Sick City top but at least we won

I am wearing a Man City top that smells of sick. I washed it last night in preparation for today, like last weekend when we drew 0-0 with Newcastle.

The reason it smells of sick is that Leilei woke up on the stroke of half time (not a bad time to wake up as we were ahead 3-0), and sicked on my shoulder. Unfortunately he had a bit of a cough and wouldn’t go to bed, so I took him downstairs for a bit, and then made him play the car game on my mobile that always gets him asleep.

Except that he wouldn’t sleep this time. It took a half hour phone call from Awl before Leilei was asleep.

OK. They are all asleep now! So my shirt smells of baby puke! We won! We beat Fulham 3-1! Ok we could have done better but it’s three points! And Corradi scored at last!

Earlier today we went to a celebration for the birth of a baby girl (a month ago) to a cousin of Tan. It was a bit like a wedding celebration in that it was situated in the poshest hotel (the one close to our house) and was preceded by five minutes of extremely loud bangers. Similar to our wedding meal last year, the guests started eating as soon as they sat down at their tables - no standing on ceremony waiting for the baby to arrive (well, everyone had paid 100 kuai each in red envelopes to be there).

I was invited to play cai ma by various blokes, and managed to beat some of them, much to the others' amusement. However I had to leave before 7.30 to look after Leilei while his mother prepared to go out dancing. He was to have gone to Bangxu with his grandma tonight, but they are now going tomorrow. I felt a bit bad at the meal, as it seemed more people wanted to see him than the baby we were supposed to be celebrating...


Leilei drinking orange. Tan's mum is on Tan's right and her brother's wife on her mum's right. The eggs are dyed red for...err...good luck.

Lie-in

Had a nice lie in without Leilei, but went to pick him up later in the morning. A lie in. You really can’t appreciate how nice that is unless you haven’t had one for so many months. Sometimes I get up early and do all the baby things till late morning just so Tan can experience that feeling (normally when I’m after something).

It’s really hot again now, including the nighttime. Most men, though, still wear long trousers during the day and black shoes. There is a bit of a penchant for wearing shiny black shoes with white socks. Fortunately, Xiao Li and his friends wear dark socks.

Visits to the ladies outside the shops who clean shoes are frequent, as it gets quite dusty here. In fact I’ve noticed this wherever I’ve stayed in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. I think one of the reasons it’s so dusty here is simply the amount of building going on. I went to clean my white trainers today. I took Leilei out to watch his mum dancing for a bit (more to show him off to the other ladies), then went to buy some milk powder as we’ve given the other tin to his grandma. She is meant to be taking him to Bangxu tomorrow for a couple of days.

Leilei stays the night with waipo

As I was out shopping in the evening with Leilei, I thought I’d pop in on his grandma as I haven’t seen her in a week or so. After a few minutes there I said I needed to go to pick up Tan from dancing, and her mum asked if I could leave Leilei there…to stay the night. So I did. He’s got a lot better with other people now – you can leave him with just about anyone as long as he has a car or a ball in one hand.

New place to wash iron ore

I normally tell Xiao Li I need to do some work when he asks me to go to his work with him, but as I haven’t gone for some time, I thought I’d go after lunch. The last time I went was two weeks ago in the baking sun, while we stood in a maize field waiting for the owner to turn up to see if we could do some business deal.

That day I found out that the place in the mountains where they wash the iron ore, in preparation for selling to the factories, was no longer usable as the lake there had dried up. They needed a new place to wash the ore where the water would be plentiful.

Well, that day, two weeks ago was part of the plan. We eventually met the owner of a plot of land that had been used for growing maize, but was situated, conveniently, a hundred yards from the main river that flows from Pingguo (and continues to Nanning, and eventually to the sea). A few words were spoken, and I understood that we were to start washing the iron ore in this place instead of in the mountain.

So I was quite surprised to see a half built wall around an area nearly the size of a football pitch when I arrived. More than that, there was about 100 tons of iron ore awaiting washing, plus some women digging out the foundations for a new house on this plot.

They had taken this seriously. Xiao Li had paid the owner of the land for three years. The area was to be walled off, and have a couple of inhabitants in order to keep non-desirables away. A three metre deep pool was to be excavated and pumped full of water from the nearby river. I asked when the house would be ready (I gave the women a hand digging the holes for the foundation stones) and was told “five days”. I asked when the whole thing would be ready and was told “ten days”. I was surprised but believed these figures. And I will be here long enough to confirm them.

One thing is for sure, they get things done here. I presume there isn’t a lot of governmental interference, or employment laws they have to follow. We just paid the four women digging the house a few hundred kuai (works out to £1.80 a day), and those building the wall get twice that, then spent the rest of the time checking the work. I was encouraged to tell them to “kuai yi dian!!” (“hurry up!!”), but I could only do so in a laughing manner, although I did go around the workers and ask them how they were doing and what methods they were using to build the wall (they think I’m their boss).

So now I know what Xiao Li has been doing recently: overseeing the work on a new place to wash and distribute their iron ore. Ingenious! They’ll be able to produce five to ten times more than previously at not much more cost.

Lao Tao surveying the new premisis.

A woman digging the foundations of a new house that will take five days to build. She will have earned under a tenner in that time.

Cooler

For the last ten days or so it has been noticeably cooler during the night. I mean, sometimes at midnight you see people in long sleeves eating their bbq. And when you get out of the shower early in the morning, it’s actually a bit cold. This makes Chinese parents go over the top and you see young children in three layers of clothes in their mothers’ arms. Leilei doesn’t escape this, and he’s bundled off to his grandma with a tee-shirt, jumper and cardigan, even though during the day it’s still 30+ degrees C.

One nice thing about this change in the weather is that it is much clearer outside, and less humid than before. The mountains around the town are much more appreciable and walking more than one pace a second does not make you break out into a sweat. Unfortunately, Leilei has developed a bit of a cough again, and of course this is blamed on the change in the weather. I asked if winter had come and was answered in the affirmative – I’m a bit saddened at the thought of having to wear long sleeves at 1am…

Routine life here now...

Well I haven’t written for some time as life has taken something vaguely resembling a routine now. A sort of typical day may consist of:

Wake up at 8am with Leilei. I’ll change his nappy and get his milk while Tan gets washed (takes 65 minutes). She’ll feed him some porridge and clothe him. I’ll take him to Wai po’s house (grandma’s) in a three wheeled cab at 9.30am, and maybe do some shopping in the supermarket before heading back to have a shower, by which time it will be after 11am and someone will be making lunch. After lunch I’ll try to settle down to doing some work in preparation for getting a new job. Sometimes, though, we’ll both have a little siesta. Tan will generally go out in the afternoon with Xiao Wei, and they’ll come back around 6pm with our sons for tea.

The women go out dancing most evenings so I’m usually looking after Leilei and bathing him and putting him to bed around 9.30pm. The girls come back around this time with some bbq (usually duck intestines and duck tongues). We’ll have a beer and I’ll help Xiao Li with some English before going to bed. Nothing special really.

For the last few weeks Xiao Li has been out of the house most days until the evening. He’ll generally come back at lunchtime with Lao Tao (his cousin and business partner) to cook something, and then again at teatime. It’s strange because for the first eight weeks I was here he seemed to be around almost all the time and I wondered what he did for a living.

We bought a sort of car for Leilei recently. You can make it go simply by moving the steering wheel which is really cool. He really likes it and so does Li Mingda, so they both share it sometimes as you can see....

Car money

Hmmm, well my diary seems to be unavailable in China, despite the news that after three years' censorship, blogspot has been allowed back for about a year - link. At least I can't access it.

However, I still seem to be able to write it although nothing particularly exciting has happened over the last week or so.

On Monday, after dropping off Leilei to his grandma, Xiao Li and I went to the bank to withdraw some money. Well the biggest denomination bank note in China is the red 100 Ren Min Bi, and Xiao Li withdrew an amount that many people around us would not earn in five years. Plus he already had 10000 in his wallet.... I got a bit worried that this was some sort of mafia-related thing as we joke about being mafia men a lot of the time which I thought was just some fun.

Well we didn't get mugged, and it turned out boringly that Xiao Li just wants to buy a car (so much for bank cards or cheques). I asked him when and he said at the end of the month but it is the 4th today and we've still not been to a garage (or maybe you don't buy cars from garages here). I wanted to ask him about the interest he'd be losing in the meantime but I suspect I wouldn't have got a logical answer, or that you don't get interest in China.

When they talk about the mafia, I don't think you need to imagine dodgy Italian types in suits. Tan told me a story about the pregnant girl downstairs: Last year, before she fell pregnant, she was in a Karaoke place with her friends, one of whom drank too much or took drugs and in her hysteria jumped up and down on the couch and pretended she was going to jump out of the window. One of the ladies who works in the place came into the room to see what the fuss was about and when she saw the drunk woman told her to go home and die there instead of in the karaoke bar.

Well, this really pissed off the now pregnant girl, and she called her boyfriend to get his mafia mates around to ... well I don't know, really. Anyway, the karaoke place in the meantime had called the mafia around to get rid of the drunk woman and her friends from the bar. It transpired that both sets of mafia arrived at the same time and promptly went out drinking together!

The slightly sad ending to the story is that the employee who told the girl to go home to die lost her job.

It's things like this you have to think about when you criticise our police. At least they would probably have been worth ringing.

On Thursday we went to Huang Chun's new place. She was Tan's best friend when she lived in Pingguo, and is recently married to a man who is younger than her. Well, this place, although not huge, looked like something out of a style magazine - a 50" flat tv attached to the wall, marble floors, lighting at weird angles. I'll put up a photo later. All in all nice to look at but doesn't feel very livable in if you ask me. Still, I imagine that's the way it's going to go in China - more western style apartments in private blocks with security guards and a single pretty garden for the inhabitants. The tackiest thing about it was this horrible elevator music emanating from the garden. At first I thought it was some kids with a radio, but then discovered it was coming from speakers disguised as black rocks dotted around the garden. It was too loud; you could almost hear it from inside the apartment and it made me think of 1984 with the microphones hidden everywhere. I'm sure it was not intentional, but it made my Western mind think that this was some covert means of inducing soporific inertia to assuage any thoughts uprising and rebelling.

Huang Chun's new house. Leilei particularly liked the glass-covered step up to the dining area, under which was an assortment of white stones, shells, and orange table tennis balls which he calls "ba ba qiu" (should be ping pang qiu). I liked the tv.

Cupping

Woke up with a terrible pain running from my left collarbone down about six inches. It was so bad Tan put a special plaster on and I went back to bed for a couple of hours. When I got up it was still excruciating and I couldn’t even hold Leilei (or twist my head to see him calling). Everyone said it must have been because I slept in a bad position. Xiao Li kindly gave me a massage on the right place, then, without telling me, yanked my left arm in an amateur attempt to crack my bones. Not only was it painful, nothing cracked, and I felt worse than before. Then Xiao Wei suggested I go to hospital to have it cracked. Well I didn’t want anything cracking. The last time I had anything like this was after one of the England World Cup matches earlier this year when we were at Al’s house doing press-ups outside as a punishment for not catching the ball in some silly game we made up. I must have done over 100 press-ups that evening with no stretching beforehand and the next day I couldn’t even get out of bed. I only did ten the previous night…surely it can’t have been that.

Well anyway, at 3pm Tan took me to the massage place we’d been to a couple of days before and explained the problem to a bloke. We went upstairs, where he rubbed by back with hot water infused with herbs, and then started to massage all over my back. Tan said he was making the muscles relaxed before he would attempt to crack my back, which was not what I wanted to hear. However, it later transpired that there was to be no cracking…something a lot more scary in fact.

He did a very good job of the massage, and although the pain was on my left side, he stated that my right side had problems due to having been sitting down too much at a desk and not exercising enough. I’m not sure how he came to that conclusion – if it was muscle stiffness, it might have been caused by playing badminton. Anyway, he put some oil on my back, then started to scrape my skin with an implement like a comb but without the teeth, made from bone. This was to prepare my back for…cupping.

Cupping is a strange procedure whereby you heat up a glass bowl and quickly stick it on the victim’s back while there is a vacuum, which sucks the skin up into the bowl. I really don’t understand what practical purpose it serves but I understand it has been common practice in China for around 1700 years. Check out some information for yourself: http://www.google.com/search?q=chinese+cupping

Here is a video of the procedure

Well, I don’t know what the masseur was using to heat the bowls, but it sounded like a blowtorch. The painful part was not the heat of the bowl, but the suction of the skin into it…he must have placed about twenty of these bowls on the whole of my back and by the time he had finished I felt as though I had been lifted into the air such was the pressure on my back. I could hardly talk, but managed to ask how long till he took them off – “five to ten minutes”, he replied, which felt a lot longer than that. Actually, having read a couple of pages I realise the masseur was probably heating cotton wool balls soaked in alcohol to heat the bowls.

Me after my first round of cupping.

When released, each bowl made a noise like a fart that you only half tried to keep in, but the relief was tangible. By the time he removed the last one with a satisfying “prrrrweeee” I could have laid there for an hour. But to my horror, a minute later he started putting a new set on. That’s like going to the dentist, having an injection and a filling, then going to the waiting room only to be called back a minute later for the same procedure again. This time was more painful too, and I gave a quite audible sound of relief as they were removed. It didn’t help that Tan kept saying: “ooh, that one’s really bad…look how dark”, as if I could.

I nearly passed out when I heard he was coming in for a third run, but Tan said I actually didn’t have to have it if it was painful. Well, I’m sorry, but from where I come from that’s a challenge. I said of course he could do it again, and grinned and bore another ten minutes of this strange pain…

The results are quite scary. If you didn’t know better, you’d think I had caught some alien form of disease, or was the illegitimate offspring of a human and a tortoise. Don’t look if you’re just about to eat.

Me showing I liked the experience by the international sign of the thumbs up.

They charged 30 kuai for the experience, which lasted about an hour, and included more massage and pressuring of acupoints after the cupping. I did feel a bit better afterwards, apart from a general tightness of the back, so I suppose it was value for money.

That's what it looked like afterwards. And still does three days later as I'm uploading this stuff...

Back home I was told I wasn’t allowed to have a shower for four hours, so we went out for a bbq with biao ge (the bloke who is always there – I now know he works there and his speciality is duck) and a couple of other blokes. Unfortunately my heroic story of pain and suffering didn’t appeal to anyone’s compassion as it’s quite normal for them there.

Not avoiding Spanish red wine

Up lateish at tenish, to be told that we been invited out to eat lunch with Fan and his wife. I got a shower while Tan took Leilei to his grandma’s to babysit as he can get quite bothersome at meal times with adults, especially if he is tired. We took a taxi to the Pingguo aluminium company area. This company is one of the biggest aluminium mining places in China, and a target for American ownership, although they have only sold 8% to the Americans as there is a big need for aluminium in China itself. The reason we sometimes go to eat here (it is on the outskirts of the town) is that many of the employees of the company live there, and are catered for by numerous restaurants.

Horse boss and his wife came along for the meal, and Fan’s son was there too, so in total that made nine people. We had our own private air-conditioned room, as is quite normal now, and the table was already resplendent with coriander grass root, cow ligaments with fried boiled eggs (yes, they boil them and cut them into quarters before frying them), boiled peanuts and the like.

Then the bombshell…Fan took out four bottles of yesterday’s Spanish plonk and set about opening them with a variation of corkscrew, chopsticks, fingers and lighters. I suggested that we open one first to see how it was (just in case), but this just fell on deaf ears as Fan cumbersomely managed to open four bottles, then give one each to me, Horse boss, Xiao Li and himself (chivalrously avoiding the women), each with a crumbling, floating cork inside.

After I had exchanged my wine glass for a clean one, I poured myself a small glass, as the others filled theirs nearly to the brim. The wine had a slightly orangey hue, which, along with the pungent smell, the year and the country of origin, didn’t bode well.

Well, yes, it tasted rank. Of course I couldn’t say this, although Xiao Li did remark, “it isn’t sweet”, which would have been almost a compliment in Europe. In order to keep face, but also keep myself from looking like I was eating a lemon, I poured a small amount of lemonade in to reduce the bite. This made it bearable, and Xiao Li did the same, although Fan wouldn’t taint his pride and joy. To add to the awkwardness of the situation, as each man had his own bottle, you couldn’t just sip slowly as it would be quite evident that your bottle wasn’t going down. On the contrary, Fan seemed happy to drink half a glass at a time, which meant we all had to too. After half an hour, Horse Boss’s face was as red as his drink, although he seemed quite jovial. An hour later, more food arrived, then more and more. Suddenly we realised Fan, Xiao Li and myself had finished our bottles (I was on half lemonade by that time), but Fan noticed Horse Boss still had three quarters of a bottle left. Oh, phew, just what I wanted…how we laughed as we quaffed the rest of it down.

We got back at 3ish and I went to pick up the photos I’d put in for developing the previous day. They turned out really well, although most will be appropriated by visitors to Xiao Li’s house, as happened to forty or so of the fifty I brought from England.

Going back after red "wine" lunch - Horse Boss's wife, Tan, A Ni in the middle and I think that's Fan on the right

Slept from 3.30 to 6.30pm on a bellyful of wine, then got up to eat, before being whisked off to the hair salon by Xiao Li. I had a new masseuse this time as this one specifically asked to do me, and my usual one did Xiao Li. Wow! This one was even better and really made me feel comfy with a fantastic head massage. When she started doing my neck, another girl joined in to do my arm and I was in heaven for twenty minutes. When my hour was up I felt so good I did ten slow press-ups on the couch to impress them, then jumped down to have my hair brushed and gelled. In the meantime, Xiao Li’s elder sister’s husband had turned up to take us out to “drink tea” again.

So we ended up at the same KTV bar as last time and although I was served tea, I never got the chance to drink anything else but 3.1% beer with a load of friends/business partners who seem to take delight in having a foreigner amongst them. Actually I was quite sensible and didn’t drink too much and got home at midnightish.

Avoiding Spanish red wine

A friend of Xiao Li’s (Fan) and his wife came round in the evening for a drink. They brought two bottles of Spanish red wine as a gift, and I was worried we may have to drink them. They explained that you couldn’t use a cork screw to open them as the corks were too old and crumbly, something confirmed by a glance at the label that said “Denominacion origen 1993”. I mean this was 13 year old Spanish wine called “Duc de Fois” (not Rioja or something nice), was corked, and had somehow made its way to China.

Thankfully, we stuck to beer and soft drinks, and as Fan and his wife were both from outside Pingguo we all spoke Mandarin for a change. Got to bed at 3am in the end, and watched some of an Ali G video I’d downloaded…had to stop after a bit or would have woken up Tan and Leilei with the laughing.

Serious pose with Horse Boss

Slightly less serious pose with Fan and wife

Strange hand massage

The girls went to have their hair done for the umpteenth time in the last six weeks. Xiao Li and I caught up with them at the hair salon where we once again went for a hair wash.

The women being a bit shy

This time I had ear rinse (guang er duo) too, which includes, not surprisingly, rinsing out the ears with water, then inserting cotton wool buds into the ear canal a great deal further than your GP would advise. It was a strange experience and I kept deathly still while the bud felt like it dug two inches into my brain. No, unfortunately I didn’t catch a glimpse of the bud once it was extracted so no waxy photo of that….

Having said that, it was an awfully nice experience….

The hand massage was part of the head wash experience

They do something with the nerves - rather weird I thought

Wads of cash and more KTV

On the way to get some breakfast I told Xiao Li I didn’t have enough money for the cab fare, at which he showed me the contents of his bum bag – a wad of 100 kuai notes that must have been at least 10000 kuai, or about £650+.

On the way back we stopped into the bank where he produced his id card and his sister’s id card, then withdrew 40,000 ren min bi (not much less than £3000) in £6.50 notes). He calmly put them in his wallet, except for the last 10000 which wouldn’t fit, which he put in his trouser pockets. As this was several years' salary for most people, I asked him why he needed so much cash.. Well, apparently he is going to buy a new car at the end of the month. And he wants as 4x4. Fair enough – obviously credit cards are not expected here….

Xiao Wei complained of a very painful neck in the morning, due, according to her, to the neck cracking at her massage yesterday (she and Tan went to the same place I went to yesterday). Just as I’d got over my fear of neck cracking I don’t need to hear this.

Incidentally , I read a worrying article in The Guardian online about the dangers of not drinking. It seemed to suggest that unless you have three units a day you stand a greater chance of having a heart attack. See the article at http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1929774,00.html

I had just one bottle yesterday and none the day before…oh dear.

In the evening, after having a couple of beers at the bbq place, I was invited out to “drink tea” again. This time there were about 15 blokes in the room and only two women. I wasn’t really in the mood, but did my best to be sociable and chat and sing songs with them. I managed to remain reasonably sober until I suggested that it was time to go, as we needed to get the girls some food.

As we were leaving, Xiao Li said we would just pop in to another room in the building to say Happy Birthday to one of his mates. We knocked and entered a room filled with drunk men (and two women who may or may not have been friends). I was forced to “gan bei” (drink a full glass) several beers with the men before I was allowed to leave, a good deal less sober than fifteen minutes previously. Well at least I caught up on consumption re the Guardian article.

Cracking massage!

Mobile phone use here is different to the UK. For a start, most people have a clamshell style folding phone, including men. And a good deal of people have two phones. Even the poor folk who wear tatters and ride around in decrepit tricycles going through people’s rubbish all have a small mobile in a leather case attached to their belts. It’s not as though they are particularly cheap – reasonably small ones ranging from £60 to much, much more. And I believe that most people have to pay to receive a call (although I am on a different tariff so it’s free to receive but probably more to make calls).

The other thing is the tones. Not once have I heard ring ring or any of its family. It’s always some mad pop song that would get you booed off the 7.39 to Charing Cross. Even Tan changed her tone to something more jazzy when she got here. Ok, I admit it. After being given strange looks for my British ring ring I set my tone to be Land Down Under by Men at Work. Hope I remember to turn it back before I get home.

Lastly is the funny expression people give to their phones when receiving a call. Women especially, upon receiving a call, will wait the statutory 12 seconds before fishing out the phone from their bag. Then they will open it and hold an expression on their faces for another few seconds that makes them look as if they’re trying to work out a particularly difficult quantum mechanics equation, before finally pushing “Accept” and shouting “Waaaayyyyyyy!!”, (which is the way you answer a phone in Chinese, although it doesn’t have to be that loud). I used to think this was because a great deal of people haven’t programmed names into phones, and still use recognition of the phone number as a way of determining who is calling, but I have seen the exact same behaviour on women that have names on their phones that come up when someone is calling. It must be something to do with pretending you are so busy you can’t answer phone within 10 seconds of someone calling, or you want as many people to know as possible that someone is calling you.

Anyway, in the evening Xiao Li and I went out for a massage at a different place from before (the wives had had theirs during the day). The price has gone up in Pingguo from 25 to 30 kuai for an hour (about £2). Despite this ridiculous rise in inflation we paid anyway. The massage was the best I’ve had here. For the first time I was able to relax my neck sufficiently that the woman was able to crack it both ways by twisting my head to the left and the right! In fact she cracked just about every bone in my body – the trick is to massage the area well first and stretch the bones. They also apply pressure on specific places (I think they’re called acupoints), which can be painful at times (e.g. on the gums) but must be good for you.

The sore point of the massage was about half way through when the woman started on my legs. They first put pressure using their thumb on an area high up on the inside leg and hold it there for a few seconds. Well, the right leg was fine, after which she proceeded to do the relevant massage and stuff. Then she moved on to the left. I don’t know if it was her first time on a foreigner (I suspect so), but she managed to apply pressure on a particularly sensitive piece of skin that wasn’t part of my leg. Being a man, I bit my tongue and bore some significant pain for 30 seconds (I counted each long one), while she blindly got on with her otherwise very good job.

To be honest I’ve feared this every time I’ve been for a massage, but so far dressing to the left has served me well. I’ll have to reconsider for future sessions. Thank God she wasn’t particularly attractive or it could have been worse.

At least I had managed to allay my fears about European bodies being structured differently from Chinese ones. Ok, so I’m taller and hairier and fairer and whiter than them, but I think I have the same amount of bones in the same places. But until today I couldn’t properly relax, worrying that they may try to crack a bone that existed in Chinese bodies but not in English ones, and render me unable to walk again. I then performed a thought experiment regarding Leilei that showed me the folly of my ways – I mean, would he have an extra bone from his mum if she had one? And no, it’s not true about spare ribs.

Confirmation of extension of stay

While Leilei was with his grandma, I did some checking of the news on the Internet. They block bbc news here, unfortunately, so I tend to check The Times and The Guardian web sites.

There seems to be a lot of stories about religion at the moment – I understand much of this has been sparked by Jack Straw’s comments about a Muslim women wearing niqabs in his surgeries, compounded by a teacher in Yorkshire being suspended for refusing to remove hers while teaching children.

Even more fascinating for me was the amount of comment this has provoked (at least on these online newspapers). I admit I spent most of the day reading the comments of obviously well-educated people on such topics as “Should faith schools be abolished?”, leading to “Should England be a secularised state?”. I find the answer to both of these to be “yes”. Most definitely. Anyway, you can find a lot of comment at http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/index.html or http://www.timesonline.co.uk/comment

I found out that we could change the tickets to leave on 2^nd December instead of next Saturday, which was nice – and we shouldn’t even have to pay to change Leilei’s ticket as he doesn’t take up a seat.

Li Mingda's classroom. No Chairman Mao in sight.

I feel more like I’m living here now, than holidaying. We often eat in, and Leilei has a regular routine. I went out on my own to the other side of town to pick up Li Mingda from his school, and chatted with the parents like any other normal 6’1” fair haired, hairy-chested foreigner. Then went to pick up Leilei from his grandma’s and looked after him while his mum and Xiao Wei went to their dancing class. Haven’t played table tennis or badminton for a week – will have to make amends….

Table hopping at the bbq place

Xiao Li and I were supposed to go for a meal with some “big sister” in the evening, however, our lift didn’t turn up so we decided to go with the girls and Leilei to the bbq place. There we met the usual suspects and sat around their table eating lamb and prawns and greens, and drinking beer, as you do.

Getting ready to go

Now and again I got up and went for a walk. I wanted to see how the Man U – Liverpool match was going so I found a place with a tv, and asked the people eating there if they minded me changing the channel. No, that was fine. Some youths then invited me to sit down with them for a bit, which I did – pig penises washed down with beer. I bade them farewell then bumped into Lao Ma, one of Tan’s friends, and sat down with her and a friend for some more nosh. All very social here!

No nursery and poor City

Last week Tan and I went to look at one of the local nurseries. Although it was a semi-government place, Tan thought the sleeping area was dirty and didn’t want Leilei going there. She was right. But it would have been nice for him to be spending so much time with other kids during the day – they give the kids lessons, but don’t indoctrinate them with photos of ex-leaders. And it is only 100 kuai for the month (less than £7). Anyhow, Leilei goes to his grandma most mornings and stays there till we go to pick up Li Mingda (Xiao Li’s son) from his school at about 5pm.

Spent a lot of the day waiting for the televised Man City game at Wigan, in which we played disgracefully and lost 4 – 0.

At least we had good food and company

Cheers mate!

Toilet training fail and bumper cars

Leilei went to stay with his grandmother most of the day, as he has most of this week, which is nice and convenient…she is even toilet training him! I did try this two weeks ago. I refused to put on his nappy as no other children of his age here wear nappies. It didn’t take long before there was a load of poo on the bedroom floor, but I manfully cleared it up before washing him and immediately putting on a new nappy.

In the evening Tan and Xiao Wei went to their dancing class while I took Leilei out to the Guangchang to play. We went on the bumper cars, which until we got there had looked pretty tame. But as soon as we got on, all the other kids wanted to go as well, so all the cars were being used and there was lots of bumping going on…it’s not like an English fair where you’re discouraged from ramming into others. Well, Leilei didn’t complain.

In fact he complained bitterly when I went to take him home. The three wheeled taxis tried to rip us off as we were foreign but I wasn’t having any of it and told them in Chinese which shut them up!

Passports faff but nice face wash

We had planned that I would fly to Shanghai to get the tickets changed once our passports had the new visas, as posting would take up to five days. But when we rang the Baise police station to ask when the passports would be ready we were told that the man in charge of that process was in Nanning and wouldn’t be back until next week. With that spanner in the works Tan declared that we would have to go back on 28^th as originally scheduled. I was less pessimistic.

I got her to ring China Eastern and ask if they needed to see the visas on the passports in order to change the tickets. They said no, they just needed the passports. The Baise police station said we could take the passports and bring them back when necessary, so this morning Tan went to Baise while I nursed Leilei and my head in bed.

She was back at 2pmish, then went to post the passports and tickets to Shanghai, where her former boss said he’d be willing to receive them and take them to the China Eastern office to change them. Jolly nice chap. He even said he’d pay for them and we could pay him back when we get to Shanghai. So here’s hoping nothing goes missing, and that they get there on time, and that we can amend the tickets to next month, and that they get sent back successfully, and that we can go and get the visa done again. Any one of those fails and we’re up shit creek.

Horse Boss came and helped me fix the cabling in the house, so now I can get Internet in our room (no more disturbance from the ever-illuminated television). As I know Horse Boss quite well now, and as a gesture of thanks, I gave him a bottle of duty free Gordon’s Gin. He really appreciated it, but will have problems getting tonic water in this town!

In the evening Xiao Li and I went out for a “face wash”. This is the best face wash in the world. You lie down on plush fake leather beds while the lady first washes your hair and massages your head for about 20 minutes. Then she washes your face gently before giving you a nice face massage, which moves down to the neck and shoulders, and before you know it you’re on your front and she’s doing your back. The thing lasts and hour and it only cost £1.50! Must have been some sort of discount. Ahh…want to go back every day.

Leilei deciding he'd rather watch tv than go out for a head wash

Much better prawns and more tea/KTV

Diarrhoea is called la du here. It means something like spicy stomach. Luckily it is relatively common and they have pretty effective medicine so I was ok by the morning.

Tan and Xiao Wei have started going to Latin dancing classes on Monday, Wednesday and Friday evenings. I was invited to join them but politely declined saying I needed to look after Leilei.

So while the girls were away, Xiao Li and I went to eat at a local porridge place. They actually serve more than porridge (by which I mean squidgy rice with nice stuff in it rather than the sweet stuff we have for breakfast). We had some fantastic prawns and other delights. A couple of Xiao Li’s friends turned up, then another, then Horse Boss (the business partner who owns the computer shop) and his wife. We all got rather merry playing cai ma and this time I lost more than I won. The girls turned up later for their rations before I was told that the men were going to “drink tea”. Oh no, not again. But not wishing to appear impolite, I accompanied them to the same KTV bar as before and drank tea and beer and sang till two late in the morning.

Horse Boss and his wife

Me with some mates (Leilei and Xiao Li on the right)

Up Horse Head mountain before tea with Horse Boss then poor prawns

Went for lunch with the wife and kid at the cousins where her mum’s staying. Afterwards I went for a walk on my own up the mountain path. It’s not really the thing to do at 2pm on a 35 degrees plus day in the sunshine, but I really wanted to get a couple of shots of the view that I could stitch together; one of Xiao Li’s friends makes signs for advertisements and said he could print out such a photograph for me.

So I bought a couple of bottles of water and made the trek up to the top, pretty much drenched when I got there. I met a couple there with whom I engaged in conversation for about half an hour and shared their oranges. It was one of those conversations that do your confidence in Chinese no good. I understood less than half they were saying and had to ask them to repeat themselves on numerous occasions. Still, they were very friendly.

It’s just one of those things about staying in a place where the majority of people speak the local lingo amongst themselves…it doesn’t really help your Mandarin that much…oh well, I’m not complaining!

I went to the top of the pagoda on the mountain and enjoyed being by myself for nearly the first time in two months.

A picture made from two pictures of the view from the Horse Head Mountain.

At the bottom of the mountain I popped in to Xiao Li’s friend’s computer shop (his name is Ma Tao but because he’s the boss everyone calls him Ma Laoban – literally Horse Boss). I was invited upstairs where we drank tea with the boss of the curtain shop next door for three hours solid. This time, maybe because I already knew Horse Boss, the conversation was flowing and we were talking about eating and drinking culture, and that how in England people bought rounds as you have to pay each time you order…they find that sort of thing really interesting. We all found it amusing that neither of them knew what Chinese year it is (it’s the dog). Anyway we all had a lot of fun (and only tea, not beer), so my confidence in my Mandarin was somewhat renewed.

In the evening Xiao Wei, Tan and a fat aunty went to the bbq place. I noticed some friends as we entered and went to sit with them for a glass and a bite. This time there was lamb and dog, plus some prawns that tasted…not very prawny. Tan came over a few minutes later telling me I shouldn’t eat with strangers – I explained that they were my friends and that Xiao Li was coming anyway, but she didn’t look convinced. Well Xiao Li came and we had some food with the girls before going back to chat with our mates. However I started to get a very dodgy feeling in my stomach. The kind that requires a visit to the toilet. I told them I needed to go and they said I could use their loo (they own one of the places at the bbq). I didn’t really have time to explain that I couldn’t crouch, so I went anyway and pretended. By then it was getting worse so I ran out, bid a quick farewell and got the closest three wheeled cab to take me home where I made it just in the nick of time.

Apparently it was the prawns, even though I only had two.

Visa "extension" faff

The other day I suggested to Tan that we might be able to stay a here a little longer if we could change the flights and get renewed visas. She said yeah that would be good, so this morning we went to the Pingguo police station to see what we could do. First we got some passport photos done at great expense (although Leilei looks particularly good looking in his) and filled in two copies each (Leilei and me) of the application form. Then we went back to the police station only to be told we couldn’t get the visas done there – we had to go in person to Baise (for the third time in a month in my case).

Handsome young man

So, Xiao Li borrowed his sister’s husband’s car, picked up a mate who also happened to need to go to Baise, then Xiao Wei, Tan, Leilei and I all piled in the back of the tiny Chevrolet Starlet (about the size of a Nissan Micra. There was actually rather a lot of leg room in the rear, partly thanks to the fact that the bloke in the front was short, and partly due to the tiny boot this car has. Thinking about it, this is quite a practical arrangement…how often have you had your knees dug into the back of the seat in front while the boot has been nearly empty? Well I have plenty of times in the UK but I am 6’1”.

By 2pm we’d reached the police station in Baise, where interestingly half the cars in the car park were right-hand drive (see Saturday 14^th October). We went to the Visa Extension desk and the lady who dealt with us spoke reasonably good English. She interrogated me about when I arrived, where I’d been staying, how long etc… then asked to see our marriage certificate. I said that wasn’t necessary as the Chinese Embassy in London hadn’t required it for our visas. However, I’d ticked the “Visiting relatives” box instead of the “Sightseeing” box. Damn. So I said how about if I just tick the “Sightseeing” box instead, as I am sort of doing that as well. She said that would be ok, but that she would need to evidence that I had enough money for the remainder of the stay. “Ok, how much?”, I asked. “100 US dollars for each day”, she replied. Shit.

Well I didn’t have my marriage certificate, and I didn’t have my most recent (or any) bank statements, just my cards. Then I thought – this is ridiculous! It’s just an extension of an existing visa for which I had to show nothing but our passports and pay £60 – I wasn’t asked for all this when I did the same thing in Shanghai three years ago.

“Oh, but it’s not an extension”, you have a business visa. “No! it’s a tourist visa! That’s what I applied for”. But sure enough, on my visa (and Leilei’s) was the letter “F”. Well it’s not obvious, but “F” stands for business, and “L” stands for tourist in the visa world. So basically the Chinese embassy had screwed up, and no one had batted an eyelid when Leilei went through the customs on his business visa….

I just about held myself back from shouting some sort of abuse about the incompetence of the Chinese visa system, took a deep breath, and calmly looked at the situation. We had to apply for a new visa, not an extension, and we needed a marriage certificate or proof of having at least $3000 in the bank (I’m not sure if they accept overdraft facilities, but I wasn’t confident about it).

Leilei had come to the desk at this point, and the woman had softened a bit. I took out my wallet and gave her £100 and a wink and said I’m sure there’s some way we can sort this out….

No I didn’t, I took out two debit cards and a credit card and told her I had enough money, but obviously I didn’t have the statements. She said I could ask the bank to send them but I said I might as well get my mate to send my marriage certificate – it would make no difference, it would still be too late to change the tickets by then. So she said she would at least need a photocopy of the bank cards, and then see what could be done.

While she waited for someone else to come, the woman was inspecting all our passports and noticed that Tan’s first visa to come to the UK was a spouse’s visa, not a fiancée’s. I had to admit that the British consulate in Shanghai had made a mistake on the visa, and laughed about how easy it was to make visa mistakes while secretly feeling utterly relieved that I hadn’t vented my spleen a couple of minutes earlier about Chinese visa incompetence.

Well I don’t know if it was Leilei’s smile, or that fact that during this time I was introduced to one of the policemen who worked there who was a friend, but they said it should be ok just to take a copy of the cards. I wasn’t going to argue, although I didn’t know what value the copy would be other than being able to take my money. We will just have to wait a minimum of five days to get the passports back.

As we were in Baise we met up with Tan’s elder sister again for a slap up meal at a decent restaurant – the bees were brilliant, most of them freshly hatched!

Leilei trying on a field worker's hat in a nice restaurant.

After the meal we made our way to a local beauty salon where we had to remove our shoes and put on slippers by the brand name of “Knie”. Tan and Xiao Wei had their eyebrows plucked, and Xiao Li and I had a facial. Yes, I thought it sounded weird but it was very refreshing – facemask and all.

If you're going to make fake goods at least make an effort...

Very relaxing facial

Drinking out of a chemistry set and karaoke in 3 rooms

Went to a friend’s house for evening meal at 5pm. When we got there four of them were playing mah jong which, as far as I can tell, is a bit like rummy.

The food, when it arrived, was fantastic. I especially liked the tofu square pancakes, onto which you put some cucumber and spring onion, some sauce and some meat, a bit like Beijing roast duck. Unfortunately the only drink available was white alcohol, which I steadfastly refuse to drink (this was immediately remedied by ordering a crate of Li Quan beer). Amusingly, they drank the white alcohol out of what looked like measuring glasses from a chemistry class – they were conical and measured in cl.

The effect of drinking white alcohol from a conical tube.

To add to this, when my beers arrived, I was given another chemistry class glass but this time in the form of a beaker. I can’t remember what we used to call them in school, but they have a spout. The whole effect was quite weird – it only required a Bunsen burner and some test tubes and pipettes and I would have been right back in school. We actually drank very little, and got back 8ish at our house.

Today is Tan’s and my 3^rd meeting anniversary; I mean it was three years ago that I touched down on Shanghai and met the girl who became my wife. So I gave her a card. Unfortunately, Leilei wasn’t letting me write it very easily…then I heard Tan opening the door downstairs. Although I didn’t have a dictionary handy, I hastily finished the card in Chinese.

I should have hidden it and finished it properly. I managed to miswrite the character for “love” – and she made me write it down 100 times.

One of the people I ate with earlier invited us to go out to “drink tea” (a loaded expression), but we couldn’t get a babysitter for Leilei so Tan stayed at home as she was tired anyway. The tea place was of course a KTV place (Karaoke TV), and when we got there there were already about 15 people, some of whom I recognised. I was offered tea, and of course beer, from small glasses that you have to finish in one.

Drinking "tea"

After about an hour, I was whisked away to another room, where another 15 or so “friends” were gathered…they all took delight in meeting me and having yet another beer, and I did my party piece of singing Ni shi wo de mei gui hua much to their delight. After bidding goodbye I went back to the original room for a bit before being whisked away once again to a third room where there were another 15 or so “friends” wanting to meet me, and yes, share more beer with me (and yes, sing that song again). Well, actually it was a lot of fun…my Mandarin is coming on and I always manage to have a laugh with these people.

Enjoying the karaoke!

We got back at hmm….1ish?….but before we went to the house we stopped for some fantastic noodles really close to Xiao Li’s house. There were still a fair few people up at this time and it reminded me a bit of Spain…why not if the weather is good and you’ve had a nice siesta? Which is what I feel like having now….

Lovely late-night noodles

RHD car smuggling

I remember the other day asking Tan why there were a few right-hand drive cars around. She told me they were all smuggled in from abroad (Japan and Hong Kong I guess – they are all Japanese cars, and not new). I thought this rather odd. I mean if you’re going to smuggle a car in, it’s going to be quite obvious that it’s smuggled if the steering wheel is on the other side, even with blacked out windows. However, a taxi driver corroborated her explanation.

I think China won’t allow imported vehicles as they want to promote their home-made cars. And Japan has strict environment laws for cars, so they have to get rid of the older ones to somewhere.

Apparently, you can only smuggle in cars if you know someone in the police. And of course if you know someone in the police you aren’t going to get in trouble with the law for having a smuggled vehicle. Oh yes. Why didn’t I get it in the first place? In fact, you can see that it’s downright advantageous to have a right-hand drive car here – who’s going to touch you if it’s evident you know someone in the police?

Anyway, had a nice evening watching Premier League footy on the tv with a couple of beers.

Getting caned at badminton

Xiao Li and I went to play badminton again, where I met a local English teacher, whose English was quite good. I practised against him and was clearly worse, and when he said he couldn’t play badminton because he was too short it didn’t make me feel better.

Later, while Xiao Li was playing the pretty girl who works there, the English teacher suggested I play with one of his friends, which I did. I lost 15-3 after being 3-0 up and was effectively caned. I came off the court dripping – I had long taken off my top but my shorts were totally wet (from sweat). The English teacher said “ah…I see you are a beginner…your wrist is weak…cannot reach back of court…it’s ok…friendship first”. Oh, thanks, that’s just the encouragement I need…I used to think I was half decent in the UK. One reprieve though, I managed to break two racquets just from hitting the shuttlecock!

New table tennis place and snake blood and bile

Happy Birthday Andrew!

Xiao Li and I went to play table tennis at a new place – indoors. I think it’s a military related place but I can’t be sure. Anyway, they have four tables, although last time we came here there was no electricity so we couldn’t see a thing. This time though we were prepared. We had bought the most expensive bats in the sports shop. At 185 kuai each this was more than I would have paid in a UK shop (about £12), but Xiao Li said it was a present for me, and we walked out without paying (after I protested that it is protocol to pay for things you take in a shop he told me he knew the owner and that he would pay him the next day – with a discount of course).

I suddenly realised what a difference a decent bat makes. I played a fat bloke who was already there and the first few shots flew off my bat at various angles, rarely landing closer than a few feet from the table. Gradually, I began to tame the bat, and managed to start using the grip to my advantage – at least at serving. The fat bloke beat me soundly over the half hour we played. Then I played Xiao Li, who I managed to defeat comfortably mostly due to the fact he’d been practising with a woman who wasn’t that good. What pissed me off, was that as soon as he’d finished beating me, the fat man sat down and chain-smoked 4 cigarettes waiting for his next turn at the table.

Me losing at table tennis (the ball is behind the bench).

In the evening some of Xiao Li’s friends came around and we ate snake and various other goodies. During the meal the snake’s bile duct was put into a bowl of white alcohol (I think it was the bile duct – they explained it as being the thing the green stuff comes from when you’ve vomited so much that there’s nothing left in your stomach). A couple of hours later we were playing cai ma again – each person challenging everyone else in turn to a best of three match. It had the desired effect and most of them were pretty pissed by 9pm.

Then I was told we (the men) were going out to “drink alcohol”. Well at least they don’t mince their words. To my disappointment we drove to the same nightclub we took Leilei to a couple of weeks previously – and this time we didn’t have a private room. We sat in the thumping disco room with three Geishas/whores (still don’t know exactly) at our table encouraging us to play drinking games with them and giving us food and sparklers. I recognised two of them from the last time I was here. Needless to say I was a perfect gentleman made polite conversation and avoided drinking with them.

I don’t know how when I got home I had about 20 sparklers sticking out of the top of my trousers (they were unlit) – maybe the beer was a bit stronger there. Anyway – I was the one constantly looking at his watch asking to go back so I could watch the England match at 1am (at Croatia).

At the nightclub...I am doing my best to look indignant. All the women in the photo are Geisha.

What a piss poor match. I mean, at home against Macedonia we looked plain, but at Croatia we lacked any creativity and attack…and there was clearly no leader. Beckham has to come back if we are to have any hope in qualifying for Euro 2008.

A new-born and lots of babies with drips in their heads

Tan and I took Leilei to our cousins’ house where Tan’s mum is staying. A while later we got a call from one of Tan’s friends saying a cousin had given birth the day before to a daughter. So we left Leilei to buy a present and went to the hospital to see them. The mother looked fine and not as though she had been in labour 24 hours previously. The father looked fine too, although he hadn’t held the baby as of then.

The happy couple with their new-born

What shocked me was as we were entering the hospital there must have been 30 or more babies outside the entrance with drips attached to their heads. I even saw nurses putting the needles into them – a process that the babies didn’t seem to enjoy. Later I asked Tan why so many kids of all ages were on drips (it’s not just hospitals – there are plenty of clinics on the high streets full of young children on the drip). She said it was the quickest way of administering medicine. Simple as that. Why wait for tablets to be digested when you can put the stuff into the blood stream straight away. Fair enough I suppose. Oh yes, and the babies with the needles in the heads? Well the veins in the wrist are too small at that age…. Stands to reason really.

Fun on the rides in the guang chang

In the evening we went to the town square again where Leilei enjoyed himself on the rides, again. And again and again....

Leilei and Dada having fun on the rides

The Bees and the Birds

Leilei and I both got up at 11am and I went out to lunch at a place round the corner while Tan’s mum looked after Leilei. We ate with Xiao Li’s business partner, who then invited me to go to the iron ore place again. I said I had to look after Leilei, but as Tan’s mum already was I went anyway. We went all the way up the mountain to where the iron ore comes from and there was a great view from there.

Eerie house we stopped off at on way to iron ore place

Me with a couple of mates at the iron ore place

   

Back in town, we went to buy bee larvae as I had told them I was partial to it. They are actual living grubs when you buy them in the market. A slice of honeycomb-like thing sits on the table and they pluck out the larvae and put them into bags for you. From time to time, a bee hatches from one of the holes and starts walking around getting its wings ready for flying. As soon as this happens, they get a pair of tweezers and pick it up and put it in a bottle. For what purpose I have yet to fathom, but I imagine it’s something to do with food or drink.

Xiao Li also bought some wild birds, about the size of starlings, and cooked a great evening meal that wouldn’t be approved of by some people I can think of.

Some bee larvae in their homes. You can pull of the white fluffy bits and see the things wriggling inside. Occasionally one pops out as a fully fledged bee!

We bought a couple of bags of these...they are still moving at this stage!

Tasty birds...the funny part is when you hold the beak and bite off the whole head...it's quite creamy. The beak and the claws are about the only parts you don't eat (although the women didn't eat the heads for some reason)

After the meal Tan and Xiao Wei went for a hair wash while Xiao Li went for a hair cut. I took Leilei to the square where we had a good time in the fun house bouncing on the trampoline and throwing balls around, before going to the supermarket to buy nappies and milk powder. Chinese supermarkets have far too many workers than is necessary. While it is sometimes hard to find anyone to help you find the aisle with Marmite in Sainsburys, there is someone there in every aisle in a Chinese supermarket. You are always being watched. And if you look like buying something they will often come and advise you – more often than not suggesting you buy the cheaper brands because they’re better quality. Another weird thing is that when you buy something a little expensive, like milk powder for £5, you can’t just put it into your basket. A woman comes and writes something on a slip of paper, which you then take to the till where you pay. Then you come back and give the woman your receipt and she will give you the milk powder and you can carry on shopping. Of course when you get to the till to pay for the things you have to find the receipt you got for the milk powder in the first place to show you’ve already paid.

Rubbish England vs Macedonia and rubbish beer

Up at 9am to do Leilei. Stayed in the house for most of the day before going to play table tennis in the evening. Met a bloke there who wanted to play me. We practised for a bit and I realised I was actually not as good as I thought. He could spin in all directions, smash and return smashes with ease. We then started a game and I won the first seven points as I managed to tame some of his spins. But then he scored a point, and then another…I feared losing 11-7 but boringly enough I beat him 11-3, probably because his eyes hadn’t adjusted to the light. He later beat me twice. We got his number and agreed to go and play inside some time where he would teach us how to play properly.

Leilei in a san lun che

After table tennis we met the wives and kids and went for a bbq of duck intestines, duck tongues and chicken legs. We got home at 11pm so I cracked open a couple of bottles of beer in preparation for the football at midnight (England vs Macedonia). Xiao Li had bought some “special” Blue Ribbon American beer but had forgotten to put it in the fridge, so we stuck to the cold Li Quan instead. After an abysmal game which echoed of lame Ericsson friendlies against poor opposition (we drew 0-0) I opened a now cold Blue Ribbon beer and it tasted weird, like really watered down whisky, but I had a couple of bottles with the bloke who lives downstairs anyway….

A selection of hitherto uncooked bbq