Sisterly reunion and family meal

Well at least I wasn't up too early and treated myself to another two mangoes before going to the basement to pick up dian dong che I'd left to charge last night. As I entered I heard the typical suite of alarms going off that never seem to stop for more than a couple of minutes and no-one pays any attention. Typically you have to move someone else's bike to get yours out, which triggers the alarm. But this time I saw it was our bike that had its light on and I realised it was our bike only that was eminating sound. I pushed the button to stop it and put the charger away but noticed a notice stuck to the front of the bike. I didn't understand it but guessed it was to do with the alarm and feared it could have been going on for a long time. As I rode to leave, the security bloke stopped me and had a right go at me. Of course I claimed ignorance but it transpired I hadn't closed the seat lock properly, where the charger is normally kept, and the alarm had been going all night. I guess that the security people normally have a bit of a sleep, or at least enjoy some tranquility in the early hours, but I had prevented that.

The stern notice that was attached to the dian dong che - I intend to translate it one day

A Wu called in the morning to say that we were going to Baksec Zhai's for tea, but I said Da Jie should be coming and he understood that family comes first so agreed t arrange for tomorrow instead. This is one yet again why it is quite annoying not knowing if someone is really coming when they say they are. There's half a chance that Da Jie won't come today and that it will be tomorrow so all will have to be rearranged again.

Well apparently Da Jie was coming today at 11am so we got to Waipo's well in advance where Er Jie already was. 11 came and went and then we were told they were stuck in a traffic jam. I'm guessing it's not convenient to take the train or something but I've taken the slow train to Pingxiang from Pingguo before and it was lovely and hardly longer than driving, and certainly not subject to traffic. By 12.30 we heard they'd missed the Pingguo exit at the motorway and would have to turn back later so we decided to eat. Finally, at 1.30 Da Jie turned up with her husband and stepson. Apparently they hadn't used the satnav.

So they ate their lunch and then photos were taken. Then Er Jie produced two hong bao (red envelopes) for the kids, each containing 500 kuai. That's going a bit far...she's already spoilt them rotten. Apparently she has ordered them a swegway each - rather silly as I've already told Tan the batteries won't be allowed on the flights back either as hand or hold luggage. I guess it will mean an expensive and long overland journey. Waipo didn't want to be in the pictures as she said it was bad luck for some reason. But when it was just the three daughters she decided it would be ok. It's just possible this will be the last such opportunity.

Da Jie's stepson, Leilei, Xixi, Da Jie, Da Jie's husband

Er Jie, Leilei, Tan, Xixi, Da Jie

The three daughters and Waipo

Da Jie brought some pomegranates

I had considered asking for help buying train tickets to Zhuhai but based on experience I thought it would be a whole lot less hassle doing this myself. I wouldn't have to deal with others' opionions then about the best train to get and why I shouldn't stay in Zhuhai more than two nights due to muggers or whatever. Worse, someone might even offer to drive the 12 hour journey. No, I was going to do it myself. I'd been told that with the new gao tie train the journey was a little over three hours. More like a little over five hours. I would have preferred to get the 16:23 but that would have arrived at Guangzhou at gone 21:30 and we'd still need to take another train for an hour, so I booked tickets for the 08:54. It seems you can't buy tickets all the way to your destination, or return tickets, at least not on ctrip, so I ordered separate tickets from Pingguo to Guangzhou, and Guangzhou to Zhuhai. Once I'd logged in to ctrip.com it remembered the passenger details and I was able to choose who was travelling. Unfortunately Leilei and my passport numbers had changed since we last used ctrip and I nearly booked with the wrong ones, so had to manually remove us and re-add.

I thought that was a job well done when I'd made the two separate transactions to pay for the single tickets, but my email notification showed that for the Pingguo to Guangzhou trip I'd put them both in my name. Oh dear, this would now require going to explain to someone in person when picking up the tickets instead of just going to a machine. And this probably wouldn't have happened if I'd asked someone to help. Well I'd sort it tomorrow.

As much of the family were together (only Tan's brother was not around - presumably out of town working as a driver) it was decided that we would go out to Li Jia He Xiang and this time we actually did eat there. It was a lovely family meal where I learned for the first time Ling Ming and Xiao Nong's son calls me "Yi gong" - grandpa! I suppose it makes sense as Ling Ming is Da Jie's son, so effectively a generation below me. Leilei and Xixi were also excited to be and uncle and aunt respectively. Relatively little beer was consumed and by the end of the meal as we Chuan Chuan received the receipt we noticed we hadn't even got through a box, and needed to be refunded a few bottles (I didn't offer to take them home in a doggy bag).

Family meal at Li Jia He Xiang

I took the kids back home to charge up their devices before popping back to Waipo's to pick up the tv that we usually borrow here and isn't used over there. It took a while but I got it set up with the satellite box only to find there was no signal. I had no idea what to do next after wiggling the dish about resulted in nothing, so set up the old Wii instead. This year I've brought a Wii Fit board so hope to use it.

Leilei said he wanted to get some presents for his mates but of course we want to get something local they can't easily get in the UK. So of course we went to the "shenme dou you" shop downstairs near our building. We call it that as it seems to have everything we (the kids and I) need. We ended up getting some of those character practising "parchments" that you use by dipping a brush in water and the writing comes out black for a few seconds until it dries up. Original, fun, and educational. And only 5 kuai each though the brushes were 3 kuai. I got some paper to make paper aeroplanes and for Xixi to do some art with the water colours she bought. Altogether it came to 62 kuai as the shopkeeper showed us on the calculator. But he said 55 kuai to show he was giving a discount. Then, who I can only assume was the boss, shouted out "50". It was like they were bartering with each other to give a lower price even though they were running the place! I didn't argue, and as I was fishing for cash the boss noticed Xixi looking at the pretty nail clippers and of course asked which one she wanted. She chose a pink one of course and I noticed Leilei getting jealous. He waved off any attempt at payment and as we were leaving noticed Xixi glancing at a Spongebob Squarepants padlock and immediately picked it up and gave it to her (it should have been 13 kuai). Leilei was a rage of envy by the time we got out of the shop and I had to insist Xixi give him the padlock, and explain that he'd just have to accept Xixi would get more attention than him. I explained how I was once the attention-getter, then he came along and stole it from me - now Xixi has taken some of his thunder which is sort of fitting as his name means "rolling thunder".

Leilei standing in front of one of our favourite shops in Pingguo, the "shenme dou you" shop close to our building

Leilei and Xixi's artwork on coming back from the shop with more than we bargained for

Back home I tried in vain to get the satellite working so I could watch some olympics so ended up hooking the laptop up and streaming some of the Pakistan Test where it looks like England could well fight back to win after being 103 runs down in the first innings.

Well...just once in a while get back to the old way of things

Mangoes for breakfast and tea for tea

Up at a leisurely 8am in time for a less leisure 90 minute ping pong session to sweat out any of yesterday's excesses. I realised we still had loads of mangoes from Tian Yang so had the excellent and healthy idea of having a couple for breakfast - luxury! To avoid too many going bad I put the rest in the fridge and brought the other box to Waipo's when we went to lunch a bit later.

Healthy and delicious breakfast

We had been told that Da Jie would be coming today to see her son Ling Ming and younger sisters Er Jie and Tan. Except I suppose Er Jie should be called Er mei as she is younger. It's all rather confusing. Depending on who is calling me I have a different moniker. So if it's Chuan Chuan I'm Yi Zhang, but if it's someone else its Jiu Jiu or Bo Bo so I have to be aware what each means to know if it's me that's being beckoned. Needless to say I must fail quite frequently. So I was interested to hear Tan call Er Jie by her actual name, Tan Lihong, as I thought that within families one never used actual names. Tan said this was quite normal but I have my doubts. I didn't make her aware of my doubts though.

After tea at Waipo's the kids and I went for a ride and we found ourselves near Li Kun's place where we've had tea before. We weren't on a mission so decided to give him a ring and he said he be around in a few minutes. Of course we weren't expecting him straightaway so popped into a small supermarket we hadn't seen before. This was the third or fourth place I've been to this year that sells fizzy soda water and it was one kuai cheaper than the other places at 4 kuai, so I bought a few and got the kids some sweet drinks too. After quite a few phone calls we finally met up with Li Kun a good half an hour later at A Ni's place as he was near there. After a wee chat with A Ni and son, we followed Li Kun, his wife, and daughter in their 4x4 to his place where I learned this place was his tea-drinking house only and he actually lived by the market. A house exclusively for tea-drinking? I had no evidence to oppose this as we spent the next 45 minutes or so doing exactly that.

The kids were wondering why there was so much phone number graffiti - I think I remember Tan saying it's places offering fake degrees but I've never tried calling one

But the kids were quite bored so as promised I took them to play at the guangchang where they got soaked again on the ben ben chuang jumpy castle before showers beckoned. In the end it transpired that Da Jie wasn't coming today but would be here tomorrow. Then for some reason I couldn't sleep till 3am - must have been the blasted tea.

Colourful scenes at the guangchang

Snake, meal, and massage

Up at a leisurely 8am so no running but I did go for ping pong again till 10. After a shower we went to check the camera trap, and to our relief it was still there despite being rather more visible in the daylight than we had hoped. Back home though to our dismay there was nothing other than a few early morning strollers and a some joggers. We'll have to find a better place for next time - more out of the beaten path.

Disappointed with the camera trap so we took our own pretty picture of a pond in the guangchang

We're starting to get into the routing of going to Waipo's around 11-11.30 and this time after lunch Tan mentioned that there was to be a meal in memory of some person from Bangxu who died recently. The actual mourning part was already over and this was to be a happy event. My presence wasn't needed but I wanted to go.

After lunch I took the kids for a spin and to their old nursery and their old school that they attended not that many years ago. We found the train station and saw it had been massively modernised, presumably for the huge infrastructural changes that have been made to accommodate the new "gao tie" (tall steel) fast trains that have taken the country by storm in recent years. I'm slightly annoyed that many people refer to the new trains as "dong che" - moving car, as opposed to "gao tie", as I'm not sure if this is a different type of train or not. Tan recently took a dong che to Baise and said it was very nice. Well hopefully I'll find out soon - this reminded me I needed to book tickets to Zhuhai but looking at the queue I thought we'd do it online.

On the way back from the station we stopped off at the cool cave, a place I used to frequent with mates until a couple of years ago when the main bloke stopped using the place as a mini restaurant - presumably as it was too mini to make money. It looked deserted and Leilei didn't want to climb up the outside steps in the oppressive heat, but I made him and nearly regretted it when nearly at the top a snake, presumably roused from its slumbers on the steps, woke up and whizzed right past us causing a mild panic. All I remember was that it was nearly three feet in length and the front three to four inches was mostly red, and the rest quite brown - we'd better look it up to see how close we were to death. Up by the cool cave there was a solitary old bloke who didn't seem to want to have anything to do with us. I asked if anyone lived there and he said "no", then went for a look and saw clothes hanging out and wondered why people would do that if they didn't live there. I couldn't be bothered to ask him more.

I dropped off the kids at Waipo's then went home for half an hour before thinking I should be making more of my time off work, so set out again on the dian dong che looking for a new place that actually does nice massages as opposed to those that are supposed to cure something. I spent much more time than I should have done between 2-3 pm and ended up finding nothing that didn't look rather seedy, then realised I'd caught the sun.

This caused me to feel a little tired, and I managed to grab 1h15m of sleep till 4.30. I grabbed a shower as although the meal was to be at 5.30 at Li Jia He Xiang, the excellent restaurant we used to be invited to more than was good for us. Sure enough I got the call that she was leaving now and we needed to be there in five minutes, and sure enough as soon as I arrived five minutes later I got another call to be told the meal wasn't at Li Jia He Xiang but rather another place up the road by the corner of the guang chang.

As the kids and I were on the bike it didn't take a minute to get to the actual eating place and there were many oldish people standing outside in the heat chatting. This went on for 15 minutes or so until it was determined that we should enter. Inside were about 40 tables, each seating around eight people. We appeared to be in the first 20% or so and took a table quite near the entrance with Lin Hong, her daughter Tian Tian Jie Jie, and her parents. Of course this meant that as other entered they cooed over the kids, causing a bottleneck for the rest trying to get in. I thought about moving to a more practical table, but it would have meant moving more people, so just let the situation run its natural path.

Waiting outside in the heat with the Bangxu gang

Some people were well into the food when we entered, and by the time we started some had already finished and were busily depositing what they hadn't finished into doggy bags. I had a couple of glasses with Lin Hong's father, but nothing significant, but as is the custom here blokes from other tables walked over to ours and gan bei'd with me. Then I thought I didn't need to be passive here, so joined in and went and found my own bottle to take to other tables. Tan suggested a particular table and then warned they would try to get me drunk. If that was the case then why suggest that particular table??

The meal in full swing

Well I went there anyway and instead of accepting a standing gan bei they grabbed a fresh set of eating utensils and bade me sit down with them. The next 45 minutes or so did indeed involve plenty of gan bei'ing, so much that I needed to use my usual trick of moving to cai ma to put a slight slowdown on proceedings. In fact it must have been more than an hour as later when I looked around not only were Tan and the kids gone, there were only a couple of tables with people left. The blokes were all "family" from Bangxu and accepted my excuse to leave, but only after gan bei'ing each one a final time.

We were one of the last tables remaining

Outside I managed to do tipsily what I didn't manage in the afternoon - to find a lovely massage. Why hadn't I thought about it in the first place? I just needed to go for a "wash face". I went to a place opposite the KTV place that I used to go to quite a lot, and asked if indeed it was possible to "wash face". They looked at me as if I was a bear asking permission to poo in the forest before telling me to lie down on one of the beds. I excused myself and went for a wee first, but instantly realised I'd made the right choice. I'd even shaved earlier in the day was able to really enjoy a face massage complete with head and shoulders and arms too - such a decadent thing to do but it's only my first time this year. They did warn me that the price would be 130 kuai - a lot of money but they said it was mainly for the face soap, and that next time I came it would be 30 kuai. There will be a next time for sure.

Leilei haircut and another boss meal

Woke up at 4.30am but after a bit of counting in German I managed to squeeze back in and out of dreamland till 6.30 - a bit more successful than recent mornings. After giving up on further shuteye I went to ping pong from 8.30 - 10 in the rain but still managed to sweat as much as if it was a sunburner.

I'm trying to work out the algorithm for whether to get up or not. There are various factors that need to be weighed such as:
 - how much I need to sleep
 - how much benefit I'd get by doing the exercise I otherwise wouldn't be doing
 - what chance I'd have of having a siesta if I've had less than five hours sleep
 - what chance I have of having a couple of beers for lunch
I'll have to sort this out later.

We went to Waipo's again at 11.30 and I picked up some dou jiang and breakfast stuff up on the way. I excused myself soon after and went to the kids' piano place by the river in the hope that I might get a tinkle. I'd forgotten that this place doesn't even have doors to close out even a small percentage of the music and my Scott Joplin was competing with various Bachs and Beethovens, and therefore probably lost. I tried to look on the bright side; if you can manage to play in such conditions, it should stand you in good stead for playing in many more. I still look forward to the time I have the balls and ability to play on one of those public pianos though.

I only lasted half an hour at the piano place before I left to pick up the kids and take Leilei to have a haircut at Lao Ma's. This was the first place that Leilei ever got his hair cut and he probably doesn't remember how he only allowed it after shaving my arm. I noticed that Lao Ma had actually taken some care over her wifi password. Literally half the time the passwords for wifi are 88888888 or 123456789 but hers was 88889999 - cunning. Xixi says she has an app on her phone for getting onto wifi without a password but now I'm guessing it just tries the most popular few passwords and generally works.

Lao Ma's nice BMW X1 - I still wonder how you can afford one at twice the price as a hairdresser earning much less than in the UK - I must be missing something

Leilei actually enjoying a haircut for the first time in his life

Haircut done - not bad

Leilei shaved my arm in 2008!

We went home after Leilei's haircut as I needed to work and Leilei wanted to chat with Momo. We're thinking of going to see him and his mum in Zhuhai in a few days. Then A Wu rang to ask me to go to the same boss as a couple of days ago to eat. Well he was obviously over his little tiff with me when I didn't go fishing with them the other day. I was fine with this and took the kids to the same place behind the KTV that I went to a few days back.

But there was no-one there. Fine, I spoke to A Wu and he said they'd be there "soon" which could mean anything. So I left them for a bit to pick up some stuff, but well after 6pm there was still no sign of life. I took them to get a bite to eat as by this time they were hungry and picked up a not massively healthy fried sausage wrap with a bit of lettuce that Xixi gave straight to me but otherwise they both ate fully. In the end the meal didn't start until gone 7.30, well more than two hours after A Wu rang, so I said I'd take the kids to Waipo's as it wasn't fair to leave them here in the smoke when they'd already eaten.

What the kids ended up eating for tea (I had Xixi's lettuce)

What grown men do while waiting for food to be served

It was a nice meal, and one of the women from the women's table came to the blokes' table to cai ma, and I guessed she was without husband and therefore "reaching out". I may be totally wrong and I usually am, but I boringly made a point of saying my wife was from Bangxu. I'm sure there is a term like that for women when they make it clear they are not available but in a not very subtle way.

The men's table but the woman is hidden on the left hand side

Later that evening I remembered I told the kids we'd put out the camera trap so we went to the mini mountain behind Deng Xiaoping hill and found what we hoped would be subtle place to capture any animals by the side of the path. I hope we get something though I'm not betting on it.

The hidden camera trap

Back from Tian Yang with yummy mangoes

I was up reasonably early at 7 but the kids weren't. Luckily I had the wherewithall to check what time breakfast served till and found it was 9.30 so got them up at 9 and 10 minutes later we got downstairs to find almost nothing left. Grrr. I did sort of moan but I managed to salvage three boiled eggs, two fried eggs, three man tou, and a portion of noodles each for the kids so we weren't hungry but I'm not sure how healthy my five yolks were as the kids don't seem to like them.

Back at hotel room kids wanted to watch a film but I said there was no point and as if to confirm that Yang Haiwei called a minute later to say he'll be there immediately to pick us up. Did he not know about checking out? At check-out Leilei forgot his chong dian so we had to go back. Yang Haiwei had to wait a little while and wouldn't let me pay, saying the business would, so I said I'd say we were his clients as a sort of joke but I think he may have took my excuse seriously. It was 600 kuai after all - why not put on expenses?

Back at Haiwei's office there was lots of waiting around, drinking tea, and I really wondered what actual work was being done. To be fair, occasionally someone would walk in and talk to someone with some papers in their hand, but that seemed about it. I had hoped that Haiwei's one hour absence was due to work but found out he'd been cooking lunch, which we partook of before waiting around a little later. I was told we'd pick up some mangoes from a market then leave back for Pingguo at 3pm. This was a change from the original plan as we were expecting to take the train with Haiwei's wife and kids after lunch. But it transpired Haiwei would now be driving back today so we'd all go in the same car again.

Haiwei's car outside his new office in Tian Yang - there are few blue cars in China

Before we left we went to the market in the boiling mid-afternoon sun. The ladies cut out bits of mangoes for us and they were utterly gorgeous. As Haiwei and his wife discussed how many they wanted and at what price I went for a little walk in the sun which made the local stallholders look at me in a queer way as if to say "what's that bloke doing out in the...oh he's one of those...". Haiwei's wife spent about 360 kuai on three quite large boxes of mangoes, and they put something else in the car too.

Kids and Haiwei at the Tian Yang mango market

Eating straight out of the fruit as mother nature intended

Back in the office 3pm came and went as more and more tea was imbibed. Eventually it was time to go at 4.20 but first we drove a few minutes to some factory outside Tian Yang where we stopped for some reason. Someone brought me out some "liang cha" (cold tea) which was actually warm, and I recognised him as the bloke I conversed with yesterday. I wasn't really in the mood for another deep conversation but luckily I didn't have to as it was time to go.

But instead of going to Pingguo we stopped at Tian Dong, the next region down from Tian Yang. Haiwei was on the blower to some woman trying to find a place to eat. Ah, so we were to eat here before heading to Pingguo. But the place was closed, and looked like it wouldn't open till the evening, so we did end up going back to Pingguo where we found a nice place to eat and Xixi found a tiny kitten on the stairs that wasn't scared. There were a couple of other blokes there, one from Tian Yang, and a tacit agreement between Haiwei and me to only have a couple of beers as the other guys weren't partaking. In the meantime Uncle Yellow had called me to go to a bar tonight so I said yes that would be great, and he'd call me at 8.30.

Cute

I got a lift home with the the kids as Tan was going out to eat at A Xia's as she'd not had any tea yet. Haiwei then forced not one but two boxes of mangoes on us. So unnecessary but appreciated. We'll have to give most of them away though. A few minutes later Uncle Yellow called to say he was downstairs so the kids and I went to see him in his nice new white MG (which he was quite proud to tell me was a Chinese brand now). I called Tan to see if I could drop off the kids at A Xia's but she told me she was about to go home as she was full, which isn't normal, so I asked Uncle Yellow to go to A Xia's and pick her up and drop the lot of them off home.

Uncle Yellow and his new white MG

So I had a couple of hours free and we had a relaxing time just talking about stuff with another bloke I'd eaten with back in 2008, and his wife and eight year old son. We were on 2.5%ers but the boss came over and after a couple of gan beis took a selection of three other beers from the same brand and opened them up and we had a bit of a tasting session. I said I preferred the 2.5%er in the hope that that's what we'd continue with, but paid compliments to the 3.6%, 3.7%, and 4.0% too. I got everyone to line up the cans in order of their preference and it seemed we all agreed we weren't massively keen on the black lager - phew - it was the strongest.

My order of favourites for some reason from right to left

What I wasn't particularly happy about was seeing the kid with a bottle of blue alcopops. Ok it was 4% and he nurtured it the whole two hours or so and didn't even finish it, but it seemed wrong. Then I thought of the French parents who supposedly bring their kids up on watered down red wine and everything seems ok and it results in the kids not interested in drinking when they grow up. Except that it doesn't. I didn't overdo it at all and got a lift to A Xia's 11.30 where I picked up the dian dong che and took it back to chong dian and got an early night at 12.30.

Fun and music in Tian Yang

Yet another 4am wake after a relatively early 1am sleep. Nothing for it, by 6.30 I was in the guangchang. Alhough I really wasn't in the mood for another long run I did make a slow start but as I got around to Deng Xiaoping hill I decided I'd go for more of a strength test and run up the steps there. Well my heart was in the right place but I barely made it a third of the way before my strength was sapped away under deluges of sweat and I had to walk the rest. It should be a good personal goal though, to actually jog up the entire west face of the hill one day. At the top I took one of the new walkways down after having done some stretches where I was clearly the least flexible, and least old, of anyone else.

The tiring steps up Deng Xiaoping hill

My co-walker

I plucked up the courage to attempt a quickish walk/jog up to the pagoda on the hill behind Deng Xiaoping but the bloke I'd been following became aware of my presence when some mates of his walking in the opposite direction pointed this out to him. So of course he started talking to me and we ended up walking a circuit of pagoda hill rather than jogging up it. He met a lady he knew and of course there were then photographs to be taken. He said he would do another circuit but I said I'd go to the top. No problem, he'd show me the path. Well actually we walked past two perfectly good looking branches of our circuit that looked like they'd go to the top but my friend said no...they were not good, for a reason I'll have to work out later - "tai di". By the time we got to a path that he deemed suitable we'd pretty much completed a second circuit anyway. I did get to the top in the end, and as I was enjoying the view a man came with a flute and a loudspeaker. He turned on some, I suppose, classic Chinese music, and then accompanied it in a rather pleasant manner. I wasn't sure what to do or say when I passed him on the way down from the top of the pagoda but he didn't give any expression when I caught his eye and I wondered if somehow I'd trespassed on his temporary property and I'd been hexed or something.

I decided I still didn't want to run but, as I'd not done it for a while, went to play ping pong at the old people's leisure centre. This provided over 90 minutes of further sweating but not before I'd gone home to change out of my first stinky top. By the time I got back surprisingly all were awake. The kids had had some crappy sweet stuff that I didn't want, so I cut a luscious dragonfire fruit and had that instead. Still insanely sweet but proably better for you.

Xixi said she could see something on my back and I saw the fruits of yesterday's horrid "massage"

Tan said she was about to go to Waipo's at 10.30, so I said I could take the kids to eat lunch in a bit - we still had to pick up the dian dong che from Ma Laoban's. But as I went to fill a bottle of water I noticed there was none left. So I called the water woman and said this time I wanted two large bottles instead of just replacing the one we have. Unfortunately I didn't realise the word for the large bottle was "tong" and I thought she said "dong", i.e, cold. As the bottle would be situated in the living room it made no sense for it to be cold, but I guessed the woman knew this so I cheated and handed the phone to Tan. That's when I realised my mistake, and really she was confirming the second bottle as it required a 40 kuai deposit. Of course Tan questioned why I wanted a second bottle. Because what happens if we run out of one and it's midnight? It took little over a week to run out of this one and we're not even in the house that much. Then she saw the point.

It was now 11.30 so we all went to Waipo's to find out there was not enough food, so I took yi ma's dian dong che out and the kids decided they wanted to get stuff from the dou jiang place to eat. I didn't really care as long as they ate. As the dou jiang place is mainly a breakfast place they were happy to see us as I guess what the don't sell goes to waste (they close for the day in the afternoon). The total for three of us came to 10 kuai - under 40p each for lunch.

We were due to go to Tian Yang later but I didn't know what time to messaged Yang Haiwei to ask. He called a little later to tell me he'd pick us up at 4pm. Great, the early lunch meant time for a kip while the kids stayed at Waipo's. I probably got to sleep at 1.30 and up again to my alarm at 3.30, then up again to a reset alarm at 3.45. I realised I needed to pack so set about it for the one night stay. Of course with various chargers this is a bit more than a five minute job and at 3.57pm Yang Haiwei called to say he was waiting for us downstairs. I asked him to give us five minutes and 10 more later we all boarded his blue car with the red seats that I remember from years ago.

It took a little over an hour to get to Tian Yang with Haiwei's wife and younger son. It's only 25k from Baise but there was a hold up as a lorry had turned over presumably due to the bit of rain that had fallen. When we arrived we went straight to Haiwei's office to drink tea. There were a couple of blokes there and over the next hour or so I was involved in deep conversations about stuff. It was rather tiring concentrating so much but at least it was tea and not beer. I learnt a view new words too: "wu liu" (logistics), "kai fa" (develop, as in software), "wen hua shui ping" (education level), and "jie du" (detoxify). They may seem a bit random but we were talking about their work, my work, and some cultural stuff where I made sure to state that educational level does not necessary determine your ability to do certain work, and is not a direct corollary of intelligence. The main bloke I was talking to, Li Zhong, seemed to take what I said very seriously and actually said he appreciated hearing my perspective. Then he started talking about traditional Chinese medicine, and how it didn't require skin grafts as with the traditional stuff it would grow back in 14 days (something to do with detoxification of the skin). Immediately my woo radar was tickled but I held myself back and limited my questioning to general open questions like how did it work? etc., instead of how did they test? Of course I didn't get a detailed answer (fair enough, he wasn't a quack) but I wasn't very well going to rip some skin off to test it.

Passing a not-very-nice-looking lorry on its side - the driver was on a stretcher

The the subject turned, as it so often has this year, to Brexit. I have a slight suspicion that this topic is huge in China too not just because it might herald greater trade ties between the two countries, but because it shows what happens when you allow the general population to make a very important decision, which is something that wouldn't happen here. Of course it shouldn't have happened in the UK either I think, but hey. It's pretty likely strengthened the way it is politically here, but I've never got so far in a political conversation to know. But if a certain things happens in the States in November I wonder if some places will start questioning some aspects of the democratic way.

Haiwei's wife (I really should know her name by now) then came to take the kids away from computer screens and away to eat with their son, while I went with some blokes for a manly meal. There's a rather pretty area in Tian Yang where the buildings are all made in the old style with curvy bits at the end of gutters and the like. They are also building new houses in this style, which is rather more attractive than the standard new builds. Our restaurant was in such a building. We went upstairs and one thing that was slightly unusual was that the beer arrived before the food. Immediately Yang Haiwei declared the Li Quan 7du as fake, and ordered the Snowflake brand instead. I of course asked how he knew, and this is where my Chinese suddenly takes a turn for the worse, or, more likely, the explanation is unclear. I asked again but when I got a second woolly response to the tune of lots of Li Quan here is fake, I decided not to labour the point, very unsatisfactorily.

Nice style of buildings in Tian Yang

Obviously fake Li Quan in the foreground

At least the Snowflake beer was 2.5% instead of 3.1%. Yet again I found myself questioning why sometimes a 7 degree beer is 3.1% yet an 8 degree beer is 2.5%. Yet the blokes talk about beers in terms of degrees, not percentage. However, when talking about spirits degrees does equal percentage. Nobody seems to give two hoots about this, yet it's vexed me for 13 years.

Boss Huang and Yang Haiwei engaged in cai ma battle

The meal was of course great, and the Snowflake gradually deepened the hues of the imbibers' faces until the boss stage, where the boss of the restaurant first came and toasted with us. For some reason, when someone important comes to a table to do a couple of gan beis, it's quite normal for him to be given a cellophane-wrapped bowl/plate/glass/tea cup/spoon and have it unwrapped for him (it is nearly always a him), only for it not to be used. A few minutes after the boss had left we repaid the compliment by going to the room where he was eating and gan beiing everyone there. Had it been Kronenburg we'd have been paralytic by now.

I knew the plan was to go and have bbq at some point. In fact the main reason for coming here was to taste the famous bbq that puts Pingguo in the shade apparently. But Haiwei said we were now going to sing song. It was a short drive away and we arrived in a nice looking pedestrian area with what I think are mostly bars on either side for a couple of hundred yards. We stopped at the first one and I saw a couple of blokes, one of whom looked particularly drunk. Then I gradually started to understand what "sing song" meant here. We weren't going to a KTV - rather this was a place where you sang to live music. What a bloody good idea! The blokes were a guitarist and a keyboard player (he who looked drunk), and Haiwei rifled through some pages of songs before choosing one. Both the musicians of course knew the music by heart and started playing, and Haiwei rendered a really good version of this song I didn't know. Somehow being outside and having real (if amplified) music really added to the occasion in way KTV could never do. I realised the keyboard player couldn't have been very drunk as he played some quite complex riffs.

The music street

Haiwei on left getting ready to sing

Haiwei's wife turned up with the kids, who were looking very happy and apparently had eaten ok, and ordered bbq where we were. Ah so this was singing and bbq together, with the kids too - excellent. And the kids tucked into a lot of the bbq as did I. I don't want to say it was better than Pingguo's but for someone who was still full from the meal I did manage to eat more than was necessary. The blokes were asking me to sing of course. Now if this had been KTV I might have been able to find an English song I knew, but here it wasn't the case, and I hadn't drunk enough to consider singing "Ni shi wo de mei gui hua" even if they knew it.

One of the blokes singing to the accompaniment of keyboard and to some extent a drum

But seeing the guitar had given me a hankering to play it. And after a couple more beers I messaged Andge to ask for an idea for what to sing. He had the great idea of Hey Jude, but I didn't know the chords. His great solution was to send a screenshot of them over WhatsApp (thankfully not yet blocked) but I didn't think I could be looking down at my phone all the time and what would happen when the screen locked? So I decided I'd try The Boxer. When I said I'd sing a song they showed my to the hotseat but hadn't banked on me playing an instrument as well, so they fetched the guitar and set up two microphones for some reason (the guitar was accoustic but plugged into an amp). It was actually quite fun to sing, though inexplicably I forgot the fifth verse and went straight into "In the clearing stands a boxer" after the second "lie la lie" but I don't think anyone noticed. Annoyingly, the most drunk bloke played the drums to the song and was quite out of sync much of the time, but again, no-one really cared; they got me up to sing and apparently really enjoyed it. Haiwei was telling me he known me all these years and never knew I could play the guitar.

Really poor and short recording of me doing The Boxer accompanied by even worse drums

After a few more beers and bbq it was 11pm and I decided it was late enough to take the kids back, so said goodbye to my chums and got a lift to Tian Yang International Hotel, where one of the blokes helped us check-in to our pre-ordered room. Luckily I'd had the forethought to take our passports as these were necessary. We had a nice executive suite and I got the kids showered and into bed not long after midnight and followed soon after.

Horrible "massage" and nice meal with teacher

Finally up at 9am for a change! Even if I wanted to I couldn't go to ping pong as I had the kids asleep in Leilei's room so I had a nice morning in until Ma Laoban called me to ask me for lunch again. Sure, why not? Well there are probably reasons why not but hell, Tan's away. As soon as I put the phone down it started ringing again and it was A Wu reminding me that we were to go out fishing with the bosses from yesterday. Oh shit, I'd forgotten, or never understood that. Well I told him I was taking the kids with Ma Laoban as it had been arranged (honest, if only just), and I think A Wu now understands he can't make my mind up for me so he hung up!

Ma Laoban came to our place to pick us up shortly after midday. We stopped at a new big hotel and we picked up police mate, who was looking decidedly the worse for wear. We then drove a little while outside Pingguo to a reservoir where we saw people swimming. Ma Laoban said we'd go swimming first but it happened to be a joke. Not an obvious one as I've been in similar situations where we really have (and I've not had trunks). There were a few people sitting by a table in the shade, and it became apparent they were from Bangxu and we were to eat with them.

Police mate sat in a deckchair and fell asleep until the food was served, but even then looked like a man more hungover than awake and although he was poured a beer none met his lips. He only managed a mouthful of food before going back to sleep again. I didn't want beer either but when one of the ladies offered to gan bei I realised it would be rude not to. Luckily it was of the 2.5% variety so I wasn't too worried. I managed to get the kids to eat some yumizhou so at least they weren't hungry and I had some of the local duck. The women were rather made up for what was otherwise a very informal outside meal in the humid heat - it was almost Sunday church attire. A few more beers later we went back but police mate was still not in great shape.

Some Bangxu ladies at the meal by the reservoir

Tan was back so I dropped off the kids with her at A Xia's and went to find a massage. Not because I really needed one but because I could and they are nice. Plus I planned on having forty winks as I hadn't planned on having beers. I found a place opposite A Hua's place, where Tan had warned me a few years ago I shouldn't go as there were prostitutes. It looked too unseedy for that, so I thought I'd take a chance. I asked if they did massages and of course they did, so was taken upstairs by a woman in a pink jumpsuit. I was brought into a small room where there was already a bloke lying down on his front with his trousers around his ankles and two sucker pump things on his buttocks. I hadn't bargained for this and was a little nervous, but at least I'd confirmed it wasn't a den of the sort of eniquity that Tan had warned of.

Horrible electric suction pads

But neither was it a massage that I was hankering after. I just wanted something that felt nice - I didn't care about how good it was for you. I idiotically told the woman that my back was in pain, in order to justify the massage in some absurdly English way, as if I couldn't have had one if it wasn't in pain. So she turned on some horrid sucking machine attached to some suckers that she attached to various parts of my back for a minute or so at a time. It hurt, but I'd made a rod for my own back in a semi literal way, and was now paying for it. Not only did it last over an hour, it was 130 kuai too, and I left hearing the woman get me to promise I'd call her before I come next time. I agreed, but it wasn't a total lie as there won't be a next time. Next time I'll be honest and just ask for a massage by someone's hands. 130 kuai for a machine massage indeed. And no chance for any shuteye either.

 Blood sucker

Tan called to say her ex-teacher had invited us to eat just outside Pingguo, and that we'd have to get a taxi there, but when I got to A Xia's she said someone would be picking us up. I don't mind this information, but it does make me take every word uttered with a pinch of salt, and it can be rather annoying. Most annoying is when you're told that so-and-so has invited you for a meal tomorrow evening, so when other people call you you say you're not free. Then, as if the most normal thing in the world, you're told you're not going now, or it's the next day, or it's somebody else inviting you. The only thing you can mostly trust is when someone arranges something for the actual day it is, which was the case today.

A bloke arrived around 5.30 to pick us up. Tan had asked me to save one of the duty-free bottles so I'd taken a whisky with me. We drove for 10 minutes and arrived at a rather picturesque setting with a pond, which was also deserted. The kids and I looked around for a bit to see our surroundings, while the driver found a room and turned on the air-con. 10 minutes later the teacher turned up with his wife and kid and apologies for being late. He gratefully received the red bag containing the whisky, but neglected to look inside (I wasn't too annoyed as it was quite cheap standard Famous Grouse or similar). Food and drink were ordered. I was in a funny situation where I didn't particularly want to drink, but teacher clearly did as he opend a bottle of bai jiu. Of course it would have been rude not to join him in at least some beer, and Tan understood this - I did make an effort to show it was 2.5% though. The food was plentiful and excellent, and the teacher good company, despite getting rather drunk after his third glass of 53% booze. He started going on about how his wife was a goddess, and stood by him while he changed his business etc.

Pretty place outside Pingguo where we ate

Tan, teacher, teacher's wife, some woman who drank beer

The kids with teacher's daughter and woman's daughter

Me with teacher and driver

A few photos were taken for good measure, and a woman joined us, and then the boss of the place. These two did share in the beer so at least I had someone else to gan bei with. Li Kun had been pinging me on WeChat to go and drink tea, and I'd kept responding that I'd hopefully have time after the meal. However, it was gone half eight before we finished and too late for tea. Instead, I took the kids to A Ni's for some juice. Lin Hong came to take the kids to the guangchang and A Ni grabbed me to go upstairs where there were at least half a dozen ladies in various states of intoxication. I just wasn't in the mood at all but performed a few gan beis before excusing myself using the kids' shower requirements when they got back as justification. I left to the order of coming back in a few minutes but I didn't want to and Tan certainly didn't want me to either, and got a reasonably earlyish night.

Pissed police mate and boss meal

Up at 5am for some annoying reason but at least I'd had nearly four hours' sleep. Ling Ming had given us a couple of tubes to fix the washing machine. I didn't know it was broken but found it was the water escape tube as it was split from old age and weather and did leak a bit on the balcony. Of course the tube was the wrong type, and now that I had the washing machine on its side I knew I'd need to find a new one before we'd have clean clothes again.

This was a mini mission that the kids and I looked forward to. First stop was to the place run by one of Tan's "aunties". I didn't expect to get the replacement part there but because I had the old one with me and a photo of the appliance, they were able to supply my with a phone number of a place that should be able to sort me out. The next hour was spent finding the place they had alluded to. I didn't call it as I knew none of the street names. The only clue I had was that it was "beyond the traffic lights" and a finger to point me to which traffic lights. It ended up being a bit like a treasure hunt, except instead of pieces of paper with further clues we'd stop at some shop and ask how close we were to this road. It took about five stops but we finally made it to the Haier shop and the lady popped upstairs and came down a minute later with a replacement tube for 15 kuai. Mission accomplished. Well I still had to install it. Back home it was actually quite straightforward and now we have a non-leaking washing machine and the kids had some fun.

Then, as if on cue, Ma Laoban rang to tell us to come to eat. I dumped the kids at Waipo's as I knew they'd be bored and Waipo really appreciates them being around even if it isn't 100% mutual. I arrived at Ma Laoban's Lenovo computer shop and there was a police mate there too who would join us. We took Ma Laoban's Landcruiser with curtained rear side windows and went to a place just a couple of blocks away from where we ate last year. It seemed to take rather a while sitting down at the ground floor with the pretty waitress ordering food for the private room that would be on the second floor, but in this instance it didn't really matter. It seemed every third item we ordered she came back apologetically to say they were out of it. But they had my favourite brown translucent boiled eggs (liang dan pi dan) so that was ok.

Ma Laoban's wife, me, police mate, and Ma Laoban at the meal

But my choice of beer wasn't ok. It wasn't that they didn't have Li Quan, rather that police mate was insistent on me drinking their strong bai jiu (white alcohol, but really it's transparent and it's from rice and it's horrible). He was utterly insistent on this, so much so that the only compromise I could make was to drink the brown "medicine alcohol" instead, and he ordered two small 100ml bottles. The food was good but I didn't like the drink, so had smaller sips than police mate. But he noticed this and told me to drink bigger sips as it wouldn't taste so strong. What utter tosh. After another bottle police mate had turned a shade of aubergine but was still insistent that we enjoy the drink. By this stage I didn't care quite so much and we managed a third bottle. Finally he ordered two more but I had to protest and he accepted and pushed the bottles away a few inches. Then a minute later his conscience got the better of him or something and he opened them both before I could counter him. He was instantly a classic drunk and staggered down the stairs a bit later and into the car where he held his head in his hands. I felt quite ok on the other hand and noticed that there were a couple of photos of people eating on the wall, and one of them looked like Jeremy Corbyn worryingly looking at some pig trotters. I ended up getting home at 3.30 and slept solidly till 6.30.

Had Jeremy Corbyn been here before, and what was he looking at?

A Wu I think it was woke me up to tell me to hurry up, we were going to see some friends at the karaoke place near where we lived for three months in 2008. Well the kids were out so I thought "why not?" and grabbed a shower and went to the KTV - probably slightly over the limit still. But when I got to the dest at the KTV and asked for A Wu, they told me he was in a different building, and took me out through the rear exit, across the road to a place where a load of blokes were eating on the ground floor. My entry was met with some drunken cheers and I was immediatley placed into gan bei mode for the next five minutes. There wasn't an amazing amount of food left but it didn't matter - the atmosphere was good and I did remember some of the blokes at least. I remembered I'd bought two packs of 200 fags at duty free for 90 quid and thought this might be an appropriate time to give them out, so excused myself saying I'd be back in 10 minutes.

Boss Zhou standing

I went back via the rear entrance of the KTV and then through the front door but was immediately accosted by a quite pretty woman who spoke to me in English "Hi! Where are you from?" Politely I told her, and she said I was very handsome, which was rather unnecessary, and proceeded to introduce herself to me, then, as a second thought, said "this is my husband", pointing to the bloke on her right. The husband looked at her with a long face and said "if you say so dear". I nearly felt awkward, but any such feeling was quickly quashed when police mate made an appearance. I recognised him from this afternoon and realised he'd probably somehow not slept off the afternoon booze, as he looked quite the worse for wear. Then Ma Laoban's wife turned up too and I realised they were wearing the same tops. Ah, it was some reunion, which was why police mate was in town.

Typically I took an instant liking to their tops, and I was asked if I wanted one. Why of course I did, and within 30 seconds I was given one. Remembering my mission to get fags, I excused myself for a second time in as many minutes and said I'd be back very soon, slinging the top on my shoulder.

Jeez while I was riding back there was a nasty whiff of BO and I felt embarrassed as I sniffed both armpits, but in fact they were fine (I had used a 72hour deoderant before going out so should be ok). I tried to find the source of the smell when it dawned on me that the reunion shirt I'd been given probably wasn't out-of-the-box, but rather off-the-back of someone else. Yuck. At home I grabbed the fags, then, as I was committed to wearing the stinking top, turned it inside out and used half a can of Gillette deoderant on it and then did the outside for good measure. Also, it was size M, but being Chinese that's pretty much an S so it was tight it a way I wouldn't have minded if I had rippling biceps, and short I wouldn't have minded if I had a six-pack.

Class 44 - "we are the best"

This time when I got back I went straight to the blokes' eating place, so the KTV crowd wouldn't see me. Boss Zhou, the main boss there, was very happy to accept 10 packs of Marlboro Red, and thankfully shared them around the others. I asked if he would mind if I took one for a mate in the KTV and of course it was ok. I said I'd be back again in a few minutes. As I did have the new top on I knew I had to see the reunion people even if I only knew two of them. Of course as I walked in I was plied with thimble-sized glasses of weak beer and gan bei'd with many of them. I gave the pack of Marlboro to police mate, but a couple of minutes later the pretty girl with the no-so-happy husband came over to me with them in hand. Apparently she'd never seen a hinge top pack before and had opened them like a soft pack, and was asking what to do. I didn't really have much of an idea so pulled on out and gave it to her. That seemed to work. Then I made my excuses and went back to the bosses across the road.

I used the kids as excuses to leave the meal a little later, but I was then given big bags of dragonfire fruit and star fruit even though if I only ate fruit for the next month I'd have more than enough. Yang Haiwei then called me after I'd picked up the kids to ask me over to drink "tea". So I dumped the kids off at A Ni's and went to see him and a couple of mates at the Lang Fu tea place. Of course tea meant beer, but I only stayeed an hour as once again the kids became my excuse to leave at 11.30 so picked them up to shower and sleep for another post-midnight night.

First massage and red wine faux pas

Damnation to my 4-5am window. Getting to sleep at 2am I thought I'd at least last longer than 5am but it wasn't to be. So at 6am I got up and found some shorts and by 6.15 I was at the guangchang with nothing but phone and keys in hand. My only target was to do more than the three laps I'd managed last time but rather than try four I walked the first half lap so would only be attempting 3.5 laps. It would be easier to beat the record of three laps that way. But on the second lap I wasn't feeling up to it, just no motivatation although beating last time should have been enough. Then I came across Zhang, who was jogging with a female. He noticed me and made the Chinese sound of recognition between males: "ah", and bade me jog with them.

It transpired that he and his pretty (for her age) friend had been jogging partners for 15 years. I had already noted that last week when I went with him to play ping pong he was wearing a top that mentioned the Nanning marathon. I hadn't been aware of such a thing but he'd done it. Luckily they weren't running any faster than a tired me so I stayed with them for a bit. They were doing longer laps than me and normally did four of them. The conversation and just company did for me more than I could have expected and I jogged a lap and a half, after which they (the woman is called Huang, I just learned) said I should relax as I'd started earlier. But I wanted to prove something to them so started a new lap even though I'd already well beaten my previous record here. It was slower, and my average speed per mile came down to 10m25s but I managed it, even with a sprint finish and was happy to see I'd done a 5.24 mile rather hot jog.

At home, just to make it better I forced myself to do a 7-minute workout, during which I sweated more than is decent. But the shower felt good. The kids and I walked to the dou jiang place on way to Waipo's with Tan, then after having a bite of brunch, left her as she was going to Baise a bit later for a few days for a primary school friends' reunion.

We went to the jade place where I had my annual change of necklace string for my jade pig. This year it was 10 kuai, as opposed to 6 kuai last year, but it had been more in the past. Pretty random but I'm not going to complain. After, the kids and I went to look for something new but even the bridge that had been built some seven years ago still didn't have a road on the south side. I tried to explain to the kids why this may be but could only muster that it was a project gone wrong, something I don't wholeheartedly believe in this place.

Still on the bike, we noticed we were getting battered by the soon-to-be-midday sun, so took a turn to Ma Laoban's place where we hugged as it had been nearly a year since we last met. We shared a couple of cups of tea then he said we'd call me to eat with him tomorrow lunchtime. I had semi-hoped we might go for a bite with him there and then, so instead we all went to A Ni's. There, the bloke with the same surname as Tan, Tan invited us to eat with him upstairs. It transpired he had some extended family for a meal, so that was quite good timing. Tan ordered steak for me and I asked for boring chips for the kids. A bottle of red wine was ordered for some reason, and some poured for all the adults. We all got up to cheers and I followed the Chinese tradition of gan beiing my glass only to find that everyone else just took a communion-sized sip from their glass. I felt rather sheepish as I was poured another - I wouldn't have downed it if I didn't think everyone else would.

Lin Hong called and came to take the kids to play, so I went home but decided it would be better to go for a massage as I haven't done that yet. It seemed that, without the kids, and with the whole afternoon and a sleep to come, not pouring a nice G&T would be bordering on criminal, so I kept on the right side of the law and had a wee glass and one for the journey. Five minutes later I was at A Wu's favouring massage place and was told to get upstairs. So much for a relaxing massage I could fall asleep during. This woman had it in for me. She kept telling me this place and that area were "ying" (hard) so applied more and more pressure. As tired as I was sleep would not happen in the next 70 minutes. But as soon as she was over, the soothing calmness of not having your muscled pulled and pushed to unnatural places brought me to a slumber that lasted another 70 minutes. I only woke up as the air-con was set at its lowest, and pushed it to 26 before resting again. Thankfully this place never seems that busy so sleeping after is quite the norm.

Not a good idea to take a selfie while taking the dian dong che back from the massage place but hey

It was already 4.30 and not long after A Wu called to invite me to eat steak at A Ni's again. It's more than I really want but it's company. There were a couple of other blokes too and beer was taken, but not more than a couple. The kids came back to then A Ni took them out to Yi Xiao to spoil them, and they came back with new shoes, clothes, and toys. Then it was my turn and I took them to the guangchang where once again they got absolutely soaking wet on the jumping castle. As it was pay day, and I'd thankfully got a bonus, I was able to withdraw 5000 kuai to give to Ling Ming for helping sort out the house. 5000 was a lot (especially with the rotten exchange rate since Brexit), but fair enough he had sent a breakdown of the costs (which I'm yet to translate). Ling Ming, his wife Xiao Nong, and their now 18 month old son came to meet us at the guangchang, then we went to A Ni's to see her son and to exchange the cash.

Then I saw Leilei was doubled over in pain. He wouldn't eat or drink so I got them both back home where he just lay down. I guessed it was the jumping and drinking of water too quickly and that seemed to be it for a few minutes later he seemed ok again. But it meant we were no longer to go out tonight and have a relatively pre-midnight bed.