Up at a stupid 7.30am after only getting to sleep at 4am due to the late return of the ladies, but after a yoghurt managed to put some clothes in the wash using up the last of the washing liquid. Dozed a little till 10.30 before I fell into a deeper sleep while listening to a discussion on the origins of life with Nick Lane. Somehow I must have been awake enough to restart it after 90 minutes and fell asleep again to the repeat before it turned 1pm, and I'd finally had 7h30 of sleep in total. Xixi was up and Jiuma, Erjie, Qiqi gege, and A Heng, his wife and child had come around to visit.
So it was a loud half an hour of people who hadn't seen each other for four years with many a photo taken. Xixi was getting a little tired of this but played along until I came up with the genuine excuse of needing to get two more towels from the supermarket. So I said I'd take her, and Tan, who was with A Xia, told me to take her to A Xia's shop after to try on some clothes. Xixi evidently thought that would be worse than coming home so we set off to Guanmart with A Heng's wife (I now know she is called Xiao Jun) and their baby following us on their dian dong che. We got a trolley and the ladies filled it with various sweet things to eat and drink, and I dutifully got two cheap towels and some more (mint) shower gel as now both bathrooms are in use. There was no question of anyone else paying not that I would have allowed that, and when I'd scanned my card and got my receipt they told me I'd won some eggs or rice. And indeed when we showed the receipt I needed to write my (Chinese) name and number on three separate slips of paper and hand them to them. But in fact these three slips were to get me into the draw tomorrow evening for...well Xixi seemed to understand but I didn't have much of a clue. We'll aim to be here at 7.30pm tomorrow though. And they gave us our choice of four fresh eggs instead of the rice.
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| Family photo with Nezha |
We came straight back home where it seemed it was even busier with relatives. It was an hour before the England v Haiti match and I asked Qiqi if it would be on tv. He had a search and apparently it would be for 19.9 kuai. I said not to bother as we'd probably only watch a little anyway. But he then found the last 10 minutes of the Zambia v Japan game and didn't have to pay for it. V or vs? V vs vs? Ok it looks like I'll stick with v. It was determined that we'd be eating at home, which was by far the right decision despite the lack of table space. 5.30pm rolled around and Qiqi found the England match and indeed didn't have to pay anything. It wasn't the most interesting match and we could easily have drawn/lost. At least at dinnertime some of us were able to take our own bowls and eat from the sofa watching the match while some food was plonked on Running Dog. Jiuma said to leave the tea table here as it would be no problem, so I said I was grateful and had asked for a quote to take it back to the UK but A Heng laughed as he said at 300 jin it would be far too heavy to be worth it and I'm 90% sure he's right.
The drinking water had run out, and the 5 litres I'd bought last night wasn't going to last any time with the amount of people there, so Tan told me that there was a place in the complex we could go to that would dispense water and we only needed to scan a card. This sounded deceptively simple but I grabbed the 15 litre bottle and was about to go when A Heng said he'd accompany me. Secretly I was a little ok with that as had no idea where to go despite them saying it was "close". Well it was only 50 yards away and simple as piss to put the bottle in and wait for it to fill up 7.5 litres while listening to The Blue Danube, but it felt very much like being on the set of Squid Games with that music and being in an Asian setting. Well that lasted all of two minutes before for some reason we walked the long way back home and when asked of course told A Heng I wasn't tired. When we arrived I was sweating enough to change my top.
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| Some of a family meal |
Xixi and I had forgotten to get washing liquid for the clothes so went to the supermarket by the guangchang to make up for it and picked up some fresh boiled quail eggs again, before going to look for The Sun Shop where Xixi wanted to get some presents for friends. Well it was still there but had hopped across to the other side of the road. It was empty of people but open so we walked in and Xixi found some pairs of "Nike" socks for 17 kuai each. I told her they were fake but she said no-one would notice.... The cash register registered 97 kuai, but the shopkeeper insisted on totting it up on his calculator...I told Xixi he'd be working out a discount but in fact he told us it would be 98.5 kuai. I didn't argue.
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| At The Sun Shop |
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| Xixi getting along with A Heng's daughter |
A Wu had already sent me a video of Boss Zhou's place where they were watching China play Denmark, so I dropped Xixi off with Tan at A Xia's place where they have their own KTV room, and made my way over to Boss Zhou's as you do. Well it wasn't China that were playing but another team in their yellow away kit - Pingguo were up 1-0 at Jiangxi Beidamen which was good. But it only lasted another 5 minutes as the second half of the arguably more important world cup started. A Wu wasn't there due to taking the children home, so I watched an even half at the end of which Denmark scored a slightly lucky goal and China so nearly equalised in extra time. Boss Zhou seemed to appreciate my appreciation of the game and knew when to applaud. Luckily we went fairly easy on the beer, and there was enough food to fill me up as I hadn't had more than a couple of mouthfuls at home. The crayfish were particularly nice despite the tiny amount of meat you (I) actually can get out of them. A Wu then turned up after having performed his kidly duties so we had a couple more drinks and a few games of mo pai, which I'm slowly getting used to.
Soon after 10pm I went to pick up Xixi from A Xia's and before going home I remembered we needed to cut the ladies some keys. I thought we'd check by the market place but all the fruit places and key cutting places were closed. Except there was a bit of light coming from one of them. We walked over and indeed one of the key places was not shut up, but there was no-one there either. I found a phone number on the side and decided to call it, and should not have been surprised to get an answer. I asked if he was the key bloke and it transpired he was and he would be over in 6 minutes or 7 minutes. Which he was. No question of any of his wares being taken which is so refreshing. 5 minutes later we had two fresh keys and he would only take 6 kuai. I tried to argue that 2 x 4 equals 8 but he said two keys were 6 kuai and I gave up arguing any more. I was just grateful to have found a locksmith so late.
Back home around midnight I was looking for an excuse to burn off the last few km of the dian dong che before putting it to charge when I got a timely message from a bbq friend saying they were at some "club" bar a couple of km away. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth I went over there for an hour or so and again kept it fairly easy on the beers other than a little cai ma. Back home at 2ish there were no empty slots to charge the bike at the normal place or at our area, so I managed to find one at the neighbouring building. But try as I might the bloody thing wouldn't charge. I thought it might be as I had no data left, so took a picture of the faded QR code and walked home to try again. Five times I tried before nearly giving up and going to bed, but I knew to be without my steed tomorrow would be grim, so mustered up enough energy to go back outside wearing only some shorts and flipflops and plugged it in to the next plug, and lo and behold 30 seconds later the red light came on and the charger confirmed the batteries were nearly empty. Back home I still couldn't sleep so turned my VPN to the UK and tried Netflix. Yes! It let me log in and I watched the first two episodes of the new Black Mirror series and remembered it turning 6am before I finally got some shuteye.
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