Seemingly every time I get to Pingguo I have this false dawn of waking up in the morning and thinking I've conquered jetlag. And indeed I thought the same this morning. So as normal I forewent breakfast as Li Kun had invited me for lunch at the stadium, and I took the fully charged dian dong che there at 1.30pm and was very happy to meet him and his wife and younger two children. Gosh it reminded me of how hard it could be with young'uns screaming and running around but here it's accepted a bit more than other places...his 2.75 year old son went a bit ballistic but few brows were furrowed. We simply ate and had a nice chat and then Li Kun went back to his office to drink tea.
I was to meet him there too, but thought I'd better try to register myself first although Li Kun doubted the police place would be open on Saturday. Well he was right and wrong as the police place itself wasn't open, but the office I needed wasn't, and the bloke at reception told me to come back anytime on Monday, so fair enough, I was to go to Li Kun's office to tell him he was sort of right.
I did the usual and drove past his office till I hit the small supermarket that sells cold non-sugar drinks, and bought a single bottle of 0 sugar cola as I feared I would be flagging soon. I took a large gulp before I heard a young girl shout at me and I recognised her as Li Kun's second daughter I'd just had lunch with. Somehow she had recognised me and took it upon herself to lead me to his office (getting a lift on the dian dong che) which was indeed only 30 yards away.
And indeed at 3.00pm it was just tea we drank (not that beer wouldn't have been an option had anyone wanted it). The daughter and son noticed my cola so I poured them a glass. The daughter let the son have a small sip and it must have been his first time as his eyes lit up and he slowly beamed a massive smile that was infectious to all in the room. I asked if it was ok for a not-yet three year-old to have cola and Li Kun said it was fine, so within the next few minutes the bottle was emptied, but I suspect the tea we drank had enough caffeine to fill in what I missed from the cola. I mentioned to Li Kun about the possibility of watching the last match of the season tomorrow and one of his mates Lu Feng said he could sort that no problem - we exchanged numbers and Weixin and he said we'd meet tomorrow lunchtime before the kick-off. Well that was efficient.
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| I've just had my first sip of cola! |
Yang Haiwei had got in contact to tell me to meet up with him at 5pm to talk to his younger son in English, and then to eat, and I was more than happy with that. So around that time I drove over there to whichever place he was living in at the time and spent a good hour chatting with his son and some of his mates before food was served. They'd pretty much cooked half a pig, and that meant all the bits inside plus the skin. Haiwei used his chopsticks to put a full pig's foot in my bowl of rice and unlike former years I wasn't annoyed and actually quite enjoyed it. I think we ate with the owner of the house and his wife and son, and another woman I don't know who was annoyingly good at cai ma.
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| Dinner with Haiwei and friends |
Eventually it got to 10pm and although the beer was flowing I made the jetlag excuse of needing to get home and all were ok with it. Of course it took 10 minutes of exchanging glasses of beer to finish off but I was back before 11pm as I wanted to watch the City match. But bloody hell my VPN wasn't working. Not one of the three I'd paid for, and I tried for ages. I had to settle for a dodgy stream that was very stop-and-start. So although I didn't get to see it in all its glory I sort of witnessed a lovely 6-1 win for us over Bournemouth (Doku looking a great buy) before being dragged to sleep.
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