Grape picking and pig eating

Happy Birthday mum!

I used the solitude of the relatively early morning to catch up on some work-related stuff. While I was doing my expenses at 9am Haiwei called and asked if I could come with him to pick grapes. As I had nothing else planned I said I'd call him back after checking with the kids. Leilei had no interest but Xixi stirred from her slumbers and said she wanted to go. I'd been told we'd be back by 2pm so I could still catch up on sleep.

So I rang him back and said we'd have a quick bite to eat and go, and he said they needed to eat breakfast first too so would be round in 20 minutes. I got the phone call back soon after and had to hurry Xixi up washing and brushing and doing her hair as she is becoming a right proper little woman. Haiwei was waiting for us in his 4x4 downstairs and we got in the back and said hello to him and his wife. About 10 minutes into the journey we stopped. Apparently they hadn't actually had breakfast. In a way this was good as I realised that the female passenger was not his wife but a different woman, but I wasn't sure of the appropriateness of this relationship.

They finished their breakfast of noodles outside while Xixi and I sat in the air-conditioned car playing I-spy. It's a bit more fun here as there are many things you wouldn't normally see in London. Like cows on the road. We thought we'd be on our way when they'd finished eating but then another car turned up which was apparently part of our entourage. So food was ordered again. I took this opportunity to talk a bit to the woman in the front and found she was a bank partner from Baise. Apparently she was in the pub last night and I had gan bei'd with her. Slightly embarrassing, but it was dark, and now she was wearing large sunglasses and a large sun hat. At least I can't remember Haiwei's wife's name so I hadn't called her by that.

Finally, around 11am, we arrived at the vineyard. There were six other people from the other car, including two more women from the pub last night, their two sons, and 2-1 who was driving. We grabbed a couple of baskets and pairs of scissors and spent the next half an hour filling up. Xixi really took a shine to this and enjoyed the whole experience of checking the grapes first for ripeness (they were all bagged on the vine) before cutting, and she did all of our basket. We then went up to the woman by the side of the road and boxed and paid for them, before hearing that we were now going to pick "ti zi". I wasn't sure what "ti zi" were, but they were explained to me as like grapes but you could eat the skin. I fell back to translating on the phone and the definition was a less-than-helpful "grape/raisin".

An expert eye is required for checking the ripeness first...

...then unwrap and go for the jugular

Xixi, me and Haiwei with some of the harvest

Five minutes later at the ti zi place we found that there were already a great many already picked, much to Xixi's chagrin, and she deemed the place a waste of time as she didn't get to do any more picking. The ti zi were nice, though, more of a hard texture than the fleshy pu tao that you peel the skin off.

A bootful of grapes and ti zi

Then we were on the way to the He Hua lotus flower place we went to a couple of times last year. The young lady in the front, Xiao Mo as I had now learnt, was less shy now and oohing and ahing at the beautiful pink lotus flowers, whereas I was a bit more mindful of the time, and rather keen to eat. We finally got to the eating place at 1pm after deciding it was too hot to go for a wander in the flowers (good decision, like last year). Luckily, Haiwei knew the boss (I wonder if there are any he doesn't) and although it was busy we got a table pretty quickly. I gave Xiao Mo the bottle of sun tan lotion factor 50 that I'd brought and she appreciatively put it on, as did Xixi.

The meal at He Hua - Xixi had finished and wasn't in the mood for conversation

Then it suddenly turned from scorchio to rather "liang", which is a useful word for "cool", but in the sense of relative to what has just been, rather than a specific temperature I think. The clouds had come over the mountain for a welcome few moments of shade before being hastily burned away again by the angry sun. The food was more than plentiful for us, but as with so many meals here, people just appear from nowhere to sit down and consume. Haiwei's wife turned up, then Boss Liang to help out with proceedings. A few beers were consumed but nothing excessive, and I made sure Xixi was watered after she had eaten well. Then I got a phone call from Tan half an hour away in town to tell me to put sun tan lotion on Xixi and give her water as it was very hot as if 1) I wasn't aware of heat and how to look after kids and 2) the climate here was sure to be 100% the same as in the centre of town. I responded by sending a pic of Xixi with the requisite materials.

Xixi with the required materials

Luckily there was no walking in the flowers afterwards, so finally we left to go back. The roads were mostly good but occasionally atrocious. I find it hard to fathom how they can build roads that just suddenly turn into potholed tracks you have to negotiate at literally walking pace. I guess it has something to do with jurisdiction but still.... They are selling the He Hua place as a tourist destination, and even have English on many of the signs, but if getting there entails the discomfort of such roads it sends out a strange message.

We got home at 3.30 and Haiwei gave us a box of the grapes as a little present. Xixi was very proud and went to wash them as I went to have a little sleep. It was very little, about 15 minutes but it had the effect of a power nap. I noticed a missed call from Uncle Yellow, so called him up and he asked me to come to a mate's house to eat pig. Why not? I dropped off Xixi with Waipo, knowing she'd be whisked away by Tian Tian pretty soon, and Leilei was already with Nong Kaicheng, and drove to the centre of town where I found the flat of the bloke who used to be the cook at the Cool Cave, but now apparently cooks elsewhere for more money.

He'd bought a whole young pig and invited his mates around to his house to share it. All us blokes sat around the main table but the elders and youngers were also part of the meal and sat around the coffee table, slightly distanced from the smoke that was kept in our half thanks to the air conditioning unit and a fan to keep us cool. It was a great, friendly meal, and the bloke's parents were very welcoming too. His mum was 74, apparently just greying, and as spritely as en elf as she hopped up from the sofa to help us take a group photo.

Cheers!

An army fag with a couple of lines denoting something about the tobacco but I didn't quite understand what

We drank Snowflake beer. The brand, not as in made from. It was 2.5% which made for less dangerous cai ma but it didn't half fill me up. A couple of blokes came a bit later and we made space for them to my right. I recognised one from somewhere and he reminded me he came from Wenzhou, near Shanghai. The problem with this was that he couldn't cai ma in Cantonese and I'm not so hot in Mandarin so we did it in both which was confusing for me and my excuse for mainly losing. When he got his pair of disposable chopsticks he announced that they were broken as they wouldn't split apart. Someone else tried and agreed, then I motioned to hand them over to me. I pretended not to put in too much effort but it took a bit of the beer strength to prise them apart and I proudly showed them separated and handed them back, declaring that they were English chopsticks. I think the beer made them laugh more heartily than the joke merited. Then I noted that they were left-handed chopsticks and they nearly pissed themselves.

I was full of food and fizz and felt I could no longer carry on as I was shattered too so I made my kid excuses and I wasn't made to stay any longer than a few goodbye gan bei's at 8pm. But actually I was free for a little bit, so I did what any sane English man in possession of a dian dong che and 30 kuai would do and rode to the local head wash place for my first "head"onistic experience this year. I recognised the boss and some of the girls straight away, and somehow they recognised me too. Oh I could have drifted off had the air conditioning not been quite so close and had Tian Tian not called me to say Xixi was getting a bit tired half way through. I said Xixi would have to wait 20 minutes and when I'd paid up and picked her up half an hour later she seemed absolutely fine.

I also got a call from A Wu to meet him for a bite to eat, but Xixi came first. I did need to pick up Leilei from Nong Kaicheng's but he was having a shower there first so Xixi and I had a few minutes to kill. We managed to find out where A Wu was by a sort of hot and cold game of turning up where we thought we had to be, describing what we saw, then getting closer, describing what we saw again until he could see us out of the window of the restaurant. We did only stay 20 minutes, enough for a few gan bei's and words of consolation to another bloke whose wife is from Bangxu. Bangxu women are painted as something pretty vicious here, but in a jokey manner, and the phrase that everyone understands and laughs at when I say it is "I fear nothing in the sky, nothing on the ground, only when my wife speaks Bangxunese!". It rhymes and sounds funnier in Chinese.

Then we went to pick up Leilei from Nong Kaicheng's. Apparently they were waiting for us but there was no sign of them, even after phone calls, until his mum A Hua called back to confirm we were waiting at the wrong place. Whoops. I forgot they now live in the place we lived in for three months in 2008, just down the road from where we were. It was now gone 10pm so shower for Xixi then straight to bed for them and me, though for some reason couldn't sleep till 1am.