A Wu meal

We've been here long enough that jetlag shouldn't be an issue but that was my excuse for another 6am wake-up. Today I couldn't be bothered with a run, so I languished in bed until the guilt tripped me into going to play ping pong. I was duly beaten but I sweated more than enough to justify my time and got back in time to get the kids' breakfast. It's becoming as predictable as it has been in previous years, except they no longer want dou jiang. So I end up buying four eggs, one you tiao, and a couple of yumi bing and a portion of jiao zi if they have them and it costs about 80p and there's always enough left for me to have some lunch later. Despite prices rocketing for many things, and the horrible exchange rate from a post-Brexit point of view, this is one of the things that remains nicely affordable.

Tan took the kids out at lunchtime and I knew I'd need a kip but I called A Wu and Ma Laoban to see if they were available for lunch but neither was. This is a bit of a strange experience here but I think of it as a good thing; people are actually busy as opposed to some previous years' experiences.

Tea was at Waipo's, which she really appreciates, even though she eats earlier than us and doesn't eat at the table any more. I don't know why this is but I'm not going to question it. While we were at Waip's, Tan showed a video of a recent kerfuffle in Pingguo where a bloke was covered in blood after a fight with someone. It filled the kids with the heebie-jeebies and meant I had to get them home reasonable early tonight. I'm quite annoyed at that...we get these sort of stories now and again in the local news in London but we don't change our livelihood.

A Wu then called me to go to eat with him and some bosses at the office behind the KTV. I've hardly seen him since I've been here so drove over and it was just like old times with food and beer and cai ma. I excused myself at 9.30 as needed to pick up the kids from Tian Yang Po's bbq where Tan was eating with Huang Chun and A Xia, and took them to the supermarket before heading home for a shower and bed. Tan got back at 2am.

Some people were drinking suan mei jiu but I don't understand why the hip flask was so big or hip-shaped

A really enjoyable meal but I had to hop to a meeting soon after...

Early jog, late ping pong

Yet another pre-6am wake-up so I Weixin'd Liangwen and we met up for a jog at the guangchang. Unlike last year he wasn't with his female jogging partner, and also unlike last year he insisted in jogging even slower than I wanted to. He also wanted to avoid the road areas due to traffic so we headed towards an area with more trees. This gave me the opportunity to spark up a conversation about electric vehicles and go on about our Renault Zoe. I thought he'd be fascinated but he just took in in his stride (literally), and simply agreed with me when I said that within five years most traffic would be electric. Agreeing and understanding such a prolific change should be a major thing in my book, and should at least have provoked a bigger response! But on reflection I've come to get used to this sort of acceptance of change; change where I'm from comes to a greater extent from the people, whereas here is more "dictated" from the government. Although intuitively it may feel that the former is the better, I'm less and less convinced by it. But the consequence of the latter is that people are more accepting of change from above as it is just the way it is.

It still interests me, the view while waiting for the lift

A really normal view of someone stretching in the guangchang

Later I got the kids a sort of pancake filled with sausage and lettuce and fried in not the most healthy way, then took the kids to A Xia's shop where Tan frequents in order to drop them off as a siesta was beckoning. It was so nice to hear A Xia compliment me on my looks as she said I was more handsome than last year. Pathetic maybe but I'll take it. So many people (a handful) have commented positively on my looks this year it genuinely makes the effort to do the swimming and running worthwhile.

I got back and managed an hour or two's kip without too much trouble and when I awoke set about sorting Leilei's iphone. It was palaver 2.0 as in order to reset the phone I needed to confirm it on another device that had his apple ID, of which there were none. Then in order to reset the password it sent an email to his email, but that required 2FA on one of his devices too. I was going nuts as he'd managed to make monthly paid-for subscriptions on "free" apps that I was massively annoyed about but couldn't cancel until the phone was working. Finally I got it to realise it would need to download the latest update, but after ages it still hadn't done so. Then I realised it may be the VPN that was preventing this, so reluctantly turned it off and finally a couple of hours later it reset the phone. It has taken around 10 hours in total to do this. Not happy.

I needed to pay 2000 kuai to Ling Ming for cleaning and sorting out the flat so got in contact with him and drove around to their new flat around 4.30pm. It's a really nice place at the top of the building and has two floors and views over the river. Their kid is two now but doesn't remember me. Ling Ming wouldn't take more than 1800 and after spending a good half an hour complimenting their new abode I made a move as they were going to his wife's mum's to eat.

Ling Ming and his toddler

In the evening I took the kids to play ping pong in the new place we were supposed to have gone to yesterday. Haiwei had sent a Weixin location and we turned up and arrived on the red dot on the map but there was no ping pong to be seen. We asked about and were told to go to the sports centre but that was far from the red dot on the map where we should have been. Eventually after half an hour of phone calls and misunderstanding someone walked down the road to find us at a hotel and took us to a place down a dark alley not that close to the red dot.

We went out for tea first and it pelted it down not for the first time...very refreshing

What we found inside was a massive ping pong place and a competition that was in full sway. Eventually one table was freed up and a bloke invited me on where we practised for a good half hour. The kids too got their chance to have a practice but had to put up with copious semi-professional phone-photographers snapping them at every opportunity. We'd expected to leave by 10pm but only some time after that did things start to calm down and a big photo opportunity was taken with all of us. Apparently there were two other zhen that had come to compete.

Leilei and Xixi apparently had a good time practising while I was doing the same

It was getting on for 11pm so I took the kids back for a quick bbq as they were peckish. We only got five duck tongues and 10 beef and the total came to 50 kuai without any drinks! That makes Tian Yang Po pretty bloody expensive as it was hardly filling. Back home I kept receiving calls to go out and eat with the ping pong people from earlier. Only at 12.30 did I get the chance to when Tan got back, yet I was met with howls of delight and made to gan bei for a few minutes before I ate anything. It was nearly 2am before I got home.

A very rare pic of Leilei and Xixi actually genuinely apparently enjoying each other's company

The ping pong meal I joined finally at 12:30am that went on for a good hour afterwards

Bad lift

Up at a reasonable 8am to spend two hours getting beaten at ping pong. It's become quite a routine not just this year but from the last 6-7 years really. I'm not sure how I'd cope without the exercise. I picked up the kids at midday from A Xia's shop and we went to have gorgeous sweetcorn soup at a place I've been to a few times. They had a little egg-fried rice too. I thought I'd ordered two fried eggs too but what appeared was a much better option - an omelette with plenty of greens that I had to scoff myself as the kids were having none of it.

Back home I only managed a 15 minute doze before being asked to take Tan's pad to Waipo's, where I also got tea for the kids. We had decided to go to ping pong in the evening but were stuck at Waipo's for quite a while as a massive storm yet again laid drops the size of small goldfish abound outside. Only when the drops were scarce enough to do a Billy the Whizz style escape did Leilei and I rush onto the dian dong che to go home to pick up the ping pong bats, or racquets as I understand the official term is, however unlikely it sounds. Actually it's been proven that running fast in the rain makes you get wetter...you live and learn.

Actually apparently it's Billy Whizz, not Billy the Whizz...

Strangely, on the way up the lift stopped at floor 9 where a bloke was waiting. I told him we were going up but he was welcome to come, but he motioned that he would wait. Or he didn't understand a word I said and preferred his own company. A few seconds later as we were ascending we had the awful experience everyone always thinks about but rarely has. The lift stopped all of a sudden and the lights went out leaving us in pitch darkness. For the first few split seconds Leilei and I thought we were falling such was the change in gravity force. It took me a couple of seconds to logic out that it must just be the electricity as we weren't splattered on the floor. We were sweating bullets though as the lack of air conditioning added to the palpatations we were still having. Although petrified, Leilei had the presence of mind to check his fitness watch to see how augmented his heart rate was, though he kept whimpering how scared he was.

It was up to me to remain calm and collected and let him see that I wasn't afraid. I was acutely aware of the heat and the potential lack of oxygen, and managed to prise apart the internal doors. Then Leilei berated me for not having a flashlight app on my phone, so I took a picture using the flash and found we were almost exactly between two floors, I guessed between 11 and 12. Then it dawned on me that the phone in my hand was the obvious piece of apparatus to get us out of here. I was so grateful to see one measly bar of reception, and it was enough to contact Tan, who said she'd call the manager. But it was getting so hot...try as I might I couldn't pull the outer set of external doors open more than an inch, but it was enough to let in some sweet, relatively cool air, not to mention a stab of light. It also gave me the opportunity to shout for help..."jiu ming! jiu ming!", I called, until Leilei told me I should be shouting "jiu women!". Not that it mattered - no-one heard us...we heard what we thought were footsteps, plodding slowly up the stairs, or maybe plodding down, but never getting quieter. We shouted at the footsteps again "jiu women!!" but they didn't hasten, and it was a good 30 seconds later we realised it was the sound of dripping water.

By the light of the phone I saw a number for the lift company so on Leilei's advice called it lest they be able to do anything. By this time Leilei was sitting on the floor as he'd seen a youtube video on how to survive lifts falling down, but in an effort to prove it was only the electricity that had gone I refused to do so and said this must happen all the time (though I didn't really believe that). We'd been in the lift now a good 10 minutes and I was really disappointed that no-one had come. But the lift company did answer the phone and I was explaining which building and what had happened when I realised it was pretty pointless...they wouldn't be able to do anything remotely and help would surely come before they could sort any. Sure enough, while on the phone a bloke came up the stairs and I shouted at the top of my voice so he'd know where we were. I immediately apologised to the woman on the other end of the phone who'd just been deafened by this, and explained it looked like help was at hand, so not to worry. The bloke was able to open the external door of the bottom half of the lift, but there was not so much space to get out there, so I bade him come up to the top half as we saw it. My only concern that the lift would surge into life and slice whoever was getting out of it at the time, so I went for the option that I thought would make for the quickest exit. As the top door opened I told the bloke to move out of the way and shoved Leilei as quick as I could out of the door, before being helped out myself.

What you might see when trapped in a lift - one third of the door of the 11th floor by your knees...

...and what you might see as you escape through the half-12th floor door

What a bloody relief after such a harrowing experience, but the bloke didn't look like much had happened...I guess it wasn't the first time, but how bad would it have been for an elderly woman of Waipo's frailty? They could have died! But it gave me an idea for something that should be mandatory - backup batteries on each lift with just enough power to get to the next floor and open the doors when something like this happens. Blackouts are not that uncommon here....

On the drive back to Waip's we found that only the traffic lights were also out; the other shops nearby all seemed to have electricity. Indeed when I came back to check half an hour later the electricity was back but Leilei understandably didn't want to go up yet. I thought about forcing him to to confront his new fear but let it go as Liangwen was calling me. Apparently instead of going to ping pong at 7.30 we were to go for a couple of drinks first with some mates. Leilei wanted to go back to Waipo's so I dropped him off and went back home to get the table tennis stuff, and actually felt my heart racing a little more as I got in the same lift that 40 minutes previously had trapped us in. In the house I called Liangwen to find out where to go but I didn't get through. I realised suddenly that I'd run out of credit...gosh so lucky that didn't happen an hour ago or we'd have been trapped considerably longer. Then in the lift down Haiwei called me to go out or something but he cut out and I tried to shout to call me back as I had no credit.

Liangwen had told me the name of the place but I only half remembered it, and without internet on the phone it was a bit random to try to find it, asking people who hadn't heard, so I had to wait for him to call me again asking where I was, and then keep him talking until I found a stranger to give the phone to. In the end it was just on the other side of the guangchang and we went to a restaurant room with about six rather drunk looking men, one especially so that when he spoke the others could barely understand either. I didn't know what to make of it really but I joined in a couple of glasses and we left within 20 minutes to ping pong. Haiwei called again to tell me to play ping pong in a different place, and sent me a link which I got as I was connected to the wifi. But I'd already decided to go with Liangwen, and picked up the kids on the way. We only stayed 45 minutes at the 6th floor ping pong place as I felt I should really see Haiwei, so said goodbye, and got back on the dian dong che. It only had four bars of electricity when not moving, and zero when you accelerated so I took it carefully as I got to the guangchang, but it started going seriously slowly and I realised we wouldn't make it, and I couldn't even tell Haiwei. We managed to limp back to the house at 8...7...6 kph, barely enough to balance on two wheels before totally giving up just as we arrived. 53 km we'd managed since we got the bike back...not bad...just got to remember to charge up at four bars next time.

Uncle Yellow had invited me to "drink beer" this evening and had called me a couple of times since table tennis. As it was just around the corner from Waipo's I left the kids there as Tan was out. It was his wife's friend's birthday but it seemed to be mostly blokes and bbq. They seemed a nice bunch, and there was the usual gan bei'ing and picture taking going on. But there was cake too, and although I didn't fancy it it was enough to entice the kids to come out for a bit. But it didn't last long as there wasn't that much to keep them interested so I dumped them off at Waip's again as the people here wanted to have a sing-song. In this case it actually meant that; one of them had a guitar and I finally noticed that the shop we were sitting outside of on the pavement (doing our own bbq) was a music shop. Some bloke did a nice rendition of Knocking on Heaven's Door, before a girl plucked up enough courage to do a song or two in Chinese. It was pleasant but I knew it was well gone 11 and I needed to take the kids back, so after a last gan bei I said goodbye and sure enough as I was taking the kids back I got the call from Tan berating me for being out so late with them...it's not as if they've ever been to bed before midnight so far!

Singing song at Uncle Yellow's wife's friend's birthday bbq

First squat of 2017

Despite the usual 2am going to bed I woke at 5.45 so decided to do a leisurely run of 5.5km. Having a VPN this year on the phone and laptop has made a lot of difference; for the run I could actually track where I went on the map. Breakfast was the usual eggs and you tiao and pancake from the dou jiang place, and then it was work till lunch, siesta, then work again from 3pm. The good thing about the work I'm doing at the moment is that it doesn't require any client intervention, so no-one's waiting on me. This meant that when Li Kun called me to go for a meal I was able to say "ok" and grab the kids and get picked up by him half an hour later.

We went to a new place that is more of a swimming pool than a restaurant, but we took it for the latter and had a lovely al fresco meal without too much in the way of beer. Unfortunately, though, I received my first taste of la du this year. It had taken a good three days for my poo to take on its usual Pingguo texture reflecting a fairly high protein diet, but I could feel the liquid version burgeoning up whether or not that's a verb. Had we been within a few minutes from home and I'd had the dian dong che I'd have grabbed it and managed to hold it but that was not an option. Oh no, it was to be my first squat of 2017. Last year working with a couple of Chinese blokes in Holland I'd heard stories of how their Westernised Chinese friends had managed on a squat toilet. One had taken to removing a single leg of his trousers and tying it around his neck to avoid contact with the floor. I didn't have time to make such a cunning plan, but I had the advantage of shorts. I took my right leg out then put my heel in my shoe, leaving enough space to perch my phone and did the deed just in time. Oh sweet relief but I knew it wouldn't be the last time. How Andge managed a whole level of Angry Birds in 2009 I'll never know. Perhaps it was something to do with the loo not being a public one.

When I got back to the meal there were nods of "we know where you've been", but it wasn't in any way mocking. And when I grabbed another set of tissues it was "we know where you're going" but I didn't give a monkey's cuss. Thankfully that was all for the evening, at least from a squatting perspective.

Meal with Li Kun, pool in background

It would have been nice to go for a swim, but we'll leave that for next time. When we were taken back I took the kids to the guangchang again but it started raining and the bouncy castles were coming down. Yang Haiwei called me to go for a beer but I had to say the kids came first, so couldn't meet him. We ended up going for another magical mystery tour and ending up doing exercises by the stadium as we've done a couple of times before. Not massively interesting in terms of doing new things but enjoyable and bonding.

Late night exercising

Back home while getting the kids ready for bed I got a message to go to KTV from the same friends as the other day and as Tan came home at 11pm I said I'd manage to come for a bit. I was glad I did - friendly people and no forced beer made for a pleasant evening and I was more than ready for sleep when I got back at 1ish.

Normal

Zhang Liangwen had invited me to go jogging at 6.30am but that didn't happen after a well-past 3am sleep last night, but I still got up before the kids and while Leilei went with Tan I took Xixi out to find somewhere different to eat. We happened upon a place with its doors shut which meant air con was on, and as it's been blisteringly hot for the last couple of days we took refuge there. The couple of women working there had hats on and I realised they were probably from a muslim part of China, so I made sure not to order pork. In the end Xixi and I both ordered beef dishes which were really good and I was surprised Xixi ate a fair amount of hers as it was pretty spicy.

Spicy beef noodles for brunch

I've realised it's just normal being here now - I hardly ever feel like taking pictures and the only reason I did of the food was just to put a message on WeChat so that the rest of my Chinese friends would know I'm back in the country. The only aspect of holiday about being here is the relative lack of work at the moment, otherwise it's been mainly catching up with old friends and enjoying the extreme weather, whether hot or raining or both. Ah yes, and managing siestas - those saviours of sanity.

The iphone palaver continued...in order to reset it I needed itunes so installed that on the work laptop but the bloody thing wouldn't connect. Then the same thing happened on my laptop so I had to put it in factory reset mode. Finally it got recognised but when I tried to reset it another error happened. That had taken the best part of an hour so I put this mini project aside as I wanted to get some ping pong in with the kids. After that we went to the guangchang, and unlike yesterday the bouncy castles were up so I let them slide into five-year-old mode and spend half an hour getting drenched there before showering early.

As it was only 10.30pm, I took the kids out on another magical mystery tour on the dian dong che. Nothing magical other than it's something we can't do in the UK and you generally get to learn something new. Today we just went on a new road and found a flashing light that turned out to be some sort of firefly. If nothing else it got me the chance to talk about how this was chemicals reacting in the fly's bum but Xixi told me off for being too sciency.