Again, I wasn't feeling good enough to go gym due to ladu. Haiwai pinged me to eat tea at his family's house at midday so that was the evening meal sorted. I only had three xiaolongbao for lunch then played with Tan Shiyun before Jiuma unexpectedly said they were going back to Baise and that was that. I may well not see them again for a year or so.
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| Tan Shiyun looking like she'd half-inched a pint glass from the local |
So at 6pm I left to picked up a watermelon on the way to Haiwei's err...mum's? I'm not really sure. I was going to pick up the biggest one and asked the vendor on the side of the road if it was ripe but he said "no" and started slapping various ones until he found one that sounded ripe enough. I've seen buyers do this before but not vendors. He decided on one for 27.8 kuai and it was the first time I've ever spent a fraction of a kuai on WeiXin.
It was a much better than average meal, with large "black tiger" prawns, or at least that's what they translate to, plus roast chicken etc. Haiwai was saying that this meal would have cost 1000 kuai in a restaurant, but cooking at home made it less than half price. Both his sons were there, the elder with two of his best mates, and the younger playing on his phone and barely putting two words of English together. After the customary 15 minutes of eating, Haiwei opened a bottle of red for himself and beers for elder son and one of his mates and me. I asked the elder son if he was driving tonight and he pointed to the mate next to him. Ah good...they were responsible enough to have a designated driver.
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| Lovely birthday meal for Haiwei's elder son in the blue |
Then, after we'd had a couple of beers the elder son, I've got to remember his name, said it was his birthday today. I chastised Haiwei for not telling me and he laughed and said to ganbei of course. The ganbeis continued as we moved on to caima, during which I beat his son several times in a row and he got quite red-faced. In the end Haiwei finished his bottle of wine and we finished the beer. The lady of the house was about to open my watermelon but we said not to as we were full and we didn't want it to go off (I guess it was too big to put in the fridge). So it was the end of an excellent and jolly meal during which I did manage to speak a reasonable amount of English with the elder son, despite him being with his two mates who didn't understand a word.
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| Elder son's mate, elder son's other mate (dd), Haiwei's elder sister's daughter, elder son, me, younger son |
A bit later I went for a walk to the guangchang and bumped into Tan and Xixi eating bbq at where other than Tianyang Po's. They were just finishing but had loads left, and as I'd just turned up I was to pay and take the rest home. Great timing. But I continued to the guangchang and met who I think is called Ranran but I don't know. She was with a friend and her kid so I managed to offload a little bit of bbq to him, before going home to chill. Then Xiao Nong pinged to go to KTV asked if I had friends to go with, as it would be me inviting I suppose. I thought about asking a couple of people but it was already late and I knew they'd be working tomorrow so I told her and said we could meet for a drink instead, but heard nothing back. Then, in true Pingguo style, at midnight Ranran pinged me to say she'd been dragged to a KTV to celebrate a friend's birthday. Knowing my 1am curfew I said I could make it but only for 40 minutes.
So I got to the "Party" KTV place, which is in the same car park area as "Miss You" KTV and "Calorie" KTV, and she came down to get me. Why they wait till midnight to invite me I don't know. Do they have to reach a certain level of inebriation to do this (to be fair Xiao Nong had pinged me at 9.30pm)? Is not like it's daring or anything. I hadn't had time to grab another beer before leaving so was happy to do a few ganbeis with people who had clearly been doing that for some hours. It looked like the beer was running out so Ranran poured me a rather unwelcome glass of gongbaowen and I sipped on that for the next few minutes as we played caima.
I said hello to the birthday girl who was clearly sozzled, then went to another room. Blimey, they weren't messing about there. A very portly bloke stood up, took the empty glass out of my hand, and picked up two (probably 330ml) cans of beers and shoved one in my hands before opening and chugging his. I managed it, but rather slower. Then it was back to glasses to ganbei a couple of the ladies, before the same bloke reached down for two more cans of beer. I bet he could put away a fair few, but as I was getting mine down me I realised it was 12.55am and I felt a bit like Central Europe Cinderella (an hour ahead, no it doesn't make sense, and anyway I'm in China). I didn't have time for goodbyes, so walked to the door without looking back and beat a quick exit, getting home just a couple of minutes after 1am. Of course I had a missed call from Ranran, and I got back to her apologising, but saying next time let me know a bit earlier please!
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