Except before lunch he, A Ni, and I went to a shop underneath our block "Jun Lin Tian Xia" where three generations of a family were at the same time eating, babysitting and running the shop. The owner was feeding his father who is elderly and recently had a fall, while the mother was preparing some food for her few-month old daughter who was being looked after by the grandmother. A Wu brought a couple of melons and some more fruit as a present. I think it was a belated present for the "new" arrival. Normally there is a special feast to celebrate the baby's 100th day but apparently it wasn't that. The family took delight in the fact that I could speak a few words of Bangxunese and taught me how to say "smile" ("lou di") and suddenly, after no expression at all, the old man broke out into a smile himself! And this had the infectious effect of making everybody else smile and all was good for a while and I was told I could come back to learn some more Bangxunese. But by now I was hungry....
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| The cute baby daughter and her mum at the shop under our house where I learnt a little Bangxunese |
To my minor delight we went to a cheap noodle place with no air-con where you sit on a dirty table and choose a couple of chopsticks from a cup (they are not even in individually wrapped pairs). The noodles with roast duck were delicious but I ate the meat first as A Wu had passed on some of his in order to attack the noodles. As I was about to make a start on the noodles, and as A Wu had just finished wolfing down his, he got a phone call and immediately told me to stop eating. It transpired that two Nanning people were in town now (that we should have met the other day) and we were to go to Li Jia He Xian for a formal meal with them. Ha! That will teach him to eat too quickly (I doubt).
So yet again we were in the premier restaurant. The two blokes were bank managers from Nanning and I didn't ask the specific purpose of their visit, though I did glean it was their first time in Pingguo and they were leaving after the meal. I also introduced myself to their driver, who was also sitting at the meal and he told me we'd already met twice before as I shook his hand. That's really embarrassing. I couldn't even rip out an excuse like his hair was different as I didn't know if I'd met him this year, last year or a decade ago so I just apologised and said "of course" as if that made it better.
The meal was excellent but unfinished after an hour. I sensed A Wu's conversation wasn't as flowing as usual and was punctuated with silences that I brought myself to fill with non work-related topics such as: how come they can't tell where I'm from by my accent? I mean I can tell the difference between a French and German speaking English but the amount of times I've been asked if I'm French or German it seems there is either a Chinese accent (of which there are many) or a foreign accent. Or more likely it's just that exposure to foreigners speaking Mandarin in this part of the world is so infrequent that people are unlikely to build up enough experience to be able to tell. Food for thought, but enough idle chatter. I was very tired now and as we left the restaurant to go to A Wu's office I said my farewells before a quick nip of G&T and a nice siesta. I'm down to one can of tonic water now and have scoured the supermarkets for any sign of fizzy water with no success still.
Tan called at 3pm just as I was opening the doors of the land of nod to tell me to close the windows in Xixi's room at there was a mighty storm. I'd totally missed the sound of that, partly, I expect, as a result of living in a place with constant noise 75% of the time. But Tan was right, I've never witnessed such a wind and the rain coming down in near horizontal stair rods. If I hadn't been half asleep I would have poured another G&T and enjoyed the display but Tan had also said that Lin Hong had invited us for a meal at Li Jia He Xian again so I really needed my beauty sleep.
Refreshed after a couple of hours of uninterrupted snoozing, I showered and walked over to Waipo's to see the kids for the first time in many hours. We all walked the three minutes to Li Jia He Xian at about 6pm for what must be our fourth or fifth meal there this week. There were about five people there when we arrived, and another eight or so came soon after and we had a really enjoyable time talking with many of Tan's ex-colleagues which made up somewhat for the other night when Tan was in Nanning. I did the rounds of gan bei'ing, firstly with Lin Hong as a thank you for inviting us for the meal. The kids ate ok too, before being whisked away after an hour or so.
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| Xixi showing a flowery carrot... |
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| ...and how it was made (a bit cheating if you ask me) |
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| Nice meal with Tan's bank colleagues and a scary ghost that popped up |
Earlier in the day I'd called Uncle Yellow and we agreed that I would call him around 9pm in the evening to meet up for the first time this year. But A Wu had also called me to go and eat with him and some friends on the river. So at 8.30 I left Lin Hong's meal and took a san lun che to Jiang Bing Lu, the road by the river that has lots of bbq places. I got off at the wrong end but it was a nice digestif to walk down the road until one of A Wu's friends came to meet me in the street. We walked down to a restaurant I really like on a boat on the river. The remnants of the meal were still there and I was warmly greeted by a dozen or so people including some women I gathered must be wives by their ages.
The perfunctory gan bei'ing began but I realised I'd already been through one lot at the previous meal a few minutes ago so I challenged them to cai ma, which was readily accepted. When I realised it was already 9pm I asked if it was ok to invite my mate down too, which of course it was. Uncle Yellow turned up 10 minutes later and we spent the next half an hour there chatting gaily. As I had invited Uncle Yellow to meet me rather than a load of other people, A Wu and I left for the guangchang with Uncle Yellow in hot pursuit in his micro yellow car. When we arrived A Wu said he had some matters to attend to at his office so I went to look for a table for some bbq but straight-away I was motioned towards another table where I saw Tan, A Ni and another friend who appears to have joined their group, presumably to replace Chen Mei who is now living in Nanning.
Uncle Yellow was arriving so I thought we might as well sit with the ladies as he knows Tan and A Ni anyway. It transpired he also knew the other girl too so we all shared some bbq while the boys shared some beer and had a pleasant night without going to excess. The owner of this bbq place had just opened up recently, and I think is the wife of the Police Treasurer, whose house we visited last year for a great home-made meal. She wouldn't let us pay at the end (would have been around 300 kuai I reckon), so I said farewell to Uncle Yellow and walked back home with Tan, remarkably hand-in-hand, which isn't something shown that much in public at least among our generation.
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