I woke up at 9am to my phone going off and for some reason answered it. It was some bloke saying something about being a teacher. I was a bit groggy and told him to repeat a bit slower but he kept going on at the same speed. So I told him I didn't speak Chinese very well and he just hung up. Given that only three people know my new number I have no idea how he had it. Yes it was probably an advertisement I suppose. At least it will remind me to put my phone on silent. Except I didn't, and fell asleep again until Tan woke me up with a call at nearly 11am. "Where are you?". I was honest and told her I was in a hotel, which didn't go down very well, but I quickly followed up with the explanation about the A/C and said I'd be back in a few minutes as she'd already come back to Pingguo (early than she'd said).
Back home the first thing I did was grab our passports and took the freshly charged bike (yes, the new charger was what we needed) to the police place in the south of the city to get our dengji. This time the process took not much more than 30 minutes, after Mong or her colleague found my document from a few months ago. So, officially registered for the umpteenth time, I headed back to focus on the second highest priority of the moment: the A/C. I explained to Jiuma, who'd also come back, that I'd used the remote to turn it on but only the door-thing opened and nothing came out. Tan then plugged it in and the whole thing came to life, and it made me look like a bit of an idiot. I argued I'd been playing with it for half an hour, including unplugging and re-plugging as you do, then "luckily" the thing stopped working. This time it wouldn't come back to life, which shouldn't be a good thing but justified my actions at least.
Jiuma made a phone call and said someone would be round later to look at it. Indeed an hour later a bloke came and after I explained the symptoms (it wasn't really that hard) he opened it up and said the "ban" was the problem. Of course I had no idea what a "ban" was but I worked out it must be some sort of circuit board. He tried to fix it but said it would need to be replaced and he'd be back in a bit with a new one. Indeed, I've since found out a circuit board is indeed a 电路板 (dianlu ban). An hour later it was working again, albeit with a new remote. The third priority was now to sort out money. My Revolut card was refused by a couple of ATMs so I had to use HSBC, but yeah, first world problems. I wish they were a bit more crypto-friendly though. This time I've actually paid for our Mullvad VPN with crypto (before we left) so pretty cool.
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| Fixing the A/C with a new 电路板 |
At 6.30 Feng ge pinged me to show where to meet and to say we'd meet at 7.10, so I had a wee tipple and left at 7pm only to be called over to a table outside what I was soon to learn was a newly opened restaurant, or at least it had a new boss. The whole place was celebrating the occasion and I was dragged to a table and sat down with a bottle of beer and made to do the expected ganbeis. Luckily I hadn't actually eaten much so availed myself of some of the goodies on the table before being whisked off to another table to rinse and repeat. Luckily again, I noticed Feng ge had pinged me again to say he was running late and to meet at 7.20.
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| My excuse for nearly being late for the football... |
By 7.25 I made my excuses and after a few more ganbeis was allowed to leave, and after a couple of calls met up with Feng ge 15 minutes later outside the stadium where we could hear them calling out the names of the players. We were back at the Wu Ming supporters side and although not as full as last year it was still a great atmosphere. We got off to an amazing start and after 19 minutes our Brazilian Giovanny had scored a hat-trick at the goal we were behind! The second half wasn't quite so good, as has been the story of too many of our games recently, with the defence apparently tiring. But hey, we managed a 4-3 victory thanks to a Giovanny 4th, against a top-tier team.
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| Cracking result and best game I've been to so far |
Next Feng ge ordered a didi che to go to see some mates and drink beer for a while opposite Yu Jing Hua Ting, and at 10.30pm saw I had a missed call from A Wu, who'd then sent me a weizhi. But I couldn't leave Feng ge so soon after getting to his office so stayed for a few beers first before pinging A Wu at just gone midnight to see if he was still out. Indeed he was, so I took the bike down to near Matou Shan where I heard Huang Lei shout "Doini" which is about as close as he's ever got to my English name. So I pulled up and joined them sitting at a table outside, where A Wu was wearing one of those paddy field hats. Then I had a bit of a shock as inside one of the shops/houses next to us was another funeral alter but this time with a (covered) dead body behind it.
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| Upside-down wheat beer at Feng ge's office as you do |
It transpired it was A Wu's mother's funeral this weekend, and we went to pay our respects the same way as two days ago in Bangxu. It would have been nice to have a little advance warning. But it is what it is, and we went back to the table to eat. I'm not sure wearing a football top was most appropriate but others were in casual clothes so I didn't worry too much. I did worry when Huang Lei told me that as a "close" family member, and being male, I would need to come back tomorrow morning before 9am for the funeral itself. So I probably should have gone home earlier than 1.30am.
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