The Chinese way

First of all, I haven't forgotten that I have still to post on the rest of the Sichuan trip - I'll do it soon. This is just a quick post, but I had to write about it.

We were invited for lunch at the home of one of the Chinese teachers. In fact, she doesn't do a lot of teaching, but does timetabling etc. Her home is just out in the countryside, so we took a taxi from town to get there. Unfortunately, despite being with some Chinese people we got out of the taxi in slightly the wrong place and had to wade through quite a lot of mud to reach the front door...

Anyway, the meal was fun (despite my not being able to drink alcohol due to illness yesterday and the day before).

When it came to the time to leave, we had to wait a little while, and I presumed that we were waiting for a taxi to arrive. But no, it turns out we were waiting for the return of a car which was already dropping some other people off.

Now, Rick and I often joke about the police cars here always being used for driving friends and family around and not for actual police work. [Can you see where I'm going with this?]

Yes, the car that arrived to drive us back to Pingxiang was in fact a police car. We did laugh a bit (especially Rick, as he was a bit worse for wear!) It had the special kind of horn that you only really get on police cars, government officials' cars etc. Rick also got to turn the siren on!!!

And so, by getting a lift home in a police car we're just that bit closer to becoming Chinese. The hair and eye colour might still give the game away a little bit though.