Up at 7 and couldn't get back to sleep except for when I had slight hallucinations around 10am, after which I got up. I couldn't close my eyes without seeing spider-like shapes from the corner of a window behind lace curtains and it wasn't a nice experience. I'd semi-packed but wasn't too fussed...I had enough to take back and I could leave whatever I wanted here.
But now my leg was really hurting for the first time and I found it hard to walk. I manned up enough to take a shower and take off the bandage, but needed to lie down on the sofa in my office before I could face re-dressing it. By then it was nearly lunchtime and I was mindful that we were to be given a lift at 3pm to be in good time for our flight at 8.10pm from Nanning. So it was off to Waipo's for the last time and although there was no rice there, there were wan tuns that the kids ate. That meant I had leave to find something for myself...it would have been nice to have a final friend meal but I was knackered after four hours sleep and also needed the time to pack.
I got some bottles of pop for the car journey, and probably the last zero sugar shui bi I'd have here this year. I did find Luwen and said goodbye to him as he wasn't able to come last night due to being asleep. Then Tan rang to say she needed a belt for her 27k check-in luggage. 27k? You could have asked what the limits were. The kids and I did have a look in the luggage shop for such a belt but there was nothing forthcoming so for once we came back empty-handed on a shopping trip.
A Heng took us to the airport in an uneventful journey in the large Buick, and we had a thankfully little-turbulent one hour flight to Guangzhou. As we weren’t delayed we were able to take advantage of the decent grub and drink at the lounge there. I’m normally quite sad at this time but life moves quickly and each year it seems quicker that summer comes around and we’re back. Maybe it’s because each passing year is a smaller percentage of our lives so we just perceive it so, or maybe it’s just with the kids growing up so fast there’s always so much to do you don’t notice the time go by. A good incentive to keep busy if ever one was needed.
Leaving Pingguo for the last time in 2017
Some weird pinky hallway in Guangzhou that for some reason Xixi liked
Got up at a reasonable 2pm considering last night. Then moved to the study for a tad more until the kids went out. I felt a bit crap and couldn’t face looking at my dressing but did have a shower. Tan was out with the kids so I decided to go and meet them but I was advised to go to a chemist to remove my bandage first of all, and I took this advice. I went to the chemist across from our house and explained what had happened and they insisted on first removing the bandage. That proved to be a painful experience and I nearly fainted during the process and when I actually glanced at the wound. Then she started doing something weird and I wasn’t sure what, I jerked my leg away and nearly jumped the length of the room. The woman was simply laughing at me but I felt sick. I wouldn’t let her near my leg for a bit until she convinced me she wasn’t going to do anything painful. In the end she got a capsule, then opened it and poured the powder from it over some of the wound. I had no idea if this was valid medicine or quackery and I didn’t have the vocabulary to get understandable information. I let her re-dress the wound softly while she told me not to use the cream the hospital gave me. I didn’t even bother to argue, but bought some more bandage and tape for later. Then she said I should come back later for some milli-wave treatment...what?
Applying a capsule of powder on my wound
Lunch was a buffet, but I wasn’t really in the mood for food. So I took the kids afterwards and I thought I’d go to the pharmacy again just for the purposes of finding out what this milli-wave crap was. You put some apparatus around the place that needs treatment and apparently millimetre waves are output and this heals things. Some boy was already there with his mum and had his hand in some contraption that was doing the waves. I was told to hold some walkie-talkie sized thing close to my wound, but didn’t feel a thing. I let this go on for two minutes, while looking at the milli-wave advertisements (with a white doctor of course). Then I put the stuff down as the kids were getting a bit bored. We were about to go when the nurse caught us and told me I hadn’t had enough time. I was polite enough to lie and say we needed to go somewhere, and was glad she didn’t charge us for the “treatment”. I can only imagine the waves might have some heating effect but I didn’t feel it.
Back home I suddenly remembered I’d recently got a lot of cash out of the bank. I’d had over 3000 kuai on me if I remembered correctly, but didn’t now. I looked in the obvious places but it was nowhere to be seen. So then I called Tan to ask her but she’d not seen it. I then thought the worst and realised it could have got lost in the shenanigans of early this morning. But it was so much it was worth not giving up. I must have had the money in my trouser pocket at some stage, so I looked in the washing machine, in the hanging washing but they weren’t there. Once again I called Tan who told me she’d thrown them out. Thrown them out! How was she supposed to know I suppose…. Without much hope I went downstairs to see if perchance they were in the bin. Normally old women go combing these bins at regular intervals to pick out anything recyclable, and money certainly is. But lo and behold after less than a minute’s rummaging, during which any passers-by must have thought I was completely mad, I found a blood-stained plastic bag, which on further inspection I found contained my trousers and a pair of now-red shoes. What a relief to find the cash still there in the back pocket! I even thought of rescuing the shoes, but in the context they were not that important, and I wouldn’t have time to get them cleaned anyway.
Disgusting trousers in disgusting bin, but the contents were not so
Phew
Relieved, we went out to the funfair and it was deserted, but I let the kids have a couple of goes on the bumper cars, by which time a couple more people had arrived and joined us. Then for the last time this year we went to the exercise park by the stadium till it was time for me to start my Last Supper for this year.
Once again, invitation messages were sent out the same evening and nearly every bloke could make it; Luwen, who starts at 4am, was a little tired. Tan was out so I had to take the kids, and they both sopped over Li Kun’s new baby daughter, who was incredibly cute. I got a call from Tan to take the kids back quickly as it was late (it was 10.30pm) and we had to leave tomorrow (not till late afternoon and everything was packed). I didn’t argue though, and popped them home before coming back. It was a nice meal with mates, though partly due to yesterday a bit more subdued than usual, but at least this year we got to eat outside. Another call from Tan before midnight to tell me the same information about tomorrow was equally unnecessary but I used it as an excuse to wind down the evening and say goodnight to my mates for another year. I did stay up a little too late when I got back though.
For some reason I was convinced we were going back on Thursday and I'd been telling people that. But it just dawned on me that the 30th is Wednesday and I felt like a day had cruelly been taken away from me. More than just a day in fact; 33% of our remaining time. It meant I would somehow have to merge my last night meal with my mates and the music party we'd arranged at the music shop. I guess it will be food first then music.
Ma Laoban has been really busy the last month so we haven't yet had our yearly lunch catch-up, but he called me at 9am to arrange it. Three hours’ preparation time is about as good as it gets here. I was still knackered as had had sketchy sleep last night . I sort of drifted off a little while reading the news later in the morning only to find that the electricity had gone when I roused again.
I could have done with a lot more sleep but there was no way I was going to let down Ma Laoban. We met at his shop and then he drove me to the place to eat. Two blokes came, and we only drank tea, which was a first with him even though he is practically tee-total. I could actually have done with some sleep-inducing beer but decided that it was better to be non-alcoholic, though when I got home at 3pm I still couldn’t sleep despite knowing my body wanted to. So I got up from my non-slumber and went to the local Guan Mart supermarket to see if they could improve on other supermarkets’ poor sugar-free ware. Indeed they could and I found sugar-free Sprite!
Uncle Yellow called to go to Boss Zhou’s again at 6pm, and as I had the time I thought why not? I got there on time but it was clearly too early, as is not normally the case here. I knew I’d have to meet up with Ma Laoban again later as he’d absolutely insisted on it, so I knew I’d have to pace myself. I actually offered to help Boss Zhou and was allowed to serve dishes to the tables rather than actually cook, but at least I was of use more for than just my nationality. Some of the blokes from yesterday turned up and I refused the bai jiu but had a few beers bearing in mind I was pacing myself..Soon after 8pm I made my excuses to go to Ma Laoban's and this was accepted more easily than it might have been, but Uncle Yellow is a bit more understanding than most.
Boss Zhou getting ready to cook up a nice surprise
At Boss Zhou's - they are bulls' ball in the foreground..actually ok
Before going to Ma Laoban’s I went to check if the electricity was back and of course it wasn’t. After checking with a neighbour I confirmed it wasn’t a building issue.which struck me with a little concern. I went downstairs to ask the management and they told me to call someone and I did but didn’t quite understand the problem but apparently someone will come to the house to check it out. Ten minutes later in the pitch dark a bloke came and after a bit of a kerfuffle said it was to do with not having paid the bill, even though I’d asked him that specific question when he arrived. Apparently it was irresolveable until tomorrow as it was already gone 8pm. So Tan and the kids would go to Waipo’s to sleep and I would stay and hope it wasn’t too hot. To be fair I've not used the air-con for sleeping over the last few days, at least until 8am when the sun suggests otherwise.
I got to Ma Laoban's at about 8.30pm but no-one else was there. For someone who doesn't drink he didn’t do a great job of not drinking. He opened a bottle of Australian red wine and put it into an aerator which took a minute to decant it and it was actually really nice. I remembered that in 2008 after three plus months living here the only thing I really missed was a decent glass of rouge but even that is now available here. And he didn't add ice, or lemon, or lemonade.
Aerating red wine at Ma Laoban's
But then I got a call from Tan to provide the electricity book's number so I had to excuse myself from Ma Laoban’s for a few minutes to go home again. I'd been told to look for a red book in the key drawer and had found only a blue one, but from my limited Chinese I understood it was to do with electricity, and guessed the colour I'd been told was wrong. For a change I was right, and took a picture of the appropriate ID page and sent it to Tan on Weixin. Except for an annoying reason despite being connected to the wifi it didn't send. This led to another phone call asking why it hadn't been sent...and I guessed it was the incoming phone call that could have interfered with the sending. This happens a lot in some sort of way; people ring you to hurry up, then ring you again when you're on your way and you have to stop to answer the phone, which is inevitably to tell you to hurry up, which you would have been doing if they hadn't called you to do so....
Anyway eventually it got sent and I went back to Ma Laoban’s, but then 10 minutes later I got another call to go back home and see if the electricity was working. Although before I'd been told explicitly it would not be I decided not to argue and explained I'd be back in a bit. Interestingly we most certainly did have leccy so I told Tan they could all come back here.
Back at Ma Laoban's (again) a couple more people had arrived, plus the female classmates from lunchtime, then a rather drunk bloke who'd also been with us at lunchtime. It was a pleasant evening but I knew I had to see another friend at around 10.30 so I started to make my excuses. Of course no-one was having any of it, unlike Uncle Yellow, and they started gan-bei'ing the wine, which I wasn't too happy about. Finally, Ma Laoban poured what I estimate to be 250ml of the stuff in my glass and said I wasn't to leave until it was gone. So I managed it in a more pronto fashion than I would have liked, but was allowed to leave after several handshakes.
Next stop was a KTV place where I met advertising friend and various other friends thereof. It was busy and boozy and I had to gan bei a few times but at least it wasn’t wine. After a bit, advertising friend suggested it was too noisy there (which I agreed with), so we went to Bar 3000 Degrees at getting on for midnight for a bit of bbq. Then around 1am Li Kun called me to go to Lao Tong Fried Chicken place to eat and drink, so I told him I might pop over in a bit.
The picture in the men's toilet at Bar 3000 Degrees
As it was getting late and advertising friend had to work the next day we bade farewell and I thought “sod it” and told Li Kun I was on my way. He was with some mates and they’d had a fair few already. Stupidly I joined in with them until gone 3am. That’s where it gets a little fuzzy. Li Kun had insisted on someone else driving the bike home while I went with him, which in retrospect was a good idea, although I wholeheartedly disagreed with it at the time. We got home ok though but the bloke had parked the bike by the wrong door. At this moment of my life I should have just accepted that and gone to bed. But being a twit I insisted on moving it to our door. With predictable results. I drove shin-first into the bumper of a car parked in the way not two yards away and came off the worse. Well actually, due to the drink I didn’t feel it as much as I normally would have, but as I walked into our building and into the lift I noticed a trail of blood behind me. I tried to ignore it while I got into the house but Li Kun had seen it too and was following me. Inside, I noticed that the lower nine inches of my right trouser leg were sopping wet with the red stuff, and I don't mean the wine from Ma Laoban’s. Li Kun said we had to go to the hospital but I laughed it off saying it was only a scratch, but knew that really this wasn’t a Monty Python sketch. Li Kun said we definitely had to go and in a moment of sobriety I realised he was right and acquiesced.
Li Kun had called A Wu, who for some reason was up, and we all drove to the hospital. By this time it was getting light, and it all felt a bit weird. I removed my trousers to reveal what turned out to be about a four inch gash after the nurses had washed away most of the blood with a yellow liquid I think was iodine. Then came the bit that sobered me up the most - someone with a white overall came with a needle. I lay back and closed my eyes, knowing that I would not be able to avoid being pierced. I suppose it wasn’t as bad as it might have been, but I should have known why they were injecting me...worse was to come. A couple of minutes later they came with literally a needle and thread, and I realised I was about to be stitched up. For the fourth time tonight, despite the booze, I made the correct decision of not jumping off the bed and refusing this as I might have done another day, but I certainly didn’t watch what happened next, even if I did feel it a bit.
Doing something horrible to my leg
Ghastly stitching
Before...
...and after...I suppose I should be grateful
I was tired and ready to go home after that ordeal, and felt bad for Li Kun and A Wu, who were both still with me taking photos and joking all the time (sometimes that’s just what you need with mates). But no. The next thing was the standard Chinese panacea of giving you a drip, presumably of saline solution. But this was going to require another injection. I refused flatly, but then as Li Kun said “no!” for the fifth time I let them do what they thought was best. Being tired is the second best thing for dealing with irrational fears, and I’d had too much of the best thing previously anyway so a mix of the two made it less fearful and painful than it otherwise would have been. Of course without the beer I wouldn’t have been here in the first place.
So I spent the next hour being drip fed while reclining on a wooden chair that wasn’t quite comfortable enough to fall asleep on, much as I would have liked to. Finally we left around 8.30am and I was wearing my blue sports shorts that Li Kun had thoughtfully advised me to bring. On the way home we stopped off at Luwen’s for breakfast of beef soup which I felt did me better than the drip, but like most things today, I was probably wrong.
What a drip
The hospital receipt - I'll use it for a more advanced Chinese lesson
Finally got home at 9am to go to bed. I had hoped Tan would be asleep but she was up and aware of where I’d been this morning so tail firmly between my legs I grabbed a bottle of water, apologised, and got some kip.
Up lateish but not too late to meet up with Haiwei at 11am as arranged last night. But by 10.45 I still hadn’t received a call from him which is strange, so I called him and clearly woke him up. It transpires that we’ll go to his son’s school at 3pm instead…. Well I’d missed breakfast and didn’t fancy doing much for lunch so I snacked on some dried fish, which I usually have in stock for these times. And anyway Uncle Yellow had invited me to a meal this evening which wouldn’t be later than 6pm so there wouldn't be long to wait.
Some boss, I don’t recall his name, invited me to drink tea after lunchtime, which I did until Haiwei called to say he was picking me up. So I left the dian dong che by the tea boss and five minutes later we arrived at the school. It was a bit of a sweaty walk up the five storeys but I duly did my inspection and said it looked very tidy. The term hadn’t started but there were a couple of teachers there drinking tea so I restarted that. Sometimes I think that the ritual of drinking tea is just something to make it look like you’re doing something instead of nothing while waiting for the next meal. At least it always involves conversation, so if nothing else I’m improving my Chinese a fraction.
I’d got in contact with Steve but at 3.15 he still hadn’t turned up. I’d sent him the location on a map so he shouldn’t have a problem, but for some reason he wasn’t there. I told him to look for a black car before realising he could almost be anywhere in Pingguo and see a black car. But WeChat has the option of letting people know where you are, and once Haiwei explained how to use it I told Steve and we found out he was by the guangchang, literally nearly a mile away so it took him a good 20 minutes to get here as this is not a place for quick walking.
Inside we talked a bit about schooling but didn’t go as specific as offering him a job. Luckily he speaks a little Mandarin so I didn’t have to translate everything. Then we were kindly invited to a meal with Haiwei’s family, but I already had my evening plans so Steve would go without me. But I still needed my dian dong che so Haiwei took us there as it was on the way to his house. On the way Haiwei was asking about Ghana. It was a little tricky to converse and semi-translate at the same time especially with words I wasn’t sure about, but it came down to Ghana being colder than here, and with lower storey houses. I could well have missed something. Also, apparently Ghana is relatively rich due to its natural resources such as bauxite and gold. Ah gold, the natural basis for an abstraction of value due to its scarcity, durability, portability (to some extent), fungibility (to some extent), divisibility (to some extent). But imagine what would happen if they found massive reserves of the stuff under the sea in some Ghanaian port (actually it wouldn’t necessarily have to be in Ghana, it just got me thinking). If they found as much gold in one place as has already been mined the value would plummet. It’s not like its value as jewellry or in electronics justifies its value alone. No wonder people have been trying to emulate this in a digital fashion for years...but it took the solving of the double-spend problem before we finally got a workable digital currency that people can trust due to its trustlessness of a central authority. People will look back and wonder how we managed previously.
The meal was a typically matey-one with the usual suspects from Uncle Yellow’s band of brothers. They were explaining how they each got through two bottles of red wine and three glasses of rice wine (56%) last night, then straight away ordered beer. We stayed there till 11.30pm and that was all I could manage.
Gorgeous grubs on the left, and gorgeous grub in general
For the first time this year we had a meal at Li Jia He Xin as we’d been invited by Lao Lin and Lao Pan. This was a place we’d gone to something like twice a week in previous years but I think the economy here may have peaked and it’s not so common to spend so much any more.
Meal with Lao Pan at Li Jia He Xin
After the meal I took my laptop to the handwriting place I’d taken the kids before as I really wanted to watch the second half of the City match vs Bournemouth outside the house so I just turned up with my laptop and asked if it would be ok and of course it was. We managed a couple of drinks but I was firmly focused on the game...it was 1-1 and into injury time and the bloody stream went...no amount of coaxing it would bring it back so checked on Flashscores...90+5 and still 1-1...shit. But Sterling performed a miracle at 90+7 and I shouted out much to their bemusement. Gosh we really needed those three points...but please don’t leave it so late again.
The other day in the supermarket my ongoing nightmare literally came true; I met a foreigner - Steve, from Ghana and his mate. They stuck out even more so than me due to their hue, and I felt I needed to introduce myself as I’d actually heard about their existence. It turns out Steve is based in Pingguo and his mate Max is in Baise. We had swapped WeChat IDs and agreed to meet and tonight was to be the time. I called up Haiwei and he was in his office so I told Steve where it was. Apparently Max was back in Baise but his girlfriend is a local lass so there wouldn’t be a problem finding the place. They turned up and we had an enjoyable few beers and bits to eat. Haiwei was interested in his salary and when he found out what it was he was disgusted. He said foreigners should be paid more as it’s expensive to come here and they make better English teachers. I considered questioning that but thought the better of it.
It transpired that the next day we would take Steve to where Haiwei’s younger son goes to school to see if we could get him a better deal. But tonight was to drink beer and Steve and his girlfriend had obviously had some practice.
