No credit and no charge

Up at 3am for a few hours but meandered through sleep till lunchtime. I received an SMS at 4.53am saying my account was underfunded by 129.39 kuai. What? Ok, the first time yesterday I could understand but this was just 12 hours later! I forwarded the text to Li Kun as I thought there must be some issue. But he just confirmed it was underfunded and that I needed to top-up. Well I wasn't going to spending 250 kuai a day. Li Kun said maybe someone had been calling abroad...but surely the boys wouldn't have been that stupid with all the messaging apps and VPN? I found out later Leilei had been calling abroad...bloody 18 year-olds...how can you not be aware of foreign phone calls? Probably because they've never really had the concept of paying for electronic communication, and don't consider the difference between using mobile data and an actual voice call.

I had my doubts about the dian dong ches and had them confirmed when Leilei had paid me back 200 kuai and I'd put it on our mobile account and had mobile data again. I tried driving one of the ches and it barely moved, meaning no overnight charging. I tried more attempts using Weixin but was going round in circles. Eventually I "followed" the company that does the charging and after a convoluted sweat-inducing few minutes I managed to get the charging light to change from green to red which I was reasonably confident it meant was charging now. Finally!

But by now it was raining again and without wheels it wasn't practical to go to the police place to register us. Tan said they were now getting very strict about being registered when you arrive in the country. If that was the case why were they closed for Dragon Boat day?

At least they still have a fairly decent selection at the supermarket by the guangchang

As it was getting on for 6pm I was aware we'd been invited out to a meal at A Wu's new office, so set about getting home to pick up the boys to walk over there. To be fair they have been ok about turning up for such meals for a while at least, but they were already out eating DFC, so I just went by myself and to be fair it was one of those boss meals they would have been fairly bored at.

I need more sleep

Bloody hell I woke up at 3.30am again. Stupidly since we took the flight I have forgotten to take my melatonin as really its main use is supposedly to counter jetlag. And I've been taking it most nights for the last few months despite almost no jets.... Well with the help of VPN and Youtube podcasts I managed to doze on and off, too tired to go to ping pong but too awake for a proper sleep. If I was living here properly I'd have just got up and got on with my day, knowing I would find a few spaces (in terms of time) to grab a nap here and there.

In the morning Jiuma had left to go to Baise, saying Erjie would turn up at 3pm. I didn't really pay much attention to that as people say lots of things here. But at 2pm Erjie video-called me to say she was outside Pingguo and was going to pop in to see Leilei. Sure enough a couple of hours later there was a knock on the door and Erjie and a couple of other ladies walked in and shrieked to see Leilei. Of course as all relatives do they remarked on how tall and how thin he is. But he seems pretty cool with that. As an 18 year-old I was so self concious about being thin. But we managed the photo-shoot and then they said they were going to Baise for a meal and that we could go with them. Hmmm...no thank you was our reply but we were told any time we wanted to go there we could get a hotel for free...yeah not dodgy at all.

Leilei with Erjie and another aunty

Leilei had forwarded me a text, which I worked out was saying the account was under-funded. What? Already, after four days? Oh well, I guess Li Kun had just got us the cards but no credit which is fair enough as we haven't paid for them yet. Topping up would be via Weixin of course and Yima's friend helped me out as I topped up my account with 50 and the same for Leilei. I tried to top up Nezha's account but it wouldn't allow me to input his number for some reason. I know when Li Kun got us our cards mine was the "main" one and the others linked to my account. In fact I'm not sure I needed to top up Leilei's at all. Anyway the text I received appeared to show my account was still 112.99 kuai in debt. So I added 100 and then 30 and that appeared to enable all three of us to get back online outside of wifi zones.

Bugger, I still hadn't registered us and we'd been here for five days already. Five days or 5 days? The former seems more correct but in this internet age do we need to bother? I understand in general from one to nine should be written like that but from 10 and above it's the number form. But is it a rule set in stone? Are any rules for the English language set in stone? It doesn't bother me that much as I'm not an English teacher but I just want one single rule to be adhered to: "literally" means exactly as is. Not similar to. If we could adhere to that single rule I'd be happy for the rest of English to swim about in the mud of ambiguity.

Well it has pretty much been raining since we got here but at 4.30pm there was a break and I took this opportunity to go to the police station. It was still overcast but only about 30 degrees so I walked it. It's such a cheap thrill, walking in Pingguo. Even though almost no-one shouts "hello!" any more, I still have an acute awareness of where I am and that to some extent I will be judged as a foreigner and I will never lose that feeling of needing to be a "good" diplomat. I got to the vicinity of the police station and asked a shopkeeper if he knew where it was. He pointed and said "not far" which was all I really needed. Three minutes later I was there and couldn't understand how I'd missed it the other day.

Inside I explained that I needed to register us and the lady wasn't sure what I meant. I wasn't really sure either so just said when we come here we need to show our passports to the local police and she seemed to get it. But then the other police woman - no, just police person - told me that I had to go to another place to "deng ji wai guo ren". I was slightly disappointed but not surprised; there have been at least five places we've registered ourselves in the last 19 years or so. She kindly wrote a couple of sentences to explain where to go and who to see in the building, which was on the other side of town and they wouldn't hear of me walking there (not least because it would take 45 mins and they closed in 30).

So after this most recent unsuccessful attempt to register ourselves I started walking back and picked up a couple of small towels for wiping the seats of the dian dong ches clean. Again, such a trivial thing as that turned into a delight of talking with the shopkeeper's daughter who didn't know how much to charge me so called her mum to find out. Yes it was only a 2 minute conversation with her but it probably gave us both more value than it would have normally...although it most ways it was totally normal. I also needed a shower mat to save us from a near-certain injury in the slippy bathroom. Neither of the shops I tried understood the Google translation of shower mat so I had to explain the action of taking a shower and slipping over in order to get them to understand what I needed. But the second shop had a dirty one hiding away somewhere.

A Wu called as is his wont and I agreed to meet him shortly at his new office. But first I wanted to sort out charging the dian dong ches. These days all the charging places have a number and a QR code, so clearly I'd need to sort something in Weixin. I duly scanned the code then got page after page of instructions in Chinese that I was gutted not to understand. This is the difference between being able to chat to a person in Chinese and actually interacting with applications. I got as far as taking a screenshot then literally writing the characters down on paper then inputting them into Pleco, and found out I needed to fund an account. Fair enough I added 10 kuai but then there was more stuff to do. I sort of gave up and sent Tan a couple of screenshots and she sort of helped. I plugged them both in and saw that the chargers' lights were green so hoped they were charging...green is for "go", right?

The evening consisted in a walk to A Wu's new office for "tea", then going out to a restaurant not far from our place. I pinged the boys and was a bit surprised to hear that they'd come over (on their hired bikes). The meal was with Boss Wei, who seems to be A Wu's main boss-companion so far this time. Plus A Wu's new wife and Boss Wei's wife and a few other people. The boys turned up to the delight of the others but Nezha said he felt sick and went to the loo. Meaning they both left minutes later. I guess it does take time for your belly to adjust here. 

At 9pm I explained I'd been invited out to see another friend so I was allowed to leave. I went to meet Lu zong at his new place in Jiang Bing Lu. Annoyingly I can't order a didi che with my phone without doing photo ID, which I'm not sure is a good idea as I have Li Kun's banking details and his photo ID attached to my phone too. So as I saw no other means of transport I just ended up walking and getting there a little late. We had a couple of beers  and bbq with some friends for a couple of hours before A Wu wanted to meet up again at a KTV bar around midnight. Again I walked the 1k or so and made it there to find them in a strangely non-singing room in the KTV place. I was getting pretty tired and it didn't help that the woman who decided to sit next to me whooped me at cai ma, And I made my excuses and left soon after 1am.

Nice grub

Awoke bang on 3.30am after 3h30 sleep. So much for getting over the jetlag. Dropped off a little between 8-11 though, and again after heating up some leftovers from Uncle Yellow's meal a couple of days ago.

Some mate IM'd me at 5.42pm to drink beer and as I had nothing officially on I said I should be able to. Then I bumped into Waterman, no, Lu Zong as is his name I now know for sure, and he asked me to go out tonight. I said I may already be busy but maybe I could come over later. I had a portion of bao zi at our local place and the woman was very happy to see me after such a long time.

Then Chen pinged me to ask me to go for a bite and I explained about the existing dates. He answered fairly logically that the bloke (who quite frankly I couldn't remember) who'd invited me for a drink hadn't even given a time so we could count him out, and that we wouldn't need to go to Lu Zong's till 9pm. So I pinged the bloke I should be seeing and explained I had two other dates and we could meet up in a couple of days, and he said "ok" and 10 minutes later I was waiting outside our building, watching Chen coming up the road in live location on Weixin. When I saw him lean out and shout my name from the right-hand side of the car I knew he must be in a didi che and that meant he was going to drink, as he's one of the few people I know who are very strict on themselves about not drink-driving.

We drove up to just north of the guangchang into a residential area where we walked in to what looked like an alcohol shop, to a great cheer from mostly red-faced people drinking baijiu. Chen was aware of my dislike of this vile liquid and had brought a load of German beer. And although it may not have been real German beer it was German strength at 5% so I knew I'd need to be careful. But I was brought straight up to the boss to gan bei a large glass of beer with his thimbleful, but after that I insisted on half or third measures when gan bei'ing the rest of the table.

I wanted to take a picture of the food and that was fine but Chen made a point of me not taking a picture of the people. I sort of got that and understood that the multiple people taking pictures with us were of their own volition.

Nice array of food at the meal

Well 9pm arrived and it was pretty clear we wouldn't be going to Lu zong's place so we went with the flow. Then I got in contact with Leilei and it appeared they had sussed out how to use the public dian dong ches using Weixin. Now that he has someone's card assigned to his account he can pay for stuff with a simple scan. So he simply scanned a couple of the yellow bikes and they both rode up to where we were. To more cheers of course! I do understand that people still like to have their photos taken with us, but I was happy it was the boys who were more the centre of attention rather than me. Apparently they hadn't eaten since lunch so gorged themselves on the grub, and in this case quite literally were eating grubs, as far as I could understand.... Well they were explained to me as "wood worms" which sounds self-explanatory but I wasn't aware they were so big.

The boys enjoying their grub

Oh dear...

The boys made their excuses after a while and at well gone 11pm I had to admit I was flagging again. But Chen is cool and understands that and won't try to force me to stay. So one gan bei later I was saying my goodbyes and not quite committing to coming back tomorrow as invited. Chen had ordered a didi che and 5 minutes later I was back home not even contemplating a night cap.

Back to ping pong and meal with Haiwei

Somehow I was up bang on 7am as if jetlag never existed. I could easily have gone back to sleep but did my trick of logicking myself into shorts and a light tee-shirt and grabbing a couple of bottles of water and my trusty table tennis bat. After a couple of mouthfuls of yesterday evening's doggy bag made my way to the old people's leisure centre for the first time in getting on for four years.

The tables had changed, as had the floor, and I recognised no-one from before. And maybe for the first time I wasn't the youngest person there. But within 30 seconds of walking into the room I was invited to play. It's one of my greatest pleasures here, at least in the morning time. The bloke I was playing decided we would play a game and for once I didn't have to ask as I knew it would be five games. I was happy with losing the first 11-8 and ecstatic to win the second 12-10! I lost the next three of course but I will still chalk it up as another moral victory. I then did the rounds with a woman of my age and another bloke before someone I recognised walked in and gave me a shout of recognition before shaking my hand and getting on the table with me. He proceeded to put me in my place until even he could see that I was waning and he told the woman to replace me. That was what I needed as it was now 10am and I could go home and get the boys some breakfast.

They hadn't rustled but I knocked to ask them for their passports as I'd need to register us with the police for our stay. But not before going to the dou jiang place we've been to for years to get them some bao zi as the jiaozi were already sold out.

Sadly my dian dong che is broken, and according to jiuma it will be 1000 kuai to repair so not worth it for 7 weeks. I told her I agreed but inside I wasn't sure. It's a major form of freedom here. But she said we could use another one that she'd bring round but she'd already told Leilei about that and he was excited about using it with Nezha. So maybe in the end I'll pay for it to be fixed and then the family-in-law will be able to use it in the future.

So I took her red dian dong che out in the rain to find the police place. This has been a bit of a wild goose chase in the past as it's been in at least three different locations. But I found the place we'd been to for the last two times and of course it was boarded up. I asked the bloke in the neighbouring water place (that was blasting music out as they do) and he said they'd moved down the road and I got him to write the name on my phone so I'd be able to find it later as apparently they were on holiday today and tomorrow as it is dragon boat holiday at the moment.

I did drive down to try to find the new place so I'd know where to go Monday and came across a police-looking place with people wearing police-like uniforms in it. I asked if they were the police and they said no it was 200 metres further down the road. 200 metres further down the road I saw nothing police-like so it's going to be a question of getting Uncle Yellow to help again I guess.

While on the dian dong che I decided to get some jiaozi from our old place near our old house. But I happened upon the water place next door first and found Waterman sitting there. He jumped to his feet and we had a hug. He immediately took a video of me and sent it on Weixin then we shook hands again and drank tea for a few minutes while he invited me to a new place in Jiang Bing Lu when I had time. He understood when I said I needed to get some food and got three portions for 18 kuai - more than the last time but understandable and still delicious. Annoyingly Weixin pay didn't work, or rather it did but said I needed to await an SMS to confirm but it never came. And a couple of doors down I picked up a six pack of Li Quan and a couple of zero-sugar lemonades as I planned to have another siesta.

The lads still hadn't stirred when I brought the jiao zi so now they had both breakfast and lunch on the table. I managed a portion of jiaozi but despite the early start only managed to drop off after 3pm to a Lex Fridman podcast thanks to Pure VPN being the only reliable one so far. A Wu called to wake me up an hour later and I didn't really know what he wanted but I told him we'd been invited to Yang Haiwei's tonight. Then I got three more calls that I thought were from A Wu so I ignored them in an attempt to get more shuteye until I realised at 5.40 that it was Haiwei calling me. So much for being ready at 6pm, he was already on his way to pick us up and wanted to know where we were.

I'd already showered after ping pong so picked up one of the remaining duty free bottles and 5 minutes later we were in his car driving to his friend's place. He spent the next 40 minutes or so cooking and the boys were asking how long to wait. But this is China and you don't ask such questions. At least there were snacks to keep the wolves from the door.

Well we started with lamb soup with lots of meat in it but it was strange that there was only us three plus Haiwei and the woman of the house. Leilei spotted what he thought was a tiny maggot and said it put him off his soup, and that put Nezha off eating the rest of his. I looked at the so-called "maggot" and could barely work out anything other than an excuse. Obviously I couldn't explain a maggot for fear of offending the cook so I just explained the boys didn't really like soup and could they have a bowl of rice instead? Of course they could and they did actually finish it before asking if they could go for a walk.

Spot the maggot

Nice meal at Haiwei's

That was the last I saw of them as the woman's husband walked in with two crates of beer in addition to the cans we'd already started on. Haiwei's younger son came out of his shell a little and spoke a very little English so I'd done my job. We went on till well after 11pm when Haiwei could see I was flagging and drove me home as you do, and I was asleep by midnight.

Music at Li Kun's and evening meal with Uncle Yellow et al

Up and down from 4.30am till getting on for 9am when it was just "up". The lads were up soon after and it seems they had had a better sleep than me but I wasn't complaining. They grabbed the showers they didn't have last night and I was pinged by Li Kun who said he was at the dentist's but would be at his place at 1pm to give us our holy SIM cards. It's always a huge deal to have a working SIM with data but especially this year as the lads will want to go out together without me and without wishing to virtually chaperone them I will need to be in contact. After all 18 years is not the most mature time of your life (I speak from experience).

They took themselves out to get breakfast and had 16 jiao zi between them. I had nothing as is my wont. Then we left soon after midday to attempt to withdraw some money from the bank and get some provisions from the supermarket. The deluge that had defined the morning had stopped but we foolishly went out without umbrellas and of course after 5 minutes it started again. We avoided most of the moisture by walking under the overhangs of the shops until we came upon the Agricultural Bank of China. Bugger - my card was not accepted in the first or second booth. We are down to 300 kuai after I found another 100 kuai in my wallet so I must sort this out soon.

I chose "English" but the error message most certainly wasn't 

We continued down to where I thought Li Kun's place was, helped by a map he sent and my memory. We were hungry so stopped into an eatery but the boys were not impressed by what appeared to be the fare or my lack of translation skills when it comes to food. So we stepped out and went to the supermarket Leilei and I had been to a few times before that sells a decent range of sugar-free drinks. Nezha wanted some dry beef but we couldn't find any so he accepted spicy wet octopus. I got two boiled eggs and Leilei some crisps as he wasn't hungry after the eight baozi late morning. I asked the ladies at the till if there was wifi and of course there was so I connected and we ate our wares as I confirmed we were pretty close to Li Kun's place.

Uncle Yellow had also contacted me to invite us to Jiang Bing Lu to eat with Boss Zhou and A Ning - friends for many years now. After last night with Li Kun I was a lot happier that the boys would come along and not be bored (at least for a while). The last time we were here it was like taking blood from a stone to get Leilei and Xixi to go out for a meal with my friends. I just hope they don't get too much of a taste for the beer.

We found Li Kun pretty easily and the next couple of hours were a wonderful mix of tea and music. It sounds a bit Leonard Cohenesque but both the lads got into playing instruments with Li Kun and myself and I saw a side of my son I'd never really seen before. Being painfully shy for most of his life he engaged with Li Kun in Chinese and music (two important languages) and Nezha was doing so too at least in music. We ended up sharing each other's music and doing some live jamming and Nezha was really enjoying it. We'd found a medium that surpassed spoken language to some extent or rather augmented it. A bit like maths in a way...totally international. We left only to get some rest at our place as we knew we'd be going at at 6pm to see Uncle Yellow.

I managed a snooze from 3-5pm despite the Vanilla full-sugar Coke I bought thinking it was both sugar and caffeine free, while the boys went out to see the town again. Yes, Pingguo is officially a city now...for the last 3 years or so but it will always be a town in my heart. 

Soon after 6pm we left for Jiang Bing Lu by the river. It would be about a 20-odd minute walk if we couldn't find another means. But on a corner I saw three or four white cars about the size of a Ford Focus - too small to be boss cars but too similar to be a coincidence. So I asked the driver of one of them if it was a taxi, but he didn't seem to understand, so I thought I was mistaken (租车 isn't it?). But then I double-checked using the international term "taxi" and he nodded and even said "yes" in English. So we jumped in and I said Jiang Bing Lu but he seemed unsure...normally such taxis are hailed by the Didi Che app in WeiXin but I didn't think it would work for me as I need to set it to my new number. But I showed him on the map on his phone and we were there four minutes later. I was getting my money out when he asked if I couldn't pay by WeiXin. I thought I'd try it anyway and he said 6 kuai, and to scan a certain QR code. As if by magic it actually worked as I still had some money in my account.

Uncle Yellow, his family, Boss Zhou, A Ning, and a couple of other people were there at a table not in a private area, and for the next three hours or so what followed was a typically lovely meal. Nezha was asked what he'd like to eat and he answered "chicken" when I translated the next thing we knew that a fresh one was being tracked down. Nezha wanted to see it being slaughtered but we were told it was not possible. I doubt that but they probably preferred our company at the meal. And indeed 45 minutes later the dish was served. But the boys, as has been their wont so far at every meal (both of them) wanted to go for a walk for a while and I explained it was Nezha's first time in Pingguo and he wanted to see the place so it was ok. Also, unlike last night they were on Coke and water instead of beer, which I was relieved to see (worried that they'll get a taste for it).

I pinged A Wu during the meal as I thought I ought to let him know I was there rather than him find out by seeing me cai ma on Douyin. Of course he was about and told me to come to the KTV place after I'd eaten. Uncle Yellow was fine with this so we dropped the boys off and I walked the rest of the way to the KTV place. At the counter I showed the address that A Wu had sent, thinking it would be one of the posh rooms but actually it was another Boss Zhou's place behind the KTV building that I'd been to copious times before. A Wu was in fine fettle and grabbed me and picked me up with his bearhug. There were over a dozen drunk men and a couple of sober women around the table and I had to ganbei with most of them, multiple times over the hour or so that I spent there. I was flagging and said I had to go at about 11.30 so A Wu came with me. For once we didn't drive or take a taxi, but walked the 10 minutes to Jiuma's place where I wasn't even tempted with a nightcap.