Meal with Lu Wen and friends

After little sleep we were all rudely awakened by the sound of bangers. This isn't unusual, but today's were bloody loud and sounded like they were coming from somewhere closer than 14 stories away, which shouldn't be possible unless someone in a flat below us was letting them off. Every time they'd stop for a few seconds, and then there would be a fresh set. I guessed it was a new business on the ground floor of our building (thankfully they are all pretty much open for business now). There was no respite for a good five minutes, and Leilei hated it. I wonder if they still do this in the bigger cities - I can't imagine Beijing allowing a new shop to blast this fact across the whole neighbourhood as here. As for me I don't mind it that much as it's a cultural thing, but when it happens at 4am (and it does from time to time) it really riles me.

Tan took the kids to Waipo's to eat, which allowed me to catch up on some sleep in our room, which has double curtains that allow for day-sleeping. I've had a bit of a tummy for the last few days so wasn't sure about going to Waipo's to eat at 5.30pm, but decided I had better do as there was nothing to eat in the house, and then a bit later made the effort to exercise by playing table tennis. I still wasn't feeling 100% so when Lu Wen called me to go out I thought I'd call it a day at the ping pong place and went home for a shower. Feeling refreshed, I went out and called Lu Wen. I couldn't understand where he said he was so he said he'd pick me up. While waiting I popped into a local tea place and started chatting to the owners but just as they got some tea out and started boiling water I got the inevitable call to go and a car turned up outside to pick me up. I hope I get the chance to go back for a cuppa as I think the owners were a tad disappointed I couldn't stay.

We went to Lu Wen's work, rather than the normal bbq place as apparently it was too busy there and there weren't any seats. I wasn't 100% sure about this as if he really is semi-mafia (I think the term is used loosely) then surely sorting out a few seats for good paying customers would be simple. Anyway, there were only three blokes at Lu Wen's place, and I noticed Lu Wen was rather red in the face, suggesting he had been on the sauce. He proceeded to try to make tea on his tea table but kept messing it up, one of the consequences being scorched fingers. During this time various blokes came in and went out, in various states of inebriation, sometimes collapsing on the sofa for a 10 minute nap, other times just sitting down and looking at me for a bit, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. A bit later one of the sober blokes picked up a few cans of beer and started pouring that instead - it was easier than tea.

Then about six of us moved over to a small glass table when the bbq arrived. I was passed a fried duck leg and it was really delicious. The inevitable followed, with gan bei'ing and cai ma'ing until I remembered to call Tan to ask if she wanted my to bring her some - yes - 10 duck tongues, three chicken claws and two duck claws. She knows what she wants. I used the arrival of the bbq half an hour later to make my excuses and leave, but they knew who it was for and made me promise I'd come straight back after delivering it. So I "endured" another hour of eating and drinking - it's a tough life sometimes.

Leilei stayed at A Da's but we got the typical phone call around midnight to ask us to pick him up, but convinced him it was too late.

2nd Valentine's day

Today was "Qin Ren Jie", or Valentine's day. This is a lucky day for Chinese women married to English men, as for some reason they get to have two Valentine's days. According to my (married) ex-boss Tom it's actually lucky for the English men as they get to have sex four times a year instead of three (what are the other two??). It would have been a more romantic affair had Tan not had la du and had I not acquired it during the meal we shared in the Mingdien hotel, meaning I spent the latter 20 minutes in the disabled toilet feeling unromantically my most comfortable of the afternoon.

I made up for it after a nice siesta though. I went out on the dian dong che and after a few minutes looking found a place selling fresh roses. 100 kuai for a bunch of eight was a bit steep in my book but as Tan won't read this she won't know I said that. I brought the bunch to her at Waipo's house so at least Waipo and the kids got to see my present too, and Tan appreciated it I could tell, by taking photos of us and uploading them to her QQ space.

Happy Valentine`s day darling

I'd been romantic enough for one day, so at the romantic excuse of needing to shape up my body, I took Leilei and A Da on the dian dong che back home to change into some sporting clothes, and went on to the old people's leisure centre where I caught up on some old friends (literally) and on some table tennis. I still lost poorly but I'm getting better and now get minor rounds of applause when I win a good rally. Leilei wasn't too bothered, so after Yang Haiwei came around to invite me to go and eat some bbq I took him to go and play with Chuan Chuan before getting a shower and meeting up with my mate.

I finally got a photo with Mr Table Tennis but he decided not to smile and had even shaved!

I only stayed till gone midnight, and met up with A Xia for a couple of beers with her husband's friends, but the beer went to my head so I left a little earlier than normal and found Leilei in bed with Tan, relegating me to the kids' room to stay with Xixi - not a bad second choice really.

Todo

A list of things I need to do before we go to UK:
 - sort out a school to liaise with Leilei's school via skype
 - get some characters printed on the back of at least two of my sports shirts
 - get a tea thing for the dregs as my one in London has a nasty crack (get a smaller one)
 - get a new tea table for the living room
 - sort out a night out with mates at the cool cave

Work though technically on holiday

Something brewing over Pingguo

Slept in till the mid-afternoon before preparing for work. I'd agreed to work today as there was still some important stuff to do, but I managed to finish a little early at 11.45pm. I went to get some bbq for myself and Tan at midnight but boringly no-one called me over to their table to gan bei - I could have made an effort but instead sat by myself for a bit contemplating having finished work and what still needed to be done for the last week and a half we have here.

Well, one of those things is to have some fun as I'm officially on holiday now. So after bringing Tan's bbq to her I popped out again to Zhang's "Small eat big love" place and found some mates there to eat and drink with for the next hour or so till 2am.

I meant the drinking water...

Our drinking water from the dispenser ran out the other day. Normally it's not a problem as you just call up the number on the bottle to get a new one delivered a few minutes later. But this bottle didn't have a number on it, so I called Ling Ming but he didn't answer so I tried Tan, who didn't know who to ring. Then she called me back to tell me to go down and ask the security guard, and that she wouldn't come back if there wasn't any water. I wondered why she couldn't just pick up a couple of bottles on the way back - and why did I have to tell security if I couldn't get a drink of water? Then it dawned on me and I called her back to tell her it was the drinking water that had run out, not the utility variety as she had thought.

It was fair enough though, the water had gone a couple of weeks ago and Tan and the kids had gone to sleep at Waipo's rather than live without a shower. I had manly stayed smelly, working and guarding the house. Actually, we've been pretty lucky with the utilities so far - we've only had one power cut, and that was only for an hour or so - and outside of my work hours. On the other hand, Waipo's house has been subjected to two or three power cuts, and as they're on the first floor it gets a lot hotter there.

Tan called me at eightish to ask I wanted to have some free food and drink at the Ming Dian hotel. I hadn't had a break from work so I decided to go to see her and the ladies an hour later for some pickled cucumbers and moon cake. The free drink was "wine". It did look like red wine, but it was pre-mixed with lemonade and was luke warm - about the worst thing you can do to good red wine, meaning it wasn't.

Looking a bit too serious!

On the way back I stopped off at Ma Laoban's computer shop as I hadn't seen him for a while and wanted to pick up a pair of speakers. His shutters were half down as it was gone 10pm, but I knew he'd be in. And indeed he was, with a number of friends, drinking tea as usual. I spent the next 30 minutes in conversation with them and the charming two year old daughter of one of them before remembering to buy the speakers and get back for a meeting.

A lovely break for a couple of cuppas with Ma Laoban and friends

Maybe it was the tea, but I just couldn't get to sleep, even after 100 in German. I didn't want to disturb Tan by turning on my phone (even in night mode) to learn to count in another language and finally ended up sleeping some time after 7.49am.

Trifecta of massages ain't that great

I got a wake up call from A Wu around 10am asking if I wanted to eat dog with the bloke that called me last week. Against what I felt like saying, I said yes. At 11.30 I got picked up but instead of going to eat straightaway, we went to an estate agent where A Wu went on to apparently buy a garage. I know he bought a house last year that he is yet to decorate, so I suppose it makes sense. However, given the state of the tiny, messy place he calls home at the moment, I'm surprised his priority wasn't to decorate and move into his new place. I was asking the ladies about the price of the flats, and was told 2300 kuai per square metre, which isn't that much more than the 2000 we paid three years ago, and certainly less than the 3000 I'd been told about last year. Given the glut of new blocks of flats being built I'm still having problems working out how prices are still rising. Assuming it's true, it must be that Pingguo is sufficiently big that it is drawing in more people from the countryside, and that people here are getting richer. I've seen nothing to contradict this so I should be right at a simplistic level. But it seems strange when you read about the various Chinese ghost towns, which have many familiar looking blocks of flats, but no dwellers, like Chenggong http://blogs.worldbank.org/transport/rise-of-the-chinese-ghost-town.

At midday we went to drink tea for a few minutes in the place where I have my own teacup. But this time as we literally only had a couple of minutes A Wu told the lady not to bother with tea so we just drank hot water instead. I nearly asked why we went to drink tea in the first place but thought better of it. We then drove to a place near the goose restaurant and I found out it was Boss Tao's place, he of the iron ore business who had worked with A Wu six years ago. He told me I'd put on weight (why, thank you) as he shook my hand. Then a few more blokes turned up but there wasn't yet any food, so I decided to go on a little wander around.

Other than boss Tao's house just about every other building in the road was either a cheap hotel or a massage parlour, with a ratio of about 2:1. The hotels charged from around 60 kuai a night, and had "o'clock" rates (the hotel translation, not mine) from 28 kuai, which I guessed were per hour, given the nature of the other establishments. However, they all had families sitting about inside them and didn't actually look seedy.

I then got a call from one of the blokes to eat. Back at Tao's place the food was on the table. Centre stage was a big bowl of duck. I had been expecting dog, but someone said that the dog had run away. I gathered that this was a joke, and it didn't matter one jot as the more important thing about these meals is the company. But there was something different about the beer-drinking - rather than just pour out people's glasses and gan bei, everyone was given their own bottle, which was kept under the table by feet (very kickable and yes at least once was one toppled). Whenever you gan bei'd you filled up yourself from your own bottle, which I gathered was a means of keeping tabs on how much you'd drunk. Once, Boss Tao filled up my glass with his bottle and I caught him in the act, exposing him to the table and forcing him to drink his before filling his glass with the contents of mine and forcing him to drink again. I'm not sure this was actually a drinking game but for the rest of the meal there were various attempts by some to fill others' glasses, which I found pretty amusing.

Gan bei'ing at Boss Tao's

But coming up to three bottles downed, I was feeling the bubbles and explained I needed to go for a walk to settle my tummy. When I mention things like this honestly there is never a problem as they know I'm coming back. Even the other streets around here were littered with more cheap hotels and I almost got lost. I had a slightly weird experience when I came across a number of dumped dummies in an alleyway behind some restaurants (and presumably clothes shops), and thought I might be on the set of some science fiction film. 15 minutes later I rejoined my friends to continue. I managed a few more bites and another bottle before going for a wander again. I looked inside the massage place with the pink curtains and it looked totally innocent. Then Boss Tao came to me and insisted I went for a foot wash. I was absolutely fine with that as it meant I wouldn't have to have any more beer, and indeed it was a totally innocent foot wash and massage, which I really appreciated by nodding off for a couple of minutes in-between the blokes coming round to see how I was.

Legloss in Pingguo

By the time I'd finished it must have been 4pm. A Wu then said we'd go for a massage. Having just had one as part of my foot wash I wasn't in need, but neither was I in need of arguing with the idea. We rolled up to a place 30 seconds away, which was more of a "professional" massage place and walked to the third floor with Driver, who I since know is called A Shan. Once in our room we each laid on our massage bed and A Wu promptly fell asleep while A Shan and I were massaged for the next hour.

Maybe because he hadn't had a massage, or he really needed to pay attention to his hair, when we finished, and A Wu woke up, he decided to go for a head wash. Well I'd just had a double decadent two hours, was I going to turn down a trifecta massage mayhem? This time A Shan didn't come in, and the head wash half of the 50 minutes was lovely. The wet massage on the back and neck wasn't quite so amazing as usual, and the rest of the massage part was, quite frankly, unnecessary and bordering on painful. I'd managed to reach the threshold of pleasure and started to turn the circle back. It is possible to have too much of a good thing.

Though it was getting on, neither of us were hungry. My only important goal for the evening was to watch City v Southampton to start their Premier League campaign, and opined that we should go to a bar to watch that. A Wu had agreed, but by the time we were ready to go to the bbq place it was already 10pm, having faffed about as one does. We picked up Lu Wen and his daughter, and I got an order for some bbq from Tan too. By 10.50pm the bbq was still being cooked so I went home to see if I could find the match on telly or t'Internet. I was still searching when they came back with the bbq. Then a few minutes later A Ni and A Da turned up too so we had a fairly impromptu gathering in our living room, which is what it is for, really.

As we noshed on the duck tongues and fatty beef I searched in vain for a decent picture, while A Wu insisted on trying his bottle of Spanish "Porto". Those words don't go well together, and the "wine" did not go with anything other than lemonade, unfortunately. So the three of us blokes chugged it quickly so we could wash it down with beer. If it had been the UK we'd have poured it down the sink. We finally got a reasonable stream of the match so I stopped cai mai'ing (as I was losing badly) and focused on the football. Shockingly, we let a 1-0 lead turn into 2-1 just as we had against QPR. I had a similar gutted feeling as I had on the last game of last season, only not so deep. Similarly, when we managed another comeback to win 3-2 the relief paled in comparison to winning the Premier League! It was a deserved three points but our defence is certainly suspect, after performing so well for the first half of last year.

Nice siesta before another meal with Bak sec Zhai

At 6.49am I gave up trying to sleep and went to my study and taught myself how to pluck some of "A Most Peculiar Man", by Simon and Garfunkel, on my four year old guitar with two year old strings. No particular reason, but it had been going through my head for an hour or so so I thought I'd exorcise it.

Much later in the morning Tan got up. The kids had both stayed at Waipo's so there wasn't too much to do so soon, luckily. But the clouds disagreed, and pelted down one of the reasons why we have such good fruit here. That was all very well, but we don't really have any food to cook in the house, despite having a cooker and everything else we need. So at not long after midday I volunteered to get some fodder and both Tan and Ling Ming seemed grateful and put in their orders for rice and meat dishes, together with soup. I took the umbrella and not the dian dong che and went to a nearby place to get the food. As preparation for a much needed sleep I had a tiny gin just before leaving. By the time I was waiting for the food I'd ordered I was feeling decidedly light-headed, but made it back ok to eat.

I called A Wu to ask about eating tonight with Bak sec Zhai, and we managed to organise that we would do so at around 6pm. This gave me five hours to catch up on shuteye in the kids' room as Tan was chatting on her phone in ours. It didn't take much fark browsing on UC Browser before I was zonked. I did wake up at 3pm to go to the loo, and because the kids have a white curtain that keeps out the light less effectively than a magnifying glass, and I found that I was alone in the house, I moved back to our darker, cooler room and straight back to sleep until my alarm woke me dead on six. I did feel dead, and could have slept far longer, but I would have regretted it.

I had three missed calls. I knew as soon as I called one of them I'd be told to hurry up. So I lay down for two minutes, enjoying the last calm two minutes of the day, before calling Bak sec Zhai, and then A Wu, who sent his driver around straightaway despite me saying I'd be 15 minutes due to needing a shower. This shower did its trick and I pulled on some long trousers and went down to be picked up. We got to Bak sec Zhai's Pingguo house by 6.30pm where he had arrived a little earlier from Nanning. There were a couple of blokes and his family there, and I noticed that the front of his house had a great view of the guangchang. But Bak sec Zhai was more concerned about getting us down to drink and eat, in that order.

A couple of blokes had cooked up a nice feast of local dishes, including a particularly tasty Bangxu dish of raw fish and peanuts. But Bak sec Zhai was still more interested in drinking beer and I was reasonably happy to go along with this as I'd had a long week of work. The kids had eaten already and were suitable amused by the fish tank and a pet bird, so we ate and drank for half an hour or so until Tan and A Ni arrived and did the same. I had to have a break another 30 minutes later so went to the living room to check on the kids who had been suspiciously well-behaved. I spied a piano and decided to torture it by playing The Entertainer and Maple Leaf Rag, plus what I could remember of Bridge Over Troubled Water. I was rather rusty, and the piano was mostly in tune, which accentuated the imperfections, but when I returned to the room to continue the meal I received an unexpected round of applause (from the adults).

Gan bei'ing with Bak sec Zhai

I hinted that we'd better go at about 9pm, after having lost cai ma and being plied with more 3% Li Quan beer. This time it was agreed that the meal was just about over so we said our fond goodbyes, and A Wu took me to the head wash place we tend to frequent. He left me there, and I had a most wonderful 50 minutes or whatever it was...nothing beats a head wash and wet massage after a good meal with friends. Well...almost nothing.

Somehow I got back home a bit later and A Wu and A Ni were there. For the first time this year we actually put my "running dog" tea table into use and brewed up some particularly nice flower tea that the men and women enjoyed together. A Wu got me a nice tea cup and we also brought up a bottle of "Porto", though after having read the label it appeared to come from Spain. From my previous experiences of drinking Spanish red wine in China I advised against opening it up tonight, and said we should save it for another day. So we opened a couple of beers to, ahem, complement the tea, but more to complement the new English football season - hurray! It was more enjoyable knowing that City aren't playing till tomorrow, and when all had gone I did stay up on my own to watch Newcastle beat Spurs 2-1, although a draw would have been the fairer result. I don't know if getting to sleep at 3am was early or late.

End of work for this summer and Tan back

Hopefully last day at work. Yet again had not enough sleep so after waking up Leilei and picking up Xixi I came back from the school run and lapsed into dreamland again.

Later in the evening A Wu called to invite me out to sing song. He knew I was working and he knew that Tan would be back late but still asked me when I could go. I said probably not at all but if so 12.30am at the earliest. I think he got the message I wasn't going.

Tan came back at 1am, A Ni having driven back from Nanning airport after minor delays. The silly girls hadn't checked the temperature in Qingdao and hadn't brought enough clothes so had picked up a bit of a cold. It didn't help that all three walked to the car in the pouring rain in Nanning, rather than one of them doing so and picking up the other two (and presumably putting the air-con on inside). I think us blokes would have been more practical.

It has been the hottest week though here in Pingguo. Although it has rained a fair bit, when it hasn't it's been particularly hot and humid, so much so that for the last couple of days I've been working from our bedroom as it has air-con.

Well Tan was tired and complaining of flu-like symptoms, which didn't please me either so I let her sleep. Unfortunately, this did not extend to me. I have had a dodgy tummy for the last couple of days and spent too much time travelling to and from the toilet.

3 hours' sleep and morning siesta

Leilei had got to sleep at around midnight, and Xixi was at Waipo's. I nearly fell asleep about 2am but for some reason didn't, and it was 6am before I finally managed it, after remembering to set my alarm. Even getting up to 100 in German hadn't knocked me out by 3.30am. I'd gone back to reading fark.com comments on my old Nokia E71 using UC Browser. It's a bit like Opera Mini in that it reduces page sizes by around 90%, but even better, it has a "Night Mode", which is really just turning the background dark blue, with the text a slightly lighter shade of blue, but it generally works for not disturbing Tan (or Leilei tonight) and also for tiring the eyes before beddybyes. Not last night though.

Anyway I did get up three hours later at 9am and managed to get Leilei up a few minutes later. I called Waipo to get Xixi prepared but when we turned up 15 minutes later she was just stirring, in the makeshift bed on the floor with Chuan Chuan. We'd brought some breakfast but it took some time before the kids had eaten and washed and brushed and it wasn't much earlier than 10.30 before they were at school. This meant it was nearly 11am before I was home and ready for a much needed siesta (if you can do so in the morning).

But it was worth it and I slept like a baby till 3pm! Then the rest of the day was work work work....

Minor accident on the dian dong che

I did wake up at 10ish, and called Nong Kaicheng to see how Leilei was. Of course he was fine, and wanted to play more and not go to school. Well, it is his summer holidays, and I was tired, so I said ok and then phoned Waipo to say that Xixi wasn't going to school either before going back to sleep for a couple more hours.

As per normal I went to Waipo's for tea at 6pm, and both the kids were there so I got some baba time with them. One of the weird things about this country for me is that suddenly I hear my name being called by loads of kids "baba!". It really took a lot of getting used to as in the UK when I hear that it's inevitably one of mine.

After the meal I took Leilei to Nong Kaicheng's again, before doing a little bit of shopping for some fabric conditioner. It was now gone 8pm and dark, but I didn't expect what happened next. Right in front of me a van pulled out from being parked and started a u-turn manoeuvre. This is quite normal but normally they see you and let you go. But this bloke despite the driver's side being close to me just carried on. Unfortunately I don't have this reflex of bibbing all the time. In fact Leilei has counted every time I've bibbed this year and has only got up to three. Also unfortunately the brakes on my steed are random/non-existant on the front and pathetic on the rear, so although I slowed a little, I could not avoid hitting his front left bumper at which point he finally noticed me. It wasn't a big bump and I hadn't fallen over or anything, but I told the driver to use his eyes. He didn't seem offended, or in anyway surprised, and just said that there was no damage. I drove off, remembering that I no longer had a front headlight on the bike and quite possibly he wouldn't have seen me even if he had looked.

Later in the evening I got a call from Leilei, who wanted to stay with me tonight. Fair enough, as long as he did some homework - he's supposed to be writing a diary but he's very behind, and very reluctant to do it. But we made a deal and he wrote a few sentences with my guiding.

Tan to Qingdao but "normal" working day for me

Tan left to go to Qingdao this morning with A Ni and A Xia. Apparently they'd arranged this on the fly a couple of days ago. So I took the kids to school and arranged with Ling Ming that he'd pick them up and take them to Waipo's after school so as I could do my work. This worked ok but it wasn't great not seeing them all day. Still, it's only till the end of this week that I'll be working and Tan will be away.

During the evening I got a call from A Hua, Nong Kaicheng's mum, saying Leilei was with them and was going to stay the night. Apparently theirs is one of the many houses in Pingguo that have a Leilei toothbrush and a change of clothes. No problem for me.

After work at 12.30am I went out for a bite to eat at Chang's place "Small eat big love". There was a table full of blokes I'd met before and we spent the next hour and a half chatting and gan bei'ing as you do. Although I'd ordered some bbq, and eaten some of their lovely baby fried shrimps that you don't have to peel, they wouldn't let me pay for anything. I said I needed to go at 2am, as I had to take the kids to school, which is a reasonable excuse so a couple of gan bei's later I walked back to the bike. No sooner had I got on that I was called over to a table with a few blokes and girls. I thought, "sod it, why not?" and went for just half an hour for a tad more gan bei'ing and chatting. It's sort of justifiable as it's genuinely good for my Chinese (I kept telling myself). Then, at 3am I got a call from Nong Kaicheng's number. Unsurprisingly it was Leilei, a bit upset. He'd woken up and wanted me to take him home. I told him it was too late, and to get back to sleep. Quite frankly it would have been a bit irresponsible of me to have done so on the dian dong che after a few beers, and maybe worse to have walked him for the 10 minutes it would have taken. He seemed ok in the end, and I said I'd see him in the morning.

BBQ paid for again...

Back to work...boo! I got a call at 10.30pm from a "friend" I'd met at some previous time one evening probably at the bbq place. He asked me to come out to eat and drink. I explained that I was busy at work and wouldn't be able to make it till 12.30am at the earliest. That was fine, apparently, and I should call him then to meet him. I finally finished at 12.45 so called him but got no reply, so I texted to say I was ready, only to receive a text back saying he'd gone to bed! Life's like that sometimes. At least it's easy to find somewhere else to eat, so at 1am I popped out to the guangchang bbq place and before I could make my order I heard my name called from two tables. I recognised Lu Wen and made a quick order of five duck tongues and five fatty beefs before sitting down with him and about eight mates. Needless to say there was much gan bei'ing and cai ma but sometimes that is nice after a hard day's work. Needless to say too was that I found my bbq paid for by Lu Wen before I had the chance to do so myself, not that I was able to eat much of it as they already had enough food on their table.

Expensive shirt before train back to Pingguo and meal with Boss Hu

There was no particular plan for today, so we got up lateish and moped around the room getting our things ready. The kids had left sweets and biscuits everywhere and it was quite messy. Also the towels hadn't dried from last night so I had to dry myself with not much more than a facecloth after my shower. Only around midday did we finally arrange to check out. A Wu had left at 8.30am apparently - he'd been called to do some business at a local hotel. So I called him and he got Driver to pick me and the boys up, the girls begrudgingly accepting to take Xixi with them.

We went to a posh hotel with a huge foyer, and found A Wu, with Er Jie and rich uncle, the same three who had delayed our departure for Nanning yesterday. They had had a bit to eat, and now Er Jie and rich uncle were leaving. As it was lunchtime I ordered some stuff for us and we had a reasonably civilised meal in rather splendid surroundings. We were just about to leave when my tummy sent a signal that it would require the accompaniment of a "ma tong" (sit down toilet) within four minutes. I thought it much safer to seek refuge in such a hotel than risk a squatter elsewhere. I was relieved to see a disabled cubicle in the men's bogs and sure enough it was the only shitter with a sitter. And I had no phone reception either so I enjoyed ten minutes all to myself - almost worth the price of admission on its own.

A Wu had told me he was going to buy me an item of clothing. Whether this was just a friendly thing to do or a comment on my existing wardrobe I didn't ask. We got in the car and as we were leaving the hotel a security guard knocked on the window and we had to pay 15 kuai to get out. Scandalous that a paying customer has to pay to park in the hotel he's spent so much money in!

We drove to a shopping centre close to where we were yesterday and visited a few clothes shops, A Wu asking me to try on various shirts. Typically they were too small, and we had a bit of a laugh at that. In each shop, the ladies (always ladies) poured us cups of tea and offered us and the kids sweets. I nearly went for a top in one place but they said they only had a size 52, which was a bit tight on the shoulders, and it would take 20 minutes to get a size 54 delivered. A Wu was having none of that so we spent half an hour looking around and ended up at a previous place that did have a blue flowery shirt that fitted me ok. A Wu voiced his approval, and that we would take it. Then I saw the price tag and was aghast. 2580 kuai, or 250 quid. A Wu took out some dark blue envelope that must have been some sort of voucher. He "paid" for the shirt and seemed quite happy that there was still 5000+ kuai on it. Now it is a nice shirt, but there is no way it is worth 10% of its price tag, and I'd love to know exactly what was going on. I know that when you do buy things you get vouchers for future purchase but this seemed excessive - I even wondered if there was some sort of money-laundering happening.

Tightly parked dian dong ches lining the streets outside the shopping centre

Well, the lady took my Man City shirt and put it in a bag as I was to wear the most expensive item of clothing I have ever owned for the rest of the day. A Wu then said he wanted to buy a new phone. Despite its old-fashioned looks, I've been impressed by his phone of the last couple of years; it takes two SIM cards (as so many do over here) and the battery lasts ages. But of course he went straight to the iphone stand. Well, not quite straight - I told him about the Galaxy 3S, and that it was newer than the iphone, and may have certain advantages, but then stopped in my tracks. I'd have to get geeky to show how it might be better and when people have this iphone look in their eyes it's worse than any rose-tinted spectacles. They just want one and that's it. It's a great phone, no doubt. It's just the way it zombifies people that puts me off a little.

Anyway, I didn't have time to stay with him. After the journey down I didn't want a repeat of the lack of safety and discomfort on the way back so Leilei and I were to take the train. It transpired that he wanted to stay with A Da, but by that time the women had joined us in the mobile phone emporium, and Xixi was more than willing to go back with me. It was 3pm and I had already checked the timetable and the next train was at 4.20pm so we were told to hurry and get a taxi to the train station.

It took longer than expected to find a taxi, and we crawled all the way to the station, arriving at 4pm. I realised we needed to rush a little so we found the shorted queue and waited patiently. I lost my patience soon after as the bloke at the front of the queue seemed incapable of understanding the ticket seller, despite the fact I could. I felt like translating to him as he couldn't decide whether to buy a single or return ticket. I guessed it might be quicker to move to another queue, so did, and was promptly followed by a couple of other people. This queue moved faster, but I was slightly concerned that people were waving their id cards while purchasing tickets. Finally at gone 4.10pm we were at the front of the queue. I asked if there were seats on the next train to Pingguo, and was answered in the negative. I thought about it for three seconds before realising I didn't have much of a choice so I ordered two singles to Pingguo, but the woman looked at Xixi and asked if she needed a ticket. I said I didn't know, and that she was four years old. But I was asked if she was over 1m20cm tall. I took a glance at her, with literally no clue, and said she was surely under 1m20cm. That meant she was free, but the teller needed my id card. Ah damn, I said I didn't have one but she said a passport would do. I said I didn't have that but I did have the number (I keep a text file of such important info in my phone). She said she needed the document but I had no time to argue and showed her the number on my screen and said "this is the number you need!" in my best Derren Brown Mandarin. She calmly complied, took down the number and printed off my ticket.

We had to run to security and put Xixi's new strawberry bag that A Wu had bought her yesterday through the screening machine. I asked if I needed to take out my mobile from my pocket and was told no, only to fail the person-screening machine and have a metal detector search and find my mobile. Why didn't they just let me take it out in the first place? The train was boarding so we ran to the first gate where my ticket was checked and we were allowed into the waiting room. Then we needed to exit the waiting room and this time the ticket inspector told me the ticket was wrong. I said it wasn't as I'd checked when I bought it but true enough I'd been sold a ticket for the later 8.55pm train.

Thinking on my feet I said surely I could get on the train and then pay for a new ticket there. Surprisingly the guard said I could and let us through, where we ran to the first carriage that wasn't a sleeper (as this was an overnight train going to Kunming). There was yet another guard at the door of the carriage and I explained that we would pay once on board. He looked fairly friendly and said "ok" so we got on. I feared the worse when I saw many people sitting down in the aisles between the carriages, and others standing in the same area. I didn't fancy doing that for the journey with Xixi so we got ourselves into a carriage and actually found a seat, understanding that someone would come and claim it soon. But no-one did. We didn't chat that much to the others as I was very tired and I tried to get some shuteye because we'd be going for a meal 90 minutes later with Boss Hu.

There were actually a couple of spare seats, but none of the non-seated people seemed interested. Then another guard came and started asking everyone where we were going, and then writing it down on a pad for some reason. I asked the bloke next to me if Pingguo was the next stop and he said it was. An hour later we arrived at Long An, but I thought better than to say anything. Xixi was more-or-less ok for the journey, though got a bit heavy and sweaty on my lap as the air-con was fairly feeble. No other guards came to us to ask us to pay anything so I was glad that a bit of common sense and politeness helped us out.

When we got out at Pingguo we opted to take the bus into town, rather than a san lun che, which, to my regret would have been quicker and only a few kuai more expensive, as the bus went the long way around to the centre. The driver didn't have change for a 10 kuai note so told us to wait until more people got on. He thought I had a fiver and when I gave him the tenner after three more people had got on he said "oh!", whatever that meant. When we got off I tried to force him to take the 10 kuai but with a smile he wouldn't accept it. Then we ended up getting a san lun che home anyway as it would have been a hot few minutes' walk otherwise. I'd called Boss Hu and knew where to go so after a quick freshening up Xixi and I got on the dian dong che to the university area. We didn't have to wait that long for A Wu and the other entourage to turn up from Nanning.

The meal was in another new hotel and there was just us lot who had gone to Nanning and Boss Hu. The food was excellent, and Hu was pretty quick on the beers, gan bei'ing at a frequency hitherto unseen outside of a karaoke room. Despite her tiredness, Tan managed a couple of gan beis too and got into the spirit of things. We originally had tiny strong alcohol glasses literally the size of a thimble and huge wine glasses. I told Hu that I didn't drink white alcohol because it tasted dreadful and stank, preferring beer, at which point he told the young ladies to bring beer glasses in. A while later, during the meal, he presented me with a gift of an expensive boxed bottle of white alcohol. I was rather embarrassed, but as we'd had a few bevvies I was actually also quite happy to have been given such a present. However, white alcohol is a bit of a white elephant here as if I bring it back it will impact what I can buy from duty-free - I'm thinking I could have it as an exhibit in our house here as at 56% it's not likely to go off in a hurry.

Boss Hu, a present of bai jiu, and me in a very expensive new shirt

I'd noticed, after eating enough, that Hu couldn't seem to stop eating, even using his hands to take food from the serving plates, which I imagined was not really done. I hadn't kept up with his drinking either. Driver then took the kids to Waipo's to play, and the ladies left a little later to "wash feet". One of A Wu's colleagues turned up to help eat and drink the rest of what was there before the four of us blokes also got driven to the Ming Dian hotel to have our feet done.

"Washing feet" is actually a rather accurate description of what is done here, at least for the first 20 minutes. We had a room with four bed-like couches, each with its own lady and wooden bucket of hot water with herbs, which we dipped our feet into. It was a relaxing experience and I managed to withstand the heat of the water unlike last time. Within the time it took me to get my feet and legs aclimatised to the temperature I heard a deep snoring coming from Boss Hu to my left. To his left A Wu was also fast asleep. Now I was tired, but not quite enough to sleep, especially as I didn't want to miss this, but all in all it was 90 minutes of luxury - half an hour or so of the feet before a massage for the rest of the time. I found myself dropping off from time to time during the massage, but got roused by Tan popping her head in and asking if I could go and pick up the kids. What was she on about? She had finished and I had half an hour to go, as if I'd just walk away now! No, darling you pick them up and I'll see to them a little later....

We left some time gone 11pm, after A Wu had argued enough at the reception and managed not to pay (was he owed something? I'll never know), and I got a lift to pick up the kids, shower them and get them into bed, having a relatively early night myself.

Not very successful trip to Nanning

I really needed this weekend after the last week of work, and was rather glad that A Wu had suggested 11am instead of 9am for going to Nanning, allowing for a bit of a lie-in as the kids had slept at Waipo's yet again. I tried calling, then texting at 10.30 but only at nearly 11am did he get back to me saying he was on his way, and how long would I need? I'd only need 10 mins to grab a shower but A Wu was on his way back from Tian Dong and would be a good half an hour, after which he'd need a shower etc. So he suggested A Ni and A Da go too, and I take Tan and the kids. Fair enough I suppose, though I would have liked some time to look around on my own.

Eventually we were picked up by Driver at 12.30pm and we went straight to eat just outside our house, not quite the lunch in Nanning with friends I'd been expecting. After lunch we went to pick up A Wu from a hotel, where he was "doing business" with Er Jie and another bloke, who Tan said was a very rich relative who owned some mines. That took a few more minutes and then it seemed we were ready to go, albeit with eight people in the five-seater Toyota - Xixi and A Wu in the front passenger's seat Tan, A Ni, me and the boys in the back. Needless to say it wasn't very comfortable but before we got out of town we stopped again to fix one of the tyres, which took another 15 minutes. Tan said she was too pissed off by all this time-wasting to go, and would go home. I was in half a mind to agree - had I been left to my own devices I'd have been on the midday train and be arriving in Nanning by now.

We finally arrived around 3.30pm and got dropped off by the main shopping centre. My main goal was to find some tonic water, which I'd been told by a barman in a coffee shop earlier in the week you could find in Nanning. Failing that, surely simple fizzy water would be easy to find according to him. So we split up from the ladies and went to Walmart. I had as much luck with tonic water and fizzy water as in Pingguo. For some reason nobody seems to understand what fizzy water is. I'm sure it's not me just being thick. "Qi" means "fizzy" and "shui" means "water". You can't get much clearer than that but whenever you ask for it the women workers always point to the Coke and lemonade bottles. Then I explain that yes, this is fizzy, but I want water that is fizzy. Then they look nonplussed, so I go to the water section and say "this is water, right?" and they agree that the clear stuff in bottles is indeed water. Then I point at the lemonade and say this is not water. Then I always end up having to act out opening a bottle and making a "fzzzzz" sound as it opens. I can only imagine it's so hard to comprehend simply because it doesn't exist - even A Wu wasn't able to explain to the shop workers in a couple of words. To make matters worse, they do have various brands of soda water, which would have done, only it's never fizzy.

Eventually I found some fizzy drink that was not 50% sugar, although it was some sort of glucose and salt supplement with lemon flavour. I bought six bottles, considering this not a complete loss, though if I'd been alone I'd have found a few more places and I bet would have been able to be more successful.

After the boys put too many sweets in the trolley, and A Wu put in a few bottles of Er Gou Tou for Venky as a memory from years gone by, we went to pay. For the first time I saw A Wu pay by card for our shopping and then we went outside. We endured a rather long wait until A Wu reappeared with Xixi - evidently the girls had gone off to shop on their own, dumping the last kid with us. Another few minutes went by before Driver turned up and we got in the car to go to our hotel. It was nearing 6pm and we were due to eat so A Wu stayed in the restaurant on the 2nd floor and I dumped off some stuff in our room. I'd already opened one bottle of my fizz to check it was ok and I was reasonably pleased. I wasn't happy, however, to see that Leilei and A Da had also opened a bottle each, only to tell me they didn't like it that much - it wasn't for you bloody kids! Now half of my bottles were semi-flat and wouldn't make it back to Pingguo....

We went down to the table in the restaurant where A Wu was ordering various goodies. It was very difficult with the kids, who had not had their usual nap, and wouldn't eat anything when it arrived. Then A Wu said the wives weren't coming as they were still out shopping, but some friends were. This was just badly organised. He'd only rung the Nanning friends while we were shopping, to invite them to come and eat, and neither had answered their phones. Then I called a bloke I met last year with the same surname as me, who worked for the water company of Guangxi. He didn't answer but later got back to me and remembered me well. He apologised that he was out of town but told me to come back soon and call him. A Wu still insisted that two other friends were coming but it took so long we all started to eat. We'd pretty much finished when two youngish blokes arrived to help finish off what was left, but all in all it was one of the dullest meals I've ever had in Guangxi.

Worse was to happen later, when I realised that Tan and I had both neglected to take the kids' clothes I'd packed earlier. This is one of those things that wouldn't have happened had Tan not gone; I'd carried my and her bags downstairs as hers was heavy, due to being a woman and spending one night away. I did call her but she didn't want to buy new clothes for the kids as apparently they'd have to be washed before they wore them anyway. So I ended up having to get three kids showered and brushed and into bed naked against their will, and allowing them to stay up late watching kids tv till 11pm. They still weren't asleep when the women finally got back at 11.30pm. The blokes at the meal had invited us to go out that night, and A Wu, who had disappeared after the meal, had called me a couple of times to say we'd be going out to watch them singing, which sounded a bit weird. However, when he got back with the women he stated he was tired and we wouldn't go out. This pissed me off a bit as I'd had virtually no time to do anything in Nanning other than babysitting. So I gave up trying to dry Leilei's pants with the hairdryer and walked out of our room to go for a walk and a bite to eat.

I found I wasn't far from the famous bbq road of Zhong Shan Lu. As per four years ago, I walked up and down sort of looking to see if I could join in with people, but I ended up in the same place as the last time I was here, and just ordered a bit for myself. There was a girl by herself on the neighbouring table and I politely engaged in conversation with her, taking care to mention the wife early on lest she entertain hopes of a dashing stranger sweeping her off her feet. Having pictures of the kids didn't hurt either. She was just in Nanning on business from Liuzhou in central Guangxi, and we had a pleasant meal together in the end, with me realising my Mandarin was not that good with people outside of Pingguo or Nanning, or maybe she just had a better vocabulary.

Tan had texted to say it was dangerous in this road but nothing could be further from the truth; there were plenty of females eating alone, and even the woman I ate with thought it was funny to say so. Anyway, I'd had my fill so I made my excuse (the toilet) paid (for her as well), and left to get back at 1am to the sounds of both the kids snoring happily away despite their lack of pjs.

Let sleeping shopkeepers lie

Back to work after a full weekend. Annoyingly for at least two mornings this week we've had drilling again in one of the neighbouring houses. I'm starting to wonder just how many apartments have actually been sold, and how many were sold but with no intention of "decorating" them any time soon. I mean, they've had two years now. I'm trying to think of a rule/penalty for house-owners that do not decorate within a certain amount of time as it's a very noisy business. Maybe for every day beyond one year that you haven't completed your house you need to pay 100 kuai to a central coffer that goes to the other inhabitants who already have finished, and have to put up with that bloody noise.

Having said that, it's only been for an hour or so for two or three days so it could be a lot worse but it doesn't half make your siesta a bit slower to arrive. I still wonder when the four undecorated apartments I can see from our balcony will ever be done.

Since Ling Ming has had his new set of wheels he's not needed his dian dong che. This means Tan has appropriated it. It's newer, and accelerates better than my old steed, but I am not jealous. Now, the daily routine, as per recent years, of getting the kids to school in the morning has been shared by Tan (although I still do it most of the time). On getting back I'll typically make her a cup of coffee and give her a sticky rice krispy type cake for breakfast before checking emails and getting on with some work. Come midday I'll go and get some jiao zi and bao zi from the local place around the corner and Tan will typically go out. I once went out at 2.30pm to get my lunch and found that the jiao zi woman was alseep in a wooden chaise longue. I thought I'd give her a couple of minutes after I couldn't rouse her by talking to her, so went to get some milk tea for Leilei and some friends, who at that day were at home. But the bloke on the counter there was asleep too. I spent the next five minutes going from place to place feeling too awkward to wake either of them up. Eventually I sort of shouted at the young bloke in the milk tea place until he stirred - I reasoned he'd feel worse if he lost business due to sleeping on the job but I could well be wrong. With the tea in my hands I did the same thing to the woman at the jiao zi place and got that too. I did take a video of myself trying to get this stuff but it feels too rude to upload sleeping people.

The late nights had not allowed me much freedom to go out, though I did occasionally do some bbq after midnight. But on Thursday I finished early at 11.45pm and A Wu had invited me to go to "sing song". I wasn't massively in the mood but needed to get out of the house. It was the same place I've been to a few times now, just outside of the town. There were about 10 blokes there and one woman. I was as sober as a judge and they were as sober as judge Pickles. I can really appreciate how off-putting it must be for women to have alcohol-smoky-sweaty stink forced in your direction when a pissed bloke is shouting in your ear as the music is so loud. It was almost as if my right ear had an olfactory lobe.

I did do a few gan bei's just to be sociable, but A Wu too was not too impressed by the people. Within half an hour we'd left, and A Wu was saying we shouldn't have mixed with those poor blokes (poor as in not rich). I didn't push the point that he had invited me and just left it and we ended up going to have some bbq outside the guangchang until A Ni came and a had a reasonably early night at 2am.

On Friday I called A Wu around midnight, after work to confirm that we were going to Nanning tomorrow. There was music in the background, and it transpired he was at a KTV place in Tian Dong. He said he'd pick me up at 11am Saturday but I had a smidgeon of a doubt.

Trip to Tian Yang stonery and Ling Ming's birthday meal

Had a bit of lie-in until A Wu called around 11.30 to ask if I wanted to go to Tian Yang. My reaction was to answer in the negative but had I done this I would have spent the next couple of hours lolling around and maybe getting some jiao zi for lunch, as Tan and the kids were already out. I had been invited to a meal with Boss Hu in the evening, which meant in about six hour's time, so I said I'd go as at least it wouldn't be that long. Then Tan called a minute later to say we were having a family meal with Da Jie this evening around 5.30pm, so I had to call A Wu to tell him I couldn't do Boss Hu's meal due to family commitments, which apparently was fine.

A Wu sent his driver to fetch me immediately even though I insisted on getting a shower first. I'd asked A Wu whether I should wear long trousers and he said I should, but with short sleeves, so I wondered if we were expected to attend a meal as Tian Yang is only about an hour away and it could still be lunchtime. In fact we drove two minutes to a place that does great fried food where we met A Wu just starting on a meal. This is a fairly cheap place that is on a corner and doesn't have any walls, so relies on big fans to cool the customers. Once full of beef, pork, greens and rice we got into the car and drove off.

We didn't take the road I expected, which was the quicker toll road, so I asked where we were going. "Tian Yang", was the response. Five minutes later we arrived at A Wu's work where we stopped for a few minutes. I got out to have a look around as is my wont when otherwise I'd be stuck in a car. I noticed that they'd blown away more of the mountainside and funnily there was a huge, three story high very roughly spherical rock that had come apart from the mountain and landed right in the area where the lorries go to pick up the smaller rocks to be crushed in the crusher. I would have loved to be there to see that come away from the mountain - I bet they were shitting themselves wondering how far it would go before it stopped - another 50 yards and it could have been end of business.

The huge rock that had displaced itself onto A Wu's work area

I was shouted at to come back to the car and found it had two more occupants. I couldn't decipher exactly where we were going in Tian Yang but I suspected it was something to do with mangoes as per the other times I've been there. In Pingguo, A Wu's driver had told me it would take an hour to get to Tian Yang, so I was hoping (not expecting) to arrive at 1.30pm. After taking country roads for half an hour we finally got onto the toll road, wasting about 30 minutes I reckon. Instead of paying at the tollgate, Driver just looked at the woman there and she let us go. A Wu has done this before and despite asking, I've never quite understood why they get through free as if he was China's answer to Derren Brown.

We finally got to Tian Yang but didn't exit there, waiting for the exit after. There we stopped behind a black pickup and one of my fellow back seat passengers got out and started talking to the driver. Then he got in the rear seats of the pickup. It felt like some dodgy drug deal, and then to make matters worse the other bloke sitting next to me still said we had another 20km to go. I'd been checking where we were all the journey on my phone thanks to the downloaded maps and GPS. The only road looked like a very minor one and 20km would take some time. In fact it was not just a minor road but one that was in the process of being turned into not so minor, which meant it was being built and there were plenty of road works to delay us further. At 2.15 I asked when we'd be there, wherever "there" was, and I was told 2.30. I might as well have asked at what time GB would win their first gold medal. Indeed at 2.30 we were still meandering through roadworks, although it was quite beautiful scenery, except for an old ex-village whose inhabitants had probably been forced to depart due to the large rocks that had tumbled down the mountains unwelcomed into their houses rendering them derelict.

What is now a ghost village due to gravity and rocks

Finally at 3.15pm we got to a part of the road that A Wu's Toyota Camry could not navigate, so we pulled over and noticed that there was nearly no petrol in it. Driver was told to go and get some, and that the nearest pump was 30km away, before we all got into the pickup. There wasn't enough room for my backseat fellow passenger so he did some pickup surfing on the back. I was a bit jealous until I saw the state of the road and became worried that we were going too fast and would skid off and that would be the end. But we managed the next 1 or 2 km until reaching a stone works similar to A Wu's. The blokes spent the next half an hour chatting and taking some photos, while I took in some of the lovely scenery before succumbing to my male desire to throw rocks down the steep mountainside, which kept me more than amused until it was time to go back.

Beyond Tian Yang to view another stoneworks

This time I joined my back seat passenger on the back of the pickup and enjoyed surfing it back more than I should have. We got a couple of bottles of green tea and cans of Red Bull and set off back in A Wu's Toyota again as it was nearly 4pm and I needed to be back before 6. We seemed to take an even slower way back than the way to get here, and stopped off for petrol too, meaning I must have misunderstood Driver's instructions to pick some up, or he misunderstood their directions.

Yet more setbacks on the road - this time I was unable to help

On the way back A Wu passed me a showroom brochure for a Porsche Cayenne - a top of the range beauty, of which I've already spied a good two or three this year in Pingguo (to add to the couple of Porsche Panameras I saw last year). Then, to my surprise, he pulled out a receipt and said he'd bought one. I didn't know whether to believe him or not, but it looked genuine, with a price of 1,390,000 kuai for the car, bumped up to over 1,550,000 with all the extras - a full 530 times more expensive than our car, not that they compare in any way beyond having four wheels. Well, selling stones does seem to be good business (if you're the boss).

A receipt for a GBP160k Porsche Cayenne?

We got home just after 6, with every other passenger having slept most of the way, probably not helped by having drunk my first Red Bull for over 10 years. I freshened up and drove to the restaurant near Waipo's house. Luckily I wasn't the last to arrive, and there was an amazing array of food for such a relatively small table seating no more than 12. There was a lovely hot pot of frogs and cauliflower, my favourite dark eggs, a great choice of meat and vege dishes and two delicacies I hadn't yet had in China (or anywhere else): goat testicles and cow spinal cords. The goat testicles were sliced, and rather nice. The spinal cord tasted and had the texture of pig brain to my uneducated palette, and left a little to be desired. Both were supposed to be very healthy for you, and in an infantilely simple way the testicles were supposed to be good for "men's health" and the spinal cord good for keeping your back healthy. I asked why they had ordered the balls when other than Ling Ming and me everyone else was female. I got a half-arsed answer that tailed away and I didn't push for fear of bullying in what was a very enjoyable encounter with so many family members.

Er Jie came a bit later and said "Happy Birthday" to Ling Ming. Of course, it was his birthday today, so I ordered a couple of beers and had a couple of gan bei's with him, and sips with Xiao Nong and Tan. Although the frog dish was barely half eaten, Er Jie took it away and plonked a different huo guo pot onto the table above the gas fire in the centre of the table. This time there was a spicy section and a non-spicy section, and when it was hot enough we proceeded to cook lots more meat and veg. Honestly, that hot pot alone could have fed everyone and I was aghast to see that waiting on the side was yet another hot pot of cows ribs. Chuan Chuan explained that she had to go to work. It's funny as last week I asked if she was working and she said "no", but it transpires she is now working in a clothes shop "run" by Lin Xue, who I remember from Bangxu back in 2003. She's 18 now (and Chuan Chuan is 20), but it still seems rather young to be running your own shop.

Clockwise from left: Chuan Chuan, Er Jie, Jiuma, Waipo, Da Jie, Xiao Nong, Ling Ming, Tan

I took the kids back after a bit as they were getting restless after having eaten already. A Da then rang me to ask where Leilei was as apparently he was close to our house. So we trundled to what looked like a furnishing shop by the guangchang to see him and his parents A Wu and A Ni. Naturally, we drank tea while sitting on a plush sofa with the boss of the place. Thankfully there were some kids bikes and stuff to keep Leilei and Xixi amused with A Da and some other kids outside so I was able to drink some tea in reasonable peace.

When the kids got restless I took them for a ride to get some pearly milk tea. The place was opposite A Xia's shop and a couple of doors away from where Chuan Chuan was working, so we popped in to say hello. The kids insisted in having some jelly crap in their milk tea, and we went back home to give A Da his portion and eventually get to bed.

Chuan Chuan and Lin Xue at the latter's shop

Chuan Chuan and Lin Xue are on the left in this pic from early 2004

Dreadful "big water"

I'd forgotten that I'd agreed to go to "piao liu", which literally means "drifting", and although somewhat accurate, it would be accurater to say "dinghying" if such a word existed. It is more like white water rafting but without much white water. The idea is that you start upstream and go down over a number of kilometers. I had been invited to go to one in Baise a couple of days after we arrived but I'd decided not to due to the early start. This time was a relatively new one just outside Pingguo, which was much more gentle and kid-friendly.

I was not really too happy to be woken at 9am to be told Ling Ming was waiting downstairs for us. It was a quick getting dressed and quickly grabbing a change of clothes just in case. Ling Ming was taking his new car but didn't feel too confident driving on the unfinished roads outside so we swapped over and I drove after having gone to pick up about 11 women who had come with Da Jie. They all drove behind us in a "bread loaf car" and instead of the 10 minutes I'd been told the journey was I drove for a good half an hour through roads that were in the process of becoming roads, including places where there should have been traffic lights as you get so far but then have to back up as someone else has got further than you down the one half of the road that is open.

We arrived around half ten but then were subjected to the foreign game of waiting around. It was ferociously hot and we cooled ourselves down with a couple of cartons of tea while wondering when something would happen. It took nearly an hour, but Ling Ming had bought the tickets, and we were to wait for the next couple of buses to take us to where we would start. Leilei stated time and time again that he wasn't going, but Ling Ming had bought his and Xixi's tickets anyway. Strangely, although over ten women from Da Jie's town of Pinxiang came along in their van, none of them seemed to be going boating, only Ling Ming and us four. Finally the bus arrived and luckily it was air-conditioned as we waited in it for 15 long minutes before setting off, all to the tones of Leilei complaining that he wasn't going to go on the boat.

We eventually left. We'd left our valuables with Da Jie, and it was actually quite liberating to have in our possession only clothes for a while. Ten minutes later we arrived somewhere higher up the mountain where we would start our rafting from. Not so soon though. There were around 60 people who had come up in the two coaches, and there weren't enough lifejackets, helmets, or oars for all of us. So we sat around waiting in the heat and humidity, some of us in lifejackets that we soon undonned as it became clear they were heat magnets. I asked Tan why we were waiting so long and she said it was because the previous group had not moved far enough down the river hence it wouldn't be safe. Looking around at the dearth of "jiang", one of the few words I've learnt this year - paddle, I suspected otherwise. So I went to one of the women who worked there and asked why we were still waiting and she said that we were waiting for the paddles to arrive, and that they were "zhunbei dao le". Now I love the Chinese and the culture here but I don't like hearing "zhunbei dao le". This means something is just about to arrive, but in reality "just about" means something other than it does in any other language I understand it in. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but in near 40 degree heat it is slightly annoying.

Thankfully it only took another 10 minutes before a pickup truck sped up and stopped. Despite the worker woman with her loudspeaker telling everyone to not take the paddles from the pickup as it was yet to park properly everyone stormed to it and grabbed whatever paddles and lifejackets they could.

Leilei was still telling me he wasn't going on the boat although it was obvious he was. And finally we were allowed to get into our dinghies. I insisted that Tan and Xixi went with Ling Ming as I wanted a father and son time together, and got him onto the dinghy. I was to get more than I asked for. The tranquil water seemed to chuckle at our helmets and lifejackets as we lifted off with our single paddle. Although we were one of the latter entrants into the water I soon worked out how to use the paddle to reasonable effect, and set upon catching up the rest of the people (who didn't know they were in a race). We made good progress and by a couple of hundred yards at the first corner we were first!

Around the corner I saw a sign in blue saying "big water, be careful". I also saw two or three blokes on the riverbank - ah, I thought, they will be taking the photographs that they'll be charging extortionate amounts for when we get back. It wasn't as easy navigating a corner as it was the straight water and we sort of got moved to the outside lane as it were. I noticed a rather deep drop of about three feet which was sort of exciting but our dinghy was revolving a little and by the time we hit it we were going backwards with me at the "front" and Leilei sitting in front of me.

I don't think we did anything wrong as we both grabbed the rope on the side of the boat, but after the drop the dinghy was on its side and didn't want to get back down. I had no control and the next thing I remember was that we were capsizing in the middle of very fast water. Now you should get a panic when you're shoved underwater and you can't breathe and the current is controlling your movements and all you can feel is the occasional buffering of the rocks below on your body. But when you know that your son was in the same boat you are not aware of yourself at all. I could think of nothing but Leilei and tried to force my head above water to shout "er zi!" (son). It took a few seconds of being treated like an empty bottle by the ruthless water before I could even surface to shout, let alone for air.

I was able to glimpse that a couple of yellow-shirted blokes were moving to do something and when I got my head above water again I just shouted at the top of my voice "wo de er zi! wo de er zi!" (my son! my son!). I was still being swept by the current and could see our boat stuck about 40 yards upstream, but no sign of Leilei. The water was shallow enough now not to drag me under any more but I couldn't move so I made what effort I could to grab on to any branch that would allow me to stop myself being dragged further downstream and move myself toward the bank, and finally got there. I had visions of Leilei being dragged further than me down the river due to his smaller size, and worried about a myriad of other things that could have befallen him such as being snagged on something or even being knocked out.

As my eyes and ears began to focus more I could see a bloke in a yellow top holding on to our boat upstream shouting "bu yao jin!", which means "don't worry". That was not great advice, but I then saw a Leilei-sized boy on the boat he was holding on to. The fact that he was kneeling up meant he was ok and I waved at him and he responded by moving his arm in some way, though I could make out he was in a bad state.

It took a couple of minutes to make the 50 yards upstream to the boat, holding on to the various branches to pull me there, but we were reunited. Apparently he hadn't had as bad a deal as me in terms of getting dragged by the water, but this maybe because the bloke had fished him out quickly or something - I'll never know. The point was he was seriously disturbed by the event and was sobbing profusely.

Despite being within the first couple of hundred metres of the "course", there was literally no going back. The length was 4.8 km and we had 4.6 to go - try telling that to a kid who has capsized in rushing water. I'd lost my helmet but luckily Leilei hadn't - he'd just lost his shoes. So I used his helmet to pour out most of the water that had accumulated in the boat and said I was sorry but we'd just have to continue.

It didn't make it any easier that just about every other boat had passed us during this time, and even that at least one other boat had capsized too.

Leilei cried a river for the next half an hour or so but I guess ran out of energy later. Every time we came across any slightly white water he called out "big water, big water!" and I too feared it might be like the first one. I made a clever move to avoid one "big water", despite it being relatively calm compared to our first one; I managed to cut across some trees to avoid some white water and triumphantly told Leilei we'd found a shortcut. Unfortunately where we ended was a quite nice little lagoon but outside the flow of the river. Try as we might though we couldn't get back into the normal flow, and Leilei noticed this and was worrying again, "we're stuck!". I told him we were fine but after a couple of attempts I realised we were not going to get out easily. I held on to branches to pull us into the current but we kept getting pushed back. Then, as I held onto another Leilei shouted "spider!" and panicked again as a house spider-sized arachnid landed in our boat. For once I didn't give a shit about an eight-legged friend and stamped on the bastard. After nearly giving up hope of getting out of that place we found that the last two boats had workers on them, hopefully for safety, who, without not a little effort, were able to drag us out of the lagoon my shortcut had led us into, and back into the river again.

Now that Leilei had no more tears left, he kept asking me when we'd be back. I made my best estimations and said we were "nearly there". Thankfully, although this was a bit of a lie, the rest of the water was either calm or safely ripply, not that that helped with Leilei until we finally spied the building we'd driven to a few hours earlier that day.

I was seriously worried that Leilei would have a water phobia after that experience. It's bad enough as an adult to experience the power of white water currents, but as a seven year old it's worse than a nightmare. Or maybe it's one of those experiences that turns one into a man.

The kids and me after having braved the 'rapids' of Pingguo County

I'd had the wherewithal to bring spare clothes for me and the kids, but Tan hadn't. So Leilei and I showered and put on dry clothes, and Tan, who hadn't capsized had to put back on her wet clothes. Xixi had had a great time on the "rapids" apparently and also had a change of clothes. Ling Ming had already ordered food so it should have been ready for us by the time we were ready, but it took a good 45 minutes before our tables were cleaned and served. By this time it was well gone 3pm and I was quite tired, though the adrenaline of having witnessed my son have the scariest experience of his life (and one of mine) kept me well awake. We had a nice meal but I was looking forward to getting back and having at least an hour's kip. At 4pm I drove us back and we were home half an hour later. The kids said that they'd slept in the car (despite playing I-spy for most of the time) and decided not to sleep, which left me allowing Tan to sleep while I got them amused doing drawing and seemingly playing nicely together for a bit. I was hopeful for 45 mins of shuteye myself but that was dashed due to them keeping on coming in to ask me for things. Well, there are worse reasons for not having a well-earned siesta.

A Wu had already called me to let me know that I was expected to go out for a meal with an old friend from Baise, who I hadn't seen for about five years. With this in mind I didn't struggle to sleep much longer as if I'd succeeded I wouldn't have made that or anything else in the evening. Tan was still weary and not feeling particularly well, so didn't want to come. A Wu had said not to bring the kids, which I appreciated, and they didn't put up too much of a fight as they were busy drawing at home. So I took the dian dong che to the usual restaurant "Li Jia He Xian" and met A Wu there.

I've called this bloke "Bak sec zhai" since I've known him, and I thought it was simply a way of calling him "Baise bloke" in Cantonese, i.e. bloke from Baise, but today realised his surname really was "Zhai". As I entered the private room I immediately recognised him from some years ago and we hugged like old friends, which is not something normally done here when sober. His wife and daughter were there, which was nice, and I did ring Tan to come but she wasn't feeling up to it. This didn't stop fags from being smoked of course, and I was happy that at least I hadn't brought the kids. But we had a good time catching up on old times.

A lovely meal with 'Bak sec Zhai' on my left and the restaurant boss on my right

While Zhai tried to get me to drink many beers, Jiefu arrived. Jiefu means "older sister's husband", and I think in this case it really is A Wu's older sister's husband and not some unrelated person given a relative name. I hadn't seen Jiefu for a couple of years and we embraced like long lost friends when he came in. He said we'd need to gan bei many beers as we hadn't seen each other for some time and I told him that was just an excuse, which he found rather funny. We ate for a while until Jiefu excused himself, saying it was his dad's birthday and he had to go and see him. I don't know how long he was away but after a while he came back again. Then I got a phone call from Lin Hong asking me to go to karaoke. I wasn't really in the mood but I thought it might at least give me a break from the gan bei'ing of the meal that I'd been in for nigh-on three hours.

I called Tan but she was still too tired to go out, and anyway didn't know the people who would be there, so a little while later I said my goodbyes to Bak sec Zhai and A Wu gave me a lift to the KTV place a little outside town. He was embarrassed to be there "early", as in 20 minutes late, as not everyone was there, but the room soon filled up with people I didn't know, I guessed mostly Lin Hong's junior colleagues. Lin Hong seemed in fine spirits and was getting me to do my usual three songs in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, before the evening descended into a sort of disco.

I needed an excuse to stop drinking so I sneaked out and went for a walk around the building. Finally a little time by myself. I found my way to the roof of the building and walked about in the humidity, checking the view of the lights of Pingguo a small distance away. Normally I would have had a phone call by now but I guess the others were too busy drinking and dancing and that suited me. I eventually went downstairs, but this time to a different floor, and peaked through the tiny windows of some of the doors to see the song-worshippers in some of the rooms. I happened upon one which was fairly full, and had a good mix of blokes and women, not looking too drunk or dressed up. I thought "why not?" and and pushed the door open and walked in. I had a look of surprise, as though I'd accidentally walked into the wrong room, but I was invited in before I could even feel the guilt. As is normal, at least one person knew about me, and knew Tan, so there was something to talk about. I then restarted the ritual of gan bei'ing and realised my plan of leaving the previous room in order to slow down was at risk of backfiring. So I used plan B, which was to offer to sing a song, of course the "Ni shi wo de mei gui hua". It went down very well and I must have spent half an hour there before going back to Lin Hong's den.

Due to the early start and lack of siesta I was feeling tired and a little the worse for wear so I made my excuses and said I'd need to get back home. So Lin Hong kindly drove me back and dropped me outside of our building. I waited till she had gone then slightly sneakily popped around the corner to grab some bbq and chat with the locals, and by the time I got home at 2.20am I had A Ni calling me asking where A Wu was. Needless to say I slept in the spare room, very easily.

Ling Ming's new car

Ling Ming got a new car Sunday. It is a Chinese automobile with the brand name "Haval" and the model name M2. It`s not the prettiest thing on the streets but it's pretty practical and at a snip under 8 grand I wouldn't worry.

Ling Ming and his new car

On Tuesday I came down with flu-like symptoms which caused me to fall back asleep in the late morning before work. The same happened Wednesday, but there was too much to do on Thursday and Friday so I got up a bit later and worked through the day. Leilei has alternated between sleeping here and a A Da's, with Xixi mainly sleeping at Waipo's.

On Thursday I was invited out to a meal with A Xia and friends. I said I couldn't go, but her husband Lao Su said he'd pick me up and drop me back. As luck would have it my meeting was cancelled so I was able to go and have my first multi-person meal for nearly a week. I did only stay an hour at a new restaurant near the university area, but had plenty to eat before going back with the kids and A Da, to let them play more on the Wii before going to Waipo's to sleep.

On Friday the kids didn't go to school for some reason, and got taken out and spoiled by whoever was at Waipo's place - Xixi had yet another set of clothes and Leilei had yet another set of some sort of battle cards. My evening was chockablock with meetings and when finally I'd finished at 12.30am A Wu, who had been calling me to go out all evening despite me telling him of my meetings, was already home.

Tan's eldest sister, known as Da Jie (big sister) had arrived in Pingguo in the evening and her son Ling Ming went to meet her. She stayed at Waipo's with the intention of seeing us all on Saturday

Tan was tired and in bed, so I decided to go out and get a little bbq. I went to the same place as Monday evening but before I managed to get there I was shouted at to come and drink a glass at a table of people at the next door place. One of the blokes knew Tan's sister and apparently I'd eaten with him a couple of years ago, which I pretended to remember. I ended up spending about 15 minutes there before reminding them I was supposed to be at another table and they let me go. I spent the next half an hour or so eating and drinking with who I now know as Mr Chang, and his son Chang Hua. His small place is called "Xiao chi da ai" (Small eat big love) - I think the translation loses something. This time they let me pay the 64 kuai and I took a couple of small cans of beer back to watch the Olympics. Well, watch the Olympics and also catch up a bit on some work too. Got to bed unguiltily at 4am.