Well, it’s not my first time in H’s hometown but it’s the first time I’ve been there in the summer (actually, I’ve only been there once before, back in February for Chinese New year when I met her family for the first time and threw up on my shoes on the first night) and things are looking distinctly greener and more countryside now. I’ve still not been sick on my shoes which is a major improvement on my visits, although tonight is the major celebration so there’s still plenty of opportunity (especially if Swiss James calls in on his way through Jiangsu, H’s brothers have sworn that they will drink with him until he is “finished”, it’s not clear if that means drunk or dead at this point).

We actually arrived yesterday afternoon in time for a delicious dinner at H’s parents place, I’ll no doubt be needing a diet by the time I get back, almost everthing is cooked in copious amounts of lard. Anyway, we stopped at her brother’s place and got up ridiculously early (like 6:30) and popped out for some breakfast in town

H buying congee

Some rather good Lanzhou Lamian for me

After that we drove to the market to stock up on supplies for her mum, that was a BIG mistake. I mentioned before that tonight is the big celebration and every man and his dog (and when I say dog I mean motorbike) had made their way to the central market and as we approached the market we we’re quickly hemmed in from all sides by a combination of pedestrians, motorbikes, cars and trikes, in the end we spent a good hour making our way about 50 metres towards the market and then reversing all the way out again, apparently H’s brother has done this kind of thing before luckily. At one point we hadn’t moved for about 10 minutes so H jumped out and started bossing people around (she’s something of an expert), it turned out that a woman three cars behind didn’t know how to reverse and in her own words “was scared to death”, H talked her back all the way out (with help from a random man in the street) and slowly but surely we got out and made our way to her mums (with the veggies we’d picked up eventually from the market).

Back at her parents place H helped her parents with preparing lunch and I entertained the kids (ran around the yard while they chased after me with a variety of plastic weapons intent on doing me actual injury). Eventually I managed to get myself on light duties and spent an hour drying beans in the yard, in return they called off the wolves while I did it (to give the puncture wounds chance to heal).

H in the traditional kitchen, the two built-in woks are powered by an open wood fire at the back.

Drying beans (I think)

That was about it really, I had chance for a quick walk around the paddy fields next to H’s parents house, then we had lunch and returned to her brothers place for a much needed nap!