I hadn’t seen Zhang Hua much this year, so pinged him to see if he’d eaten, but as soon as I had Leilei called me to say I’d been invited to eat with family friends. This was pretty much the first time this year with the usual gang of Tan’s friends’ families; A Xia, Xi Li, A Pang and the like, with a couple of husbands and many kids. I said I wasn’t drinking but there was a woman there who was new to me who said she fancied a beer. So it was out of politeness that I said I’d join her as drinking by oneself in such a meal would not look good, so we ordered a very reasonable four bottles of 1998 Li Quan between us.
Then Zhang Hua got in contact to tell me to go to his mate’s new restaurant that I went to a couple of weeks ago. The kids decided to come as they’d had enough at the family meal, but weren’t too interested at this new place, and after a bit of watching football on the tv I took them home. Back at Zhang Hua’s it was pretty civilised until we were invited to move to a private room where there were many empty beer bottles on the floor, and four blokes and a token woman at the table. I had to make my excuses before midnight as I was simply too bloated, but advertising friend had left a couple of messages to go and eat and I thought “what the hell?” so drove over to south of the town. I had a bit of a headache already and I pulled up outside a pulsating disco place and my heart sank. I felt I physically couldn’t enter but then I heard her voice from a place a few doors away. Phew, a normal eating place
A group of us played mo pai, which I’m still not 100% on the rules, but it’s a much slower drinking game than cai ma, and we ate mini red lobsters that took ages to get the meat out of, but were worth it. Finally, I said I needed to leave at 2am, and they all agreed it was time, and one of them footed the bill of 1054 kuai. I didn’t even bother to try to pay any.
On the way back it started to piss down so I borrowed advertising friend’s dian dong che raincoat before I got completely soaked, and for once didn’t get waylaid on the way home, probably as with this weather there was no-one to waylay me.
Well it was a bit of a wedding hangover, and breakfast was leftovers of the kids’ delivered noodles. At least it wasn’t DFC. I went to have tea at the same place as yesterday until it was time for the kids’ tea. At one stage a man came in for a massage, but a minute later left saying something I didn’t quite catch. Apparently he took one look at the masseuse and decided she was too fat. I could understand if it was that type of massage place but this was above board. Well...maybe he had a point but it was pretty incredulous to my British ears that he would have acted on it….
Actually I was "forced" to have some berry alcohol too, and tried not to focus on the lighter in the background
I can even use WeChat pay in the supermarket, though this time they scan me instead of the other way round
I picked up the kids to go the the guangchang as there is not that much time left, but bumped into Tan on the corner and she took them for the first time. I got home well in time for the Bournemouth game, and found a reasonable stream. But I didn’t have a stream of beer to popped down to the nearest shop to pick up a six pack of 1998 Li Quan. The shopkeeper’s husband was sitting having a meal with a mate and made me sit down with him but I kept it to one bottle, and told them I’d be back in 45 minutes.
The blooming stream broke for most of the second half but it looked like we deserved the 3-1 win but we also should have had a VAR penalty - how can something that purports to be so fair be so wrong? It was the clearest penalty you’ll ever see.
After the match I totally forgot to go to the shopkeeper downstairs for a drink as Li Kun had pinged me to have a glass of rouge so I popped over to him for a while where there was much merriment and I spent more time than I ought to have. I should have gone straight home afterwards but I’d noticed Boss Zhou saying he was eating earlier in a group chat so at 1amish I popped my head around just to see if anyone was there. “Go upstairs” I was told and I was immediately thrust into a room with him and three mates and was suddenly gan bei’ing and cai ma’ing again. But I was relatively good and kept it to just an hour.
Li Kun's daughters were still up post-midnight with the screens
With some random people I apparently know upstairs in Boss Zhou's place
The problem was I’d passed Zhang Hongping on the way to Boss Zhou’s and now he was pinging me for a glass. I wouldn’t be able to go back without going past him so accepted and spent the next 45 mins or so catching up with him. Catching up on what I’m not sure as I saw him just the other day but he seemed in good spirits anyway. The last two hours would simply not have happened if the beer here was more than 2.8%.
Finally the jiaozi woman was back and I was so happy to see her. My first portion in about three weeks! Apparently she had been at her lao jia for this time...she could have least have told me before leaving.
The friend of waterman that I’d met while Tan was bbq’ing with friends the other day had told me we would meet up this weekend but not when. Rather than fart around waiting for him I texted Chen to say I should be able to meet him at 6pm after all and he replied that he would contact me later..
As I was “free” for the afternoon I popped out to have tea with a couple of friends of Boss Zhou, one of whom works in a massage parlour. I was tempted to ask for one but I think they wanted my company.
I got back at 5.30 and thought I’d enjoy a cold one and remembered that now I was officially back on holiday - technically no more work till we get back. But as soon as I opened it I got a message from Chen saying he was on his way to 3000 degree bar and would be there in 15 mins. So I had to rather rush my beer and 13 mins later I received a message to say he’d arrived, and while I was in the lift another to ask why I was taking so long. Ah this is the Pingguo I know and love!
Before I got to the bar I heard a shout of “Peng!” from across the road and saw him in a san lun che. Ok, so we weren’t going to 3000 degrees - that was just a landmark he knew I knew. It transpired we were going to the new hotel that was being built last year just north east of the guangchang. I asked why he wasn’t driving and he said “drinking alcohol” but I didn’t pursue whether this was because he had already drunk or was planning to, or both.
Meeting Chen in the san lun che outside our place
The hotel was quite the pomp it had been billed to be, and we said hello to a couple of people while entering. A pretty maid led us into the lift to go up a single floor and when we got out I noticed to my left a line of wedding people all dressed up. Chen went to the first in the line and shook his hand, so I did the same, wondering when we were to go for our meal. But Chen just moved down the line and eventually handed two red envelopes in, and showed me that one had 彭多明 written on it. Oh no! We were only going to a wedding reception and I was wearing my Chinese football top and shorts! Advertising Japanese Suntory beer to boot!
The room was massive, but so far only 70% full, and we found a table with a couple of blokes Chen knew. Some people had started eating but we waited until our table was full, then the beers were cracked open. Over the next couple of hours more beers were cracked open than you could shake a stick at. Even in China I’ve never seen people drink so much so quickly...it was carnage. I did my best to keep at a regular pace but people were coming to me and doing three gan beis at a time. Then the actual newlyweds and their entourage reached our table and we had to drink more. To be fair, Chen and the groom and a couple of mates chugged a whole can while I sipped my little glass - I was just too bloated by then, and made my excuses to go to the toilet more times than I really needed. At least the beer was the very same Japanese beer my Man City-blue top was advertising, so I made a joke that that was my job here, and it got more laughs than it warranted.
I was not expecting this
and the food was amazing...
Wedding madness
Eventually, after visiting other tables and playing cai ma with people I apparently knew, we left the place as one of the last people. But that meant we just moved on to a KTV place where I had to sing No Matter What in a huge room, but by then I’d stopped caring. A bit later we left the room but went straight next door to what to me was a carbon copy of where we’d just been. No more singing for me but more gan bei’s but thankfully only for half an hour or so before we left. I could happily have gone to sleep but for some reason we ended up at bar 3000 degrees for bbq. I seem to remember more cai ma and drinking with the boss, who smokes more than she should. Back before 4am I found myself mechanically reaching for a beer from the fridge. But as I sat down I experienced a touch of sobriety that told me opening that beer would not be a good idea. And I thankfully left it and quickly prepared the sofabed and within a minute I was asleep.
Not up too late considering, but by the time I’d taking in the washing, hung the next lot out to dry, and put the third lot in to wash, then grabbed a shower, it was gone lunchtime and the kids had already had their dumplings delivered. Plus two drinks delivered by a second deliveroo person who arrived at exactly the same time. How inefficient.
I'm so embarrassed - for the last week I've been using this as fabric conditioner - I was absolutely convinced that's what it was...but Tan corrected me that it was "clearly" washing liquid...oh well...at least our clothes have been clean
All I had was an egg again, propped up with three packs of those almost weightless salty biscuits. Haiwai rang to tell me to come over and eat at his at 6pm, and I mentioned he had told me I was supposed to be going to his son’s school this afternoon (which I’d forgotten about until he rang). But he said “bu yong le” and that was that. At least I could focus on work a bit more, which I did until hunger really set in at 4pm. I thought I could hold out but it wasn’t going away so I opened another can of that expensive meat our ex-neighbour gave us the other day and guiltily had half of it.
Tan texted in Chinese to take the kids to A Xia’s where they would be waiting to take the kids at 5.30. At that time when I got them ready they decided for some reason they would rather go with me to Haiwei’s house so I called Tan and got the angry response that they had been waiting for the kids. Not much you can do.
We arrived pretty early at 6.08pm, and for the first time Haiwei hadn’t called me to ask where I was, and indeed was still cooking. I’d had the shits all afternoon and wasn’t feeling great, so took the opportunity of having a near-nap on his comfortable sofa counting in German up to 60 but not getting much further until accidentally switching to Mandarin. It was almost a dreamlike state and did refresh me a little.
The meal was typically excellent and Leilei ate up everything, unlike Xixi who has the smallest stomach in Pingguo. And instead of drinking more than a couple of cans afterwards we took our kids to Haiwei’s son’s school to play basketball, which Leilei was keen to do. It was dark and very sweaty - I didn’t particularly want to play but the lads wanted a father and son vs father and son so of course I joined in. Leilei is better than me but the two of them combined were a bit too much for us but who was counting? Xixi was a little bored so I suggested we play free throws, which she could join in with and was a little less energetic. We could have stayed longer but I really had to go back and finish work for the week.
Chen then invited me to go and eat at 6pm tomorrow, but I couldn’t confirm as I knew I’d be meeting waterman soon and he may invite me for the same time. No problem...he just said to confirm tomorrow afternoon.
After work I decided to go and see racist Huang but he was pretty pissed and boring, so much so that I didn’t feel bad relieving myself of his company pretty swiftly to sidle over to Boss Zhou’s place. He wasn’t there, but there were others who bade me over for half an hour or so for a couple of drinks. Then Zhang Hongping called me to say he’s seen me at Boss Zhou’s just now and he was just 50 yards away so I went there for the next 90 minutes until I could barely stay awake at 3am.
I managed to avoid the DFC order by forcing myself to take the kids out to the yumi tang place. We don’t even have to give our order now. Work and weather dictated spending the afternoon at home until I took the kids to A Hua’s place for tea where she was with Tan nattering, then got back to my own tea of a single egg. It rained on the way back and was a welcome coolness on the dian dong che, which I was to experience again soon after as the kids called me to pick them up again.
They took themselves to the guangchang for skating and I picked them up at 9.30 to go home and left them there as I’d been asked to go to Boss Zhou’s for an evening meal, and there was no way they’d want to accompany me there. I was the only one with him for a while and we shared a beer. But after a couple of messages to a WeChat group I’d recently been added to more people started arriving in dribs and drabs as photos of the food being served were shared. I made a joke that I had brought a brown boiled egg and for some reason one woman didn’t get the joke and when she arrived promptly ate it. The last person arrived after 1am, but we were relatively sensible with the Snowflake beer and finished by 2.30am, although for some reason didn’t sleep till well gone 4am.
I forced myself to a reasonably early start to work as judging by the last few days oftentimes (gosh, that is an Americanism) people call me a couple of hours before to go out even though I’ve told them I’m working. Indeed, in the late morning Li Kun asked me to go out at 8pm with a “bank president”. The kids’ lunch was another crappy delivered DFC but I had three 1000 year old eggs instead. I also managed to get Leilei to do some maths hw and Xixi to do some violin practice for the second day in a row so at least I’m hoping they’re keeping on track. I’ve realised why I’m not totally disparaged by the term “oftentimes”. It’s because it encourages the silent “t” in the word. I’m well aware that there are two ways of pronouncing “often” and many people interchange between the two (though if there is a rule for this I’ve not found it yet). Even Christopher Hitchens, in his audiobook “God is not Great”, used both pronunciations. My interpretation of this is that the silent “t” is the educated way to pronounce it (not that that makes it right), and that the pronounced “t” version arose from less-educated people thinking that those silent-”t”ers were wrong. But I also notice it’s more prevalent in British people than Americans, not that that makes it right. The bottom line is that when people use “often” in a sentence I am more likely to pay attention to their pronunciation of it than the rest of the sentence...more fool me. But nobody pronounces “soften” with a sounded “t” do they?
At 9pm I caved in and IM’d “hi” to Li Kun, who got back to me saying he was about to go out. So I needn’t have worried about 8pm. I went to the new music bar he’d invited me to around 9.30ish leaving the kids at home. Typically I was the first of his guests to turn up, so we sat at a big reserved table eating sunflower seeds until even Li Kun couldn’t wait and we cracked open a couple of beers. Slowly but surely people turned up, including the bank president at 10.30.
I had to bite my tongue not to talk about Bitcoin and how it could replace banking as we know it. Actually his English was fairly good and he surely wanted to practise it, so who was I to language-bully him? I managed what I was internally showing off to myself as my first English conversation in weeks, when Xixi rang to remind me I was clearly speaking English every single day, and that she was hungry although Tan was home. So I temporarily excused myself in order to get three sausages for her and returned back 20 minutes later.
It was only 20 minutes but in that time the blokes at the table appeared to have become a lot more drunk than when I left...maybe it had just kicked in. Bank president was explaining that he had attended a wedding between one of his relatives and a western man. Within seconds the conversation turned to penis sizes and I engaged in the conversation as little as I was politely able to. The upshot of it was, according to bank president, that although Chinese penises were smaller, they were hard. I thought it best to raise my glass to him and gan bei at that point, and we all roared with laughter (well them more than me).
Mr Bank President near right, token female middle left
Then he showed me his alarm on his phone that was set to 5.45am, and said no matter what time he went to bed he’d always be up at this time in order to be in the bank. I admired his resolve, and understood when a few beers later he went on his way. Advertising friend IM’d me at 11.30 to go for a drink but I couldn’t really leave LI Kun. Obviously inviting bank president was a really big deal for him and he was so happy I had been there to talk to him. He was now saying “thank you, thank you” in English to me and I realised he was really drunk. But so did Guitar Teacher, so managed to take him home without too much fuss...I’m not sure how he paid the bill or who took care of it.
It was 1am so I pinged Advertising friend just in case and of course within seconds I was sent a wei zhi pinpointing the location of where they were. There were also six pissed blokes there, each of whom I should probably know, but it didn’t really matter as we had a great time chatting and a bit more gan bei’ing till hum o’clock.
I woke up at 9.30am but decided against it and dosed till 11ish till guilt got me up to work till lunchtime which admittedly wasn’t long after. I had lunch at Luwen’s and couldn’t finish but I was starving at 6.30 so walked to the supermarket to get some eggs and found a new shortcut back. I hadn’t walked for ages and it was good to stretch my legs, so in a way finding a shortcut was the opposite of what I should have done but it’s good to explore.
Finding a shortcut behind Jun Lin Tian Xia
Tonight Tan took the kids to the guangchang to skate and I decided I’d stop work at 10.30, then contacted Boss Zhou at 9.30 to ask if he’d be about and indeed he would so I’d finally arranged my turn to invite people out. And it was great that quite a few mates came out. I’m starting to remember their names now, like A Guang, the portly man with glasses and a great sense of humour, who eventually fell asleep in his chair. Even Uncle Yellow I know is called Huang Lei came despite baby duties for a two month old. We stayed out till 2ish and I guess because I’d arranged it I was allowed to pay - result.
Twas a day of work till teatime when I took the kids to the new jiao zi place I’d discovered with Xixi yesterday and we ate in despite the lack of AC, before dumping them off at the guangchang as I really don’t need to be there any more and could be more fruitful at home. Then at 9.30 I took the sweaty things to Tian Yang Po’s where Tan was eating bbq with her school friends from 40 years ago, but they didn’t want to stay. Tan said she’d bring back food for the kids in a bit. At 11pm advertising friend IM’d me to go for a drink but I said maybe in an hour as I needed to sort the kids. Tan was still not back and not answering her phone and the kids were starving so I went there by myself. They were deep in chat when I came to tell them I needed to feed the kids, and I was told there was no pork or beef as the pork had gone up in price thanks to the African swine flu - but what about the beef? So I asked Tian Yang Po and she said she had beef so I ordered 10 for the kids (which could have been done an hour ago) plus sausages which if they weren’t pork certainly looked like it.
Our new jiao zi place
At least it gave me the chance to talk to some of her friends and have a couple of beers.
Then a bloke walked past me and told me he knew me from years ago, and I had another one of those moments where I lied blatantly and said yes I recalled the face but not the name. Anyway he was a mate of the waterman and showed me a pic of him, and of us cai ma’ing a few years back. I told him I couldn’t go for a beer during the week, then straight away broke that rule as we sat down for two bottles until the bbq was ready, by which time he’d arranged for us to meet up this weekend.
Tan was back by midnight and advertising friend said they were going to another place to drink, which conveniently was close to us. We had great fun in this place on the corner opposite Waipo’s. There was some weird drunk girl in a red dress who joined us from another table when her friends had left her who was harmless if loud. Back at nearly 4am!
I got up only in time to see the kids eating Tan-ordered KFC crap so afterwards I took just Xixi out to help me find something to eat. I didn’t want to go to the yumi tang place yet again so we found a place slightly further down the same road that sold dumplings, and I bought five of them. We drove to the exercise place by the ant tree and I managed to eat them all...pork mince and shredded greens in equal measure and sumptuous. But it was crazy hot and that beat us back to the house for respite shortly after as exercise on the equipment around us would have been torture.
Well someone decided to exercise at 40 degrees
Li Kun had IM’d me to drink tea at his place so went by myself at 4.30. We had a really good chat about the economy and I explained my interest in cryptocurrency which is always a slightly dodgy topic here as although there is a huge crypto community in China, the very fact you see something in it sort of puts you against the government-controlled ren min bi. I treaded carefully and mainly pointed out its advantages and not fiat’s disadvantages. He seemed to get it.
But the reality of fiat here had dawned on me, and I explained how I couldn’t use WeChat pay without a Chinese back account, something that would prove hard to get on a family/tourist visa. This made Li Kun call a mate who works in the bank to see if he could sort it but apparently it wasn’t that easy. I had to make my excuse to take the kids to the guangchang so took advantage of this to invite Li Kun and his family to eat where we often have since the guangchang has become a regular thing.
I picked up the kids at 6.30 and left them to do their thing in the guangchang while getting to the food place and waiting for Li Kun and family, who duly arrived and ordered food on my part. After 20 mins the kids had had their fare and went straight back to skate, and took Ava, Li Kun’s first daughter, with them, while we engaged in a couple of beers while his wife looked after the one-year old.
As we had a bit of time Li Kun told me he had a dormant bank account and I could use that to sort out WeChat pay. Well it was a long, convoluted path that took nearly an hour but afterwards I had a “valid” account, albeit it with his name as the securitor. We tested it by sending each other a bit of money and it worked! This was a significant step in me feeling I belong here as now I’ll be able to pay for stuff like Xixi’s rollerskate hire by phone and more importantly not be weighed down by small change. At the cost, quite a big cost, of some conglomerate knowing exactly what I am purchasing and building up a profile of me. I vowed to use it for simple purchases such as the skating and food. But it also showed me how crypto could really work in the real world; if...and it’s not just a huge if but the biggest if, if people accepted it then there would be no such hoops to go through as I just did, and I’m not even sure which side of the law I’m on using Li Kun’s details. I think it was in this context that Li Kun sort of “gets it”, but at the moment the legal hoops I experienced are equivalent to the technical hoops, not to mention fiat onboarding, that you get with crypto. So fascinating how this will pan out.
"My" Chinese bank account
This had stirred my passion but I still had the kids to think about...they were supposed to be looking after Ava but I had my doubts so went to find them and indeed they’d sort of left her to her own devices after sorting her out with skates and probably becoming bored of looking after her. We all stayed with the kids for another half an hour until they were positively soaked, and we said our goodbyes and I got them home and showered.
And we seem to have local Tescos...not so sure about that
But that was not the end of the evening of course...Boss Zhou IM’d me to go and sing song for the second time in a week. Fair enough, I thought, and as the kids were getting ready for bed I popped out at 11pm to do my duties...back 2am with a sore throat and happy to stay in the spare room.
