Ma Laoban

Up at a reasonable 10am considering it was nearly 4am by the time I got to sleep. But it didn't take long before it turned to 12.30pm as I'd put on another documentary about space and it spaced me out. Before I could think about grabbing a little more shuteye I suddenly remembered that I'd agreed to meet Ma Laoban for lunch, so splashed a little water on my face and had a quick brush before driving over to his new office just before 1pm. I thought I got to the wrong place as all I saw was a load of photocopying machines, but I asked for Ma Laoban and the bloke pointed me in the direction of an office, and sure enough there he was sitting behind his desk with a load a tea figurines in front of him.

He greeted me like a long lost friend, and indeed we've known each other for 17 years or so, and I've been sort of lost to China for nearly four years, so it was a well reciprocated hug. We sat down to chat and drink tea and just catch up in general, and I gave him his tiny present of three tins of tea I won at our street party for the coronation. Some bloke came in for a bit, then another, and they drank tea and watched douyin on their phones. Then Ma Laoban chastised me for getting there so late as it was gone lunchtime and we'd go for an evening meal instead. Ok that was fine by me, so he offered me a bar of beef jerky which actually hit the spot, together with some nuts that looked to me like Macademia nuts but I couldn't find the translation for that. He just called them "jian guo" which didn't help as it literally means "nut".

Meeting up with Ma Laoban after four years

After an hour or so I reasoned that we had plenty of time and said I'd go home to grab a shower. Of course he said I didn't need to but I said I did, and when I got on the bike he rushed out with a big red box of tea as a present plus a pack of sachets of local honey from a friend who works at such a factory. Apparently this would be good to ease Leilei's cough.

It ended up being well over an hour as I ended up having a chat with Awl and maybe a can of something cold, but I got back before 4pm to find one of the blokes still there douyinning as you do, and we picked up the conversation from there, before his wife came along with their two sons, the younger of whom I'd not seen before as he'd just been born the last time I met Ma Laoban. Both the parents complained about the two kids constantly arguing and all I could say is that it's very normal. I suppose it's a relatively new generation of parents with more than one child now and many have not had to put up with that before. Well the older one was screaming about something that was the younger's fault and just wouldn't stop until he seemed physically unable to scream any more, and I wasn't really able to intervene and discharge the situation.

The bloke with the phone then decided to get up and lie down on the couch as you do, and Ma Laoban called a restaurant to order tonight's food, then some mates to make sure there would be company. I decided I had to know what the nuts were, and that just "nuts" wouldn't do, so specifically told Ma Laoban I needed to know, so he said they were from "Xiaweiyi" which meant little to me, but after a bit of help writing it out in Chinese I found out it meant Hawaii. So doing a quick search for "Hawaii nuts" the first result was indeed MacadAmia nuts and not MacadEmia as I'd looked for before. Oh well I was armed with a little more knowledge, but also knew it was unlikely to come in useful in the future.

5.30pm eventually rolled around and I said I'd follow Ma Laoban on the bike but he said I'd be drinking beer so it was best to leave the bike at home. I couldn't argue with that so he followed me back to Yu Jing Hua Ting where I dumped it and got in his 4x4 to go to a place I hadn't been before near the new hotel, where of course we had a private room waiting for us. Being the inviters we were the first of course and it wasn't until 6pm that the others had all turned up. First were two rather red-faced plump blokes who looked like they'd been drinking all afternoon and were in good spirits. Then Huang Laoban turned up, who I hadn't seen for years and had meant to. He was in good spirits too and sat next to me. Then a bloke I'm sure I've met before turned up with his 18 year-old son who was nearly as skinny as Leilei (I'd asked the kids to come but no answer), then Ma Laoban's wife and other kid turned up so there was a full complement of 10 people just fitting round the table. Interestingly the two large blokes weren't drinking so moved down to let the dad sit next to Huang Laoban, who set about pouring three glasses of beer before we even started eating.

Ma had specifically said we were to eat yu sheng (raw fish) but a whole load of other stuff was already on the table, most of which I really like especially the deep fried pork ribs. I'd only had some beef jerky and MacadAmia nuts all day but still wasn't able to gorge myself on the fantastic food. But I did make space for the raw fish even though Ma had done a typically Chinese thing and dumped a duck leg in my bowl even though I said I preferred the breast. Ma's wife tried to teach me some local terms for food, and said she'd make me some "em go" which is a bit like a flat zongzi and due to start in August.

Ma Laoban's wife, me, elder son, Ma Laoban, younger son

Huang Laoban, friend, friend's son, me, Ma Laoban

All in all it was another cracking meal, culminating in cai ma at Ma's request even though he doesn't drink. Fine...Huang Laoban was up for it and beat me badly for the first few minutes to Ma's delight. And I realised in some way I was providing entertainment and therefore paying for my meal in a real way, though I'd like to think that with Ma Laoban it was more down to genuine friendship.

I do sometimes think my meals, and indeed other times here in Guangxi, are sort of walled gardens. A meal will have great food, great company, A/C, gan beis, and cai ma. But that is pretty much it. I wonder if it is a self-enforced walled garden due to my lack of Chinese, or lack of various local languages, and doubtless it is to some extent. Ok sometimes we might play mo pai or dice but in a way the only things that change are the company and the conversation. And that fact that it still feels a bit foreign is why I still like it so much. What would happen if I actually did live here for a year or two? Would I get bored? There's only so much cai ma you can play, but I get it that it's the conversation that counts. In a pub in the UK it's not like we do anything other than drink beer and talk...with the occasional pub quiz. So maybe I'm looking into things too much again. But it is an incentive to improve my Chinese in various ways even if Tan doesn't think I should be learning the local language.

Towards the end of the meal A Wu rang for me to go and drink with some bosses which would be less cultural than the meal I just had but told him I'd be around in half an hour after Ma Laoban dropped me off, which he did 15 minutes later. So as there was no-one in the house I went over to the place near A Wu's house and indeed there were about six blokes in various states of inebriatedness, all at least twice as much as me as I'd been fairly sensible after losing cai ma to Huang Laoban and got my own back on him later. A Wu poured me a glass of beer from a 1 litre can of what definitely wasn't Chinese 2.8% beer. He pointed to some Chinese and even I knew from experience that 比利时 meant Belgium. I suppose I should be grateful that it was only 4.8% and not 8.4%, as I still had to gan bei the first glass.

Most of the bosses were drinking baijiu of course and I was invited (forced) to play cai ma. Well I enforced a rule that losing with this beer was 1/3 of the glass and not 1/2, which they just about accepted. Then, as is almost expected, a rather attractive woman dressed in an immaculate white dress walked in and sat down and started eating. It was in complete contrast to all the bosses with sweat-stained clothes and rolled up teeshirts revealing...well I just know I'll never be Chinese enough to do that, and hopefully won't have a belly capable of keeping such a teeshirt from falling down. The bloke to my right was pretty pissed and said years ago he could speak English but now it had all gone. Except it hadn't really and he insisted in spurting out whatever random words came into his head. Then he pointed at the woman who was sitting to my left and said out loud that she had big, beautiful balls. I gathered he was referring to her breasts and told him in no uncertain terms he was not to say such things, but he just laughed and repeated himself. I have no idea if the woman understood what he was saying but the fact he was pointing as well meant she probably did. Sadly, I guess she's used to it and who knows maybe puts up with it for free food and drink?

Soon after 10pm A Wu said we'd go to "sing song", for which I was quite grateful and half an hour later indeed we left the bosses' place with the woman and the pissed bloke. I followed the woman on the dian dong che and instead of going to the closest one as we normally do, we went to the one by the side of the guangchang. A Wu called to complain that I hadn't picked him up but when I left the bosses I saw him going to a dian dong che too so assumed he had his own. Well he turned up on foot which at least was a little bit of exercise for him as he's put on weight since I last saw him.

The KTV was almost worse than the bosses' place we'd just been to. A sausagefest of drunks and no amount of gan bei'ing the "Budweiser" would bring me anywhere close to their level, not that I wanted that at all. I kept it fairly short and polite and didn't sing anything, preferring to come home by midnight where I had a brief chat with Mat and Andge and Awl where they were in my back garden in London. It was 1am and I told myself I should go out for a walk and maybe get invited for a bite to eat, but Tan had told me that I was to take the boys to Baise tomorrow to see Chuan Chuan and go rafting the next day, so I took the sensible option of getting a relatively early night.