Visit to Yanjiang with Yangwen

Up at a reasonable 9.30am or so but didn't feel great so resolved not to do anything silly today. Lunch was boring pao mian but I needed something more than quail eggs. Zhang Yangwen had pinged me to go out to play ping pong at 10am but I still wasn't feeling great, so instead he said to go to play for 10 minutes around 7pm. This was much more doable though I'm not sure how much good 10 minutes would do.

Then Yangwen pinged me again to meet up, so as I had not much better to do I agreed to meet him outside his house by the supermarket. So I agreed to be there at 3pm and when that time rolled around he pinged me to check I was on my way. So much for being fashionably late as when I got there he bibbed me from his new car. Oh, apparently we were going to a place called Yanjiang a few km outside of Pingguo to pick up some vegetables. Ok fair enough. It was a a good 15 minute drive south east and I was surprised I'd never been there before or even heard about it.

Well we did indeed stop off by the market and Yangwen bought a few bags of qing cai. I could hear the word "Russian" being whispered by some of the store holders so I walked over to them with a smile and indeed they asked if I was Russian. It's one of the most popular guesses for where I'm from. I'd say in order when people guess where I'm from it goes USA, Russia, Germany, UK, China. Yes, some people seem to think I could be Chinese and the other day I was asked if I had a Chinese passport.

Yangwen buying some qing cai as you do

After the market we went for a stroll and Yangwen was explaining how Yanjiang is ancient and used to be a 古镇, or ancient outpost. All the people we passed peered at me unlike most people in Pingguo and I guess it was because I looked different. Indeed, at the river we stopped for a while and some kids came over to look at me. They were oh so sweet and I was happy to talk to them and let them look at my nose and touch my arms due to the colour being different.

We drove back around 5ish and when he dropped me off I decided to pop in to the supermarket to get a sneaky bottle of something. Well they only had pitbull and melon flavour vodka so I opted for the latter. Yangwen had said to meet up later to play some ping pong so I didn't have more than a couple of the yucky melon vodkas. Annoyingly, the dian dong che's lights weren't working, possibly due to the overnight rain. I've already had my helmet nicked so didn't want to give someone the chance of nicking me for being light- and helmet-less, so pinged Yangwen to say I'd be late as I'd be walking over. As it was, the ping pong place was too busy so he met me outside to say we'd go for a walk. That was absolutely fine by me so we did a couple of rounds of the football stadium along with quite a few joggers. Jeez this is something I need to get back to now after the last two weeks.

Not an amazing choice of vodka but better than a few years ago

Back home it was pretty busy and noisy with family, and I wanted to grab a shower but there were too many people. So I decided that for a little over £20 I'd book a hotel round the corner and get a bit of luxury. It was a good idea, not to mention much warmer than the house, and fun. I got a nice shower and a bloody soft bed for the first time in a while, although ended up chatting to Mat till gone 2.30am.