Headwash and another late City match

Yesterday I invited Baksec Zhai for a meal today, but at 8.20am he sent a message apologising, but he had to be elsewhere this evening. I appreciated his prompt response and texted him back saying no problem we'd sort something when we had time.

As Chuan Chuan is on holiday for a few days the kids have mostly been staying with her. To Tan's annoyance she drove them to Baise, and then Lin Yun yesterday, where they stayed the night. The main annoying thing is that she's only recently passed her test and shouldn't be driving on motorways until she's had more experience or is with someone who has had three years at least. So yes, on hearing that I was a little annoyed too, however she seems one of the more sensible 26 year olds here, it's just that she looks literally half her age.

I didn't eat more than a couple of rice crispy cakes, which I always have in as part of a default backup breakfast here. They're not particularly healthy but can fill a gap. Although I could have found useful stuff to do, I decided to have one last (or second-to-last) head wash. Maybe because I'd had a pre-heady tipple, or because I'm just weak, when she asked if I wanted a facewash too I barely prevaricated before ascenting into the obvious, knowing it would be three times the price. But yes it was worth it.

I hadn't expected the mask

I had plans of staying up to watch the second leg of City - Steaua but didn't manage to get the chance for a late afternoon kip. Then A Wu called to say we were going to the KTV place later. At least that might wake me up. Well what he actually meant was Boss Zhou's place behind the KTV place. I took the kids but as I'd already eaten couldn't face the mountain of duck breast kindly put in my bowl. I also insisted on mostly sipping my beer, rather than gan bei'ing, and refused their 30 degree honey liqueur. I took the kids back when they were bored, but came back to the meal as promised. Luckily I only stayed another 15 minutes or so as A Wu and I were to take his son to have his shower. I had to hold his son in the car so left the dian dong che at Boss Zhou's which meant I'd have to be back.

Sure enough, we gave his son a shower, or rather let the ladies do it, then dumped him off at A Ni's and went back to Boss Zhou's. I managed to take it relatively easy though did have to do a fair few cai mas, before I finally said I needed to leave to sort the kids at 9.30. At home, Lu Wen called to say Boss Yong had invited us to eat tomorrow and could I make it? Yes, I suppose I could.

A had a coffee and then Tan got back from the bbq at some time after 11pm. She had a cup of sweet lime tea spare so I took it and drank as much as I could until I couldn't take any more sugar. The game wasn't to start till 2.45am so I had ages and put a wash on and had time to hang it up before I got in contact with Mat, and spent the best part of an hour playing World of Tanks with a crappy ping but it was better than nothing.

Rather than go home straightaway, A Wu took me to a place just around the corner to drink tea. In this case, the people we happened upon were drinking tea, and thought it really weird that we actually wanted to drink tea and not beer. But we persisted. Apparently one was a friend/cousin of A Wu. The tv was on and I noticed it was "Pingguo TV" - I hadn't realised we had our own tv channel so was more interested than I otherwise would be. I said that they should recognise some of the people and they nodded as if to say "of course", but then they said "Baksec Zhai!", and indeed there he was on tv, participating in some sort of opening of something. So when he texted me this morning he genuinely had something more important to do!

Baksec Zhai (on the right) on Pingguo tv!

I got back and had a coffee and then Tan got back from the bbq at some time after 11pm. She had a cup of sweet lime tea spare so I took it and drank as much as I could until I couldn't take any more sugar. The game wasn't to start till 2.45am so I had ages and put a wash on and had time to hang it up before I got in contact with Mat, and spent the best part of an hour playing World of Tanks with a crappy ping but it was better than nothing.

I'd heard that there were more football games available on Chinese tv/streaming now, and was glad to find http://www.livesoccertv.com/competitions/england/premier-league/ where it showed what you could expect to see on tv and online. I installed the bloated PPTV but couldn't find the match, and in the end just used their website to find it and watch it in Flash. It was not worth staying up for but we won 1-0 in an effective dead rubber. What was weird though was that I still couldn't sleep till 7am, two and a half hours later.

Ordering water and another boss meal

I wasn't in the best of moods for eating so skipped Waipo's for lunch and just ate some dried squid instead. After a couple of evenings of excess I decided I needed some exercise. I did a "Seven Minute" one and it really took it out of me. Then I decided to justify bringing the extra Wii Fit board I picked up cheaply in a charity all this way for the first time since 2008. As I fired up Wii Sports for the first time in a long time on this Wii it scolded me that it had been 2029 days since the last time it had seen me. Later I took the time to search how long that was, and surprisingly I found it was February 11th 2011. As I'd not been here at that time, and it was incredibly unlikely that anyone else had managed to fire up the Wii and play as me, I looked again and saw that if I only counted weekdays the last time I'd played would have been a much more likely November 12 2008. However, I couldn't understand why the Wii would only count weekdays, and also I'm pretty sure that I was in Nanning that day (as it was Xixi's first birthday) or returned to Pingguo but with the flu so unlikely to have exerted myself so much. I'll have to look into this further to see what is going on.

I need to sort out when this was

But I spent well over an hour on Wii Fit. Who cares if it isn't HD? It's a great console with some immensely fun games, and I sweated out buckets especially with a 10 minute rhythm boxing routine. I called A Wu and for some reason he was in Nanning, but coming back later and he said we'd play ping pong at 8pm.

I doubt there are many in Pingguo, but annoyingly we weren't the only ones in 2008

We were out of drinking water but annoyingly the phone number I've used for the last few years (and indeed a few weeks ago) to order it was powered off. How can you run a business if people can't call you? Maybe they have a WeChat account or something but if they have it isn't attached to their phone number. So after a tad to eat at Waipo's I went to the water place by the jiao zi place next to our building to see what was going on. Apparently this wasn't the place I normally used, but the place I did use had now closed. I wasn't sure I understood, or even trusted this, but I needed water so ordered a tong to be delivered soon. I even ordered the expensive 22 kuai bottle, but not because I actually understood the explanation for why it was the most expensive.

The water arrived nearly an hour later in the form of a phone call asking me to come downstairs as the buzzer wasn't working or something. Typically someone let the bloke in as I got to the ground floor so we shared the lift up. He gave a little more explanation about the other company - apparently the woman was getting too old to be doing such deliveries. Fair enough I suppose but I'd recently paid a 40 kuai deposit for a second bottle. I happened to mention the deposit to the bloke and said he could give it to the woman but straight away he ripped it up and insisted on giving me the difference between the water and the receipt (18 kuai) and I thought that was quite reasonable. I suppose he won't lose any money on having the big bottle back and he's now got a new customer too, though it's likely to be the last water we'll order here this year.

I had hardly expected A Wu to call me at 8pm to go to ping pong but thought I'd check with him at quarter past as I might have plans of my own. Oh he was simply at A Ni's place and that was that - no mention of ping pong. Almost as if he knew, I got a message from a different bloke to go and drink beer with him this evening. I sort of lied and replied that I'd have to play ping pong first, and he said ok. But I didn't know who he was. Even looking through his WeChat album there was no photo I recognised, but I saw that we'd registered as friends last night at 11.32pm, so I surmised it must be Zhang Hua's father-in-law who likes beer and speaking English.

At about nineish I popped round there - after all they were sorting out a footy shirt for me. Well I got there and Zhang Hua was alone in the back with his wife at the front and certainly not expecting me. Nevertheless he immediately invited me to eat the nearly finished food and join him in a Suntory beer. As his father-in-law wasn't there I realised my logic must have been wrong; it was not him who invited me over, which explained why they weren't expecting me. But somebody was expecting me somewhere. Strangely enough that same somebody then texted me to say he was on the road to Pingguo. Zhang Hua and I shared a couple of beers over a nice chat where I learnt a few more words exactly rather than roughly, like "jiaoliu" as a formal way of saying "communicate", and "zhengshi" for "formal".

Then A Wu called and asked me to come over to drink alcohol. I wasn't massively in the mood, but I reckoned wherever this would be had a better chance of containing the bloke that invited me than where I was. Zhang Hua invited me to play football Thursday evening and I said I should be able to, and we shared a last glass. I realised the place A Wu said he was was directly upstairs from where I was and he looked surprised that I'd got there within seconds, but the other bosses looked happy as spiders who had just coaxed a rather juicy English fly into their web. Every one without fail was drinking red wine, but I insisted on beer. They pointed out there wasn't any then I pointed to the obvious beer can in the centre of the table. Then one of the blokes calmly picked it up and removed it and said now there wasn't any. But to be fair to A Wu he did ensure beer arrived and I only had a tiny mouthful of the horrid Australian wine that was probably rejected in its mother country.

To be fair it was a bit of a laugh. There was some great food on the table but within minutes we got to the serious business of cai ma. It was dictated that I was to challenge each of the 12 other bosses on the table in turn, with best-of-threes with each. I calculated that the worst that could happen would be that I drink 12 small glasses of 3.8% beer and would probably still be the most sober.

So it was with not a little pride that I beat the first six in a row, to their and my delight. I'd just beaten the bloke who supposedly had studied in the US but wasn't really speaking much English to me when I came upon the tall bloke with glasses. I didn't mind losing the first round and having a drink, and wasn't too annoyed that I lost the second too. But on losing the third round, I found the rule was I had to move back anti-clockwise and play the English-speaker again that I'd beaten before. Well luck comes in clumps and my losing clump contined as I lost to him this time. Thankfully it only took one win to get back to tall bloke, but he bloody beat me thrice again and I was back to English-speaker. It took two goes but I beat him and then finally moved on from tall bloke with a nice "BET!" (eight) that he wasn't expecting.

The tall drinking bloke is where I first got stuck

But now that I knew that you could move backwards in this game I knew my supposed maximum of 12 beers became effectively infinite, and therefore my confidence took a turn for the worse. I tried to logic-up some confidence and argued to myself that the fact I had lost and drunk a few beers now ought to counter the confidence-drop that occurred to my recent understanding of the rules. This helped, and I managed to finally get to the end, smashing A Wu, but taking a few goes to beat the main boss sitting with me who seemed to be the main guy. There was also a rather pretty girl sitting at the table (a wife of one rather than something else) and she was the only one I didn't have to cai ma.

Well, apparently I'd made a good entrance with that stint of cai ma, and it used up a good 20 minutes or more. As the bosses got drunker, one by one they moved on to beer - I presumed I must have been somewhat of a sober figurehead that they appreciated, but it could just be because they ran out of wine. Towards the end the bloke who had studied in the US suddenly remembered a lot of his English - funny how alcohol does that - and insisted on talking to me at some length. It would have been easier in Mandarin but I was not going to language-bully him and I think he appreciated that. However, after five years in the States I would have expected just a little bit more vocabulary.

We left at well gone 1am, and downstairs outside I saw the father-in-law of Zhang Hua, who hadn't been there earlier. I left the drunken bosses talking on the broken pavement and stepped inside the shop for a couple of less-hurried beers and a wee chat. By the time I made my excuse 15 minutes later A Wu was still outside talking to a couple of bosses and it was decided that we'd go for Won Tun. Well I had the dian dong che outside and wasn't going to leave it so one of the bosses, who'd joined after me and was from Bangxu, and was now quite pissed on red wine, decided to go with me. It's not normally a problem with Leilei and Xixi but he was quite heavy and didn't make any effort to stabilize the bike with his feet as he got on and I nearly let it fall over.

We followed A Wu's car down to the river and found the Won Tun place that I recognised I'd been to before. Annoyingly, as it was served, drunken Bangxu boss poured half of his Won Tun into my bowl, even though I had no intention of finishing it. Of course he finished a couple of minutes later, so I repaid the compliment by giving him 3/4 of mine, in an exchange that had proved to be pretty pointless, especially as he finished mine.

Then a bloke and his young daughter came to talk to me. I recognised them as I'd met them the other day when going for a ride around here. He had stopped on his dian dong che and we'd got chatting. I had noticed that a few yards away there was a policeman and he was in one of the few parts of the road that actually had a gate separating the two halves. He suddenly stopped the driver of a motorcycle that was coming in the wrong direction, and I guessed that was one of the few traffic violations they may take seriously here. Well I wasn't going to go the wrong way, and after making sure that nearly all the other dian dong ches were driven by helmetless drivers (and I don't mean women), bade farewell and went that way too. Then I noticed that 20 yards past the single hidden policeman were about five policemen quite well lit up. Then a motorbike in front of me, on seeing them, made a 180° turn, presumably guilty of something, and I realised the hiding policeman was probably stopping all the 180°ers as they must be hiding something. Pretty sneaky, and I was concerned I might be stopped for some reason but my light was one and I was on the correct side of the road and I got through without incident. But yes that was the other day.

After we'd eaten we left, but drunken Bangxu boss insisted on me giving him a lift home, so we drove quite a considerable distance to his place, and when he got off he pointed in the direction I needed to go to get home. Bloody drunks. I drove a fair few minutes to the less and less populated suburbs of Pingguo before I came to a dead-end in the road. I felt a bit like I was in the Truman Show. I wondered if I tried to go beyond the concrete bollard, I'd hear a loudspeaker from the sky telling me to go back. Had it not been gone 2am I probably would have tried. Plus the fact that I didn't have great range on the dian dong che spurred me to think of a better course of action.

I could either go left or return, so decided to return as at least I should get to somewhere I knew. I found the bbq place I'd first seen last year and entered just to see what it was like, but apart from a handful of places open it was dead. I didn't go back the exact way I'd came but took a right trusting in my general sense of direction. Thankfully it ended up being a good decision and a few minutes later I could see traffic lights, meaning I must be getting closer to home. I was ever-so-slightly tempted to get invited to some of the late-night tables still eating and drinking but decided enough was enough for one night.

Fireworks and an unexpected celebration of a bloke going to university

Lu Wen called me to say one of the bosses from yesterday's meal was inviting me for a meal tomorrow. Just when I thought such advance notice didn't happen suddenly it happened. But I'd promised A Wu I'd invite Baksec Zhai for a meal tomorrow (obviously I hadn't called him so much in advance) so said I'd probably not be able to make tomorrow. Ok then, it would be the next day according to Lu Wen. This I believe even less. Nobody seems to have the capacity to arrange things 48 hours in advance unless it involves plane tickets.

I skipped lunch but had tea at Waipo's, then a bit later as the kids were out with Chuan Chuan decided to go on a bike ride to see what that would bring me. I rode to a couple of places I wasn't too familiar with and then suddenly out of the blue there were fireworks nearby. When I found the source of the fireworks I found about 50 people, mostly shirtlesss blokes sitting around tables eating and drinking. I was interested in what the celebration may be and so I asked a couple of ladies sitting at one of the outside tables. Ah - it was the owner's son who was soon going to university - that was the reason for the massive fireworks display and feast. Suddenly I was bidden to have a bite to eat and have a drink with the father and had my hand held as I was brought into the mileu of blokes.

First I was made to sit at the table of the bloke who was going to university later that week. He seemed so pleased to see me, as were the others at the table, and of course I offered him a gan bei. Then they quickly latched on that I knew how to cai ma, which brough literal gasps of awe. So of course I had to prove this and immediately beat the first kid I played. This led them to break out into applause which of course I lapped up but worried about taking some of the limelight from university boy. I needn't have worried though - I cai ma'd him, then every bloke, then we broke into two teams around the table and I didn't drink a glass.

The best picture I could get of the kids' tables but about as accurate as it seemed

Moving on to the elders' table I felt a little more at home

But they the dad came again and it was decided I should now sit at the elders' table. Gosh they made the kids look sober, but I had a very fun time talking with them and also cai ma'ing for good measure. One bloke was wearing a buttoned up brown shirt with a collar and I reckoned he must have been the magic man for the evening. He was particularly drunk where you could tell his eyes were not focused, but he insisted in a couple of gan beis and cai ma too, despite being otherwise impossible to understand.

I did check the beer - it was "Suntory" - 7.5 degrees, or 3.1%, so not the weakest. The other day I took advantage of some time to myself and tried to sort out once and for all the relationship between "degrees" and percentage when it comes to beer. For wine and spirits it does seem to be a one-to-one relationship, but totally muddled for pijiu. I spent more time than is decent making notes of the degree/percent relationships from some of the beers on offer and found that even though Li Quan 7° is 3.1% and Snow 8° is 2.5%, at least within brands there was some consistency, i.e. a higher degree has not (so far) resulted in a lower percentage. I'll need to add to this spreadsheet but here is the first draft that one day I may show to a local to try to fathom some explanation.

Brand	7°	7.5°	8°	9°	9.7°	10°	11°	11.2°
Li Quan	3.10%					3.60%
Snow			2.50%	3.60%
Blue Riband						3.60%	4.30%
Qingdao			3.10%
Melchers Dutch								5%
Budweiser					3.60%
Suntory		3.10%

I spent a good hour there in every sense but made some child-related excuses and left around 9.30. As the kids weren't around I decided I'd have a quick drive to the bloke I'd met yesterday who brought beer to the bosses. He and his family-in-law were there and indeed drinking beer and I was welcomed in like a long-lost family member. The "father" had had a few clearly and was using his best English to try to communicate with me. They were listening to music and he put on his favourite "Yesterday Once More" by Carol Carpenter I believe. I noticed that my friend, who I now realised was Zhang Hua, was wearing a cool football top in a slightly darker that City blue (though hardly different from this season's abomination) and I told him I liked it. That was enough for him to start asking my size and favourite number. Ok I sort of knew I'd be offered one and I did my best to say I'd pay for it but they would hear nothing of it; it would be ready in a couple of days. At least that would mean I would have to go back, which I'm guessing is what they really wanted. After that and a couple more gan beis I called it a night.

Whoops - nearly another double date meal

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

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

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

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

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

Some of the aftermath of the meal

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

Another City win with meal at A Wu's

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

Handsome lads

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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