Managed to sleep in till midday or so and didn't feel great again. It took a great effort but after a quail egg I managed to do most of another stint of dumbbell exercises. A Wu pinged me in the middle to see where I was. Then at 4.13pm to say we were going out. Ok, I told him I'd need to grab a shower first, to which he replied he was waiting outside. Well he'd have to wait. I told him 5 minutes but it was more like 15 before he called again to ask where I was.
So at about 4.40pm got in his BMW and then we drove to the office just north of the guangchang, where we entered and left the doors open as it stank of smoke, then he put his phone on charge and went outside for some reason. I spent the next 20 minutes drinking tea with a couple of blokes and there was clearly no hurry at all for anything. I did manage to pop outside and chat with a family keeping warm around a burning log, until A Wu turned up to say we were going. We got as far as turning the car around then stopped again to chat.
Finally we were on our way at getting on for 6pm and it was only a 10 minute drive north of Pingguo to some place I'd not been to before, but it was someone's hometown. Then more waiting around ensued. This enabled me to have a walkabout and I bumped into a couple of ladies cooking zongzi, and of course they made me try some. I didn't realise how hungry I was and ate a whole slice at their insistence before being called to come down as the car with the beer had arrived and us lads each had to bring two boxes to the meal.
I hadn't expected such a big feast. There were about 10 tables in total, 9 of which were filled with blokes and just the one with womenfolk. It was pretty good fun of course. One of the blokes on our table said he was born in 1968 so he was the elder and therefore led the ceremony of ganbeis, and I was just glad it was 2.5% beer. After a while Huang Lei turned up too, and then the table-hopping began and I started to drink only half a glass for each ganbei and quickly top it up again before anyone noticed.
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| Just one of the rooms with a couple of tables...there was another next door and tables outside too |
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| Pool was a welcome relief from the beer too...even if the Chinese rules are quite different from what I'm used to |
But my gut was playing along so eventually I needed to go to the loo for a squat. At bloody least they had enough toilet paper. I got second wind and managed some cai ma'ing with a few blokes but needed to go for a walk after a bit when bloated. I came across a few women sitting round a fire and invited myself to sit with them for a while. It was so nice to be away from the endless fizz and have a semi-normal conversation for a change. But my presence was required so I went back to the menfolk until I realised A Wu wasn't about. Then he rang me to say he was in the carpark. Fair enough I'd seen him measuring out tiny shots of baijiu, probably as he knew he was due to drive later, and the two of us left shortly after 11pm, talking about his elder son. Apparently it had been a pain in the court after their divorce but I said he was a great chap and intelligent but A Wu said he wasn't. It's not really an argument I can win but I said I disagreed and that was all.
So home at 11.20pm, I realised I'd not really eaten all that much at the meal, so went for a walk to see what was about. So many places are closed now but after 30 minutes or so I came upon Tian Yang Po's bbq place and she was still open, so I ordered some beef and duck tongue as you do. There was one occupied table with three women drinking beer, so I cheekily asked if I could sit with them while waiting for the bbq. Of course I could, and I went to pick up a couple of bottle or Li Quan. Of course I was introduced as Bangxu guye, and Tian Yang Po's assistant kindly found a photo of Tan and her two sisters and everyone complimented her on her white skin (eughh) and good looks (fair enough). We ended up playing a lot of cai ma and I had some of their bbq and they barely touched mine when it arrived. It was a really fun end to the evening and we left at getting on for 2am, when I detoured a bit and picked up a bottle of jing jiu for a nightcap. This ended up being a longer nightcap than expected as another chat with Mat and Awl ensued till getting on for 4 am again.
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