After all the hard work drying the beans on day one I put my feet up for the rest of the time in H’s hometown and took the opportunity to catch up on a few dvds and eat lots of H’s fathers delicious meatballs (deep fried in lard, I’m salivating just thinking about them). Anyway, I was well aware of Swiss James’ planned trip through Jiangsu and we’d already had a 3am beer-fuelled discussion about a possible meet-up if we were both in the right place at the right time the previous weekend. By the Tuesday I was starting to think I’d got away with it that maybe they couldn’t fit it into their busy schedule when I got a text message; “m8, n changzhou 2moro, cn spNd a nyt w U guyz” it began, “letz git rly :#) & do crAZ stuff!!!!! OMG!!! ROTFLMFAO!!! SJ (;-)”, I rang him up to find out what he meant, THE MEET WAS ON!!!

At lunch we told H’s family that a couple of my friends were calling in and would probably spend the night in town, immediately a heated exchange began in Jiangsu dialect, after a few minutes I began to wonder if I’d made a grave error in inviting them, I asked H what was going on, had I angered them? “No no no” she replied, “we’re arguing about where to have the banquet, I told them they’d really enjoy our home cooking but they think we should eat at the best restaurant in town”, AH! I insisted that we eat at home and explained how they had never sampled home cooked Chinese food (of which H’s parents food is surely one of the finest examples!) and went on to explain something of the glittery razzmatazz lifestyle which supercouple Jamma© lead back in Shanghai to the to the open mouthed family. After a moment’s thought H’s brother announced “Tomorrow I shall drive to Danyang and buy the finest dog for the banquet!!!” and with a GANBEI everything was sorted.

The next day after lunch we slowly made our way into Changzhou to meet Jamma© and took a quick look around the Tianning temple complex close to the train station. I wasn’t expecting much but actually we had a great time, the wooden pagoda is ENORMOUS (154m high, I just checked) and we spent a couple of hours making our way up that and enjoying the view (oh, did I mention we had two kids in tow, that’s why it took a couple of hours..). After that we made our way into the park next door, took a boat ride, ate ice cream, etc etc until the Jamma© tourbus finally rolled in.

Tianning temple complex – well worth a look if you’re in Changzhou and have too much cash (like 80rmb too much)

We hadn’t really planned on how to get back to H’s hometown but H knew where we could find a minibus next to the train station for next to nothing. Unfortunately the last time she’d done this was five or six years ago and things move fast in China, needless to say the area had been redeveloped and the illegal minibuses had all been moved on and were nowhere to be found. After twenty or thirty minutes of hard negotiating H finally sorted two taxis for us for 110 kuai each and we set off. When it came to selecting taxis we’d definitely drawn the short straw, we set off at breakneck speed heading straight for a pack of pedestrians crossing the road who barely had time to scatter before we came screaming through. The next 45 minutes flashed by in a series of swerves into oncoming traffic and dives on the inside of cars, trucks, buses and just about anything else on the road, at one point a girl on a bike only just avoided being hit by us as we squeezed, all lights and horn, between a truck and the kerb and she jumped off her bike and dragged it out of the way just in the nick of time. The roads got narrower and poorer in quality and as we finally approached the village the road was in very bad condition (we later found that stretch of road lies on the boundary between two districts and neither district will accept responsibility), dotted with knee high dips and troughs. We made it through the first set after squealing almost to a stop but then quickly accelerated and rammed waaaay to fast into the next set. He couldn’t slow down enough and the front of the car dropped into a large rut and with a loud bang and crunch the engine/gearbox bottomed out paralysing the car, we just made it back onto the level before stopping for good. We all hopped out, relieved to have finally come to a stop and had barely got our breath before the other taxi pulled alongside, barely a minute behind us, we explained our ordeal and Emma laughed, describing her journey as “quite leisurely”.

My knuckles were still white a good two days afterwards..

Eventually we made it to H’s place and not a moment too soon, the food was almost ready and people were starting to arrive, we did the introductions and got stuck straight into the beer.

Jamma© with H and parents

As we sat down for dinner things had been carefully planned to ensure that James was sitting next to the strongest drinkers, I had been bigging up his drinking abilities at dinner the previous day, “No problem” H’s brothers replied, “We will drink with him until he is FINISHED!!!!”. James foolishly opted to go in with the baijiu (I stuck to beer) and his glass was filled to the rim for the first round of “GANBEI”.

The sad thing is, I barely got to eat any food at all, I was drinking glasses of beer (I’d guess around 150-200ml glasses) and I’d barely sat down before the GANBEI-ing started, well, I must have got through 7 or 8 glasses within the first ten minutes (I had to down full glasses of beer while James was downing a finger or two of baijiu every time). I gave up trying to eat, just snatching the odd thing every now and then between toasts until I’d got through 4 or 5 large bottles. At this point nothing else was going down, my stomach was enormous, tight as a drum and hurt like hell. I made a tactical decision and took a walk out of the gate and towards the trees, when I was far enough away from the house that I thought nobody would hear I let go an almightly stomach load which came out at jetwash velocity (I went back to ground zero the next day and was surprised that the trees had still got their bark, maybe it had grown back), it went on and on and on until I got rid of everything. Feeling newly refreshed I made my way back to the table, picked up a fresh bottle of beer and started again (I checked with James later, he did exactly the same). At around this point we ran out of baijiu so James switched to downing a can of budweiser with every ganbei for the next few rounds.

It got a bit messy after this, we were pretty hammered but we definitely ended up in a karaoke bar (I know, I took a picture), I really can’t remember what time we finally went home but there was a big panic when we dropped Jamma© off at the hotel and James realised he’d lost his phone (something about being on duty, planes falling out of the sky etc..).

An unbelievably sober looking pic, maybe James was beyond drunk, post-drunk even.

Anyway, eventually the phone turned up, but not until lunchtime the next day, I took a picture of James for posterity, he looked very well in it: