2011

The Gregorian calendar turned another page. I didn't expect the Chinese to celebrate New Year twice, but there is actually a official 3-day holiday.
I spent New Year's eve with some new friends. One of them being a couchsurfer from Beijing, who contacted me last week through that amazingly useful social network. She did not end up on my couch, but I invited her to join a small gathering with local friends and have a BBQ dinner near South Lake, the biggest lake in town, and a good place to stroll and enjoy a spectacular fireworks display I suspected would take place there.
Upon arrival at the lakeside, fireworks were already lighting up the sky, but from another location more East. The view from the traditional arched bridge over the lake was good though. We watched the fireworks until the cold wind forced us to leave the spot high above the lake. I had been to Ali Mama's BBQ garden before with my dentist friends from nearby Guangxi Medical University, and one of them joined us this evening with his now ex-girlfriend (his mother didn't approve of her, that's how things work in China). They managed to keep up a good friendship though, and I count both of them among my closest friends in Nanning.
My new friend from Beijing also brought two people, so it was a truly social networking affair. After licking our fingers clean, we strolled around the lake to a short strip of bars, to greet the turn of the decade with a bottle of Jack Daniels and various snacks. Gregorian New Year is not such a big deal in China, the bars were not nearly full, but the atmosphere was good.

The rest of the weekend was also quite eventful, socially. I had made a new friend on campus last week, a cute student of French, whom I had helped with practicing French pronunciation while lying on in the grass on campus the past sunny week, in preparation of her oral French exam. You can often find me lying on the grass with my books on those sunny afternoons, it's also a great way to make new friends.
So, while Yanyan was out for a daytime picnic with her class on New Year's day, me and my new friend went to Renmin Park downtown, and took a crazy ride in one of those stomach-turning spinning wheels which make 3-D lissajous figures high above ground. Afterward we went to a cinema in the luxurious Admiral City shopping mall in the Eastern Lang Dong district, where LED-decorated high-rises dominate the skyline.
The Chinese film about an older guy and a beautiful young lady on a 'trial-marriage' trip to a romantic resort on Hainan was both humourous and touching, and had both Chinese and English subtitles, so good practice material as well.
We finished off the evening with some tasty local food at the famous Zhong Shan Lu night market, which is soon to be demolished and replaced by something more glamourous. On the corner a 218m tall building is already under construction, which will look like a 1:2 scale model of the International Finance Center in Hong Kong (415m), judging from the artist's impression of the finished building depicted on a giant billboard.
The pace at which Nanning is growing is staggering. Everywhere new high-rises are being erected, and the increase in traffic is more than the city can adequately handle. Like in the bigger cities in the East, this will surely take its toll soon.