More massage pain but first sumptuous meal of the year

I suppose I had had more than five hours' sleep by 6am so wasn't too disappointed to wake up then. I probably would have got back to sleep normally but I was a little bit excited about taking out the dian dong che and taking advantage of the fact that it had a longer range than the one we'd used in previous years. By 7am it was already pretty hot outside but as I moved to third gear I was (apparently) going at nearly 53kph, about 10kph more than I'd done in the previous one. If my back had allowed it I would have bent forward to reduced the drag and get an extra kph or two but I was enjoying the wind in my face and the relative lack of traffic.

I took a road north of Pingguo for a couple of km but it was very industrial and not very inspiring, so I doubled back and went down to the river, reaching 56kph downhill at one stage. At the river I mounted a path to drive along the bank and came across some stone stairs that I nearly drove down by mistake, and narrowly avoided taking the the grass to the left hand side down the slope instead. I found myself in a park that was very clearly for bipeds and not mopeds. I drove past various people out for early morning exercise, embarrassingly looking for an exit I could make on two wheels. No-one actually complained, but I stuck out like a sore thumb and ended up having to drive the whole length of the park until I found somewhere I could roll out of.

I was at the bridge I'd taken Xixi to a few years ago. By now it was complete, except the road on the south side hadn't even been started. It made we wonder how the planning works around here. I mean what's the point of building a bridge at great expense if there is no road on the other side. The only people taking advantage were some old folk planting or picking vegetables on the arable other side, and some people using the bridge as a good vantage point for taking photos with the mountains as a backdrop.

The end of the bridge and the end of the road

I picked up breakfast and went home, then took Xixi to piano practice, leaving Tan doing her pilates and Leilei geeking on the iped. I tried to teach her the left hand of Les Cloches, and she got as far as playing with me, but wasn't too interested unfortunately, and wasn't into having a lesson (which I wasn't going to force upon her). So I had a practice and must have put off some of the kids in the other cubicles as someone came to close our door properly. A bit frustrated with Xixi, we left early to go to the acu-doctor for my follow-up session. But Xixi wasn't up for staying around so I dumped her off before coming back. A Xia was there having lunch with him. I think some of these women see more of this "doctor" than their husbands, or at least he touches them more than their husbands do.

The girls doing their morning exercises

Well he touched me painful. He focused on the parts of the nerve that were particularly bad and made them worse. I actually cried out in pain at some points, even though there was no-one other than him to hear, thus semi-proving a point about trees making a sound when they fall in a forest. He seemed intent on pressurising some point just below the back of my right knee ("acupuncture point" he needlessly explained in English). And the more I winced the more pressure he applied thus making it a self-fulfilling prophecy that he was kneading it because it was painful. In the end I just tried to bite the pillow in order not to make any further noise just to let him know it was "working". Again, there was no noticeable difference but the women seem to swear by him.

We'd not had a proper sumptuous friend meal yet, so rather than wait to be invited I made a few phone calls to see if anyone was available tonight for one. Everyone was. It seems few people make plans more than a few hours in advance here. I called Tan to let her know of my intent and to ask her to ask the friends I didn't already have in my phone. She was at A Xia's place with many of them and all could make it, even Chen Mei who'd come over from Nanning. I drove over there after lunch with the kids at Waipo's (yeah partly to show off the new set of wheels) and met up with the ladies. By a long stretch I wasn't the only one who had a new phone number this year, and A Hua helped me not only update my phone book, but fix the way I had written some names. Embarrassingly, her husband (A Dong) and A Xia's husband (another A Dong) I'd both written incorrectly. Thankfully she helped me write their names in full so at least I'll know which one I'm calling in the future.

As the meal was to be at 6pm, I knew as the inviter I had to be there at 5.30, meaning I needed to get some sleep now, so took the kids back and let them play Roblox while I caught some zzzs for an hour or so. At 5pm I showered and shaved, put on long trousers and socks, and took the dian dong che to "Bei Bu Wan", the seafood restaurant Chen Mei had ordered (that A Wu had said was too expensive).

The private room had two tables, obviously soon to be segregated into sexes. One by one everyone turned up until we needed to import more chairs to accommodate all plus the kids. Only one or two of the husbands didn't turn up. For the first time A Ni was there in the same room as Tan as they haven't been getting along recently, but all was fine. I ordered some stuff and let Lin Hong order the rest. To my slight surprise the manhandling doctor also turned up. He had a son but didn't appear to have a female companion and I was concerned that he would see me drink beer as I'd been almost off it for two days on his "advice". But he joined in with some gan bei's. I found out later that the women had all chosen to invite him (they obviously didn't ask me). I thought doctors should be considered better if their patients had fewer visits than more (I actually thought that was a Chinese proverb), but I didn't bring up that topic of conversation.

Nice un-posed pic from the ladies' table

It was basically like many of the other meals with the kids finishing first and watching tv, the women chatting and the men cai ma'ing. I gan bei'd most of the blokes, and then one by one each of the women, just to get it over with, which actually made me feel a little tiddly. Lin Hong took Leilei and Xixi out a bit later and the meal didn't end till 9pm by which time there was still quite a lot left over that was hastily doggy-bagged away lest it be wasted.

Post-meal with the ladies and a couple of kids

When walking out of the room I luckily remembered that it was me who would be paying and feared the worst, but it came to 1760 kuai. I jokingly asked for a discount and they said that without a "fa piao" it would be 1620. I guessed this meant without a proper receipt, a bit like paying cash in hand, which it totally was. Well I wasn't going to complain at 153 quid for a sumptuous meal that fed at least 25 people for three hours including drinks!

While the kids were out playing I went to A Wu's office for a bit and was chatting to the ladies from A Ni's work. They mostly have Samsung Note 3s and were scrolling through photos in portrait mode. I asked, in total innocence, why they didn't use landscape when looking at photos, and they looked at me in a bemused manner. So I took the phone from one of them, turned on auto-landscape and gave the phone back in that mode. Her eyes lit up and immediately another asked me to do the same for her. I must have been like some geek from heaven to them.

Then Haiwei gave me a call and I said I may not be able to meet him as A Wu said we were going to a new pub, but no matter - he was going there too. As apparently was Uncle Yellow, who also called me to ask my whereabouts. So when I got to the first floor of what used to be a coffee shop, and walked through the modern bar, it was almost like being at my local. It was a bit of a relief that a few gan bei's later Tian Tian called me to say the kids were tired. They are always a good excuse for leaving before having too many beers, so I said my goodbyes and went to the ripped Japanese flag cafe where the sweaty twosome were sipping some sweet tea pudding with Tian Tian and her parents. I said thanks to them and got the kids showered and in bed by midnight. I didn't even bother asking where Tan was but she got back at 1 after a night out with friends singing at a new KTV joint. Apparently only 200 kuai for two hours. Nice.

The crickets were playing at the pub