Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Food, beer, tea, and red wine

I managed another lateish getting up and felt refreshed. Much more refreshed than I would have had I woken up from Awl's text at 4.11am saying he was sipping champers as he'd been upgraded to business class when he only asked for a window seat. I'll have to remember that in the future. Then, shortly later, Haiwei called at midday to say he couldn't do lunch but invited me for an evening meal. So lunch ended up being takeaway jiao zi again which was absolutely fine by me, and I was still quite surprised that Haiwei remembered and even bothered to call me after yesterday's shenanigans.

Unfortunately, work reared its near-inevitable head and consumed my afternoon till 5pm. I shouldn't complain; this has been the first year in many I've not been able to stay the whole summer due to work commitments and it's good that you can be efficient thousands of miles away from the office and clients.

Bang on 5pm I got the call from Haiwei to say he's coming to pick me up. I managed to haggle half an hour for a shower and got picked up in his new seven seater Honda or Toyota or Mazda...I'm normally so good with car brands but these Japanese ones are looking rather homogeneous to my eyes lately...even the symbols on the front. But it was a nice motor and Haiwei, me and a friend parked in front of a newly opened restaurant not far from the Ming Dien hotel. Although it was new, it bore all the hallmarks of the other similar sized restaurants here, with its various private rooms on different floors with the one exception that it had a lift to get to them.

Haiwei paying for the meal

And one more exception was that they didn't sell Li Quan beer. I guess they are sponsored by whatever beer they are selling but we wanted Li Quan and Haiwei immediately called for the manager. A woman appeared and a case of Li Quan duly arrived five minutes later. The food was plentiful and great and I got quite stuffed and even started feeling the effects of the beer. We'd nearly finished when one of the fu wu yuan waitresses said I'd been invited to the room next door. She showed me in and there was A Dong, A Hua's husband, purple-faced with a big grin bidding me to sit down with him and eat and drink, as if I hadn't been doing that for the last hour and a half. But I felt I owed him this as last year he was on medicine and couldn't enjoy a drink with us, and I've hardly seen him this year. So we had a good bash of cai ma with him and his mates before I suggested I ought to go back to the room I'd been invited to in the first place.

Back there we finished off the last of the beers over a couple of rounds of cai ma and I did rather well, meaning Haiwei didn't. Had I thought of the consequences I may have let him win as he was driving. But anyway he paid downstairs and we got in the car and drove to a block of flats on the other side of town near Ma Laoban's house. We rang the doorbell, got in the lift to something like the 11th floor and entered a friend's house. Well, calling it a house would be generous. It was more of a bedsit, or even just a sit, with a toilet/shower, a corner for cooking and a bedroom with a balcony where the owner was sitting with two mates eating, drinking, smoking, and playing cards while his wife watched tv sitting on the bed nursing a pregnant tummy.

Haiwei's mate on the right, Haiwei on the left, and two mates in the middle, with the preggars wife in the background

I recognised the bloke from somewhere but wasn't sure where. Judging by the size of his abode he wasn't that well off but somehow Haiwei thought it important to come here to socialise with him. We sat down and the only thing I could eat was a prawn or two, and only managed a couple of gan bei's for the sake of appearances. Surely they won't be here in three months when the baby arrives?

Half an hour later we did a last round of gan bei's and said goodbye. I hoped in vain that I'd get home but no we had to go to "drink tea". I knew what that meant, and we arrived at an establishment, went upstairs to a rather pleasant room with a large table and some 12 people sitting around it drinking mainly red wine but I did see that tea was being served too. Boss Huang was there, plus two relatively large ladies I recognised from some years ago when Boss Huang opened his wood company. They were mainly a bit drunk, and of course insisted on gan bei'ing glasses of wine with me. I really didn't want it but realised my position of unofficial UK diplomat so joined in but ensured I got served tea as well so as not to imbibe so fast. It didn't quite work as one of the larger ladies poured ever-larger glasses of the plonk after every gan bei, and then downed half a glass herself in a manner that, had she done it in France, would have got her evicted from the country with her visa revoked.

"Drinking tea" - the lady reaching for a gan bei was the dangerous one. Boss Huang is on her left

I finally got a worse-for-wear Haiwei to realise I needed to get back (I probably used the kids as an excuse) so we got back in his mini-van but just as we were nearing our house we stopped at A Wu's office where he was with A Ni and a few other people....drinking red wine. Remembering my diplomatic status I had a couple to be polite but at least now I no longer required Haiwei's presence as my house was two minutes away. I politely said good evening and walked back and made the polite decision to sleep in my study now that it had been vacated by Awl as I didn't want to disturb Tan and it was getting on for 1am. I have a recollection of a dream being with the boys again but I got disturbed or something.