Wedding and street food

Oh bollocks. I woke up to see an email telling me the train tickets had been cancelled. No explanation, just a curt sentence from trip.com saying if any money had been taken it would be refunded in up to 10 working days. Working days. What a load of bollocks in this connected age. Like I can buy a train ticket on a Sunday but I can't get refunded on a Sunday? Crypto can't come quickly enough. So I let Tan know but she wouldn't be awake for hours.

Lunch was quail eggs again, which were actually pretty nice and made up for a lack of breakfast. I didn't eat too much as going to a wedding meal later. A Heng called to say he would pick us up at 4.30pm. He arrived at 4pm but apparently we didn't have to leave till 5pm. 

Well it seemed the train tickets would be a real PITA, so I hit upon a Plan B. I checked flights and there was one from Guangzhou to Nanning at 9.30pm on the evening they were due to arrive at 5.05pm. £70 each but the train would have been £51 each and there would be no need of a £40 hotel so pretty much obvious when you factor in the extra day they would have too. So I called Tan to tell her but she didn't get it and wanted to go ahead with the train and asked me to go to the train station to book in person as you needed to show them the ID in person apparently. Well I didn't have Xixi's passport obviously, but I knew better than to argue too much. Then she called again to say A Xia would arrange the tickets, so I sent a copy of Xixi's passport to her, only to hear a few minutes later that that wasn't going to work. So they'd have to turn up at the train station on the day of the train and show ID in person in order to get the ticket. Tan even said that the foreign football players have to queue in person but I somehow doubted that as we managed to get e-tickets no problem. But I know from experience these tickets sell out well in advance, and even though I'd purchased ours over two weeks before the date of travel the direct trains to Pingguo were all sold out hence the change in Nanning East.

So it was to be my Plan B after all, and quite frankly had it been an option for us back in June I'd have chosen it in order to get an extra day in Pingguo. I'll probably never understand why getting a train ticket online required such a strict check of ID, but getting a flight, although putting in passport details as per normal, was a piece of cake. 5 minutes later Tan had the confirmation of flights, and as it was China Southern, the same company taking them to Guangzhou, I told her to tell them this a bag drop and ask if they could send the luggage through to Nanning rather than them having to find it and drop it off again. I reckon there must be a 50% chance of that working.

We went to the new Li Jia He hotel for the wedding and were among the first to arrive, having already paid our entry fee. Nezha hadn't come as he was "tired" and Leilei was a bit annoyed at the waiting around while some of the elders chatted. To be fair it was rather boring and we could easily have turned up 30 minutes later and still have been early, but no amount of arguing or complaining would change anything and we did at least have our phones, which every person under 60 was buried in.

The meal was fine, with much more than enough for everyone, and once the compere had done his compering, and the bride and groom had said a few words, and we'd clapped enough, the copious red plastic doggy bags were out and being filled. I'd let Leilei go early after making him stay for the "show" but little did I realise most other people were leaving now too. I guess the stayers-on were those expecting to drink through the evening, but we were going home so I called Leilei and he came back to the carpark to get a lift.

Jiuma dressed up for the wedding with some other a yis

A Heng maybe not taking the wedding stuff too seriously

Seen on a tea house next to the posh hotel: "Flush after defecation" - good advice! But from a tea house?

As I said I would, I called A Wu to let him know we were out of the wedding, and he said he'd send someone to pick me up to go for a drink. 5 minutes later I got a call from someone who couldn't hear me and I guessed they had arrived, so went to the main entrance but there was no-one. So I called A Wu and he said yes someone was coming.... I called the number that had called me earlier and this time he heard me and said he was coming but would be some time, whatever that meant. Sod it, I turned on the Wii and decided to patch the Mario Kart ISO so I could attempt to play online. It took a bit of geeking to do but finally after three attempts I was in an online race with seven other geeks across the world. I wondered if I was the only person in China playing Mario Kart Wii online at the time. I like to think so at least. But before the first race the nunchuck disconnected and it thought I was playing with a single Wiimote "wheel" style. I can't do that, and by the time I realised I was already a lap down. It was all I could do not to be lapped again, and I came last and lost 100 points dropping me to under 6000. Boo.

Then Jiuma came back with A Heng's daughter. When he and his wife left for Baise I had assumed they'd take her with them. But I guess she is a grandma now and delights in taking care of her. In fact, for the first time in my life I have been called "ye ye" by this cute thing. Grandpa! I'm being called grandpa! Just please don't let it happen in English life for at least a decade.... Jiuma said the kid was tired but when she saw me on Mario Kart she most certainly wasn't. She grabbed the Switch control and rolled over laughing when I played as Diddy Kong and kept shouting "hou zi", and we spent the best part of an hour playing the balloon game (at least I did).

During this time there were more messages posted on the Weixin channel for us mango people. Apparently the video they'd uploaded yesterday had had 470,000 views. I felt quite embarrassed and then a bit later I heard it was 570k. In terms of the population of China this was pretty tiny but it dwarfed the 200k views of my "Strange hand massage" I'd uploaded to YouTube in 2006.

57 万 views (570k)...hopefully not too embarrassing

Then I realised I hadn't heard from A Wu and called him, to find out that we were no longer going to the place that had been planned as they had been drinking too much, and we'd just meet up with him and A Da for a bbq across the road. That was more than ok for me, but it still took the best part of an hour before I called him again to see if he was asleep but no, they'd be there in a few minutes.

The boys are getting up later and later and it's getting a bit annoying. But they were up for a bbq so we went and found A Wu and A Da to order some. I haven't seen A Da for years. I remember him as quite an aggressive teen, who probably didn't get enough time with either of his parents. But now he seemed really mature and kind, and just a nice person to be around. He chatted with Leilei and although it was a million miles away from when they used to play Mario Kart Wii together, it still reminded me of seeing Leilei really engaging in Mandarin with non-family for the first time 13 years ago or so.

Leilei and Nezha contemplating pig penises

Nezha ordered some meat bbq and for the sake of it we ordered pig penis and pig eye balls. Alone, the boys wouldn't have tried it but as they were both there they were up for it but the penis was tough, and not amenable to Leilei's braces, whereas Nezha bit into the pig eyeball too early and the boiling aqueous humour spurted out and burnt his face. He was belatedly told he should have waited for it to cool down then put the whole thing in his mouth before bursting it. Oh well, at least they both tried two new dishes, but they mopped up the pork and before before we had duck tongues, sweetcorn, and two chicken wings for Nezha.

A Wu was tiring, so soon after midnight I suggested we call it a night, but Haiwei pinged me to come down to Jiang Bing Lu for a bite. So I left the boys to go home, bade good night to A Wu and A Da, and got on the dian dong che to hope it would get me all the way to the river. It did, slowly, and I had my doubts for the way back, but I met up with Haiwei and a few friends at an outside table, and immediately had a glass and bowl thrust at me as though I'd not had a bite to eat all day. Of course cai ma ensued and it was a good laugh. We ended up table-hopping as you do towards the end and finally left at gone 2am while it was still really busy.

I had my doubts about the dian dong che going by myself, but I had to take a tiring Haiwei back with me too, so we trundled along at 18kph until he needed to get off, and only just made it home again. But to my annoyance all the electric plugs were taken so no chance to charge overnight.