This morning the WCE Trio received the biggest celebrity welcoming-home in the history of the
Expatdom. Frank Minkleman, twin brother of Gambays owner Fred Minkleman, provided a top-down Mercedes convertible (which he'd rented from a man in Nanjing). The Trio entered the limousine, with bodyguards standing on the running boards, whilst PM Mango followed in a taxi.
Nearly seven hours were required for the motorcade to cover 4.5-km route from Zhongshan Road to the 1912 Bar District. Every foot of curbing was occupied by bellowing humanity.
"The Expatdom roared and shrilled itself to near-exhaustion",'Wuxi Now!', reported, "the crowd numbered several million. Fifty thousand English teachers, and bar attendants, had walked off their jobs to be there. Factory sirens were tied down, car horns honked deeply, tooting fireboats on the Canal spouted water, and overhead, sky-writing aircraft spelled out
WELCOME HOME and WELL DONE in celestial messages over three kilometres long".
"Zhongshan", Minkleman stated, "was like a herd of hysterical animals. Women were weeping into handkerchiefs; men were alternately sobbing, and prostrating themselves!".
After it was over, the Expatdom's Department of Recycling reported that over 22,859 tonnes of paper and ribbons had been dumped on the Trio.
Enterprising street-vendors have been selling beer-glasses bearing the Trio's images, as well as buttons, pennants, orchids, cacti, and brooches.
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