Bumped into an "uncle" neighbour who'd been trying to invite me for dinner for some time. I gave him my phone no. and said I should be able to tonight. He said he'd call by 6pm.
Due to having a reasonable amount of sleep I had no siesta. The kids and I went out for a drive in the midday sun to see what we could see. We did a tour of the guang chang and I somehow managed to spot several young ladies in make up and white dresses so we stopped for a gander. There was a photographer taking pictures of them and I asked a family nearby if it was a wedding. No it wasn't. So was it for an advert then? Again, no. So rather than someone putting me out of my ignorance I asked what this was for then, and the answer was "friends". I didn't ask further, but I did get talking to the other family watching. Apparently they were from Chongqing, and had a home in Pingguo too. And they had a six year old daughter. The wife said we must go to their home town and eat so I said I'd look into it. 22 hours on an overnight train? I'd do it but Tan..?
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| Friends at the guang chang |
We exchanged WeChat IDs and drove off to have soup and egg fried rice at a local place, before going home to do homework with Leilei. I dropped the kids off with Chuan Chuan at Waipo's as she's back from doing exams in Baise, and got home and tidied up a little. It's slightly annoying that any cold drink leaves a puddle on the table due to the difference in heat, but even the supermarket doesn't sell any form of coasters - something I will remember to bring from the UK next time. Outside the supermarket they are fixing the road they made around eight years ago. It's a sign of how cheap labour must be that this is predominantly done by hand still. I wonder if it will last longer this time.
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| Fixing the road manually |
Haiwei called soon after 6 to invite me to eat dog by the guang chang. I explained about the neighbour, and that I'd be there some time later, and he understood in a way that A Wu probably wouldn't have. But I'd received no call from the neighbour so had decided to eat dog when he decided to ring at 6.40 so I ended up going there. It was a nice family meal and I recognised his kids from a few years ago - at least two had kids of their own now. The daughter took a picture of me and then uploaded to WeChat and within minutes had a trail of comments....
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| Me on WeChat |
The dad only had one bottle of beer, which was no problem for me but within a few minutes a box of 12 cold bottles was delivered. He wouldn't have anyone pay for them and leapt over us to ensure no-one did. I think he actually didn't have any cash on him but just told the delivery man not to worry, and judging by the smile on the delivery man he didn't. He got back in his seat and I said I'd take a picture of him and his wife and daughter and straight away he leapt over us again. Then I realised this time he'd gone to put a shirt on.
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| Uncle, aunt, and daughter |
There were some other people at the table too, and it appeared all used to live in the same street as Waipo in Bangxu at some time. They said they were relatives, but I never know if that is the blood type here unless I check with Tan. Then one of the blokes got a pen and paper and wrote a note on it and gave it to me to give to Tan. I held it up and somehow was able to read the first few characters: "Tomorrow afternoon 5.30". From that I guessed it was an invitation. I decided to show off and tell him I didn't need to deliver it by hand - I took a picture of it and sent it by WeChat instead! Cool, I thought, until Tan replied saying she couldn't receive pictures without being in a wifi area and she was out of town with friends. Actually, I think it's only iphones that can't receive such multi-media messages as there is something wrong with the China Mobile 3G implementation at the hardware level and the iphone chips aren't flexible enough to deal with it. It works ok on my old Nokia N8, however long in the tooth it might be.
I made my excuses and left by 8. I guessed Tan wouldn't be interested in this invitation for tomorrow but you never know. I drove down to the guang chang and met up with Haiwei and some more clients. I also saw Huang Laoban and friends at another table. I really didn't want to gan bei too much so kept it to one each before descending into cai ma, which I had a good patch in luckily. But I was fizzed to bursting so I made the kids an excuse and went to find them in the guang chang with Chuan Chuan. They were sweating like pigs and I brought them back to Haiwei to let them have some bbq before taking them home for shower and bed. Then, just as Tan got back and we'd both managed a shower, the router went down with the water heater. This has been quite a common occurence but this time I couldn't force the switch up. I guessed it had burned through or something. So no more hot water until we fix the electrics, but at least I could find somewhere else to plug the router in that was within reach of the ethernet cable. Phew. Asleep soon after one after failing to sort out car insurance for Mat on my car. Swiftcover swiftly said they wouldn't cover him as we was not a UK resident although he's (I think) still British. Nice.
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