Happy Birthday Xixi! Oh my my beautiful baby daughter is now an adult and I'm not there for it...but we did talk about it and are in touch regularly.
I've been lucky with the weather here and indeed it's been highs of low 30s. But tomorrow it's due to be a high of 15° and a low of 11°. In anticipation of this, half the people are already in long sleeves and/or coats. Even in the mid-afternoon. Even I'm not that sensitive. But in my anticipation I put on my clothes to wash in the early afternoon in order to do what drying I could before the cold set in.
Haiwei called me at 3pm to see where I was and I was honest and said I was putting out the clothes to dry, and I'd come over in 5 minutes. That turned into 15 as I hadn't noticed it was now pissing down so I had to sort out the coverall for the bike while not getting soaked myself, so I ended up arriving at 3.30pm after another call to see where I was.
True to my word I spoke with his son for a while before looking at his English homework. Crikey, it looked pretty complex for a 13 year-old. One particular question asked to find the odd one out in terms of the sound of the final "s" in the following words: A. books, B. keys, C. oranges, D. pens. The son had left this one blank. I first thought it was pens, as the "s" sounded more like a "z", but then they all sounded zeddy except maybe for books. So I sent the pic to Mat and he reckoned it was oranges it it was more of a "z" sound and I was confused, as he saw a case for books too (a book case if you will). So if a professional English English teacher is not sure, how is a 13 year-old Chinese student expected to do? I hope I do find out the answer.
Question 17 was particularly hard
Anyway, bar the homework (he was doing complex maths too), we talked till the food was served shortly after 5pm. For once it was all lovely; cha shao and pork ribs, with cabbage and other greens, and lots of it. Sweet in more ways than one. After the statutory 10 minutes or so some cold beers were opened. The owner of the house then arrived to join us, followed soon after by another bloke and the woman who was there last week who was good at cai ma. Every hour or so the food was reheated on the hob as the beer continued to pour and the mas continued to be cai'd, until gone 10pm, when I explained I needed to be somewhere else. Indeed it was true as advertising friend Nong had invited me to eat and play guitar at some other place.
The pork was wonderful and went down quickly
More cai ma silliness at the meal
I had no inclination to eat or play guitar, but it was a reasonable excuse to not get any more bloated where I was, and got to the place at 10.30pm. It was a busy private room with about 20 people who all cheered as I entered as they'd been drinking for as long as me probably. I managed a few ganbeis while listening to the semi-professionals playing and singing, until I had a guitar thrust into my arms. Well...I was reluctant but I'd searched the words to a couple of S&G songs lest I forgot them, and did a rendition of Mrs Robinson, before a few more ganbeis and then the guitar came my way again and I finished off with The Boxer and Sound of Silence. Well maybe it's Sounds but I prefer the singular.
I made my excuses around midnight as I wanted to watch the Chelsea City game, and this time I managed to connect to the VPN no problem and got a cracking stream for a cracking game. Of course I'd have preferred Palmer to miss the last-minute penalty to draw 4-4 but for the neutral and the title race I suppose it was a great result.
Woke up earlier than I ought to but navigated the morning via Spanish counting dreams until I got a message in the early afternoon from a friend asking me to do an evening meal. Well today is Saturday and I'm just too busy so I said sorry no can do. Again, had they arranged a couple of days ago it would probably have been ok.
Li Kun's mate Feng, who'd sorted out the football tickets and food on Sunday, had pinged me to go out with some of the football fans at 4pm. Given that I was due to eat with A Qiu at 6pm this seemed reasonable until he said they wouldn't be actually eating till gone 6pm. So I suggested I could come later and he thought that might work. But then of course I got another message telling he was on his way at 4.45pm so I said I'd grab a shower and meet him there, near Jiang Bing Lu.
Luckily I'd remembered to charge up the night before - the QR code has faded badly so I'm keeping this photo in case it becomes impossible to scan from the phone in the future
Also today, Lu zong (Waterman) had asked me to go out for the evening and I'd said I would, if only because it would give me a good excuse to leave the A Qiu meal. Tan had said she often will drink till the early hours then call her, so she didn't really want me going there, but I can look after myself.
So after a quick shower I got to the football place soon after 5pm. It was actually in a courtyard of a living quarter for workers of some sort. A couple of men were cooking, others laying out the already cooked food, and many others standing and sitting about, while another bloke was singing karaoke as you do. I got talking to the locals and they were saying this was a very typical Guangxi feast, explaining about the different types of fish (lo fei yu, which originally came from Africa hundreds of years ago, for example), and then suddenly at 5.30pm it was declared that food was being served so we all sat down. I'd not really expected to eat here as when you hear something will be served "after 6pm" it generally means much later than that.
Preparing for the meal in the courtyard with the supporters and their families
A famous Bangxu fish dish Tan would be jealous to see
Another very typical Guangxi dish with pork, duck, chicken and more...
I'm not sure this translation is perfect...but I sort of get the gist
Now for one of the nicer problems I have had to deal with here: knowing how much to eat before leaving for another meal. I declined the rice but the duck and pork were gorgeous, heated up by dipping in the huo guo for a few seconds then in some soy sauce mix. Then some of the speciality fish came, which is normally eaten raw but in this case was cooked and mixed with crushed peanuts. Feng said to send a picture to Tan but I refrained as I thought she'd be genuinely jealous as it's a Bangxu speciality.
Of course A Qiu rang at 6pm to see where I was and I told her I'd be there soon. In the end we'd had to exchange Weixin so she could send me the address, and it was north of the guangchang so would take 10-15 minutes to get there depending on traffic lights. But this is Pingguo and you don't want to turn up too early. The beer had arrived shortly after the meal had started, and of course it is customary to do a few ganbeis first. I finally told Feng I'd better go at 6.15pm and he was fine (I'd been totally honest about the meal with A Qiu). So a last ganbei later and I was on my way, when of course I missed another call from A Qiu. I called her back to tell her I'd be 3 minutes but I hit two 90 second traffic lights which doubled the journey time.
She'd told me that a friend in black and white would meet me at the gate and indeed I heard "Peng Duoming!" as I pulled up. It was a bloke and he asked how come I'd driven when we were going to drink? I think he wasn't being 100% serious. We parked in the underground carpark and went up to the 5th floor in the lift, into a sumptuous apartment that the bloke and his wife told me they'd bought last year. Ah, so this wasn't A Qiu's place, but friends'. The bloke's wife was the English teacher, and indeed for about the first time here her English was pretty good, so I was happy to indulge her in it for a few minutes. Then A Qiu entered - apparently she'd been waiting at the other gate in case I'd entered from that side.
There was some food on the table but they were still making dumplings and asked if I wanted to help. It may have been a joke but of course I joined in and made three or four really badly shaped ones before giving it a rest. I had a couple of glasses of tea with the elder of the house before another three people turned up at 6.50pm. So much for a 6pm meal! Finally we sat down at 7pm and I was glad I hadn't over-indulged an hour previously, as it was another feast. The men started on the beer and A Qiu poured a whole bottle of wine into a bowl and started pouring largish spoonsful into the ladies' glasses. There was precious little space on the table anyway and it would have been easier to put the bottle there (not to mention less spilling), but hey ho I guess that's one way to air it.
Another cracking meal...
In typical fashion, after the first beer the men chain-smoked though the meal. About halfway through, A Qiu got in contact with Uncle Yellow and it seemed he was about so he popped in too. He'd already eaten but of course a bowl was thrust in front of him with three dumplings. A Qiu got the dumplings I'd made out of the freezer and much mirth was had at the poor quality, and I had to admit they looked pretty crap but I told them they'd taste better than the others.
Around 9pm I reminded them I had to be elsewhere. I'd spoken a fair amount of English to who I now knew was Mrs Huang, who had told me she had a higher IQ than her husband (I told him I wouldn't translate what she said but she did anyway). And to be fair, she'd not hogged the conversation in English and mostly spoke Mandarin so the others could join in. So the husband took Uncle Yellow and me back down to the carpark and we said our goodbyes and I was my way back to Jiang Bing Lu again.
It always takes a little time but I found Lu zong's place eventually and went to the private room where he was with a handful of other people. Again, there was much more than enough on the table and he immediately served me a bowl of what was mostly pig fat from what I could see. Definitely not what I needed. As per usual people popped in and out. At one stage a bloke dropped in and sat next to me and poured himself a glass of red wine and went to pour me one and I had to be quite insistent that he didn't, and instead ganbei'd him with beer. Over the next few minutes he continued to pour himself more glasses and down them in one, and I could barely keep up with beer. Of course he became very red, and talked faster and faster and I could make even less sense than before. But I nodded enough and repeated enough of the ends of his sentences and thankfully he left after another glass.
Then Lu zong's business partner (i.e. co-owner of this establishment) turned up with his friendly face and it was a much more relaxing half an hour or so catching up. Shortly after 11pm I said I'd better go soon, and it seemed the others had mostly had enough too. Outside of the private room a group of people at a table saw me and bade me sit with them for a photo-shoot and couple more ganbeis. Well...apparently they knew me or Tan or something.
Finally on the road back home, Li Kun pinged me to see where I was. "Outside" was my honest answer, and he invited me to go to Xiao Bai de Tian, where I'd gone on the first evening. Why not? I wasn't that tired and I was nearly there anyway. So I went to my fourth place of the evening and we just chatted with some people I didn't know (or remember) till about 1am.
