Despite the pills and beer I was up by 10am and as I knew no-one else would arise for a while I just read the Olympics news and grabbed a shower as I thought we'd have to be out by midday. But midday arrived and I'd barely spoken to biaodi, who'd showered last night as most Chinese do. A Wu pinged me to ask if I'd eaten as he was at his Ma Daxia, then said he'd be back in a bit, so at 1pm he was there to tell biaodi to take me to a beef noodle place 100 metres away. So that was lunch and/or breakfast even if I couldn't finish it. A Wu then told me to change my train to a later time and I realised it would be a good idea as it was getting on already and we hadn't really done anything today. So I managed to book the 6.21pm train but annoyingly the app wouldn't let me cancel the one I'd already booked, despite giving me the option. When it came to it I had to choose my name from my saved travellers, but only Tan's name came up, presumably because she has a Chinese ID. Slightly annoying as it had been the only ticket available and was business class costing 80 kuai. Whatever, the time spent here should be worth more than that.
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| My Chinese is good enough now that I knew these were the wrong translations without looking at the bottles...沐浴露is shower gel and 洗发水is shampoo. Result (thanks to the conversation with Li Kun the other week) |
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| 小心地滑means careful floor slippy, but I can see how it could be thus mistranslated |
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| The beef noodles were a good lunch with some added lajiao and spring onions |
When we got back to the hotel the card wouldn't open the door and I suggested it was because it was gone midday, but biaodi said it should work till 2pm. In the end the cross-off time was 1.30pm apparently but he was going to stay another night or three so got reception to sort it. A Wu grabbed his shower and after a long time waiting around the two of us drove back to Ma Daxia. He said we were going to do some filming at his place and I guessed I would be doing a promotional video. Fair enough, I'd had enough to eat and drink at his expense.
Indeed when we got there there was some bloke with some sort of bright light. I only had to say what I was saying yesterday evening: "Ma Daxia lao you huoguo feichang bang!", but the first four times I screwed up on "lao you" by reversing the words. It's horrible how knowing you're being recorded can fry your brain like that. Eventually on the fifth go I managed to get it right, then had to do it again with my giving a thumbs up afterwards. Oh jeez I hope it doesn't go onto Douyin and Tan sees it.
At 4pm we sat down to eat. I explained I'd eaten after 1pm but it wasn't accepted as an excuse not to eat again so I joined them for a while. As it was a Saturday there were a few customers eating even at this late/early hour. I noticed I had oil on the lower part of my trousers from last night, but these are my favourite pair, and I was able to remove the lower 10 inches or so and wash them off. I went outside to let them dry on the wall but the promotional lady brought me upstairs and said it would be quicker to use the electronic hand dryer. Yes of course it would. Why didn't I think of that?
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| Everyone should have a pair of trousers where the bottoms zip off, if only for the occasional clean |
By now it was nearly 5pm so A Wu and I walked to his car to pick up my bag. He said he needed to buy something and that he'd be in Pingguo next week to invite the family for a meal, and that the underground station was over there. And that was it. Well sort of. I got to the station no problem, got someone to help me buy a token, took the tube the one stop to Nanning Railway Station (which Google still says is permanently closed), then queued up for security and this time had to take a sip of my lemonade and jing jiu that I'd concocted last night. Then at second security for passport the lady stopped me as I went through, looked at the screen for a while, then said I could go.
I went upstairs to the air-conditioned waiting area where there was not a single seat. Then I saw that there was no train for 6.21pm so I checked my e-ticket. Bugger, I'd bought it to leave from Nanning East. I went back downstairs to the woman who'd stopped me earlier and she said it was ok, the train would pass through Nanning and I could board it there. Phew! I had visions of a mad rush to Nanning East where I would probably miss it. Then it dawned on me I still had nearly an hour, so looked to see if I could get an earlier train but alas it was sold out. So bugger, I found a seat in the non air-conditioned area and sat there for 20 minutes before going to stand in the cooler area. Blimey I'd forgotten how bad queueing here is. I only have the option to go where there is a human to scan my passport so it's annoying that so many locals use the same queue to scan their ID cards when they could use one of the umpteen other ones.
I shouldn't have worried too much; of course as the other queues died down a lot of people moved to those. What annoyed me the most was a woman with a Vietnamese passport one place ahead of me. She hadn't opened it up at the appropriate page and the bloke spent nearly a minute looking for the ID page as she had a number of visas with her photo on that looked like ID pages. Jeez you could have spent three seconds preparing your passport but instead your lack of care or forethought or whatever meant the few of us left in the queue were in real fear of missing our train. Yes it's probably just a mix of culture and lack of pre-frontal cortex, but blimey would you like it if you were the person behind in the queue?
But anyway I got to the platform in good time and happily let everyone rush on first. The trip back was non-eventful and the jing jiu-infused lemonade was still cool enough to taste ok. I did ping Nong but she was looking after her kids at her elder brother's wife's place, and may be around later. So after pleasantly refusing the taxi drivers' requests I found a san lun che for the only time this summer, and maybe the last time ever and got back home before 8pm to find Tan and the kids sprawling on the beds as usual, but at least Tan asked me how Nanning was.
She then asked me to go and fix her glasses as a screw had come out. Apparently she'd got the prescription lenses in Pingguo but the frames in the UK, and the previous place she went to put in a screw that was too small and fell out. She also asked me to get bbq for her and the kids so these were my tasks for the next 45 minutes. So I went to Tianyang Po's for the duck stomach and duck tongue, then her "uncle's" for the beef and sweetcorn for the kids. While waiting I found the optician's, but the lady couldn't find the right size screw, so pointed me to another optician's just across the road that was apparently part of the same branch. Why they'd have a sister shop so close I didn't ask. But success! The lady there found the right-sized screw and wouldn't accept any payment for such a trivial task.
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| Finding the right tools and screw for the task |
Tan wasn't so impressed that I'd come back with lots of bbq and a fixed pair of glasses, and asked me to get some dragon fruit so that was an excuse to go to Guanmart and pick up a couple more beers too. Some bloke called me, who'd pinged me weeks ago to go out singing then never got back to me. He was at home with family drinking and Tan had a go at me for knowing people like him, as they would invite me to their families' funerals and I'd have to pay. Well, in 20+ years I've known enough people and only been to funerals of close family and close friends. But whatever. I wasn't asked to join them luckily.
Then at 10.45pm I got a call from Chen to go down to Yu Dao Hao Men to meet some blokes from the army, as you do. Well, why not. It was a bit late but that is the way it is here. Luckily the dian dong che still had some dian and when I got there I found Chen with a couple of blokes and their wives. One of the blokes was particularly the worse for wear and his wife poured him a glass of red tea to drink with me instead of beer. He didn't seem to notice and stumbled over to me to ganbei, and found his glass wasn't completely full so topped it up with beer. He didn't even seem to notice as he downed it, and didn't complain too much when his wife pulled him in the direction of home.
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| A couple of drunken army majors |
The other bloke was some army major, and managed a bit longer, but they'd clearly been there a while. If they wanted my company they could have pinged me an hour or two ago but hey. The woman from next door popped over for a drink then the boss of this place did for a while, grateful for my company not that I was really doing much. Then it became 12.30am so I had to use my excuse of curfew to get home, but it wasn't too difficult. The boss forced 10 chuan of beef bbq on me and said it was for the kids. Then I was home by 1am and remembered to put the bike on charge before another relatively early night.
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