Industrial tour and meal with Teacher Ling

As I was about to get lunch, Tan's secondary school teacher, Ling, called me to confirm tonight's meal at 6pm, and to take me out to "zhuan yi zhuan", meaning to look around I think. So he turned up in his 4x4. After buying a few bottles of baijiu we drove to his stone factory in the north of the city and he was explaining about his work, talking about how the board of directors selected the CEO etc. It was a lot of new vocab for me but this time may actually be useful. I mentioned I had a friend who was also a boss of a stone factory and gave A Wu's whole name, Li Junwu, and Ling said he thought he knew him. So I called A Wu and explained who I was with then handed the phone to Ling and they spoke for a minute or so in the local lingo before he put the phone down and apologised for speaking tu hua and said yes, he knew him, but no more info.

One of Ling's mountains

We then drove down south to around the aluminium place where Ling was pointing out this factory and that factory, before driving into one where they were making industrial bags. He motioned to a bloke to close a large door, then told me that bloke was deaf, and I realised he was also the boss of this place. We then drove on to the electricity generation plant, where they use gas to generate electricity just for this industrial area. I was told that this was the "heavy industry" place and where we'd just been was the "light industry" place.

He continued to talk like this, giving me information all the while for about 2 hours, which by the end was quite tiring but satisfying too to be learning not just more Chinese, but stuff about the place I call my second home now. I sometimes get this level of information from Yang Haiwei but not for so long. On the way back we passed Haiwei's new work place and of course Ling knew about it too. Then back in town we stopped off to drink some tea at an alcohol shop for about 40 minutes before he said he needed to prepare something before our meal in 2 hours.

So 2 hours to chill in an air conditioned bedroom as the daylight heat hasn't let up since it stopped raining 2 weeks ago. Well, at least for a few minutes as I'd promised I'd go and find some sun cream for the boys since Jiuma has appropriated what we brought with us. And it was a bit of an excuse to get on the dian dong che again. £4 for a tiny bottle was a bit steep but if it does the job I suppose it's worth it. Strangely, by 6pm Ling hadn't yet rung, as most of my other friends would have, but 7 minutes later he said he was waiting outside. He drove the three of us to an interesting place by the river that I'd never seen before, with a lush garden and outside dining. We walked in and to my surprise they had fresh beer on tap, including Goose IPA and Hoegaarden.

Nice selection of beers

We were told we could have whatever we wanted so the boys chose an ice lolly each and I said I'd stick with the local Li Quan for the meal. The meal was of course in a private room, and comprised some fabulous dishes including the softest baked chicken I've ever had in Pingguo and delicious thin slices of pork that was gone in minutes. Nezha noted the way they leave the head of the chicken on the plate, something I would have probably noticed during my first time in China too but is one of those things that has just become normal now. He asked me to tell Ling that this was the best meal he'd had so far in China, which I did and agreed with him.

Best meal so far

For drink, I was the only one on beer as Ling, his son, and other men of his son's age were all on the baijiu. I know it's a cultural and a business thing but it's one step beyond where I'm willing to go in this context. The boys asked for Coke and for some reason, despite all the foreign beer, there was no Coke in the place so they had to settle for lemonade, so hopefully they don't really have a taste for beer. A few minutes after a customary toast, I was the first person to stand up, then walk over to Ling's son and offer him a one-to-one toast, which was gladly accepted. This triggered other people to do the same and after a good half an hour I was starting to feel quite full.

The only other person older than early thirties was Ling's friend Lu, who was also a boss of course. He asked which bosses I knew in Pingguo and of course he knew A Wu and Yang Haiwei and showed me them in his phone, then called A Wu as if to confirm. A bit later we descended into cai ma and a few of the blokes converted to drinking beer as it's more practical for such silliness. Unlike seven years ago, Ling didn't fall asleep after drinking his baijiu, maybe because he has diabetes he doesn't drink so much now. But he was sensible enough to order a driver to come on an electric scooter to drive us home. Except the younger chaps and myself would go to a bbq place just across the road from our complex.

Well I thought I was full, but the beautiful fried fish just kept beckoning me. We played mo pai for a short while and I started to get the hang of the game a little but I still need to find official rules. Although it's quite possible this is a regional variation. Well I managed not to drink for a while, then, as is quite normal, four young ladies turned up, three of them smokers, and continued to mo pai with us and I started to lose and have to drink again. Then someone mentioned "shaizi" - ah yes that dice game I played with Chen Mei many years ago. I'd be happy to play that again. It took a couple of minutes for my brain to recall the rules but after a couple of rounds I was having quite the laugh, bluffing and counter-bluffing.

That went on till midnight when we decided to call it a night. Except one of them didn't and sent me their location on the other side of town near the river. I had another "why not?" moment as I now had a vehicle I was confident would get me there and back, and ended up having yet another bbq treat till nearly 2am.

Xiu le dian dong che!!

Back to the routine of getting four portions of jiaozi at 1pm. This time she only had two ready but said she'd have more in 5 or 6 minutes. Yeah why not wait? I took the opportunity to visit the second hand dian dong che shop I picked up the new charger from last week. I asked if they fixed bikes and of course they did, so I left my number and name and wrote "御景华庭" to show them it was close by.

I got a call in the afternoon from the bike place and they said they were busy at the moment but would come later today. I said fine but please call before you get here in case I'm away. So at 4.30pm I got a call from them saying they had arrived. Well I was home so no problem I clothed myself and met the guy at our main door after he had arrived at the other one and I'd corrected him.

The day we arrived Jiuma had told us my dian dong che was "hui le" (broken) and would require 1000 kuai to fix and that it wasn't worth it as we were only here for a few weeks. I wanted to challenge her but thought better of it as we had two other dian dong ches. But till today they have both been pretty shit in terms of range and speed, so I wanted to at least investigate the possibility of renewing my trusty black steed.

As soon as the bloke arrived in his electric car he said we only needed new batteries. I countered by saying I'd been told it was "broken" but realised Jiuma may not have known what she was talking about. He said it had not been used for years which was quite probably true even though I'd told the family they were free to use it when we were not around. It seems they may not have done and it could have been sitting there taking up space for the last 3.5 years. Anyway after half an hour he'd got an axle grinder and removed the welded-in metal bars that were keeping the old batteries in place (dian ping, not dian che apparently). But it was quite a fun moment; I had to charge the plug as if I was charging a bike but as soon as he let go of the power it stopped running, and I had to restart the charging. Long story short he managed to keep the grinder going until he had liberated the batteries.

He found this in the battery compartment and said we need to keep it safe - I didn't realise it was so long ago (July 2015 I got it)

I asked if would like some glasses and he looked at me as if I'd offered him a dead goldfish

He had brought five batteries, which thankfully was exactly what we needed, and when he'd changed them tried the the throttle and the back wheel moved, which was cool, but the gears didn't seem to move. But it was enough to get back to the shop to continue the fixing. It was horrible driving with flat tyres but I made it ok, to be told that the rear tyre was well and truly screwed, and they'd need to order a new one. In fact they needed to order a tool to remove the old tyre, but both arrived in a few minutes after a couple of phone calls.

Er shou dian dong che xing - almost literally "second hand electric bike store" with our one in the foreground getting fixed

I went for a walk as the bloke set upon fixing the rear tyre and a few doors down came upon a bloke's shop whose job was fixing tyres. I'd gone to his place a few years ago to fix a wheel and pump up my front tyre and had I known I'd probably have gone here to fix my wheel as he seemed to have loads in stock. When I got back the bloke was still toiling over the back wheel, and A Wu had pinged me to go and eat with him, but I showed him what I was up to and said I'd come over when I could.

I wondered what this bloke was doing the other week...

...now I see he was renaming (or correcting) the road ahead's (?) name

Finally the wheel was fixed, and I had a new battery charger. The total cost was 450 for the batteries + 140 for the rear tyre + 55 for the charger = 645 kuai and of course no labour cost. I really couldn't complain except for thinking I should have done this as soon as I'd got here instead of listening to Jiuma. Aargh...it's almost like living in opposite-ville. But hey I had "xiu le" (repaired) the dian dong che and had increased my freedom-radius almost literally by an order of magnitude and that was well worth the cost.

I happily drove home and it felt so like the last time I was here. I grabbed a quick shower then followed A Wu's directions to where they were about to eat. I thought I'd be late but I needn't have worried. As usual we were in a private room but this time there were three women joining us who weren't locals. They were all quite loud, and one of them quite likely inebriated already. Boss Wei was there along with two other blokes I didn't know.

The meal was a lovely spicy affair, from Wunan apparently. I had little idea about the purpose and don't really ask any more. The large woman came straight out and asked me to find her an English boyfriend. Then she came over to me and showed me pictures of her daughter who was studying in Japan, and definitely stood too close to me. She then walked out with one of the other women who was leaving and I hoped that was that but 20 minutes later she was back with a purpose...and that purpose was to drink. As she was rather large she could put it away, but the other woman wasn't drinking so she just ganbei'd us blokes till it got boring. She tried to get me to drink nuo mi jiu but I refused anything more than a mouthful. She tried to force the glass into my mouth but I told her I'd be sick over her if she did. It was a bit more aggressive than I'm used to and never had a bloke be so forceful before. But I kept polite and poured a glass of beer and ganbei'd her with that.

I talked a little to the sober lady, and gathered they had come from Guiyang on "business" but I knew better than to ask in great detail. She also asked me to find her an English boyfriend but he had to be no taller than 180cm. The drunk woman said she'd take over 180cm so I made some sort of joke about it that they found funnier than I did. Eventually Boss Wei and A Wu were clearly clearer headed than the woman and we made our excuses and left them to whatever they were to get up to.

Interestingly, A Wu and Boss Wei got on a pink dian dong che rather than the brown BMW I would have expected. I followed them on my near-fully charged one to the place we had a boss meal last week, one the ground floor of some place near the guangchang. But the six or so people that were there were already rather the worse for wear and I tediously tried speaking to one of them in English as he kept saying "do you understand?". But after a bit of cai ma A Wu said we'd go to "drink tea". I had my doubts but followed them around the corner when he stopped and said that the others were too drunk and they'd just go home. That was absolutely fine with me.

So I had some time to soak in Pingguo by night on the dian dong che and did just that until I arrived at the stadium. I pinged Leilei to see if he had eaten and he said they were going for bbq at the stadium. Then he said he was in a bar with Li Kun, so I asked if it was the one we went to on the first night and he answered "yeah". I happened to be right outside it so I walked in and saw Si Si at a table with friends but no son of mine. I was invited to sit down and ganbei so of course how could I refuse? But first I called Leilei to see where he was and it transpired he was at a different stadium bar around the corner that was much bigger than this one. How you could confuse the two is beyond me, but I'm no longer 18 and maybe I made such mistakes when I was.

I pinged Li Kun to see what was going on and he told me Nezha had had a bit too much to drink, and this really worried me, especially as they like to take the bikes out. So I said I'd be over in a minute and explained to Si Si and crew that I had to go and would hopefully see them soon. But then Li Kun told me the boys had left to go home - I guess they didn't want me to cramp their style but I told Leilei not to let Nezha drink any more and let me know when home. It's a fine line to balance on being the father of someone who is technically an adult but on other levels clearly not. You have to let them go while somehow hanging on. I got to the bar and found Li Kun and a few friends and managed a few ganbeis but wasn't really in the spirit of things until Leilei told me they were home fine. Then I could relax.

No way you'd get me on that stage

But within half an hour we left and took the dian dong ches to a snail noodle place, as in they specialised in noodles with snails in them. I guess Li Kun and the other bloke had been out drinking longer than I had as I couldn't face so much carbohydrate at getting on for 2am, but I did manage the snail, and some conversation with another bloke who turned up to eat with us.

Tan pinged me to ask my friends if anyone had a violin she could borrow. I pinged the music teacher I'd met yesterday at A Wu's place but he said they didn't have violins. But he sent me a picture that had been shared to him of Nezha and Leilei with some music shop person and said to contact him. Well I had no means of doing that so will look into it tomorrow. I didn't finish my noodles and got home after 3am but hey.