Wuzhishan, Gas & Electric Problems, House Maintenance

May 13^th Woke up this morning with a swollen left foot. Maybe that’s because we didn’t walk yesterday. This morning Huan had some other business in town so I went off without her. I was able to walk a little faster than usual but I tried to keep myself reined in, just to please the doctor(s), Tim and Huan! I walked just over eight kilometres, my foot had gone down by the time I got home although my ankle was still a little swollen. Quick shower, A/C on and struggle into my Granddad stockings!

We still have no gas as explained above, today it was the turn of the electricity! It went off just about the time our spare ribs were finished in the hot air fryer. Good job we were having salad with it. It came back on about an hour later and then went off again while I was in the middle of learning. While we were downstairs talking to the ‘electricians’ I was pointing out all the wires that were not installed as we would think but just strung around haphazardly. They told us that way back in 2006 or 2007, when the inspectors visited, the building owner took them all out for a big dinner thus ensuring of course that everything was signed off and he could go ahead and sell his properties. Some time after that, and after we had already bought our apartment, the internal building wiring was found to be faulty, hence the wires just ‘hanging around’. My trade was not electrical but telecommunications. However, when I see the results of the work here I can absolutely guarantee I would have done a much better job.

Most people in the UK are aware of colour coding of electrical wires. I wonder what they’d think of this one. This is the ‘earth’ or ‘ground’ strip. Even if the Chinese colour code is different, all these wires should be the same colour!

May 14^th Shopping and ‘air fried’ fish. Yep, still no gas. Two breaks in the electric supply today. Nothing else to report.

May 15^th Huan woke me up at 3 o’clock in the morning, it seems I was having a bad dream. Usually, I can work out where the dreams come from; in this case I had no idea. Of course once she woke me, then she was awake. Not what you’re thinking you naughty people! No she had heard a mosquito, or two, so out came the ‘electric tennis racket. Needless to say all this mad waving around stopped me dozing off again so I went off to the kitchen balcony for a drink and a fag. Hearing a lot of voices, I looked down, and there were still two tables full of people sitting at the restaurant below. I thought about taking a photo of them but they may not have taken kindly to the flash. Lots of empty bottles around too so they were a bit wobbly. At least they weren’t so noisy. I wonder if they realised the time. They should have because I saw the first farmer on his way to market before I went back to bed around three-thirty.

Managed a nice walk this morning, came home, got on the PC, and guess what, the electric went off again. We had an ‘old people’s afternoon nap’ and when we woke up, power was back, well, for a few minutes anyway. I took the lift down to the second floor which is where it appears the problems are. The first floor has power which explains why the lift works. I took a lot of photos on the second floor, but this may explain some of the problems.

At least we got it back in time to cook dinner. It’s amazing what Huan can do with just a rice cooker! Great duck leg stew today, one of my favourites.

May 16^th Very lazy day, waiting for one of our old neighbours to come and bring me some slides for scanning. By dinner time she had still not arrived! Out to do the important work, buy the lottery tickets for Wednesday and Thursday. On our way we met the lady in question’s husband who told us she would be round later. Walk cut short. Well she did arrive, with negatives, not slides, but no problem. This is what I use. If you have ever considered buying one, definitely do it. The price seems to have gone up since we bought ours but at least your memories are saved before the negatives waste away to nothing.

May 17^th Out reasonably early this morning, working for all potential visitors. Well, almost. We decided to do a highway recce and see how far they have progressed since last year. If we decide to visit you, as long as you live up north, this is the way we will go.

Now for you coming south, you have no choice, you have to stop at Wuzhishan.

Never mind, it’s a great place to stop and you don’t have to struggle, there is an exit ramp. Just be careful because this is actually the ‘north entry ramp’ Where the other access points will be we have no idea.

Now; remember the #5 bus from last month, the electric one. We knew that they were charging them somewhere out of town, today we saw where. This is the water treatment and sewage processing plant. If you look carefully you can see a whole bunch of solar panels and a #5 bus. Who knows, they could be using the sewage gases too.

And so ends another day, this time with oven made pizza! It seems they have located the damaged gas pipe, and the person who damaged it. However, he is arguing about the cost to repair it! Who knows how many more days? Thank God we bought an electric oven!

May 18^th Great day. For the first time in a while we were able to go for a ‘countryside’ walk. Hopefully my ankle will hold up and we can start increasing the distances again. Today it was a mere eight kilometres. Now you’ve seen lots of pictures of where we’ve been so we won’t bore you with repeats. This one is worth showing you though. Do you get the idea he, (or she), wants to come home with me? Oh for a house with a garden. . . .

May 19^th An early city walk today, we had to buy the weekend lottery tickets. Good job we went early, it was a warm one! And it would appear, at a rough guess, that we weren’t the only ones who thought so!

In the evening I was very British and watched the Royal Wedding on YouTube. I can be patriotic at times. I loved every minute! Huan doesn't understand, pomp, pageantry, religion, 'Britishness', romance love etc. Good job she wasn't watching it with me though, she might have caught me choking back the waterworks now and then. Just as it was finishing there was an almighty ‘crunch’ from outside. Some poor chap had been knocked off his bike. It didn’t take the rubberneckers long.

As you can see the poor fellow had managed to sit up a few minutes later. It’s a good job I suppose as it took the ambulance nearly fifteen minutes to turn up. The police turned up five minutes after them, by which time of course he had been taken away. Only after the police arrived did we see the other vehicle in the incident. He was fifty metres further along the road. Whose fault it was we have no idea. There’s a lesson for you all here though, use a dashcam! You never know when you may need its record.

May 20^th Lazy day, Taobao ordering for Ledong and learning more e汉字. We also decided to order another one of these.

With having no gas we had been using this one, that we bought for the Ledong apartment. “It’s just a hotplate” I hear you say. Ah, but that’s where you’d be wrong. It’s an induction cooker. (How it works, from Google – “When you turn on the burner, an electric current runs through the coil, generating a fluctuating magnetic field, but no heat on the burner itself. However, once you set an iron or stainless steel pan on the burner, the magnetic field induces many smaller electric currents in the pan's metal”.) Verdict from us two – it works well, very well indeed.

May 21^st Weekly shop. Now some of you may remember the Lychee Stink Bug Nymph from last month. Well they are still there, on the same tree, in the same place. They look a little different now though.

As you can see the colours have changed, now white underneath and brown on top. The one in this picture will go a little browner yet. You can probably also see that they are much bigger than they were before. Well, I guess if I was stuck in a pub being drip fed beer I would be larger too!

May 22^nd & 23^rd Lovely couple of days walking. At long last we are back into double figures again. I won’t be doing it every day, got to look after the ankle still, but it was a really nice change to go a bit further than usual. Just a couple of photos, here’s Huan under the bridge in town. For some reason she wouldn’t go ‘back a bit’!

And instead of one of me, here’s another one uploaded to Jake’s page. It’s in colour there but I think I prefer it this way.

May 24^th More staying indoors. We decided to do some more Taobao ordering, this time for us and not for Ledong. Our fly screens on the kitchen balcony are in a bit of a state so we (by that I mean me, under Huan’s expert guidance of course) are going to repair them. Here’s one of the ‘before’ pictures, ‘after’ will come later.

May 25^th Nice walk again today, only around the riverside though, seven and a half kilometres. No special photos for you I’m afraid. However, good news came our way today. We received our induction cooker from Taobao. Guess what else we got today? The gas came back! Ah well, at least we are prepared for the next time.

May 26^th Lovely long walk today, twelve and a half kilometres. Might have buggered up my ankle again though. Mind you, it was worth it. We did one of our favourite things, fight through the undergrowth.

Of course it would have been better had I worn some decent boots, (instead of sandals), and some long trousers or jeans, (instead of shorts)! We met someone who was as happy as a pig in ****! If the water had been cleaner maybe I would have joined him, (or her). Mind you, that could have been dangerous; these Hainan piggies can be quite vicious.

We also came across a very unusual flower. I wonder if any of you budding botanists can identify it?

Our guess is that someone put it there to dry and then went home with their child, with one shoe, and forgot this one!

You saw the highway in progress earlier, well Wuzhishan will also be gaining a couple of bypasses. This is the western one under construction. At the moment, like many here, it is a bridge to nowhere!

And finally for today, a selfie. Here’s a pic of me and ‘Daisy’. Getting close to cows around here is not so easy, they are very, very nervous about people. I think I got close enough though. Unusually, I also managed to give this one a pat on the head before I left. It was a very swift pat; just to be sure I didn’t disturb him too much.

May 27^th & 28^th My Achilles tendon was swollen again where I had previously ruptured it so no walking. Does anybody know how long it really takes for an Achilles injury to heal completely? And don’t tell me not to walk for weeks on end, I couldn’t cope with that.

So, instead of walking, it was resting and learning on Sunday, shopping and learning on Monday. I’m up to 450 characters now and my average score for these two days was 99%. Fairly pleased with that although a short time off causes that figure to drop again!

May 29^th Huan was ill this morning, probably menopausal troubles again, so I was off for a lonely countryside walk. I kept the speed down a little to protect my ankle. Took a few photos and a few videos. I wanted to play with Lightworks again, hence the videos. I guess I’m learning slowly. The photos weren’t anything special today, just some mist in the mountains and some clouds in the sky.

The Eastern bypass was being worked on this morning, perhaps things are progressing. I still reckon it will be at least two years.

May 30^th After a walk out to buy today’s and tomorrow’s (we’re going to be rich one day) lottery tickets it was down to work. The fly screen repair kit had arrived yesterday.

I started with gloves but found I couldn’t really cope with them so ended up as you see below. My apologies for the show of ‘belly’ but Huan seemed to take a lot of photos of it today! Towards the end she asked if she could cut some of the extra screen on the side. Well, who am I to argue eh? As you can see the gloves fitted Huan and she cope with them better than I did.

We’re not so sure if we did everything right, I guess only time will tell. However, the results look good enough.

After our ‘old people afternoon nap’ we discovered a visitor on the balcony. It looks like the Lychee Stink Bug Nymphs may have grown up and left home. This one was busy trying to spread its wings but was having a bit of trouble. That was probably because Huan had given him/her a shower!

May 31^st Huan was feeling better so it was walkies again today. I told her we’d do about eight kilometres. I lied! We did eleven and a half. She does it enjoy it though. I’m lucky to have someone who enjoys wandering as much as I do. Today we were off over the bridge to nowhere and through the first village.

Just after the village we passed this small, shallow cave. I wonder if this is what you see before mountains start falling down? Not too many worries here though.

In the next village, another picture for World Street Photography. We have walked this way many times and of course we saw them resurfacing and widening the road last year. Why they did it like this though we have no idea!

Sometimes you just have to take a photo as you know you’ll never be able to explain what you saw. We spotted sunbeams shining through the trees at the side of the track we were walking on. I took a few pictures but this one is worth a view. No, that is not a CD dangling from the trees, that is a spider’s web. I must admit I’ve never seen one quite as small, quite as closely woven or quite as beautiful before!

And we finish on a sad note this month. There are a lot of these snakes around but we’ve only ever seen one live one. They’re about 30 to 40 centimetres in length I would guess. We often come across dead ones, as this one is. I think they must come out in the evening to ‘bask’ on the warm roads and then get run over by people returning home to their farms. I believe the brown is the upper side and the stripes are the underside. Ah well, that’s life I suppose.

And that’s it from me, and from the Prime Minister, see you next month!

Ledong, House Maintenance, Riverside Bar

May 1^st Mayday, Labour Day, or whatever you like to call it. No dancing around the Maypole for us, just a little shopping down the market. Huan isn’t fond of having her picture taken so I told her I would make it sepia then nobody would recognise her! The real reason was so that I could upload the same photo to Jake’s Street Photography Facebook page. Anyway, here’s the photo.

May 2^nd Of course it couldn’t last and as soon as the ‘worker’s holiday was over we were off to Ledong again to continue with the hard graft. Today saw me sanding down the walls in preparation for painting. We did a first coat today, on the repaired parts but no pictures of that, only of the ‘sandman’!

May 3^rd And we’re off! Loads of photos of me in all sorts of positions, up the ladder, down the ladder, standing, kneeling, crouching etc. However, these two probably sum it all up. I don’t think I’m as confident on step ladders as I was a decade or two ago! I did explain my worries to the commander-in-chief who told me that it would be OK; she would buy me a new step ladder!

Our afternoon was broken up with a wedding party across the road. It was a party after my own heart, no hotel, just a makeshift tent. We had heard them butcher the pig the night before so we assume it was cooked overnight. Very much a south Asian thing, I had the same with my previous marriage. By the way, you can’t see it, but none of the guests are dressed up. Only the bride and groom bother with that. Can’t say I approve! Of course, as the bride and groom arrived there had to be fireworks!

One advantage of having a party like this is that unlike most Chinese wedding parties, everyone didn’t rush off as soon as the food was finished. They carried on until well after we had finished for the day and even finished off with another bout of fireworks. The before and after I suppose.

May 4^th One of the other things our last tenants had managed to do was destroy the bed-settee-. I guess the ‘twins’ must have been jumping up and down on it. Anyway, here’s the good end, and what it should look like.

And here’s the other end, which as you can see, they tried to cover up. I guess they realised we wouldn’t be turning the furniture over to check the underneath!

Of course it was down to muggings to find some way to repair this. Well I managed, after a fashion. I got some angle iron, had it cut to the right size and then had some holes drilled in it, (the man who did that didn’t follow my instructions despite Huan translating them). Still, it worked, after a fashion.

Once both sides were done and we turned it back over again, we found out that the last tenants had also managed to destroy the mechanism that allows conversion from sofa to bed. I guess we may end up buying a new one! The last thing they asked us was if they could stay again next year. What do you think?

Once we had done for the day, final painting, sofa repair, little clean up etc, we decided to go for a walk, a slightly different route to one we had taken before. Lo and behold, we found a beer garden, next to a lake. It seems they open in the evening, around 8 pm the water feature starts, there is live music, of sorts, and they close around 2 am. Too knackered today but maybe next time.

A few hundred metres from the beer garden we also found a public swimming pool. Unusually, for a Chinese pool, it was quite busy. As we were not prepared for swimming ourselves I didn’t take any pictures inside, but this is the entrance, should you be down Ledong way.

On a lot of our walks we are sometimes sad to see how much nature is being destroyed by man, invariable just due to greed. Today we saw “nature’s revenge”, taking over the enemy!

May 5^th A glorious morning and time to go back to Wuzhishan. With this view I was almost tempted to stay a little longer but Huan’s plants were calling “w a t e r . . . .” and we needed to order a new door viewer (peephole) before the next tenants arrive. Yes, that was broken too, but I’m not at all sure we can blame the last tenants. It’s probably always been like that. Anyway, here’s the reason I almost stayed.

And a final look at the result of all our hard work over the past couple of days. Not bad, eh?

May 6^th A very lazy day, finding out just how many Chinese characters I had forgotten in such a short time! Dinner was the leftover pizza from our ‘northern’ friends’ visit. Always make enough to freeze the leftovers!

May 7^th Monday, so back to our normal routine of shopping. Just a little on the warm side this morning, when we got in the car the temperature was 37°C, by the time we arrived in the car park, driving through shady bits, it was down a little.

I just love it when the locals tell me it’s too hot and I reply telling them that it can’t be, it’s not over 45°C yet!

May 8^th Monthly report from Endomondo, lots of hours, not so many kilometres and definitely not enough calories!

I decided, without letting Huan know, that we need to walk a little more, not quite ignore doctor’s orders, but at least try a little harder. We managed 7 km today, slowly mind you; it did take two and a half hours. Instead of wildlife pictures today, we have the local petshop variety for you. There were others too, rabbits, hedgehogs and of course fish, but I think these are enough to keep you going for now.

Last, but not least, a rather camera shy pussy cat. I was free enough to stroke him, tickle him, whatever, but would he look at the camera, no way!

May 9^th We managed another 7½ km walk, again not too fast of course, must keep the doctors, and the boss happy! As usual I went berserk with the camera. Here’s the first of the day, a nice little bit of Chinglish. Somehow I don’t think that’s what they meant to say about superstition.

And here are three strapping young people that we pass regularly. I can’t tell you anything about them. Next time we pass by we’ll scrutinise much more closely and see if there is anything written anywhere.

Here’s one, just because I like it. I took this one for Jake’s ‘World Street Photography Site’ again and titled it “Everyone’s Gone To The Moon”. You’ll need to be an old git like me to remember that that was a song by Jonathan King released in 1965. (I was 15 then).

May 10^th Out early today for another long’ish’ walk, around 8¼ km. We were out early to try and buy today’s newspaper. After my recent ‘proof of life’ debacle it was Huan’s turn. Dalian had called her yesterday and unlike last year, seeing her on QQ or WeChat wasn’t enough, they needed a ‘kidnap style’ photograph complete with daily newspaper. Well, we were unlucky; it seems newspapers in Wuzhishan are not delivered before late morning, anywhere between eleven-thirty and twelve. Did get a few more photos taken though. I think this is one that my family and friends in the UK may like. The next time they complain about parking near where they live they can think about the road in front of our apartments.

After lunch we tried again, got the newspaper with no problem and headed off to the car wash with me looking forward to a lovely ‘Foshan’ coffee. Disaster! The coffee shop no longer opens in the daytime! Never mind, one bottle of cold coffee from the machine across the road and we were off home for me to play Lord Snowdon. No help this time, you youngsters can Google him. It took a few tries but eventually the powers that be in Dalian were happy ad Huan is now certified as being ‘alive’ until they ask again. At least it took less than 24 hours unlike the good old British government way! This may not be the one they accepted, but it’s my preferred choice!

May 11^th Guess where we were again. You’re right, back in Ledong. Two reasons, the new tenants (for September) want to have a look and if all is OK sign a pre-rental agreement. The second reason, the ‘peephole’ arrived from Taobao yesterday so needed to be fitted. I discovered why the old one was broken. The holes on either side of the door are not aligned so when you tighten the two sides together it becomes problematic. The old peephole was made of plastic and hence had snapped. A surreptitious look at the other peepholes on our floor showed that they all have the same problem. The new one is made of metal so despite not being able to get a flush fit, it should be OK. Here’s a close up.

The finished result is not too bad though. The old peephole included a doorbell, the new one doesn’t so you get a much better view. Reasonable pleased with the result.

Now I know I said we would have some photos of the public swimming pool the next time visited and that was the plan. All our swimming stuff was in the bag ready. However, while I was fitting the peephole, Huan was sat on the bed-settee along with the eighty year old lady and the security man who had ‘introduced’ them. Suddenly I heard an almighty crash! Both front legs had fallen off! “Enough is enough” I decided and the offending furniture was to be binned with immediate effect. The security man decided it would be better if he took it. Good luck to him! Anyway, that meant we had no time for swimming and instead we had to do a tour of all the furniture shops in Ledong again. We eventually found a Chinese style wooden sofa with two chairs, a corner table and a centre table. The shop wanted 2300i元 but somehow Huan managed to talk them down to 2000元 and include two dining chairs. We then had to wait in for delivery of course. The upshot was no swimming but a new set of living room furniture that hopefully will last more than six months. At least the new tenants, he is eighty and she is seventy eight, will not be jumping up and down on it.

Evening time saw us walking up into town for our evening meal, there is a lot more choice in Ledong than there is in Wuzhishan.

Following that I got Huan to show me where the local market was. It’s much bigger than both of Wuzhishan’s combined and seems to have far more varieties of fish, definitely more poultry, including pigeons, the usual chickens and ducks, and then some ducks that looked big enough for Christmas dinner!. Anyone living here is spoilt for choice!

We then took a stroll back towards our end of town where Huan tried to divert me ‘home’ to drink the remaining can of beer in the fridge. I successfully avoided that diversion and we ended up in the bar previously mentioned, (see May 4th above). It is called 月亮湖 (Yuèliàng hú) or for dummies like me ‘Moon Lake’. Now you may know the story of the ‘Jade rabbit on the moon who constantly pounds herbs for the immortals, well, it would appear that in this case, this particular rabbit is more inclined to drink!

We spent a lovely two and a half hours there. It is a bar that is well worth a visit. The water feature previously mentioned, starts around eight and lasts about three quarters of an hour.

My camera doesn’t really do it justice at all. The fountain(s) are quite well synchronised with the music that is playing and in both our cases, we appreciated the music. The sound is loud enough without being distorted and we could still speak to each other.

Once the water feature stops then the music begins. It is ‘karaoke’ music, shown on a big screen, but the downside, no one is allowed to sing! Pleasant enough music though. Again the volume and the sound quality are just fine.

There is quite an extensive menu, any critique of that will have to wait though, we were both too full, Apart from the usual it also includes fried locusts, silkworms etc. The food is reasonably priced for what is in effect a great outdoor beer garden. Tsingtao beer is only 10元, for a small bottle, but that is way cheaper than the majority of bars.

I’m afraid neither of our cameras were really good enough for many photos to be included here, but you can see the daytime shots on May 4^th. We’ll give you one or two though, here’s a picture of the first ‘legless’ customer of the evening.

And here’s a customer who didn’t get legless, his commander wouldn’t let him!

In summary, we had a very pleasant evening and it’s one we fully expect to repeat in the future. If we have overseas visitors this will definitely be one of our ports of call.

May 12^th Back to Wuzhishan stopping off at Maoyang for coffee and a visit to the little boys’ room of course.

The rest of the day was spent doing not a lot except resting. My字 learning suddenly went backwards! The font that I see on the Memrise website has changed, whether due to them or due to my browser I don’t know. I am going to have to do an enormous amount of review.

In the evening we had no gas, it seems that someone has dug up the pipe somewhere and it may take a few days to sort it out. Steamed fish for dinner, done in the rice cooker!