Blimey I had nothing for breakfast or for lunch, such is the heat hear, but I managed some quail eggs in the evening for my first solid meal of the day.
Fang Jia pinged me to drink tea at 8.30pm and I had no plans so met her at a place outside the stadium for a watermelon juice. The owner asked if that tall guy was my son and I didn't need any more description to realise he was talking about Leilei. Apparently he comes here often for a milk tea and talks with the owner. Then another woman turned up, then A Hong, whom I'd not seen for about five years, and hadn't changed a jot. Then the rain turned up and we ran to the two cars while the owners hastily erected the covers, something they are very accustomed to doing. And a matter of minutes later we were back with our drinks.
Next Fang Jia and A Hong asked if I had Douyin, which I did but I couldn't get an account last year as I didn't have a Chinese ID. They thought this was weird and set about trying to set me up with one. After receiving an SMS it still seemed I needed an ID, but I don't know what they did but after giving some (false) info about my age etc. it seemed they had managed to set me up. Set me up at least so I was now following them both. And not only that, "liking" some of their videos. It's hard to understand exactly what they get out of this. They send regular short videos of them smiling or dancing, clearly with beauty-cam on, and from what I can see have a few dozen likes each on average. I guess it's not for money but maybe just that little bit of dopamine or whichever neurotransmitter it is you get from a "like". Well I'm happy to oblige but I'm not going to be checking back every day.
At least it was just a single drink and chat for an hour or so before getting home and Xixi asking for bbq. So I went to where I thought Tan's "uncle's" place was, and went and the lady took me inside to order, as she had a menu there. I tried to explain that I wasn't very good at reading food in Chinese, but she didn't seem to accept that and thrust the menu in my hand and I pretended to read for a bit before ordering some beef and sweetcorn (Xixi's favourites), plus some pork as I might have some too.
I sat down by myself at a table as requested, although would rather have waited outside, so ordered a bottle of beer. A couple of minutes later she had served some beer to people outside but not mine yet, so I joked for her to "wai di wai di!" in the local tongue, to laughs from the other table with people at it. Then I heard "Welcome to China!" in English from the oldish bloke at the table. So of course I replied "thank you!" back. He then said something like "happiest", to which I replied I was very happy to be in China, and I offered to share a beer with him. But the woman who worked there heard me as she was walking past and told me he didn't drink any beer.
Anyway they ushered me to their table and I brought over my seat and sat with them. When he learnt I was English he said that England was the greatest nation in the world. I had to disagree and said that all countries had their good points and not-so-good points, but I got the impression he didn't want to be philosophical about it. However he did call me an ambassador, which I took as a real compliment. He grabbed a plastic glass and I poured him a beer. He was with his wife and daughter, and a cousin, and said they didn't get out much to eat bbq, and had even less chance to speak English, so he was revelling in it.
It was a really enjoyable hour or so during which we got through three bottles (of which only two glasses were his). I managed a few words of English with his 13 year-old daughter but the mum and cousin were Chinese only. The bloke really appreciated it when I made slight corrections to some of his English phrases, and profusely apologised for them. Anyway we exchanged Weixin and maybe we'll meet up again. They insisted on sharing their bbq with me and as I was rather peckish had some succulent beef. I was commenting on how important texture is to me, and how I particularly like crispy stuff. But I used work "脆", which should translate to "crispy", but it seems it also means crunchy, in the sense that pig wrists and duck something elses are, as that's what they handed me. These are definitely not my favourite bbq items but hey. They wouldn't let me leave without giving me more meat and sweetcorn bbq to take back as they had so much. Another very pleasant and unexpected hour here. Oh, and our 25 pieces of bbq plus the three beers came to 86 kuai. 15 pieces at Tianyang Po's yesterday came to 65 and didn't taste any better. Note to come back here.
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| Pleasant hour with pleasant family at the bbq place |
Back home Xixi wolfed down the bbq as I'd been a lot longer than expected, then Tan had some beef liked it very much. Maybe one day she'll actually go somewhere other than Tianyang Po.
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