A bit late to a traditional Guangxi meal at Boss Tang's friend's new business opening

Managed to get up reasonably late for a change and they had already sold out of most stuff at the xiaolongbao shop so I picked up five pouches of nuomi fan for only 5 kuai. Ok, a bit carby but I felt I needed that, and three of them were enough to fill me up for lunch. More rain kept me house-locked for much of the early afternoon, and then I received a call from Boss Tang, the other part-owner of the bar with Lu zong that I was at last night. He asked me to go over to his friend's new opening of a business and that he'd come and pick me up in a bit. Oh no, I think we'd talked about this last night and I'd probably agreed to come, but I had a few plans first and said to send a dingwei and I would try to leave at 7pm. He explained that it was far away but I said I would sort it. A bit later he did send a dingwei and indeed it looked to be 10km away, doable on the dian dong che if charged up.

But I needed it now to go and pick up an item of Pingguo Haliao clothing from the official shop, which itself is a good 3km away from our house, so as it had finally stopped raining I went there first at gone 4.30pm. I managed to find what I wanted and got back. But also Jiuma had got back and she was busy folding some coloured paper on the floor for some reason I may never know. I asked Xixi what time they were back and it transpired they'd take the 9am train tomorrow from Chongqing, and it looks like they had a good time as Leilei asked me for 500 kuai "for the last time"...hmm.... Oh well, my tea was the two leftover nuomi fan things heated up. 2 kuai's worth was enough for me.

The kids in Chongqing...no smiles here please...

The monorail Tan and the kids took

By the time I had sorted out the stuff I needed to sort out it was gone 8pm, but at least the bike was mostly charged. The journey took 25 minutes and part of it was on unlit industrial roads with lorries going past. Without a headlight it was a bit dangerous, but I found if I held down the switch I could keep it on for a while. Finally, when I turned up there was a bit of a roar, as most of the people had been drinking for nearly two hours. I was poured a beer, but before I could take it I had to do some Guangxi tradition of being poured two pots of baijiu. Luckily this was much weaker than the normal stuff, and not having drunk before I didn't mind too much. But of course it had to be poured down a sort of chute into a bowl that a lady dressed in traditional clothes held to my mouth, with another bowl below to catch the drips. As they started pouring they started singing, and I just know this was being filmed and uploaded to douyin within seconds. But it was quite good fun.

It actually lasts a lot longer than this as I can testify as I was next!

My turn

And the inevitable caima, followed by "gou rou!" when you win a round! I think it means "dog meat" but I still don't really understand the significance

A new friend

I managed a few rounds of caima with some of the blokes, to their great amusement, and managed to stay a "healthy" 90 minutes during which both Nong and Li Kun pinged me to go out but I had to tell them I was miles away. When I left I promised to drive carefully and indeed did, and got back with I'm sure a few km left in the batteries. But try as I might, sleep would not come, and I ended up watching the Man U v Fulham game to kick off the season and Fulham didn't deserve to lose 1-0. Finally managed a bit of kip at 5.30am.