Family meal

Up at a stupid 7.30am after only getting to sleep at 4am due to the late return of the ladies, but after a yoghurt managed to put some clothes in the wash using up the last of the washing liquid. Dozed a little till 10.30 before I fell into a deeper sleep while listening to a discussion on the origins of life with Nick Lane. Somehow I must have been awake enough to restart it after 90 minutes and fell asleep again to the repeat before it turned 1pm, and I'd finally had 7h30 of sleep in total. Xixi was up and Jiuma, Erjie, Qiqi gege, and A Heng, his wife and child had come around to visit.

So it was a loud half an hour of people who hadn't seen each other for four years with many a photo taken. Xixi was getting a little tired of this but played along until I came up with the genuine excuse of needing to get two more towels from the supermarket. So I said I'd take her, and Tan, who was with A Xia, told me to take her to A Xia's shop after to try on some clothes. Xixi evidently thought that would be worse than coming home so we set off to Guanmart with A Heng's wife (I now know she is called Xiao Jun) and their baby following us on their dian dong che. We got a trolley and the ladies filled it with various sweet things to eat and drink, and I dutifully got two cheap towels and some more (mint) shower gel as now both bathrooms are in use. There was no question of anyone else paying not that I would have allowed that, and when I'd scanned my card and got my receipt they told me I'd won some eggs or rice. And indeed when we showed the receipt I needed to write my (Chinese) name and number on three separate slips of paper and hand them to them. But in fact these three slips were to get me into the draw tomorrow evening for...well Xixi seemed to understand but I didn't have much of a clue. We'll aim to be here at 7.30pm tomorrow though. And they gave us our choice of four fresh eggs instead of the rice.

Family photo with Nezha

We came straight back home where it seemed it was even busier with relatives. It was an hour before the England v Haiti match and I asked Qiqi if it would be on tv. He had a search and apparently it would be for 19.9 kuai. I said not to bother as we'd probably only watch a little anyway. But he then found the last 10 minutes of the Zambia v Japan game and didn't have to pay for it. V or vs? V vs vs? Ok it looks like I'll stick with v. It was determined that we'd be eating at home, which was by far the right decision despite the lack of table space. 5.30pm rolled around and Qiqi found the England match and indeed didn't have to pay anything. It wasn't the most interesting match and we could easily have drawn/lost. At least at dinnertime some of us were able to take our own bowls and eat from the sofa watching the match while some food was plonked on Running Dog. Jiuma said to leave the tea table here as it would be no problem, so I said I was grateful and had asked for a quote to take it back to the UK but A Heng laughed as he said at 300 jin it would be far too heavy to be worth it and I'm 90% sure he's right.

The drinking water had run out, and the 5 litres I'd bought last night wasn't going to last any time with the amount of people there, so Tan told me that there was a place in the complex we could go to that would dispense water and we only needed to scan a card. This sounded deceptively simple but I grabbed the 15 litre bottle and was about to go when A Heng said he'd accompany me. Secretly I was a little ok with that as had no idea where to go despite them saying it was "close". Well it was only 50 yards away and simple as piss to put the bottle in and wait for it to fill up 7.5 litres while listening to The Blue Danube, but it felt very much like being on the set of Squid Games with that music and being in an Asian setting. Well that lasted all of two minutes before for some reason we walked the long way back home and when asked of course told A Heng I wasn't tired. When we arrived I was sweating enough to change my top.

Filling up water was cool but felt a bit Squid game with the music

Some of a family meal

Xixi and I had forgotten to get washing liquid for the clothes so went to the supermarket by the guangchang to make up for it and picked up some fresh boiled quail eggs again, before going to look for The Sun Shop where Xixi wanted to get some presents for friends. Well it was still there but had hopped across to the other side of the road. It was empty of people but open so we walked in and Xixi found some pairs of "Nike" socks for 17 kuai each. I told her they were fake but she said no-one would notice.... The cash register registered 97 kuai, but the shopkeeper insisted on totting it up on his calculator...I told Xixi he'd be working out a discount but in fact he told us it would be 98.5 kuai. I didn't argue.

At The Sun Shop

Xixi getting along with A Heng's daughter

A Wu had already sent me a video of Boss Zhou's place where they were watching China play Denmark, so I dropped Xixi off with Tan at A Xia's place where they have their own KTV room, and made my way over to Boss Zhou's as you do. Well it wasn't China that were playing but another team in their yellow away kit - Pingguo were up 1-0 at Jiangxi Beidamen which was good. But it only lasted another 5 minutes as the second half of the arguably more important world cup started. A Wu wasn't there due to taking the children home, so I watched an even half at the end of which Denmark scored a slightly lucky goal and China so nearly equalised in extra time. Boss Zhou seemed to appreciate my appreciation of the game and knew when to applaud. Luckily we went fairly easy on the beer, and there was enough food to fill me up as I hadn't had more than a couple of mouthfuls at home. The crayfish were particularly nice despite the tiny amount of meat you (I) actually can get out of them. A Wu then turned up after having performed his kidly duties so we had a couple more drinks and a few games of mo pai, which I'm slowly getting used to.

Soon after 10pm I went to pick up Xixi from A Xia's and before going home I remembered we needed to cut the ladies some keys. I thought we'd check by the market place but all the fruit places and key cutting places were closed. Except there was a bit of light coming from one of them. We walked over and indeed one of the key places was not shut up, but there was no-one there either. I found a phone number on the side and decided to call it, and should not have been surprised to get an answer. I asked if he was the key bloke and it transpired he was and he would be over in 6 minutes or 7 minutes. Which he was. No question of any of his wares being taken which is so refreshing. 5 minutes later we had two fresh keys and he would only take 6 kuai. I tried to argue that 2 x 4 equals 8 but he said two keys were 6 kuai and I gave up arguing any more. I was just grateful to have found a locksmith so late.

Key cutting at 10.30pm

Back home around midnight I was looking for an excuse to burn off the last few km of the dian dong che before putting it to charge when I got a timely message from a bbq friend saying they were at some "club" bar a couple of km away. Not looking a gift horse in the mouth I went over there for an hour or so and again kept it fairly easy on the beers other than a little cai ma. Back home at 2ish there were no empty slots to charge the bike at the normal place or at our area, so I managed to find one at the neighbouring building. But try as I might the bloody thing wouldn't charge. I thought it might be as I had no data left, so took a picture of the faded QR code and walked home to try again. Five times I tried before nearly giving up and going to bed, but I knew to be without my steed tomorrow would be grim, so mustered up enough energy to go back outside wearing only some shorts and flipflops and plugged it in to the next plug, and lo and behold 30 seconds later the red light came on and the charger confirmed the batteries were nearly empty. Back home I still couldn't sleep so turned my VPN to the UK and tried Netflix. Yes! It let me log in and I watched the first two episodes of the new Black Mirror series and remembered it turning 6am before I finally got some shuteye.

Return of the ladies and feeling a bit better

Night blended into day with sleep nothing more than the odd doze, but at least the hallucinations had somewhat died down, though I was still achy everywhere. I managed the contents of the last wedding box of nuts and sweet biscuits I'd never normally touch but reckoned I needed the sugar energy, and a yoghurt for the same reason. I checked the flight and saw they were nearly half way through and interestingly going the "normal" route we always used to go over Russia. I guess relations between the countries are still ok, despite the departure airport.

We've pretty much run out of food and I didn't fancy going out in case I got taken short. The boys weren't up and any normal person here would simply order something online. But the risk vector for something going wrong was just to high with the Chinese characters, finding the right app on Weixin, inputting the address in the right format etc. I'd need to do this with a local first of all before I'd be confident enough to do myself. So I took the calculated risk of getting on the dian dong che and picking up a couple of portions of jiaozi as Nezha had told me he had already eaten. Back home I wolfed mine down with another yoghurt, then had a few more trips to the loo and finally while I was watching Computerphile on YT I fell asleep for an hour, feeling significantly better afterwards.

Just as well as I watched the ladies' plane touch down thanks to flightradar24, although it wasn't as accurate as it appears in the UK - something to do with the Chinese government insisting on obfuscating exact coordinates as I learnt from a previous employment. Well it appeared that on the flight they were told they didn't need landing cards, unlike us, and that the QR code to say they were covid-free would be fine, but when they arrived they were told the QR code was out of date. I was not going to argue, and they luckily could redo the covid-free QR code and manually write the landing cards, and it just took longer than it otherwise would have. I told Tan they had plenty of time which was true, and they ended up at the gate 90 minutes before it was due to go.... I said why not take advantage of the lounge but may as well have told them to levitate.

Feeling better after a proper hour's sleep I agreed to meet Zhang Yangwen, whom I'd been in contact with recently but couldn't meet in Tian Dong due to my illness, and nearly didn't go due to an umpteenth bout of la du near the time. But I ventured out and we went for a couple of rounds of walking round the tennis courts as we'd done in previous years, before going to the new ping pong place near the stadium. We had a short practice then he said we'd start a game. I knew he was not playing at his best, on purpose annoyingly, and I only lost 6-2 or so in games, but it was good to sweat stuff out after being bed-bound for nearly 48 hours. Haiwei was also around and told me to meet him for a couple of beers afterwards. Well beer was the one thing I'd avoided in the last 48 hours or so (maybe 40), but I said I'd contact him later.

But before I got home Li Kun said he fancied bbq and I should invite him. I didn't mind this in the least, and said I'd go after a shower. He sent a weizhi and half an hour later I turned up to the shout of "Peng Duoming!". But it was one of his mates, and the shop evidently his and his wife's. They got out a bbq and set it up with some coal and I realised it would be a homely affair. I told Li Kun I was already there and while the wife went to tend to something I sat at the bbq and did some turning as if to feel as though I was doing something useful.

I've watched them do this but never had the chance to do a bit myself

The music teacher and his wife turned up shortly after Li Kun, plus some other guitarist, and we had a very pleasant meal of bbq, smelly tofu, and of course weak beer, without any need for cai ma. Haiwei had sent me a weizhi and rang me and I said I'd be "more than half an hour", which seemed acceptable. Then I pinged A Xia to see how she was getting on picking up the ladies, and she said she was waiting. Thanks to flightradar24 I could see that they'd touched down at 10.56pm, so let her know. Which meant I'd better go and see Haiwei and his ping pong friends before getting home to tidy up the house a bit.

So excuses were made, and I happily paid 220 kuai for the bbq that had fed seven people and still had a bit left, and drove on down to the guangchang to meet Haiwei and the people he'd been playing with that night. It was a nice evening with some people I didn't know until we saw two men leave the neighbouring bbq place, one much the worse for wear. It was classic drunkenness but while that might be funny on YouTube when he's trying to walk past you you worry about him falling on the table or something. He avoided our table but did one of those drunken circles where he managed to face the front all the time but do a semicircle backwards before one forwards then plunging between two dian dong ches narrowly avoiding domino'ing then all over. Somehow he got up and staggered a few more feet, before disappearing into a housing complex next door. One of the ladies at our table rushed to the bbq place to fetch his mate, who was also rather the worse for wear but at least able to walk, and he seemed to say someone was coming for him. I don't know how true that was but he did then talk to someone who looked like a delivery driver, and I hoped he would somehow be the person responsible for getting him home.

That would have been a reasonable end to the night but the drunk's less drunken mate then came to sit with us and said he knew I knew A Wu...well I wasn't going to deny that. But he wanted to call him and as it was midnight I suggested he didn't. He spent the best part of 10 minutes trying to find him in his phone by scribbling characters in his contacts page but coming up with nothing. But he was duly poured a beer and downed it when we had a third. You realise how much of a bore such drunks can be when they take over the conversation and also make you worried they may fall over or do some other unpredictable thing. A drink later he'd managed to find A Wu and rang him and passed the phone to me. I just hung up and said it was too late. Did he twig? A minute later he waited till A Wu had answered then handed the phone to me and an equally drunken A Wu confirmed the fact that he was and I said to talk another time and hung up again.

It took another 10 minutes and a couple of glasses of beer but we all agreed it was the end of the night and thankfully set off home. I didn't forget to get some water for the ladies and as soon as I'd mopped the floor of the kitchen I got a call from Tan on A Xia's phone to say they'd be arriving in a few minutes. Well it was nice to have the both of them back, and despite Tan criticising the state of the flat (what can you do?) they didn't look as tired as they might have done. Ultimately doing the complete journey in 18+ hours door-to-door can't be complained about. Showers were had, but not before Xixi had wifi sorted and and old VPN client appeared to work so she was able to ping a couple of friends.

While they sorted themselves I grabbed a beer then tried the massage chair. Wow, 15 minutes of slight pain but mostly pretty comfortable stuff. It won't sort out my back I guess but I'm going to give it a go. I had meant to catch the end of the cricket in the massage chair, but didn't even manage a sip of beer as it was too engrossing. Well anyway, one of those days where a few things could have gone wrong but the girls were back safely and that was the main thing.

Fever and headache and girls on way

Not much more than an hour later at 4.30am I woke with a dreadful fever and headache. I managed to get some water and ibuprofen but it knew it was going to take more than that to survive the next few hours.

At 5.40am Tan pinged me as she couldn't log in to reserve seats. Luckily for her I was up if not very compos mentis. I knew you couldn't check-in online as apparently Heathrow doesn't support that (I highly doubt it), but I'd managed to reserve seats for us before. It's bloody frustrating when you've put in all the correct details to be told the flight number is incorrect - "304" is not something you're going to easily get wrong. So I tried "0304" to know avail and even adding the "CZ" prefix even though it was already there. Then I tried the e-ticket number instead of the passport, but the same error. I was about to give up when I tried the reservation number instead and it finally worked..."flight number incorrect my arse". How can they release such software? Luckily it would not be China Southern writing the software to manage the plane as they'd be falling out of the skies left, right, and centre. I booked the last two seats I could find together near the back of the plane, and told Tan that when at bag drop to ask if they could find any better ones. Also, based on our experience it should be area F at the airport.

Sleep wouldn't arrive, but hallucinations did. I didn't know whether to leave a podcast on or nothing, and opted for the former as it would at least pin me to some sort of reality. I listened to one on body regeneration again but my brain was struggling with some of the bio-electricity concepts of gap channels etc. Then it moved on to a quantum physics episode and the interviewee kept jumping between different subjects such as string theory etc. Each time he mentioned one of those I felt like I was picking up a white towel with the subject written on in and putting it on the pillow by my side, as if registering it, and the fact that some were repeated made me annoyed as I didn't want copies. I was really struggling and by 8am I took a couple more ibuprofen and I think they eased the headache a little but I was still hot so turned the A/C down from 26 to 25, and within minutes noticed the difference. I must have dozed off a few times from 8am-2pm with a few annoying trips to the toilet to remind me maybe I shouldn't have had the oysters last night, and lunch was a couple of yoghurts when my tummy was rumbling.

But by 4pm my watch hadn't registered any sleep other than the hour at 3.15am, and rather than become nocturnal like the boys, made the effort to get up by 5pm and grab a pot noodle. I'd had no calls inviting me out, and certainly wouldn't be accepting any should they come. Leilei did knock and ask for ibuprofen a bit later and I found I'd finished them so gave him aspirin instead...he hadn't had any oysters last night so I hoped he wouldn't suffer like me. At 9.45pm Haiwei pinged me to asked where I was and I told him where and that I had no intention of going out today and that I'd get back when feeling up to it.

I'd been in contact with Xixi to bring a last minute SD card, and when they were on their way I just double-checked they had their passports. Tan's attempt at humour by replying "oh no!" was not received well by me who could hardly think properly, and then she had a go at me for forgetting mine before (once, and I remembered 5 minutes after leaving home, and after having done so many more flights...). They got to the airport early and I told Xixi to try going to zone F as they might do baggage drop early. Indeed they did and by 6pm they were past security on their way to the lounge. Annoyingly, very annoyingly, they said they couldn't put the hold luggage all the way to Nanning so they'd have to pick it up in Guangzhou and check it in again, like we've had to do so many times before even when buying a ticket straight to Nanning. Well at least they seemed to have a decent bite to eat in the lounge and I dozed until gone 5am when I was able to track flight CZ304 take off 20 minutes late, then dozed off a little more to a podcast background.

My baby waiting to come back

I don't miss western food but this is Indian and looks ok

Another meal at the modern garden place

Woke up before 8am feeling a bit crap and coughing. In general I don't like to stay in bed so went for an hour's walk to see if that would help, but other than mentally it didn't seem to and the cough was getting worse. I remembered that yesterday Haiwei had called me to say we were to go for a meal this evening so I set upon an early lunch and aimed for a siesta, after giving in to a couple of small cans of beer I got from the supermarket (9.90 kuai for a pack of 6 x 330ml not bad).

I passed by a once vibrant disco/KTV that's now a ghost-hall

Sometimes you Zhuang hua pinyin - hopefully I'll find a dictionary but it won't be to English

A bit of sleep came by at getting on for 4pm and I was up at 5.30, 15 mins before Haiwei told me he'd be there 6pm, so I grabbed a shower and of course took a little longer and ignored his call at 6.08pm to meet him 3 minutes later. We drove to some place to leave the car as we'd be drinking (surprise surprise), not that I was really in the mood. We picked up his son Zixuan and booked a didi che that took a couple of minutes to come and charged 6.50 kuai for the near 10 minute journey to our destination. I thought I recognised the road under the rail tracks but when we got out of the car just saw a few standard houses, and I guess we'd be going there. Haiwei had explained that his younger sister's new boyfriend had invited some people so I guessed they lived here.

But no, just next to the houses was the entrance to the same new eatery we went with Teacher Ling last week, which was our favourite meal. Well I'd left the boys sleeping or whatever they were up to so the three of us walked in and found a white pod with some people in that looked like they were just finishing their meal. Zixuan helped to introduce some of them to me; Haiwei's big sister, his biao ge etc., and I was offered a new set of bowls but I was interested where the little sister and boyfriend were. Then a couple of minutes later everyone got up and picked up the valueable leftovers and set off. We walked around the place for a couple of minutes before being pointed to somewhere at the far end of the carpark. Indeed it was a rather large private room with at least 30 people already inside. Nothing had been touched, and when I sat down with Haiwei I found he only knew a handful of the people too, and hadn't met his sister's boyfriend. But we guessed it was the guy in the red top, but still had to end up waiting a good 15 minutes before Haiwei and I poured a glass of beer and cracked open the seal of the meeting.

One of the interesting outside pods

Another massive meal

And as soon as someone had managed the first morsel of food everyone jumped it. It didn't take long after that for the boyfriend to start making his rounds with his baiju. He came to us and we found he was from Henan, working in Guangxi, and thanked us heartily for coming. So for the next 90 minutes we had some lovely food that didn't stop coming. And neither did the beer, though I went very easy on it for the first hour at least. Boyfriend kept doing the rounds and by the time he was on this third his face was getting on for the colour of his shirt. His mate, presumably from the same area, was a bit more sober and told me he worked in France shortly about 15 years ago, so we had a very brief and basic conversation in French, for only my third time in this country. Finally I learnt that Haiwei's little sister was not in fact his blood relative at all despite having talked about relationships so much of the night. I'll never get this properly.

Presently, boyfriend fell asleep in his chair, he tried to fight it by lighting a fag but he was gone, so Haiwei's little "sister" saw to him. I had found out that the meal was to celebrate their "ding qin" (engagement) so at least I learnt a new word. I was quite ready to go as most people had, but we were told to stay by little sister, and indeed she cai ma'd with me (with water) and I ended up doing this more than I really wanted. My guts had exploded 20 minutes into the meal (of course there was only a squatter), and I still had a dicky tummy not to mention the coughing. Finally, at 9.30pm Haiwei had called his older son to go for a bite but he would not be available till 10.30pm. So we did something unusual but pleasant - we started walking back. Given it had rained a lot recently it was relatively cool and we got 10 minutes of the journey before the rain started again, so for Haiwei's and my first time we scanned two of those electric bikes and took them back to the centre.

So much for not drinking and driving, but it seems such electric bikes are "safe". Mine would only go up to 23kph anyway so maybe there's some truth in that. Haiwei was all smiles and was telling me he was really enjoying it, and I told him maybe he understood why I like to take my bike when I can. Suddenly the rain came down a lot heavier and we stopped for some cover. It didn't look like it would let up for a while so we cancelled the bikes and hopped around the pavements taking as much cover as we could from the overhanging houses above the shops. Then he declared that he would go on foot to pick up the car, so he dashed off and turned up a few minutes later...so much for not drink-driving. Anyway, as it was raining he said there wouldn't be any police around....

A minute later we were at the market place, and the rain had stopped, so tables had come out again. The owner of an oyster/bbq place said he'd give us some oysters for free and promptly plonked them down, but they were a bit boring so we asked him to add some chilli. Older brother and a couple of mates turned up shortly afterwards and Haiwei said he'd order some bbq and let me choose as I said Leilei and Nezha would pop over. Which they did 20 minutes later as the bbq came but Haiwei announced we were going somewhere else and gave the bbq and oysters to Leilei and Nezha to take back. But not before the boss asked permission to take some photos with us in front of the main cooking area, and permission was duly granted. It was a bit strange leaving so soon as normally Haiwei would have liked to have his sons speak a bit more English, but we all jumped into his car at getting on for midnight and drove to a place not far from A Wu's office. So much for not drink-driving.

My cough was not getting better, and I was flagging, so wasn't particularly happy to find a loud table of drunk men sitting around a metal dish of baked fish. I decided I would make and effort and stay till no later than 1am. And the beer was shit as well. Li Quan Blue Goblin...the first Li Quan I've had that I didn't like. I managed a couple of gan beis and cai ma but found it difficult to pretend I was having fun, so at 12.55 I made my excuses with a last gan bei and they allowed me to walk home. I just hope Haiwei got home ok. I bought a couple of bottles of "medicine alcohol" from the local complex shop when I got back, as the shopkeeper said it would be good for my headache, and although tired, I spent the next 90 minutes slowly getting through one tiny bottle till gone 3am.

Fixing hong chun

Woke up at 7am for the first time in weeks and found the boys chatting in Leilei's room. Evidently they had been up all night (again). I didn't have the energy to argue and anyway what could I do? I was definitely under the weather and coughing so tried to go back to bed listening to conversations about bioelectricity with some bloke called Michael Levin. Wow, it genuinely feels that they are discovering some fascinating information about how we grow. DNA is not everything it seems...ion channels between cells enable them to communicate and somehow grow. Some animals are able to regenerate limbs and other body parts but others are not (apparently humans can regenerate the tips of their fingers up to the age of 11 sometimes). Frogs cannot regenerate limbs "naturally" but they cut off a frog's leg then covered the stub with some solution with potassium ions and other stuff for 24 hours, and months later it actually grew back the leg. It wasn't perfect, but it had the five fingers and reacted to touch. This is potentially massive...imagine if we could translate this to mammals...and the possible implications for cancer too. I'm definitely going to learn more about this space while I have the time.

But after a boiled egg and a yoghurt I eventually managed to doze off to a similar video...justifying paying for three VPN services. But it was a rather late doze from 3.30 for only 90 minutes or so so I made myself a rare caffeinated coffee followed by a couple of colas before realising I should eat and we didn't have plans. Well I was half expecting Liu ge to get in contact but perhaps that would be later for bbq, so I stuck to wedding nuts and sweets in order not to be stuffed for later, then popped to Guanmart to get some yoghurt and other provisions. I noticed the bike had done 59km since its first actual charge, which is pretty positive, and I can pretty much count on a 25km radius now.

At 7.30pm I went to Lao Ma's salon to get a haircut...about the only place that's barely changed since we first came here in 2003 and stayed at her house. She even has the same CRT tv, and only the sign above the shop has changed in 20 years. She allowed me to pay 30 kuai which included a wash as well and I asked her where I could change the red band of my jade pig necklace. This is normally one of the first things I do when I get here but the main jade place in the centre has closed down now and I worried it would break apart. Of course there was a place a few doors up and Lao Ma walked up with me without locking her doors, and we spent 10 minutes and 10 kuai chatting with the shopkeeper who did a good job of replacing what I now know is called "hong chun".

Lao Ma at the jade place fixing my hong chun

By 9.30pm Liu ge still hadn't got in contact, which seemed a bit strange so I sent him a message saying no problem if not convenient but I got no reply. So I was about to go and find something to eat myself when I received an emoji of two beer glasses chinking from that friend from the bbq after the football, which I took as a convenient invitation for a beer, but before I could A Wu called me to go over to the place we were the other night with the drunk bosses. So I responded to the beer request saying maybe a bit later as I thought at least I'd grab a bite to eat with A Wu first, and the boys had already gone to Li Kun's to make music. Li Kun had also pinged me to say the boys could come over and he'd already sent the password to them to get in as he was out for a while.

As I'd had a few bills to pay I was down to 50 kuai so for the third time sent 2000 kuai to Li Kun's Weixin using Wise. It's fairly simple after you've set up a payee for the first time and I trust him implicitly to send it straight to me. Normally I get it within a minute or so but I guess he really was busy as I was at A Wu's when I received it and I wondered if I'd hit some limit or something. It would certainly be more convenient if I could just send it to myself but the receiver needs to be a Chinese citizen for some reason and I'm quite some way from being there.

Boss Huang and others were in good spirits at the meal, which had clearly started hours ago. I'm not sure why they didn't invite me earlier as they cheered as I walked in. And so I caught up somewhat on food and cai ma, and every half an hour or so a new, drunk boss would amble in and continue drinking, then challenge me a cai ma. Li Kun was pinging me to come round to his and I said I'd be a few minutes (it was a good excuse for a pause with the beer), but then one of the women from the farm meal the other day walked in and it would have been rude to leave so soon, so I stayed for another 20 minutes to be polite. Apparently she is the boss of a red wine place, but I don't really place her in the same category as she wasn't obviously drunk and didn't challenge me to cai ma.

At getting on for midnight I answered Li Kun to say I was on my way and yes I'd get some bbq but I had no plans on picking it up on the way as it would have taken 20 minutes or so, so got to his office and asked him to sort it and I'd pay for it. The boys were indeed there with their headphones on but left shortly afterwards saying they weren't hungry, and Leilei asked Li Kun if they could leave their stuff there till the next time. It may seem pretty minor but I see it as a big step Leilei not asking me to ask Li Kun, and going directly to him. I've seen him communicate a few times this year in Mandarin, but normally in response to a question, not actually being the questioner. Progress of a kind.

I was a bit lazy getting another bloke to order the bbq on his phone, but at least was able to pay Li Kun 168 kuai from mine. I don't know what would have turned up had I tried to order by myself. But five of us shared a few beers and the inevitable cai ma, and I hoped in vain for the rain to let up but it was having none of it. At getting on for 2am I was getting on for exhausted so we called it a night, and Li Kun made sure I pinged him when I got home as it's not that easy holding an umbrella on a dian dong che.