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This should just be a short one to fill in the gaps between Hong Kong and the official start of summer travelling. I went back to Chongren with the girls, arriving early on Wednesday morning. The next day I caught the bus to Yihuang, where Rob and Dan live and the only one of the Jiangxi projects I hadn't yet visited. Yihuang's only an hour from Chongren and the two are really similar, both in terms of size and in their relationship with the PT volunteers, which is much closer than it is in either Jiujiang or Zixi. The town itself is much prettier than Chongren - which I thought was lucky as, still being phoneless, I anticipated spending a good amount of time just wandering about near the boys' school asking where the white people lived.
Miraculously, the boys, plus Ned, who was also visiting, were just walking up to the school as I got out of my tuc-tuc so I was saved that embarrassment, and we all went straight off to spend the evening at a restaurant owned by the boys' friend Anqy. After stuffing ourselves and knocking back a good few glasses of baijiu with Anqy's mum, we were led over to the mahjong table. I'd never played mahjong before but Dan taught me, with the assistance of a dozen waitresses and chefs who'd gathered around us to enjoy the show. We played for hours and hours and at the end all four of us seemed to be down on money... Mahjong was a defining feature of my stay in Yihuang, which lasted until Saturday lunchtime. The boys were each given their own personal set by Beth and Cat's waiban, so we played more at their apartment... and I lost roughly 30Y in one evening, most of that to Rob. We didn't do much else really: we watched Pulp Fiction, played Chinese chess, ate lots of ice lollies, endured four-hours without air-conditioning thanks to a thunder-storm induced power cut and ventured outside for meals. On Saturday we were invited to lunch in their school's private banquet hall, where we met the Rob and Dan's waibans and several other teachers - even the principal, who stopped by to share some toasts with us. They were all very friendly and just generally nice, and they tried to give us each an expensive bottle of baijiu as a leaving gift as well.
I went back to Chongren after lunch, where the girls were in the midst of packing up the house for to leave the next morning. In the evening we went to dinner at their friend Kirby's house where we got suitably tipsy with toasts amongst all of his friends. I came out of this badly, both for being the newbie in the group and for downing my first drink (as was required by the toast!) too fast and thereby encouraging other people to toast me so they could test their own drinking speed against mine. After dinner we went to say hi to Kirby's mum at the restaurant where she works. The only customers in the restaurant turned out to be obscure acquaintances of the girls', so we were invited to join them for plenty more toasts (of coffee and then grape flavoured beer, both nicer than they sound) and more food. After lots of drinking and photos and the arrival of someone's dad for yet more toasts and photographs, we managed to extricate ourselves and make our way to KTV. As usual, the Chinese people present took KTV pretty seriously and sang pretty well and, also as usual, the British contingent absolutely murdered every song they came near. We were also introduced to a feature of KTV I'd never encountered before, 'DJ time'. This was 15 minutes or more of crazy DJ music with the lights flashing and all of us dancing madly like idiots. Yes, mine and Beth's new sea creature themed moves did make a reappearance, although they might actually have been outshone by Kirby's own crazy dancing.
On Sunday morning we were up early for last minute packing. Students and teachers were stopping by the house all day to say their last goodbyes and give the girls more gifts, and at 10 the party of teachers who've been closest to the girls arrived to help us pack our things into the car that would drive us to Nanchang. Both Beth and Cat were crying, most of the teachers were fighting back tears themselves and when we reached the school gates a small crowd of students was waiting to wave the girls off. The school cameraman ran up to take some last photos of the girls with their students and teachers and outside the school gates, and I loitered about awkwardly sucking a lollipop and trying not to intrude. Kirby came with us to Nanchang and stayed with us until we caught our train... which is where we are now. (At least, we were when I wrote this. Internet problems have delayed the posting of this by about two weeks... sorry!)
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