As I said Mum and Brian visited us in Zhaoqing. One night we took them to the Mongolian Bar for a meal. It's a really nice outdoor restaurant with great views over the lake and city. Night time is really nice in Zhaoqing - you can't see the smog or pollution!!

We also invited Lyn and Kitty to the restuarant with us, so in all there were 8 of us (foreign teachers also came). We were sitting down to the meal which was just superb when Mum started looking around the restaurant. Friday nights it is very popular and a lot of companies take their workers their occassionally. This night there was a rowdy crowd cheersing their beers and laughing. Mum wanted to go and say hello in person as for some time they had been calling out "Hallllloooooh!!" to us. I didn't think it was such a good idea as you could tell they were already rowdy and a tad drunk and I was trying to explain to Mum if they say "cheers" it will be expected that she empties her glass.

Like I said she still thought this was a good idea. So the two of us went over and said hello. Next thing their were cartons of beer coming out of nowhere - people cheersing, slapping each other on the back and in general we had caused a commotion. It turned out the group we had gone to say a friendly hello to were from the local Pabst beer brewery.

For some reason when they found out I was her daughter they eased off on pouring beer into her and started on me. Not that some had not already been making me drink. Each time I tried to retreat to my table I was invited (dragged) back to the party by a nice beer factory man.

If this had happened in Australia I would have thought all my Christmas' had come at once but here, skulling hot beer is not a favourite past time.