Dom, Tan, Leilei, and Xixi in China: Big meal and music with Haiwei and friends

Despite being a little buzzy from so much music last night I did get to sleep within minutes of getting home at 8am and without anything else to help. My only commitment was to eat tea with Haiwei and his son but when I did get up I managed a couple of boiled eggs to keep me going. By now I should be getting really sad about leaving but it's getting on for my 30th time here so I can have some hope of coming back. I'd already booked a 6.04pm train to Nanning for tomorrow though and expected to stay in a hotel, but wanted to keep my options open.

So of course at before 6pm I got a dingwei from Haiwei and a call to come over a bit early. Well I needed a shower and was bloody well going to take one and a few phone calls later I put the dian dong che on charge in case I'd need it later and anyway it was only a 3 minute walk away. His younger son was waiting for me outside (for how long I don't want to know) and led me up six floors to the top of the building where there were at least 20 people of all generations around two tables. i immediately felt embarrassed at being a bit late, but was bade to sit down next to Haiwei of course. I recognised the artist from January who'd made me a nice wall frieze, and showed the picture of it adorning our living room in London. But as they'd started eating there was little time for pleasantriness before the ganbeiing started, and it was very much in earnest.

I wasn't expecting so many people

To this day I still don't know the purpose of this evening but it was very pleasant, and an old bloke presently sat down and played some tradition music on a Chinese violin. Then people started singing to join in, before dancing also broke out. Unfortunately so did a "normal" guitar, which was thrust into my arms, not for the first time this month. It was excruciatingly out of tune and I couldn't hear my app to get a proper low E very well...but hey...it was relatively tuned in a couple of minutes and when the din died down I found it was pretty much in tune. So yeah, for the last time this year I did 有没有人告诉你, and a couple of S&G ones, so I'd effectively sung for my supper again. I'm going to miss this.

Cool traditional music

And then it turned to dancing

But Luo Xiaoping had pinged me to say his wife had left a couple of little presents at Li Kun's office, so I used that as an excuse to leave the festivities and picked them up there with a couple of glasses of tea as you do. I told Li Kun I wanted to see Zhuang Hua so he said he'd meet me there in a bit but a couple of mates turned up and we ended up having a few beers first as you do.

Cute Xmas presents from Luo Xiaoping's wife's hands - they will go on our tree

It was great to see Zhang Hua though, and although I hadn't invited anyone else I knew a couple of people there, including a woman from Yunan I couldn't remember the name of. Li Kun did turn up a bit later we enjoyed some nice bbq, and I left at I guess gone 1am to get back to do some packing, which is basically Tan's and Xixi's clothes so it wasn't difficult.