Boss lunch and mini excursion with Leilei

Well it's not going to last much longer - on Thursday we're flying to Guangzhou. So I made the most out of the last Monday here this year by lying in yet again. The kids haven't gone to school for the last week or so and fair enough, but they have been sleeping around in an innocent sense, meaning I had no breakfast to make or errands to run.

But it was lunchtime and I had no intention of going to the usual place to get jiao zi and bao zi. I didn't ring Yang Haiwei, but just turned up at his office to see if he fancied going for a bite. He was there, but of course we had to spend the next half an hour drinking tea with some sort of work partner and his wife. They were speaking Pingguonese, as is usual, but I started to understand a bit more, e.g. "hao chee" means "hao chi" (tastes good) but sounds completely different. Eventually I got into Haiwei's car and we drove to a new place just outside the town on the way to the new Karaoke place. It was run by the people who used to run the restaurant we frequented last year, near to A Wu's office, which I've learnt he no longer uses.

So the five of us who came knew what food to order and I ordered the scrambled eggs with "ku cai", literally bitter greens. It actually tastes very bitter if you only eat the greens, but if you chopstick up half greens and half egg it's an enigmatically nice mouthful. Added to this were various other dishes that made me realise how much I'd miss even the relatively normal meals here. Haiwei ordered some beers, and although after a fair few last night, I joined in with him and one of the other blokes under the lame excuse of the hair of the dog. Well the dog got quite friendly, and within a couple of courses we ended up playing cai ma. It's not that common to be doing this at 2pm in my experience but who was I to argue? We didn't finish till gone 3pm and any thoughts I'd had of an undeserved siesta were wiped out.

We drove back to the office and had a few more cups of tea. Haiwei insisted in giving me some very expensive "fresh" pu er cha, to which I couldn't say no. Then I asked about the large shiny black mushroom-like thing he cut a slice off and put into the boiling water for the tea. I asked if it was a sort of mushroom and was told not. Apparently it was "ling zhi", which I later found out was, er, a sort of mushroom. Haiwei had said it could cure hangovers! Well, it would have to be supernatural to do that. But I found out from wikipedia that it is known as supernatural mushroom. If that was really true the 8" diameter part he gave me should be very valuable indeed, if I ever get the chance to test its hangover-curing qualities.

Back home I remembered I needed to invite out my mates for a last blokes meal. I'd decided on the cool cave again as I like eating outside. But this time I thought I'd be a bit special and order a dog to eat. I rang Uncle Yellow and he was up for it and said he'd call the boss of the cool cave and sort it out.

I was over my lunch, and it was getting on a bit so went for a meal at Waipo's with the kids. I wanted to spend some time with Leilei so the two of us went for a ride around town. We looked in vain for a family I'd met a couple of years ago, and ended up finding the hidden park near the centre of town. To our surprise it was being made over. Luckily, they weren't building houses there, but there was other construction going on, and they seemed to be leaving the trees to be. We spend some time there just noticing things and talking about them, a rather enjoyable father and son moment in a relatively calm part of town.

Leilei in the central park

But others knew of our impending departure and Leilei was invited out into the night with Xixi and other friends and family. So I ended up going to play table tennis and was glad I did. I was happy to be with my friends there, sweating and mostly losing. But I did receive some compliments on how much better I was this year. I really have to keep this up. Yang Haiwei called me a bit later to invite me to eat duck down by the river. So, a shower later, I was picked up to go to Jiang Bing Lu where indeed Haiwei had brought a duck to be cooked, and insisted in doing much of the cooking himself. Various blokes turned up, some of whom I knew from years gone by, and a few gan bei's were performed of course. Haiwei's wife also came with the son from his first marriage and her son with him, and a generally jolly time was had by all.

Enjoying cai ma and duck with Yang Haiwei (right) and family/friends

I was tiring by midnight so made my excuses and last gan bei's and insisted on finding my own way back. I didn't get to the end of the road before being beckoned to a table at Tian Yang Po's bbq place. A couple of blokes and their girlfriends, one at least who knew me from a previous year, invited me to sit down and have a bit of bbq and chat, which I agreed to embassador-like to give the others a good impression of Britain. We had a good laugh about Bangxu women etc and I left at 1ish feeling like I really needed a walk, despite it being one of the closest nights this year.

I texted Andge and he was surprisingly free, so called me, and accompanied me for the next 25 minutes as I walked home slowly chatting about silly things and reminding me of some of the topics of conversation I'd have in a week's time that I don't quite get here. It made the reality of going home soon so much easier to bear.