Xixi hair do and bbq with Liu ge

Waking up at 10am didn't seem to agree so I slept-podcasted till midday when Tan asked me to take her to meet A Xia at a hair place as she couldn't get a didi che. Fair enough so we drove in the scorching heat and I did my best to keep to the shady parts of the road. Once dropped off I could feel my tummy wanting to play up again so quicky got home to relieve myself on the western toilet. Again and again...until Tan called to get me to bring money for the hair stuff as she'd already spent the maximum she could this morning on Weixin and Xixi was getting a perm. Also I needed to get panty liners. Man that's hard enough in the UK...that should be fun here.

I still hadn't grabbed a shower when she rang again to say the same thing. Repetition is a big deal here. I mean we have the same for sure but here it seems more baked into the culture. Most adjectives can just be doubled up to give more effect. In the UK I'm used to adverbs being doubled up a lot more..."I really really want that..." but not so much "the old old car" whereas here I'd feel quite normal saying that. Anyway I donned my cool black Man City away kit from a few years ago and went to Guanmart expecting a difficult visit but as I was looking at the liners a woman came up to me and asked me what I was looking for. I explained, rather than translated and we had a very "matter of fact" conversation about the rate of discharge and how this one was better for the evening and this one was better for the last couple of days. Absolutely no embarrassment about it at all and that's exactly as it should be. I walked out with three separate packets and when I got to the hair salon Tan didn't even complain though she surreptitiously moved them to another bag. A Xia spied my lovely Valencian market shopping bag and wanted it. Fair enough, it's lovely, and at least I'd have a better chance of replacing it. I still have my Sainsbury one here for this purpose.

Xixi's new hair do

Well I ended up not needing to go to the bank as the total for both the girls came to 381 kuai for apparently five hours work, and I just had enough to pay with Weixin. Then we were told we were to eat with A Hua which would be nice as I've not seen her this year, but Xixi wasn't too keen, so we compromised by saying I'd take her home and we'd pop back later for a bit. And indeed we did when Xixi deemed her face was good enough...jeez it's not like we were going to the Ritz. Anyway I shouldn't moan...we hopped on the bike and in a few hot minutes we were at the place we'd lived in for three months nearly 15 years ago, and not much had changed. We got the lift up the two whole floors and knocked on what used to be our front door.

Yes we hadn't screwed up and indeed A Hua was there with A Xia and Chen Mei. I actually had to ask Tan in English who that was to my right and she answered in Mandarin as if to chastise me for not knowing it was Chen Mei. Then I had to ask who the young man was next to A Xia and of course it was her son Su Liyi. Blimey some things change after four years. But it was a lovely meal and Xixi and I da bao'd the rest of the cha xiao after saying our goodbyes. We (I) decided we would pick up a couple of cups of watermelon juice from the place we'd frequented some years ago with the young ladies we'd known since they were babies. It took us a bit longer than it should have as I couldn't remember the road but it was fun anyway, and we eventually found the mini guangchang and the juice bar. But the girls were no longer there as apparently they were now of the age where they were away at school. No bother, the mum made us our juice and I specifically asked for mine without added sugar.

Four of the ladies at A Hua's for tea

Our favourite watermelon place

At that time Liu ge pinged me to let me know he was on his way back from Nanning and should be back between 8.30-9pm, and that we'd go for some bbq. Fair enough, I'd already met Lu zong who had chastised me for not turning up the other week after the footy, and he'd said he'd try to arrange something for tonight but apparently all his mates were busy, so it seemed I was free. Back home, Xixi and I drank our lovely juice and I realised it was actually my first one as the one I'd previously bought had found its way onto the kitchen floor. So while I was enjoying it I continued to update CTGP on the Wii...28 updates to go...I thought downloading it all to the SD card Xixi had brought would have avoided all that...very much 1st world problems.

9pm arrived at the same time as a message from Liu ge, who was about to arrive in Pingguo and asked for our address. I duly obliged and a few minutes later went outside to meet him. Indeed he was the bloke I remembered luckily, and wasn't driving luckily. Instead there was a woman from Henan in the driver's seat and a "daughter" of hers in the back with me. We drove carefully to the Pingguo Lu place to find what was apparently one of the best bbqs in town. Well to be fair it was very very good, and I'd go back there again. Vocabulary-wise it was pretty tough as Liu ge was talking about his work, and I was really trying to follow. It seemed that he was in the import/export business, and I was trying to gather what it was exactly that he was importing. Then it dawned on me that it didn't matter...whatever a country wanted he would arrange it. Well despite the recent economic problems everyone moans about in China, he seems to be doing pretty well as the Mercedes the woman was driving was apparently a gift from him.

Then the woman's son arrived. This time apparently it was her actual genetic son, but the "daughter" was her big brother's daughter. Real big brother? I don't bother asking any more. Apparently the son was in the 2nd year at university studying IoT, but when I pushed for more information it seemed to be more on the chip side than software. He'd just started learning English so we used that as an excuse to have a slow conversation, as he and his mum smoked during the evening. Liu ge had ordered Li Quan beer as apparently earlier that day in Nanning he'd drunk half a bottle of baijiu. Err...fair enough...still his sips of beer were generally 3/4 of the glass, and after two hours I could see the effects, so we decided to dao ba the rest of the bbq and he went with the son on a dian dong che while the Henan woman drove me back with her "daughter". CTGP had finally finished downloading so I enjoyed a quick GP before testing online and it worked well...12 people playing online Mario Kart Wii in mid 2023!

The Wiimote is a classic design icon IMO, and maybe part inspiration for the Sharp tv remote