Jeepers what’s with my body clock? 4am and I was awake after three hours’ kip. Actually I was able to be a little useful for work which was good. Then I grabbed the glass of 0 calorie lemonade I’d poured before going to bed before realising it was no longer 0 calorie thanks to the smidgeon of vodka I had poured into it thinking it was a good idea at 1am. “Sod it”, I thought, as I’d already had half of it. I sipped the rest of it expecting to be back asleep at 4.30, but of course that didn’t happen. So I did a little more work and went out for a jog soon after 7am. I stopped off at Lu wen’s to drop off my bag of table tennis bat and money and keys, and said I’d be back in a bit.
I set off on a circuit of the guangchang and had got no more than halfway when I came across my friend Yang Liangwen who put his hand up to say “halt!”. He’s the one who now doesn’t really like running, and he told me we’d walk together. I was in no mind to argue, and we spent the next half an hour walking and chatting. We were both postulating about how to deal with the 15 hour flight I’ll be taking as part of my journey to Toronto on Sunday. I must admit I’m not looking forward to it at all, but work beckoned.
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| Bumping into Yang Liangwen |
Then he left me to go to work so I managed a small jog back to Lu wen’s for breakfast, and again he would take no payment, so I sat outside watching the world go by in a cocktail of tiredness, semi-hangover, and humidity, not really caring what time of day it was. I went inside and watched an entire episode of Peppa Pig with Lu wen’s young kids before even realising it was in Chinese then I made my excuses and left. I half-heartedly went to the old people’s leisure centre but even though it was 8.15 there was no-one playing ping pong. So I just carried on walking for a bit before I got to Pingguo International Hotel. At least it was, and the building still is. But for over a year it’s been out of business and just left, as it was the last day it was open for business.
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| Another beef noodle breakfast at Lu wen's |
There was no-one there so I walked inside the open doors. It was eerie. I walked to the bar I’d been to about 10 years ago where we ordered Cointreau and whisky (not mixed together) and I saw that there were still full wine bottles behind the bar. I climbed the stairs to the big reception area and found another bar with full wine and beer bottles behind it. If it hadn’t been for the pungent musty smell it could have been just an hour or so before opening time; the tables were dressed and the chairs laid out in four rows of three around them in 90 degree angles.
I felt I shouldn’t be there, but dared myself to walk up one more flight of stairs to where the guest rooms were. The musty smell got worse, and I started imagining there may be a room with something awful inside. I looked up and down the corridor and suddenly felt I was in that hotel in The Shining. But I pulled myself together and peeped into a couple of rooms. They were actually meeting rooms and again, there could have been people coming in the next few minutes as there was a projector and sound system there. But probably nobody had walked in here for 18 months. Except for a cat I met on a red chair who looked very comfortable indeed.
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| I made sure I didn't shinny |
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| Lots of full bottles of booze I wasn't tempted to check |
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| Devoid of life and reminded me of The Shining |
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| Instructions that, if everyone in the hotel only understood English, would cause more harm than good! |
It was a bit of a relief to go back downstairs and outside, though would have been less scary in a different state of mind. I walked slowly back home realising that I had time to do this, and this was my little luxury.
Back home the kids were still not up but I changed that eventually, and managed to get Xixi to go out with me to get some jiao zi for lunch, and brought some back for a lazy Leilei.
I really really needed a decent siesta and was just preparing for one when Tan said there was a bloke coming at “2ish” to fix the air-con in the main bedroom. 2ish in English means “around 2, probably a bit later”, but in Chinese means any time after lunch, probably today. So I was fairly confident in my siesta chances but this bloke rang the doorbell at 2.30 just as I was nearly dropping off.
I should not be ungrateful of course. We needed to get the air-con fixed. But he decided he needed to access the outside unit from my study, and for that he would need to go outside. I remembered when we got the air-con installed so many years ago, and the bloke attached himself to a rope. But as soon as I found the keys for the window bars, this bloke leapt out, and clambered over an existing air-con unit like it was an assault course, albeit 14 tall floors up. I could hardly look, except to take a couple of photos. But he identified, and fixed the problem, partly by blowing into the pipe coming out of the unit. I was very grateful and when he told me it was 60 kuai, and I only had 100, I told him to keep the change, and to my great surprise he actually did.
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| Clambering |
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| Walking over to our air-con to suck out the problem - the man does not get paid enough! |
In the evening I was out with the kids when Lu wen texted me to eat dog as one does. I responded back “好的” as one does too. I had the kids with me and I knew they wouldn’t be particularly fond of dog, but Tan was out so didn’t have much choice. Dog. If only we ate dog in the UK or Europe we’d have probably found a euphemism for its meat like “pramb”, as a much more (cr)edible word than pig, sheep, cow, or dog. But to be fair we still call duck meat “duck” and chicken “chicken”. I suppose we draw the line at quadrupeds. I like how the Chinese (and possibly others) simply use the algorithm
meat. It’s simple and tells you what you’re getting.
Anyway we got to Lu wen’s place at 9pm and he wasn’t there which was a bit strange. But he turned up a few minutes later with a big bag of what can only be described as pramb in English, plus some side dishes of chicken feet. Plus 12 cans of Snowflake beer at 2.5%. I did my best to get the kids interested in eating but was never really expecting them to take to dog so we ordered some bbq for them. They loved playing with Lu wen’s little daughter, who took a liking to Xixi’s slime she’d just got from the shenme dou you shop earlier in the day. So I popped across the road to get her a pack, which kept her very happy for a long while until I realised my kids were getting bored and tired. As I’d barely started talking with Lu wen I said they could go home as long as they showered and went to bed, and took them back to do that. I got them to start showering and left them there to get back to Lu wen.
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| The kids with Lu wen's youngest and her new pack of slime |
It was good to catch up with Lu wen. Even though we have virtually nothing in common, we’ve known each other for 12 years now so we didn’t need to force a conversation. I was more concerned that there was more dog that I was able to eat and didn’t want to waste it. But ultimately I was flaking...we’d managed eight of the cans between us and even though it was the equivalent of two pints of Stella in an English pub I couldn’t really face any more, so we agreed to finish two more cans before I went home shattered while receiving an admonishing IM from Tan that I’d left the kids on their own in the flat. What? They’re 13 and 10, both with working mobile phones, and I was literally within a 30 second walk home, not to mention they could see me out of the window….
