutes. Tan said she was too pissed off by all this time-wasting to go, and would go home. I was in half a mind to agree - had I been left to my own devices I'd have been on the midday train and be arriving in Nanning by now.
We finally arrived around 3.30pm and got dropped off by the main shopping centre. My main goal was to find some tonic water, which I'd been told by a barman in a coffee shop earlier in the week you could find in Nanning. Failing that, surely simple fizzy water would be easy to find according to him. So we split up from the ladies and went to Walmart. I had as much luck with tonic water and fizzy water as in Pingguo. For some reason nobody seems to understand what fizzy water is. I'm sure it's not me just being thick. "Qi" means "fizzy" and "shui" means "water". You can't get much clearer than that but whenever you ask for it the women workers always point to the Coke and lemonade bottles. Then I explain that yes, this is fizzy, but I want water that is fizzy. Then they look nonplussed, so I go to the water section and say "this is water, right?" and they agree that the clear stuff in bottles is indeed water. Then I point at the lemonade and say this is not water. Then I always end up having to act out opening a bottle and making a "fzzzzz" sound as it opens. I can only imagine it's so hard to comprehend simply because it doesn't exist - even A Wu wasn't able to explain to the shop workers in a couple of words. To make matters worse, they do have various brands of soda water, which would have done, only it's never fizzy.
Eventually I found some fizzy drink that was not 50% sugar, although it was some sort of glucose and salt supplement with lemon flavour. I bought six bottles, considering this not a complete loss, though if I'd been alone I'd have found a few more places and I bet would have been able to be more successful.
After the boys put too many sweets in the trolley, and A Wu put in a few bottles of Er Gou Tou for Venky as a memory from years gone by, we went to pay. For the first time I saw A Wu pay by card for our shopping and then we went outside. We endured a rather long wait until A Wu reappeared with Xixi - evidently the girls had gone off to shop on their own, dumping the last kid with us. Another few minutes went by before Driver turned up and we got in the car to go to our hotel. It was nearing 6pm and we were due to eat so A Wu stayed in the restaurant on the 2nd floor and I dumped off some stuff in our room. I'd already opened one bottle of my fizz to check it was ok and I was reasonably pleased. I wasn't happy, however, to see that Leilei and A Da had also opened a bottle each, only to tell me they didn't like it that much - it wasn't for you bloody kids! Now half of my bottles were semi-flat and wouldn't make it back to Pingguo....
We went down to the table in the restaurant where A Wu was ordering various goodies. It was very difficult with the kids, who had not had their usual nap, and wouldn't eat anything when it arrived. Then A Wu said the wives weren't coming as they were still out shopping, but some friends were. This was just badly organised. He'd only rung the Nanning friends while we were shopping, to invite them to come and eat, and neither had answered their phones. Then I called a bloke I met last year with the same surname as me, who worked for the water company of Guangxi. He didn't answer but later got back to me and remembered me well. He apologised that he was out of town but told me to come back soon and call him. A Wu still insisted that two other friends were coming but it took so long we all started to eat. We'd pretty much finished when two youngish blokes arrived to help finish off what was left, but all in all it was one of the dullest meals I've ever had in Guangxi.
Worse was to happen later, when I realised that Tan and I had both neglected to take the kids' clothes I'd packed earlier. This is one of those things that wouldn't have happened had Tan not gone; I'd carried my and her bags downstairs as hers was heavy, due to being a woman and spending one night away. I did call her but she didn't want to buy new clothes for the kids as apparently they'd have to be washed before they wore them anyway. So I ended up having to get three kids showered and brushed and into bed naked against their will, and allowing them to stay up late watching kids tv till 11pm. They still weren't asleep when the women finally got back at 11.30pm. The blokes at the meal had invited us to go out that night, and A Wu, who had disappeared after the meal, had called me a couple of times to say we'd be going out to watch them singing, which sounded a bit weird. However, when he got back with the women he stated he was tired and we wouldn't go out. This pissed me off a bit as I'd had virtually no time to do anything in Nanning other than babysitting. So I gave up trying to dry Leilei's pants with the hairdryer and walked out of our room to go for a walk and a bite to eat.
I found I wasn't far from the famous bbq road of Zhong Shan Lu. As per four years ago, I walked up and down sort of looking to see if I could join in with people, but I ended up in the same place as the last time I was here, and just ordered a bit for myself. There was a girl by herself on the neighbouring table and I politely engaged in conversation with her, taking care to mention the wife early on lest she entertain hopes of a dashing stranger sweeping her off her feet. Having pictures of the kids didn't hurt either. She was just in Nanning on business from Liuzhou in central Guangxi, and we had a pleasant meal together in the end, with me realising my Mandarin was not that good with people outside of Pingguo or Nanning, or maybe she just had a better vocabulary.
Tan had texted to say it was dangerous in this road but nothing could be further from the truth; there were plenty of females eating alone, and even the woman I ate with thought it was funny to say so. Anyway, I'd had my fill so I made my excuse (the toilet) paid (for her as well), and left to get back at 1am to the sounds of both the kids snoring happily away despite their lack of pjs.
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