Back to China for the 10th time

It wasn't that much of a problem getting to Gatwick, even if I did have to pick up my undelivered package of a bluetooth headset from Eltham Post Office on the way there. We lost half an hour to traffic jams we should have known about but arrived at 11.15 for our 13.15 flight. Unlike last year at Heathrow there was no queue for check-in. The bloke just said they were quicker than the rest. I didn't quite believe that and secretly hoped for a half-empty flight.

The lounge made a big difference. The kids had some fizzy drinks and stuck around me as I caught up on an hour's work with maybe a swift G&T, looking nonchalantly at the chavs around the table close to me filled with beer bottles. The riffraff they allow in these days....

Tan had spent all this time shopping and as she got to the lounge for a bite to eat I left to get some duty free myself. But it was already time to go to the gate so I very quickly grabbed four bottles of whatever and 400 Marlboro for £141 and paid and caught up with the others.

The flight was gratefully uneventful if lacking in sleep, including the kids. And the film selection was atrocious; I couldn't get through the latest Die Hard film and ended up watching an American documentary on the building of St. Paul's. It was quite interesting but I couldn't help wondering how much was made up. I would like to visit more now though.

Once on the ground at Beijing the ladies went to the toilet. This was annoying as it meant we joined the immigration queue at the end. In fact it was so long that we joined at one end of a horseshoe shape. There was a sudden panic and a rush towards us and I realised quickly that one more immigration desk had opened. Aware that I was in China I went with the flow and we found ourselves not far back in the queue for the second desk. Although this queue-disrespecting was something I considered typically Chinese I had to remember we were in the foreigners' queue, so they must have been mostly French. Then another desk opened and I did a French-style nip to this queue and we were out 15 minutes later.

Aahh...how nice it was to grab a shower in the lounge at the airport. As it was before 8am I was in no mood for a beer but I did notice cans of tonic water in the fridge. Over the course of the next three hours or so I made a few trips to this fridge and ended up with five cans in my hand luggage!

The first ever tonic export to Pingguo

I found out to my dismay that my phone number for the last two years wasn't working, so I called Ling Ming via Skype and asked him to top me up. Half an hour later I got a call back from him on my phone so was relieved that it was just a question of putting in some cash. On the other hand, Tan's number, for a reason I don't yet understand, has well and truly gone and she'll need to get a new one in Pingguo.

I still hadn't got any sleep and was really feeling weird. In the toilet I got headspins and could hardly stand up straight. I think it was to do with the background noise, which sounded rather like being in an aeroplane. As much as I wanted to sleep I had to finish off a couple of things for work and then it was time to go to our gate to board.

As soon as we were above the clouds we got the typical turbulence that seems to accompany most internal Chinese flights. Although I seemed to be the only foreigner on the flight the announcements were all duplicated in English. The woman's voice said "We are experiencing turbulence in this ascent. Seatbelts...". I was ok with this as it seemed that it was normal while we were gaining altitude. This notice came again and again, but I was so tired I barely had the effort to be afraid. Looking around, all but one person were asleep even though it was only just gone midday. I just relaxed my body as much as I could and went with the bumps. I remembered my trick of last year and closed my eyes and counted each breath in German. I got up to 60, and then got stuck in a rut not managing to reach 70, and then forgetting where I was and starting back at 60 again.

Then came the voice again telling us that we were experiencing turbulence during the ascent, and as I knew we must be well into the flight I worked out that we could not be still ascending and it dawned on me she was saying "We are experiencing turbulence, please fasten seat belts". In fact we were by now 40 minutes away from Nanning on this 3h20m flight, so my sojourn from 60 to 70 in German must have taken me to the land of nod for an hour or so. Unfortunately the rest of the trip to 100 did not bring further shuteye, though Leilei slept the whole journey. It's nice touching down at Nanning as it has a longer-than-average runway, and you know you're on a Chinese domestic flight when your hear the seat belt buckles being undone before the front wheels are down and the chimes of booting up phones seconds later.

Lin Hong was waiting for us at the airport and I bade Tan and the weary kids go to them while I waited for the luggage. A Wu, A Ni, and A Da arrived 15 minutes later and we greeted them with big hugs. A Wu now has a grand BMW X6, which looks like a sports car stretched on the y axis, though it was able to fit two of our suitcases, the rest going in Lin Hong's black Honda. A Wu has a new driver this year (he still doesn't have a licence) who is also known as Tan.

All aboard A Wu's new X6

The drive back was pretty comfortable, though with a bit less of the sound of the grooves of the road emanating within the cabin in a melodic fashion as is normally the case. Normally we'd have gone straight home for a shower before eating but this time we ordered some food on the phone and at 5pm we arrived at Li Jia He Xian for a feast, including my favourite black boiled eggs and roast goose. Tan's new SIM card arrived during the meal but it was rather useless as someone had forgotten to mention she needed a micro-SIM.

After the meal we went home for the first time in over 10 months to find it pretty clean as Ling Ming had sorted things before he left (this year he won't be sharing the place with us and will move back when we're gone until his house is finished). After dumping the luggage we went to A Wu's new office, now situated opposite the guangchang and under a minute's walk from our place.

Leilei went to play with A Da (I was afraid A Da wouldn't be interested as he's now broken his voice, but the two still seem good mates) and Tan went with her mates. A Wu had already unwrapped all the booze and fags and assumed it upon one of his shelves. In my rush at the airport I picked up a litre of Bombay Sapphire, not remembering that I had bought him one in the recent years, so now he has two. But I had to take 200 Marlboro back as Tan needed them as a present and he didn't seem to mind.

Xixi and I went back to the house and sorted out most of the luggage that wasn't mine and I grabbed a shower and change of clothes before we popped out to see if we could cut Tan's SIM. The official China Telecom shop couldn't do it for us but a few yards further we popped in to their rivals China Unicom (not the People's Telecom of China) and I recognised the bloke from last year. I explained it was a bit rude to ask him to cut a SIM from another provider but he was totally fine about it as he was an ex-colleague of Tan's.

Then as we were on our way to A Xia's shop to drop off Tan's phone with her new number working I realised I was no longer holding the fags and neither was Xixi. They weren't in the China Unicom shop but as soon as we walked back into the China Telecom shop the young lady reached under her desk in expectation of our reappearance and produced the pack. I thanked her very much but was not in the least surprised as that sort of honesty seems the total norm here.

Five minutes later Xixi and I went to the jewellery shop and I got the neckband thing for my jade pig changed as I do on an annual basis here. 5 kuai this year, 1 kuai cheaper than last, though probably the only thing that will be.

I'd had forty winks on the car journey from Nanning but was getting really shattered now. I told myself I would stay up and have a normal bedtime, so rang Yang Haiwei, my friend and table tennis partner of the last few years, and agreed to meet him for a little barbeque around 10pm. Xixi and I took a san lun che to the guangchang (now 4 kuai - one more than before) and had a nice walk and fed the carp before heading to the bbq where I met Haiwei's tall wife and son with a hug and the inevitable comment on how big he was (the son). A sweaty Leilei joined us from A Wu's office, and Haiwei eventually came too. I was nearly dropping off so kept it to just a couple of beers and duck tongues and lamb before leaving at 11.30 to shower the kids.

I would have gone straight to bed myself but needed to take out some of my clothes. Damn, Tan was right, I had brought far too many, but worse than that, something had leaked from my bag of toiletries and had left sticky purple stains all over the bottom of my new light grey suit. I rinsed what I could from the suit and hung it up to dry while I cleaned the rest of the toiletries until I found the culprit: a bottle of "Excite" Lynx shower gel I wish I'd never packed, not least because we normally have plenty of that stuff anyway.

At least I thought we did. When I showered the kids all I found in the bathroom was a bottle of orangy clear liquid. Still, as Andge says, "it's all soap", so I used it to wash their hair and bodies but it didn't make much of a lather.

Of course once in bed I found it difficult to sleep but not something my first ever gin and tonic in Pingguo could not cure, together with ein, swei, drei....

...until Leilei walked in to our room at 1.30 and I took him back to his room and fell asleep with him till 4.30. I worried I might not get back to sleep as I got back into our bed but I needn't have and woke up again at 8am.