Being mistaken for a professional football player

Lunch was takeaway jiaozi from the normal local place. I nodded hello to a bloke while getting some lajiao to take back with me and he asked if I was one of the Pingguo Haliao football players. I took this as a massive compliment as I'm 20+ years older than most of them, even the foreigners. This must be one of the few places in the world where I could be mistaken for a professional football player! Then he realised I was the Bangxu guye and said he knew Lu Wen, so I said next time he was with him to get him to call me and go for a bite.

But when I got back I realised I needed a poo but yesterday I had blocked the matong (western style) toilet due to the same reason and we don't have a plunger. So after having used the squatter I realised what today's shopping list was becoming: a new plunger, a reading light, a set of keys for Xixi, and something else. There's always something else that I forget. But it doesn't matter. Going to buy trivial stuff here is always a bit of fun. Most would-be trivial things are fun here, at least if they involve a bit of human interaction.

I rode down to the marketplace and straightaway found a shop selling plungers. I'd learnt the word matongba so asked for one but the bloke looked at me as if I was speaking another language. So I had to describe the problem and he reached up and unhooked exactly what I thought I'd asked for. I asked him what the word for this was and he used three syllables I'll never remember, but none of them anything like matongba. Sometimes it's just like that. Then one door down I found the same shop that I'd bought my reading light at back in November last year. I don't know where that one had gone in the meantime but I found an identical model and again the bloke would only accept 13 kuai instead of 15 it said on the box.

Then the heavens opened and I used my waterproof coat to cover the seat of the dian dong che and got Xixi's keys cut until it passed. Oh yes, that's what it was...the last thing. A towel for Xixi. This should be the easiest thing to find but after walking through the market and asking a few stallholders I was still towel-less, until eventually arriving at the first shop I'd been to and asking them. The bloke pointed above him and said "aren't they towels?". Ha, yes I guess they were but they were pretty small. I asked for the largest and it was barely more than a facecloth but I bought it anyway.

As I walked past a fruit-seller the lady called to me. Ah it was the woman I'd known since first coming here. She mentioned she'd moved shop recently (obviously) and then went to the back of the shop and fetched the photo Andge and I had presented her back in 2013, of her and two other market sellers and me in 2003. It's little interactions like these that make my day. I did feel a bit bad for Xixi's tiny towel though so popped in to Guanmart to get a proper sized one for 29 kuai, when Haiwei pinged me to eat with him and his new girlfriend at the youcha place by the guangchang. So that was the evening sorted.

She still has the photo we took 20 years ago but only gave to her 11 years ago

Back home it took a whole five seconds to unblock the loo, and I just wondered what happened to the old plunger.

I got to the youcha place fashionably late at 8.45 to a tableful of people I mostly didn't know. Haiwei's girlfriend is called Li Baoli and seems very nice and sociable, though wasn't drinking as apparently she'd had a heavy night last night. What's most important is that they seem really happy together. And I was happy to be there too...a relatively simple meal outside with some nice fish, though I avoided the youcha as I was told it would stop me sleeping. But Nong pinged me at 11pm to say she was at Lu zong's bar at Jiang Bing Lu, and as we were winding down I decided it would be polite to pop over.

But I didn't have the bike so decided I would finally try to use one of those blue hire bikes, but I couldn't get Weixin to sort it out properly. Leilei has used them before so I'm sure I should be able to do it, but I ended up walking the 20 minute walk there and getting there well after 11.30pm. Well getting to the wrong place (again) actually, but no worries I was soon shown where to go, and upstairs it was pretty raucous with all the tables full of people. And this was only a Thursday night.

I sat between Nong and Lu zong for a bit, ganbeiing until I needed to table-hop, and managed to avoid having to sing.  Lord knows it must have been 2.30am before I left the place to walk home. I think I would have left the bike had I taken it.