I was not really too happy to be woken at 9am to be told Ling Ming was waiting downstairs for us. It was a quick getting dressed and quickly grabbing a change of clothes just in case. Ling Ming was taking his new car but didn't feel too confident driving on the unfinished roads outside so we swapped over and I drove after having gone to pick up about 11 women who had come with Da Jie. They all drove behind us in a "bread loaf car" and instead of the 10 minutes I'd been told the journey was I drove for a good half an hour through roads that were in the process of becoming roads, including places where there should have been traffic lights as you get so far but then have to back up as someone else has got further than you down the one half of the road that is open.
We arrived around half ten but then were subjected to the foreign game of waiting around. It was ferociously hot and we cooled ourselves down with a couple of cartons of tea while wondering when something would happen. It took nearly an hour, but Ling Ming had bought the tickets, and we were to wait for the next couple of buses to take us to where we would start. Leilei stated time and time again that he wasn't going, but Ling Ming had bought his and Xixi's tickets anyway. Strangely, although over ten women from Da Jie's town of Pinxiang came along in their van, none of them seemed to be going boating, only Ling Ming and us four. Finally the bus arrived and luckily it was air-conditioned as we waited in it for 15 long minutes before setting off, all to the tones of Leilei complaining that he wasn't going to go on the boat.
We eventually left. We'd left our valuables with Da Jie, and it was actually quite liberating to have in our possession only clothes for a while. Ten minutes later we arrived somewhere higher up the mountain where we would start our rafting from. Not so soon though. There were around 60 people who had come up in the two coaches, and there weren't enough lifejackets, helmets, or oars for all of us. So we sat around waiting in the heat and humidity, some of us in lifejackets that we soon undonned as it became clear they were heat magnets. I asked Tan why we were waiting so long and she said it was because the previous group had not moved far enough down the river hence it wouldn't be safe. Looking around at the dearth of "jiang", one of the few words I've learnt this year - paddle, I suspected otherwise. So I went to one of the women who worked there and asked why we were still waiting and she said that we were waiting for the paddles to arrive, and that they were "zhunbei dao le". Now I love the Chinese and the culture here but I don't like hearing "zhunbei dao le". This means something is just about to arrive, but in reality "just about" means something other than it does in any other language I understand it in. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but in near 40 degree heat it is slightly annoying.
Thankfully it only took another 10 minutes before a pickup truck sped up and stopped. Despite the worker woman with her loudspeaker telling everyone to not take the paddles from the pickup as it was yet to park properly everyone stormed to it and grabbed whatever paddles and lifejackets they could.
Leilei was still telling me he wasn't going on the boat although it was obvious he was. And finally we were allowed to get into our dinghies. I insisted that Tan and Xixi went with Ling Ming as I wanted a father and son time together, and got him onto the dinghy. I was to get more than I asked for. The tranquil water seemed to chuckle at our helmets and lifejackets as we lifted off with our single paddle. Although we were one of the latter entrants into the water I soon worked out how to use the paddle to reasonable effect, and set upon catching up the rest of the people (who didn't know they were in a race). We made good progress and by a couple of hundred yards at the first corner we were first!
Around the corner I saw a sign in blue saying "big water, be careful". I also saw two or three blokes on the riverbank - ah, I thought, they will be taking the photographs that they'll be charging extortionate amounts for when we get back. It wasn't as easy navigating a corner as it was the straight water and we sort of got moved to the outside lane as it were. I noticed a rather deep drop of about three feet which was sort of exciting but our dinghy was revolving a little and by the time we hit it we were going backwards with me at the "front" and Leilei sitting in front of me.
I don't think we did anything wrong as we both grabbed the rope on the side of the boat, but after the drop the dinghy was on its side and didn't want to get back down. I had no control and the next thing I remember was that we were capsizing in the middle of very fast water. Now you should get a panic when you're shoved underwater and you can't breathe and the current is controlling your movements and all you can feel is the occasional buffering of the rocks below on your body. But when you know that your son was in the same boat you are not aware of yourself at all. I could think of nothing but Leilei and tried to force my head above water to shout "er zi!" (son). It took a few seconds of being treated like an empty bottle by the ruthless water before I could even surface to shout, let alone for air.
I was able to glimpse that a couple of yellow-shirted blokes were moving to do something and when I got my head above water again I just shouted at the top of my voice "wo de er zi! wo de er zi!" (my son! my son!). I was still being swept by the current and could see our boat stuck about 40 yards upstream, but no sign of Leilei. The water was shallow enough now not to drag me under any more but I couldn't move so I made what effort I could to grab on to any branch that would allow me to stop myself being dragged further downstream and move myself toward the bank, and finally got there. I had visions of Leilei being dragged further than me down the river due to his smaller size, and worried about a myriad of other things that could have befallen him such as being snagged on something or even being knocked out.
As my eyes and ears began to focus more I could see a bloke in a yellow top holding on to our boat upstream shouting "bu yao jin!", which means "don't worry". That was not great advice, but I then saw a Leilei-sized boy on the boat he was holding on to. The fact that he was kneeling up meant he was ok and I waved at him and he responded by moving his arm in some way, though I could make out he was in a bad state.
It took a couple of minutes to make the 50 yards upstream to the boat, holding on to the various branches to pull me there, but we were reunited. Apparently he hadn't had as bad a deal as me in terms of getting dragged by the water, but this maybe because the bloke had fished him out quickly or something - I'll never know. The point was he was seriously disturbed by the event and was sobbing profusely.
Despite being within the first couple of hundred metres of the "course", there was literally no going back. The length was 4.8 km and we had 4.6 to go - try telling that to a kid who has capsized in rushing water. I'd lost my helmet but luckily Leilei hadn't - he'd just lost his shoes. So I used his helmet to pour out most of the water that had accumulated in the boat and said I was sorry but we'd just have to continue.
It didn't make it any easier that just about every other boat had passed us during this time, and even that at least one other boat had capsized too.
Leilei cried a river for the next half an hour or so but I guess ran out of energy later. Every time we came across any slightly white water he called out "big water, big water!" and I too feared it might be like the first one. I made a clever move to avoid one "big water", despite it being relatively calm compared to our first one; I managed to cut across some trees to avoid some white water and triumphantly told Leilei we'd found a shortcut. Unfortunately where we ended was a quite nice little lagoon but outside the flow of the river. Try as we might though we couldn't get back into the normal flow, and Leilei noticed this and was worrying again, "we're stuck!". I told him we were fine but after a couple of attempts I realised we were not going to get out easily. I held on to branches to pull us into the current but we kept getting pushed back. Then, as I held onto another Leilei shouted "spider!" and panicked again as a house spider-sized arachnid landed in our boat. For once I didn't give a shit about an eight-legged friend and stamped on the bastard. After nearly giving up hope of getting out of that place we found that the last two boats had workers on them, hopefully for safety, who, without not a little effort, were able to drag us out of the lagoon my shortcut had led us into, and back into the river again.
Now that Leilei had no more tears left, he kept asking me when we'd be back. I made my best estimations and said we were "nearly there". Thankfully, although this was a bit of a lie, the rest of the water was either calm or safely ripply, not that that helped with Leilei until we finally spied the building we'd driven to a few hours earlier that day.
I was seriously worried that Leilei would have a water phobia after that experience. It's bad enough as an adult to experience the power of white water currents, but as a seven year old it's worse than a nightmare. Or maybe it's one of those experiences that turns one into a man.
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| The kids and me after having braved the 'rapids' of Pingguo County |
I'd had the wherewithal to bring spare clothes for me and the kids, but Tan hadn't. So Leilei and I showered and put on dry clothes, and Tan, who hadn't capsized had to put back on her wet clothes. Xixi had had a great time on the "rapids" apparently and also had a change of clothes. Ling Ming had already ordered food so it should have been ready for us by the time we were ready, but it took a good 45 minutes before our tables were cleaned and served. By this time it was well gone 3pm and I was quite tired, though the adrenaline of having witnessed my son have the scariest experience of his life (and one of mine) kept me well awake. We had a nice meal but I was looking forward to getting back and having at least an hour's kip. At 4pm I drove us back and we were home half an hour later. The kids said that they'd slept in the car (despite playing I-spy for most of the time) and decided not to sleep, which left me allowing Tan to sleep while I got them amused doing drawing and seemingly playing nicely together for a bit. I was hopeful for 45 mins of shuteye myself but that was dashed due to them keeping on coming in to ask me for things. Well, there are worse reasons for not having a well-earned siesta.
A Wu had already called me to let me know that I was expected to go out for a meal with an old friend from Baise, who I hadn't seen for about five years. With this in mind I didn't struggle to sleep much longer as if I'd succeeded I wouldn't have made that or anything else in the evening. Tan was still weary and not feeling particularly well, so didn't want to come. A Wu had said not to bring the kids, which I appreciated, and they didn't put up too much of a fight as they were busy drawing at home. So I took the dian dong che to the usual restaurant "Li Jia He Xian" and met A Wu there.
I've called this bloke "Bak sec zhai" since I've known him, and I thought it was simply a way of calling him "Baise bloke" in Cantonese, i.e. bloke from Baise, but today realised his surname really was "Zhai". As I entered the private room I immediately recognised him from some years ago and we hugged like old friends, which is not something normally done here when sober. His wife and daughter were there, which was nice, and I did ring Tan to come but she wasn't feeling up to it. This didn't stop fags from being smoked of course, and I was happy that at least I hadn't brought the kids. But we had a good time catching up on old times.
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| A lovely meal with 'Bak sec Zhai' on my left and the restaurant boss on my right |
While Zhai tried to get me to drink many beers, Jiefu arrived. Jiefu means "older sister's husband", and I think in this case it really is A Wu's older sister's husband and not some unrelated person given a relative name. I hadn't seen Jiefu for a couple of years and we embraced like long lost friends when he came in. He said we'd need to gan bei many beers as we hadn't seen each other for some time and I told him that was just an excuse, which he found rather funny. We ate for a while until Jiefu excused himself, saying it was his dad's birthday and he had to go and see him. I don't know how long he was away but after a while he came back again. Then I got a phone call from Lin Hong asking me to go to karaoke. I wasn't really in the mood but I thought it might at least give me a break from the gan bei'ing of the meal that I'd been in for nigh-on three hours.
I called Tan but she was still too tired to go out, and anyway didn't know the people who would be there, so a little while later I said my goodbyes to Bak sec Zhai and A Wu gave me a lift to the KTV place a little outside town. He was embarrassed to be there "early", as in 20 minutes late, as not everyone was there, but the room soon filled up with people I didn't know, I guessed mostly Lin Hong's junior colleagues. Lin Hong seemed in fine spirits and was getting me to do my usual three songs in Mandarin, Cantonese and English, before the evening descended into a sort of disco.
I needed an excuse to stop drinking so I sneaked out and went for a walk around the building. Finally a little time by myself. I found my way to the roof of the building and walked about in the humidity, checking the view of the lights of Pingguo a small distance away. Normally I would have had a phone call by now but I guess the others were too busy drinking and dancing and that suited me. I eventually went downstairs, but this time to a different floor, and peaked through the tiny windows of some of the doors to see the song-worshippers in some of the rooms. I happened upon one which was fairly full, and had a good mix of blokes and women, not looking too drunk or dressed up. I thought "why not?" and and pushed the door open and walked in. I had a look of surprise, as though I'd accidentally walked into the wrong room, but I was invited in before I could even feel the guilt. As is normal, at least one person knew about me, and knew Tan, so there was something to talk about. I then restarted the ritual of gan bei'ing and realised my plan of leaving the previous room in order to slow down was at risk of backfiring. So I used plan B, which was to offer to sing a song, of course the "Ni shi wo de mei gui hua". It went down very well and I must have spent half an hour there before going back to Lin Hong's den.
Due to the early start and lack of siesta I was feeling tired and a little the worse for wear so I made my excuses and said I'd need to get back home. So Lin Hong kindly drove me back and dropped me outside of our building. I waited till she had gone then slightly sneakily popped around the corner to grab some bbq and chat with the locals, and by the time I got home at 2.20am I had A Ni calling me asking where A Wu was. Needless to say I slept in the spare room, very easily.
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