Karaoke, Chili Picking and Jiangtang

One day from Nanning, Jane arranged a trip to the countryside, to a country home run by her sister's husband's family, where you can walk in the forest along a river, lunch, pick chilies and play mah jong in a lovely relaxed atmosphere away from everything. It was a lovely warm sunny day - which is great when it's just a few days to Christmas - and nice walking along the river lined with bamboo and other trees. After lunch, we were sent to work in the fields and had to pick chilies (to pay for the lunch I guess !!). After collecting a few bags full, it was back to the house and a bit of mah jong, which I kind of remember from playing at home as a child. However the Chinese play it a little differently, there are less tiles and some that are different or have different functions, you also have to play very quickly, a one or two second delay on my turn and everyone is looking at me wondering what's wrong ;) It's not a game for a learner/amateur in China.


Left: Jane2, Jane1's brother in law's mother, Jane1 and Liu in the countryside.
Right: Women at work in the fields, that's what I like to see ;)

Have also been playing a few sports during the stay in Nanning, a few games of 10-pin bowling, pool, and one day a badminton game and a 7-a-side football match on sand.

One day in particular stands out, where my sporting abilities were clearly on top form, first bowling with Jeff, Jane, Jane & Liu, I scored a 178 which has to be my best ever, including 6 strikes and 1 spare in the game, not bad for me ! Then just a short while later during a 6-0 demolition at pool I even cleared up one frame from the break, poor Jeff didn't even get a shot. Badminton was fun, such a log time since I played that and quite pleased that I could almost hold my own in a friendly knock around with 2 chinese, the football was the first time I played on a hard sand surface, kept misjudging the ball at first, quite fast and slipped a few times, was good game, but my lack of fitness showed and was out-run by the regulars.

One thing I'm definitely not so good at though is singing and on Dec 26 I went to a birthday night out for Ming. After dinner we went to a Karaoke bar, my first karaoke since Atyrau in Kazakhstan. You get your private karaoke room and system and waiters/waitresses bringing food and drink as you please, all very cosy and people just sing. It's not such a spectator sport as it is in Europe where everyone watches and listens, here, while someone sings, everyone else just chats, drinks, eats and then when they want a go, they sing and the rest chat, drink, eat, everyone just gets on with it with no great fuss, and if you're crap nobody cares. This though was already apparent to me from the screeching and squealing you regularly hear from KTV bars around town, those which have public karaoke sometimes have speakers on the outside of the building too, so everyone knows and can hear what's going on inside and sometimes it sounds pretty bad. Fortunately on this night, we had some good singers in the group.



Left: A bagful of chilies
Right: Ming singing at her birthday karaoke night.

Discos / nightclubs are different here, from about 11pm to 1pm there is usually a show of some kind, dancing, comedy sketch, acrobats etc, only after all this does anyone get on the dance floor and dance. You also get big dishes of nice fresh fruit delivered to the table, I'm not sure if someone keeps ordering this every time or if it's just a nice touch, but every table seems to have them.
My food and diet has changed a lot here, but generally I like Chinese food anyway, so that's been little problem, though it is of course at times quite different and certainly more varied than the Chinese cuisine in European Chinese restaurants. All those Chinese dishes I have tried before are available somewhere, but these and their variants are usually a small percentage of what's on a Chinese menu in China. There's plenty of meat dishes I haven't tried before, some camel's hump was put on my plate before I knew what it was, so I thought I'd give it a go, it tastes OK, but nothing special and a bit too chewy, frog is tasty but too many little bits of bone, paddy field fish is a tasty, small fish found only in rice paddy fields, not in rivers or seas. Pig's stomach and intestines seem popular, but I haven't tried any, though beer fish is a speciality around Guanxi which I must try sooner or later. I have avoided dog and snake so far and also did not go for the pangolins in a cage outside a cafe in Xingping, eating chicken's feet still makes me laugh for some reason. Taro, lotus root, rice porridge and a warm blended drink made from corn on the cob kernels are now regular in my eating, also frequent are roasted horse chestnuts, fire dragon fruit and my new favourite thing ever!! jiangtang, a stick of chewy sweetened ginger.