A day out with Angela and the eyes question finally resolved!

The friendliness of Chinese people never ceases to amaze me.  This story starts at the end of the conference.  I was out very late the night before the end of the conference, and I had decided to stay and extra night in the hotel.  I got up in the morning and booked an extra night.  Then I got a message from Angela.  “Did I fancy a day out in Tongren!”.  She had learned that I was there alone and wanted to take me out!  Excellent!  Soon afterwards I got another message telling me the plan of the day and telling me what time she would arrive.  She arrived in a taxi and we went off with all my luggage to the centre of Tongren.  She needed to take a few photos for an official document and then we would go to shopping for some ingredients for a meal that she would cook for us at her friend’s house.  We went to the photographers, but he was not there.  However, we parked my luggage in the back of the shop and went off to explore nearby.  We popped into a milk tea shop and ordered.  Milk tea is like nothing I’ve had before.  It is like a thin milkshake with a slight tea flavour and a myriad of things can be added to it, but it always has lots of small jelly balls in it.  They are very chewy!  I got vanilla flavour.  Angela then asked if I was hungry.  I was.  So, she ordered in some food form outside. Apparently, you can do this in China.  In a drink shop you can order food from outside to be consumed in the shop.  Never met that in England so far!  Anyhow we were drinking tea and chatting, and it came to me, the question I’d always wanted to know the answer to and had asked several times but never got the answer to.  Chinese eyes, in the centre appear to have a gap between the eye and the eyelid…does stuff get stuck there?  I say I have asked it several times before, but no one had quite understood the question.  Angela’s English is very good and she explained.  What appears to be a gap, is not a gap, it is just an extra fold of skin!  So now I know!

Angela...experimenting with the 'beauty' feature on the camera.  Personally I think that people look better w

ithout this effect!

Beauty feature didn't work for me!

After eating we went shopping and then back to the photos shop where Angela got her photos taken and I played with the photographer’s young daughter and taught her some English.  Eventually all was done and we went back to her friend Xuemei’s house.  Unfortunately, it was on the sixth floor, there was no lift and I had about 26kg of luggage!  I managed to get to the flat, but it reminded me that I was nearly sixty!  At first Xuemei offered to carry one of my bags but gave in after a short distance!  Later we all got weighed.  The combined weight of Angela and Xuemei was still less than the combined weight of ME.  They were 45kg each, I was 97kg…..about five kilos lighter than when I arrived!
So we prepared dinner, played a game that I didn't know the name of.  I lost.  As always, mainly because I don't care if I win!  Later I found out that the game was called tiao qi.  Leave a comment if you know what that is in English!

Xue Mai and Angela playing tiao qi which is apparently Chinese Checkers.  It is neither Chinese nor Checkers and was invented in Germany!