Last Supper 2018

As it’s sadly nearing the end I took the kids out for a bike ride and Leilei had another go by himself in the hotel car park again. We went to the west side of town and found A Wu’s old house that we’d lived in for three months 13 years ago, at least Leilei had. He may not have remembered, but it brought back memories to me as it was our first real living experience in Pingguo, meaning doing the trivial chores like washing and drying clothes, cleaning the floor etc., the things that make you feel more a part of somewhere you are staying. Well the kids didn’t particularly care for my reminiscing and we made off again back to town where I had the idea to get a print out of the stitch-picture I took the other day. We found, after a couple of wrong attempts, the advertising friend’s new shop which is 2-3 times larger than her last place.

I have a sad fascination for how many km our dian dong che does

Printing out my stitched picture of the view while waiting for our lift - at least she didn't question why

Of course it was fine to make a print-out, and of course she wouldn’t take anything so we had a couple of cups of tea until the kids got bored and said thank you again. The previous time we’d got such a print-out was about 10 years ago. Back at home I found I still had a pack of face mask cream from The Body Shop so was able to reciprocate the favour.

Now there was one more thing on my list of things to do before we went back - seeds. I’d looked in a few shops but none sold them, but was told that the market in the centre should have them, and indeed they did. What would have been an even more boring trip for the kids (what kid wants to buy seeds?) was made a little more interesting by watching market vendors plucking out soon-to-hatch baby bees from their hexagonal sleeping quarters to be sold on to restaurants and fried up deliciously.

The bees that made the trip to the market more interesting

Rather than leaving The Last Supper to the last evening I decided to message my mates for tonight to meet at Huang’s Beihai seafood place, as has become customary in the last few years. I IM’d each one to come from 9pm and without fail they got back to me to say they could (though those with kids may be along later). It seems that the Chinese penchant for turning up early to eating events is more a female trait than male, or maybe if the food is being prepared for you then there’s not so much point turning up early. Certainly no-one did as I got there late myself which would have been frowned upon.

I’ve grown more in confidence about ordering food myself recently and did so before any xiong di turned up, and I think I did a good job. One by one they all turned up a great meal ensued. It had that typical Chinese flavour of people coming and people going and always maintaining around 75% of the total number of invitees. At some time before midnight it was decided that we would move on so I paid the reasonable bill of 900 kuai, said goodbye to Huang, and we moved on to another place to continue. I have no idea why - were they concerned I’d have too big a bill? Anyway, for the first time in a couple of years at least I had bbq pig’s penis washed down with more Li Quan pijiu. For some reason Li Kun wouldn’t let me drive home later so I took his car and a mate accompanied us on our dian dong che.

Last Supper 2018

Post-Last Supper 2018 with pig's penis

Ah it should have felt sadder than it did, going home, but I rationalise that each year is a smaller percentage of my life and that therefore it will feel like less time before the next such excursion.