Whoops - nearly another double date meal

I realised I didn't have much more time here so at 5pm made a spur of the moment decision to invite a couple of mates to go and eat at the Beihai seafood place. Normally such decisions work out well, and all was going well when I rang Uncle yellow, his mate the Cook, and Li Kun, and we all agreed to meet up there in 15 minutes. I swear nothing is planned more than a couple of hours away here. Organising a few beers in the pub for Thursday night on Monday would be frowned on here. But us dads in the UK need to sort out kiddy arrangements that somehow don't need to be sorted here.

As I was riding down to the seafood place I got a call from A Wu. I told him where I was going and he was invited too but he "reminded" me that Lu Wen had invited me to eat with him at A Ni's tonight. Oh shit. He quite probably had and it had escaped my mind. As it was only 5.30 and Uncle Yellow and the Cook had already turned up I thought it best to go ahead with this meal then turn up to Lu Wen's one - after all it wouldn't be the first time I'd had to do two meals in one evening. So we went upstairs to a private air-conditioned room as it was proper scorchio outside, and pierced our cling-film wrapped eating utensils as we waited for Li Kun to turn up. But I heard A Wu outside our room and went to tell him to come in. No, it had been decided that we would order some food here and take it to A Ni's to eat with Lu Wen. Actually that was a rather practical compromise.

So with significant help I ordered a few dishes and it came to 350 kuai. Not wishing to look cheap I then said "let's have two portions of..." and pointed to some shelled things. It came to 420 kuai and I only just had enough on me. A Wu was telling Beihai Huang's wife to round it to 400 but she is a born business woman and would have none of it and took the 420 from my hands. At least we arranged for it to be delivered for free. Uncle Yellow and Li Kun were coming, so at least I'd managed to get them an invitation in a roundabout way. The Cook said he would come a little later but sadly didn't turn up. Maybe he's not on A Wu's list of approved friends.

Good friends at a good meal - bonus that Li Kun and Uncle Yellow could make it

The meal was as good as it was predictable, with beers coming after the first twinges of appetites were sated. At least the addition of the seafood I'd ordered was broadly taken advantage of. I had to leave at one point for a breather so went downstairs and one of the mothers there was having trouble with her tiny daughter of six months. But as soon as I held her she just changed and hugged me like a baba. I held her for 10 minutes till she nearly fell asleep before giving her back as I could tell I was needed upstairs again.

Some of the aftermath of the meal

For some reason I had no urge to go out after this meal and even left the dian dong che outside A Ni's

Another City win with meal at A Wu's

Due to eating late I didn't really fancy lunch but I did want to make up for the calorific intake of recent evenings, so after coming back from Waipo's I managed the first three "Seven Minute" exercises with significant rests between. I'd like to think that A Wu's call stopped me from doing any more but I'd sweat enough for one afternoon. He was calling to invite us to eat at A Ni's and asked me to call Tan. We got there around 5.30pm, which should have been plenty of time to eat before the footy at 7.30pm, but A Wu was in the process of cooking and that went on for nearly an hour. During this time Tan said her ibuprofen from earlier was wearing off so I had a great excuse to go home to get some, and also fetch my laptop. On the way back I saw a lovely rainbow and of course took a pic. A minute later in A Ni's shop I showed the pic and I was told to look in WeChat. Six people had already posted pics of the same rainbow...there's little point in taking photos of natural phenomena nowadays.

Handsome lads

Probably the last photo I'll ever take of a rainbow...

...as everyone else in Pingguo had already it seemed

The English teacher Yoyo and her husband also turned up to eat. It turns out they have their own tutoring place and employ a few other teachers too. The husband teaches Chinese, which means the language and the culture so I suppose he really meant Chinese Literature but it was a slightly tricky subject to get into detail about. For a refreshing change it was a beer-free meal, even though A Wu offered about halfway through. As Tan was not feeling great she left to get a rest and as the door closed behind her I jokingly cried out "Laopo zou le - kai pijiu!" (wife has gone - open the beer!) but although the humour wasn't lost on them it resulted in lots of beer being opened.

I got the impression the Chinese teacher was looking forward to it as he gan bei'd me immediately and a few times later as well. It was suddenly 7.30 so I got out the laptop and found a dreadful stream but it was just about better than nothing - and I was happy to get to halftime two nil up at Stoke. Then Yoyo left and the kids had too, so it was just us blokes and A Ni, who seems to like her beers at the moment, and I found a much better stream for the second half. It was nervy after Stoke got one back but we finished off with two late goals and more very enjoyable gan beis.

After the meal I dropped of the kids at Waipo's as Chuan Chuan was back in town and would take them out. Then we went to the bosses' offices to have more beer. I recognised the bloke who delivered the beer followed him downstairs to his small shop. His family-in-law, at least some blokes, were drinking in the back room. I said I'd only stay for two drinks but the elder of the blokes said I'd stay for one hour! I argued that there were people waiting for me upstairs but it didn't seem to matter. The bloke spoke a little English and was going to use it. In the end we compromised on 20 minutes with the proviso I come back another time soon.

I showed a photo from 2008 of the younger bloke with what I thought was his sister. But in fact he told me that was his ex-girlfriend. Ah...I know what I thought was their dad and assumed he was their natural father as they both insisted on calling him baba. One of the pitfalls I'm a little prone to here but at least it didn't cause a problem. Anyway his now wife is prettier in my opinion.

The guy on the right I've known since 2008 and I think his father-in-law is the second from left, who speaks a little English

Back upstairs I underwent some routine cai ma and gan bei'ing but made my excuses later as it was getting a little much. I should have gone straight home but went for a ride on the other side of town. Typically I somehow bumped into a few blokes eating outside and they bade me come and sit with them for a while. I know I'm sort of taking advantage of the colour of my skin and hair and eyes and the shape of my nose, it's almost like inside-out racism. But it is a two-way street. People do seem genuinely interested in the whys and whats and wherefores of Western places, and that's doubled by being able to actually communicate with them fairly proficiently. It does feel rather like paying for your food and beer by entertainment sometimes, except providing the entertainment is entertainment itself, plus I am most certainly being entertained by the people I meet.

Annoyingly these blokes were only drinking white alcohol, which actually means transparent alcohol made from rice and it's about the only thing I can't drink here. But astonishingly there was no beer even as a backup. I really didn't want to be rude so first asked to look at the spirit bottle. Ok, it was 22% rather than 56%, I would take one for the team, and I gulped a sip and failed to make it look like I enjoyed it. Bloody hell it was getting on for 2.30am. I made my excuses, and took another couple for the team and finally got home.

Eating and drinking at 2.30am just seems to make sense here