Burn, Banking, Pension, Lots of Walking

Here we go then, let’s hope for some better weather and some more beasties and plant life.

August 1^st Not new beasties today. Do you remember the insect I thought was dead? That one may have been but on the other side of the house I found these two this morning. Cue ‘David Attenborough’ with some correct scientific stuff which I don’t know, or cue ‘Bernard Cribbins’ with “They were making mad passionate love!” These two were not dead although they only moved a little every now and then. You can see the gold bands easier here. How you tell which is male and which is female though I have no idea.

The weather stayed good for us today, we walked 9.4 km with no really fast spurts but I still ended up with a blister on the end of one of my toes. One thing I like about living here is that it is possible to ‘get away’. We live in a country of over 1.3 billion people, a city with (supposedly) 150,000 people but despite that, within just a few minutes we can be in the countryside listening to birds and insects. Of course, it doesn’t matter how far we go, someone will have decided to farm there!

August 2^nd Lovely day for a walk today and we were off before 8 o’clock. I had to include this picture so I could get a very old joke in. He’s a handsome duck isn’t he, standing there on one leg. How is it birds can do it for hours yet we fall over after a few minutes or even seconds? Anyway, what was the joke? Some say it’s an ‘absurd’ joke, others say it’s an ‘anti’ joke. I’ll leave you to make your minds up; you can always do a Google search for it. There is a gent who claims he wrote it in 1969, he may be telling the truth, who knows. All I know is that I heard it on the radio, many, many moons age. “What’s the difference between a duck?” (Insert your response here.) “One leg’s both the same!”

And here’s me pointing out one of the village signs along today’s 10 kilometre route. Note how I am ‘nearly’ standing on one leg!

August 3^rd My plan was usurped by Huan today. I had decided we would walk out and then when we had had enough we would get the bus back. Well off we went, towards Nanshengzhen, which was my plan. On the way we thought we might try and look inside some of the villas on a compound at Shishu. The security guards were having none of it so we decided to walk around the outside instead. Unfortunately, that road ended up here.

Now I can hear you all saying “Why didn’t you use a map?” Well the truth is, we enjoy just ‘rambling’ wherever our feet take us. Anyway, we had to walk back then to the main road where I felt it was time to start on our way home. Around the 11.5 kilometre mark we bought some drinks, quite necessary by then, and I suggested to Huan that we take a bus home. In her infinite wisdom she decided we should walk. To be honest, I don’t really think she knew that we had a fair bit more to go. So, the final distance was just over 18 kilometres, here’s the proof!

Once home, instead of a ‘real’ lunch I made us two chocolate milkshakes and then it was time for a quick kip! Us old folks you know . . .

August 4^th Aaarrrggh!! Another blister. Now I know what you’re thinking, but this one isn’t on my foot. It’s on my ‘giving the bird’ finger on my right hand, right on the end too. (Of course those of you who know me will know I am not the ‘giving the finger type’.) “How?” you may ask. Well, it’s Saturday and we always have a good old English breakfast at weekends, or as near as we can make it anyway. Sometimes, for a change, instead of China’s excuse for bacon and sausages we use a tin of meat instead and that’s what I was doing this morning. Now this particular tin was circular so I decided to cut out the middle of two slices and fry the eggs in the middle, in my mind it looked perfect. Of course I hadn’t reckoned on breaking the eggs into the resulting holes. One went fairly well, the other ended with my finger in the lard. I’m now typing this while trying not to use the middle finger on my right hand! Must remember, use a cup or jug next time I want to surprise Huan with a ‘pretty’ breakfast.

August 5^th Not a bad ramble today, ten kilometres starting over the bridge to nowhere and finishing down our local walk through the woods. It would appear that the farmers have given up harvesting their rubber trees. This is what happens when they don’t empty their little cups often enough.

The reason it’s one of our favourite walks is that there are hills, but nothing too strenuous, it is shaded coming down the hill, and the scenery is pretty nice to look at. Here’s a spot that would be great to take the picnic box and a couple of glasses of wine. You’d have to ignore the bugs of course but then you’d have to do that in the UK too!

August 6^th Shopping day so lazy, no morning exercises and no walks. Perturbing phone call from the Bank of China though. There is some problem with money coming into my account. “Which company is it from?” I have no idea of course. Whichever pension it is, state or private, it is usually sent via some clearing bank or other. The last time we had a problem we were in Harbin and it was the intermediary bank that had used a different name to that on my passbook. Chinese software means my passbook can’t show the last two letters of my surname. Ah well, a trip to Sanya tomorrow and see if we can sort it out.

August 7^th Well, where to start. The bank had my wrong telephone number on file despite being informed in 2015 and even calling me since then! They managed to get the right one by calling the UK. At least they had the nouse to think thought of that. Next it was the UK’s problem. My Friends Life payment for July was sent with a five year old account number and a three year old address! We eventually got the bank to accept the payment but I had to prove a few things first. 1) The company sending the payment (the paperwork gave the company name as ‘FLP Electronic Annuity’) Elsewhere on the paperwork Friends Life was mentioned and in one of my letters from them they refer to themselves as Friends Life and Pensions. I assumed FLP referred to this and luckily for me, the bank agreed. 2) Next I had to prove when I started paying in for this pension! How many people would have that recorded. Luckily for me, I keep everything! 3) I had to prove my identity of course, with my passport. 4) They wanted an ID Card, or as the Americans have, a Social Security card (obviously I couldn’t supply this). 5) I had to show them that I had been receiving payments into the correct account for the last five years. 6) I had to give both my old and new addresses as further confirmation. 7) Why does the bank paperwork have ‘Friends Life PLC’ where my letters have ‘Friends Life Limited’? (Quick explanation of ‘Public Limited Company’ and hoping I was right) 8) I had to have my photograph taken. 9) I will have to go to Sanya every month to sign for both incoming pensions, state and private. All of this kerfuffle by the way involved three bank staff, the teller dealing with me, who at least spoke English, his immediate supervisor now and then and occasionally the department supervisor! And they say they are making things easier for foreigners! A lot of this has to do with China’s latest money laundering laws, and I’m assured that it won’t take three hours next time. Still, July’s payment was successfully deposited.

June’s payment however had not been received at all. Back home then and on the phone to Friends Life, using the phone number that’s stored on my mobile and is the one I’ve always used before. “Sorry Mr. Myerscough, I can find no record of your account on this system, I think you have called the wrong number”! She eventually put me through to someone else who was able to find my details but could not explain why my account number and address were wrong this month. In fact, they may have been wrong before because it seems June’s payment was ‘returned to sender’ and re-sent on 3^rd August. I wonder how that will turn up. I was then told that the lady I was speaking to was working from the ‘call centre’ and that there was no longer an international line to contact the ‘back office’ on. She would pass my details on and they would phone me between eight and ten this evening. The back office got back to me sometime after half past nine but with no further progress to speak of. How can things go wrong so badly after receiving these payments for eight years now? I guess it may have something to do with the transition from Friends Life PLC to Aviva. The upshot was this lady, after some discussion not really leading anywhere asked for my email and said she would try and get back to me tomorrow. Of course they should already have had my email in their records as we have communicated that way in the past! She also promised to give me a phone number in the email for future reference. Let’s hope it works. Now we wait!

August 8^th Empty brain, forget pension worries and walk. Sometimes I’m amazed at just what we see when we wander around. Today we spotted trees growing out of people’s houses, or out of their walls anyway. These are not climbing ivies but actual trees.

And then just a few metres further on, someone was farming in a very strange place. Look carefully and you’ll see some crops in the middle right of the photo. Unfortunately my high resolution copy wasn’t good enough to crop today. (Play on words there, did you notice?)

Evening time and a pension update. I received an email ‘thanking me for telling them my account number had changed’! They also wanted confirmation of my address and telephone number again. As this email came from an unknown address, in other words not the same address as previously used by Friends Life, another phone call was called for. At least this one was short and sweet as all I wanted to do was confirm the email address. Now in holding mode again waiting for replies and/or money!

August 9^th Confined to barracks due to the sheer number of cats and dogs coming down from the heavens! We did get out to the bank though, ICBC. Because my pension is paid to BOC in Sanya, (there isn’t one here) we draw out a lump sum and then deposit it in ICBC here in Wuzhishan. Well we did that on Tuesday and then went to update the passbook. One of the bank staff insisted on helping me and I ended up with a page in the wrong order and another page double printed. When we got up this morning I went into a little more detail and found out the book was missing transaction numbers 37 to 56 so a visit to the bank was called for. We got a printed statement for the missing dates but it still didn’t help my brain understand the difference between book and statement. Once home it was on to the PC and refresh my excel skills. It took some time but eventually I had it all done. The book balance is equal to the statement balance. The statement shows the correct transactions where the book was not only missing some but had somehow combined others! I’m sure these problems didn’t exist in the days of double entry bookkeeping!

August 10^th Still raining! Email from Friends Life in the UK, “Please ignore the letter we sent you on the 8^th August, we sent it in error instead of to the clearing bank.” They did thank me for giving them my change of details though. I wonder if they read the bit that says letters can take anything from three weeks to ‘never’ to get here. As for incoming payments, we wait and see.

The rest of the day I spent inputting Pinyin on the bank files, Huan thinks this may help me learn. (Hahahahaha!) Lightworks was the next job, combining and exporting the dashcam video backlog. One day I will learn how to do more with that software. (Maybe!)

Peaceful end to the day, a reasonably slow five kilometre walk, to make sure we got our (winning) lottery tickets for the weekend, just in case it’s tipping it down again tomorrow. Managed to see nearly all my four legged friends on the way!

August 11^th The weather forecast said ‘raining’ all day but we thought we would risk a walk anyway. Once again we went wandering off the main roads eventually reaching a village where a little old Grandma told us there was no way out, only back the way we had come. If we carried on there were two smaller villages. We decided at just over five kilometres it was time to turn back. These were the views at the end of that village.

I wonder if there are any antique treasure cars just waiting to be found somewhere. After all, there were rich people in China pre the 1950s!

If we could buy a house out in the sticks anywhere this could be one of the choices. This would be the view from our balcony, although I took this from road level.

Well we got home without seeing the forecast rain, just a spot now and then. In fact it didn’t rain for the rest of the day. That was just as well as we were out for a walk again after dinner, we had no electricity. Buying the UPS was a great idea; we have had quite a few power failures since 1^st July when it was switched on.

August 12^th We got it half right today. My weather forecast said cloudy, Huan’s said maybe a little rain. Looking outside we both agreed that rain was definitely on the cards, not maybe! We decided on walking anyway and planned it so we could get under cover if necessary. The map is shown below. Well we got it right the first time. It rained between kilometre 1 and 2 and we were able to shelter under the shop fronts in town. (Forgot to take any pics for you there.) Unfortunately the next downpour occurred between kilometre eight and nine. We could run, which we didn’t of course, but we couldn’t hide. Never mind, last walk of the week, everything into the washing machine.

August 13^th Monday! No exercises, no walking, only shopping. Some bad news though, the upstairs balcony appears to be giving us problems. That apartment is empty for most of the year and has given us problems before. Remember the water coming through the kitchen cupboards? We also had problems from their back balcony when we were still in Harbin, resulting in our bedroom wall being soaked. You can see from the photo that this appears to be a water problem again. The worst part is that we can’t repair it until the occupants return. Nobody else has a key and nobody has a phone number for them either. Come on lottery, we’re waiting for you!

August 14^th Another rain forecast but we managed a walk before the rain today. Nothing much to report home about. We passed the hotel built by the same guy, or company, that built our apartments. As you can see by the empty fountain and the generally unkempt flower beds no maintenance seems to be done here either.

The rest of the day was spent surfing the internet. Sometimes I wish we had shops to go to, the internet provides just too much information. You may remember the problems of my phone in the rain so I’ve been looking for something else such as a GoPro alternative. As we live in China you can imagine just how much choice we have!

August 15^th Confined to barracks all day long, rain, rain and more rain. We had to go out after dinner though, it was buy tickets day! Luckily the rain eased off. We found another supposed pub. It seems the Chinese name is “Little House”. I wish these places opened in the daytime or at least earlier in the evening.

A little further down we met a little friend although by the expression on its face I’m not so sure about ‘Friend’. A little petting was allowed but only reluctantly.

August 16^th Yet another day of rain and today it didn’t stop. Well it gave me even more time to search the web. Bits of paper were all over my desk comparing ‘point and shoot’ cameras for zoom, picture quality etc. Still undecided.

Huan went up stairs and found that the neighbours to our upstairs neighbours were in so she asked if we could go and look through their window. They agreed. The balcony above ours is full of water; it’s just not going anywhere, except down! A couple of phone calls resulted in three members of the apartment complex coming to see our ‘problem’. Of course for them it didn’t seem too much of a problem at all. Still they agreed their boss should visit. Eventually he came and initially I think he also thought it was ‘much ado about nothing’. However, he looked above the ceiling in the kitchen and agreed that we did have something to complain about. He found out that the apartment has in fact been sold so he agreed to go to the housing department of the government tomorrow and try and find out who it’s been sold to.

After an eventful afternoon it was back to cooking dinner for us both and then even more ‘surfing’.

August 17th Hanging around waiting to hear from the ‘security’ boss. Nothing heard all morning. After lunch we decided a ‘weekly drive’ was called for so drove up to the reservoir and back. Took a wrong turning somewhere after the reservoir and ended up in a dead end village again.

On the way down we met a bunch of real stubborn cows. Huan was just about to get out and ‘Move 'em on, head 'em up, Head 'em up, move 'em on, Move 'em on, head 'em up Rawhide’ before they snootily let us through.

Not long after reaching home we got the expected call from the security boss; he was going to the government office, at ten to four in the afternoon! I guess he must know somebody because he did get access to the relevant files. Unfortunately there was no phone number for the new occupants. He told Huan to ring 119, the Fire Service. I advised her against it but she rang anyway and their answer was an emphatic “No”. The next number to call was 12345, the ‘government complaints line’. No success there either. The security boss then suggested that we needed at least four of the apartment complex committee to accompany us while we paid a locksmith to get us in and sort the problem out. Guess what? Only two members of the committee are here, Huan is one of them, the rest are ‘ooop North”. So, the next stage is the security man taking himself off to the police station tomorrow to try and get a ‘permission letter’ to get the locksmith to allow us in. At least it’s stopped raining!

August 18^th Not the best of weather today and of course we were waiting for any kind of updates about our ‘upstairs’ problems. None were forthcoming! We had an after dinner walk and spotted a snake in one of the basins near the river. It was very lethargic though. Sorry about the picture. Unusually, I was not able to get a decent crop from the high resolution photo.

In the evening we had visitors! Patrick, Flora and Padraig are in Wuzhishan for a rest after Patrick’s RV escapade. No Dou Dou though, sad. . . Still, Patrick and I managed to down a few beers on the balcony, he blaming me for asking him if he wanted more, and me blaming Huan for bringing us more! A very nice evening.

August 19^th A longer walk today, just over thirteen kilometres. Some good photos taken en route. Only one to share though, ‘rice planting’. I did try and get Huan to join in but she didn’t know how she was going to wash her feet after. I suppose I could have had a go but then who would have held the camera? And what if there were snakes in there?

August 20^th Back to Sanya to check how the incoming pensions are doing. The state pension was fine, no action needed on my part at all. The FLP one on the other hand was a mess again. Despite me calling them and emailing them as well as them confirming they had all the correct details, both missing payments were sent to the wrong account again. Another email sent on returning home to try and get things sorted out, again!

Unexpected visitors in the evening, Flora to borrow some poetry, Padraig, and my best friend Dou Dou. I think he was as excited to see me as I was to see him! (PS Dou Dou, in case you haven’t guessed, is a dog.)

August 21^st Not a good day for going out, weather too wet. However, a good day, or evening was had anyway, we had visitors again. This time it was the whole Quinn family, including Dou Dou and they stayed for our version of Shepherd’s Pie followed of course by the obligatory beers. Sorry, no incriminating photos!

August 22^nd Walkies happened! The weather held off all morning so we had a nice wander around the town, managed to get nearly nine kilometres in two hours. Not much to show you except the Chinese way of controlling rats. It’s the first time we’ve seen this too. This particular one was just outside the local university.

August 23^rd Miserable weather to start the day again so Huan decided we should go to the Traffic Police and see how many fines I had to pay this year. What a palaver that was. You go in, take a number to wait and see how many fines you have. Once you have that information, you take another number for the payment counter. That counter though only accepts payments for Wuzhishan (city/county) fines so once we’d finished there it was time to take another number. That was to pay the fines incurred outside of Wuzhishan. The fines don’t worry me so much, it’s the ‘points’ I’m afraid of. This year I managed to clock up 8! None of them were for anything very bad. Three points were for going straight when the arrow in the road said left only. In my defence, it’s right outside or complex and we always used to be able to go straight there and on the police photographic evidence you could actually see the remnants of the old ‘straight and left’ arrow. The next three points were for ‘dithering’ I would say. Not being sure where we were going, somewhere in Haikou, I ended up slightly straddling two lanes at a junction. The last two points were for exceeding the speed limit, 77 in a 70 zone. I was caught by an average speed camera over a distance of 31 kilometres. They are everywhere here!

There has always been a way of getting round the system here in the past. It’s your car that’s incurred the penalties but if you could find a willing volunteer they could pay the fines and incur the resultant points on their licence thus keeping you in the clear. We’ve just heard, through the Haikou grapevine, that as of 1^st September this will no longer be possible. Not only will they be photographing your car when you ‘break the law’, they will be running facial recognition software on the driver! Now you may not actually be aware but Chinese Facial Recognition software is pretty efficient. I would say it’s way ahead of anything the British police have access to. Even getting Huan a licence won’t help under those circumstances.

At least the evening was better, The Quinns arrived in force again, although minus Dou Dou. They had been fishing but had caught nothing but an old bra! Before long we were all tucking into Huan’s pizza, delicious. What a lucky boy I am to be married to her. Visitors of course means refreshments so once again Patrick and I put the world to rights over a beer or two on the balcony. Another late night, and at my age too!

August 24^th Rain forecast for late so we got a nice long walk in in the morning. Remember the ‘Golden Lady’ from last month? Well today, with a little difficulty, we managed to get round to the front of her. Here she is in all her glory, quite pretty really.

Walking around the lake also brought us to another view we hadn’t seen before. “Bottoms Up!”

As usual of course we were very ill equipped for where we ended up walking.

Something that was unusual was this next photo. We see a lot of water lilies down here and I often take pictures of them. It’s not often though that I can crop part of the high resolution photo and get one as nice as this. Huan thinks it’s almost worth framing.

And our last picture from today’s epic walk, well the last picture for the blog anyway, concerns the ‘birds and the bees’, or in this case ducks. Look closely, it’s not one duck, it’s two and they are making ‘mad passionate love’. Well one is anyway, the other one seems to be nearly completely submerged. They did both paddle away with ‘quackilicious’ grins on their beaks afterwards!

August 25^th The plan for today had been to take our visiting neighbours for a short walk, up to the fairy castle, over the bridge and down the other side of the stream. Plans of course are made to be broken and this one certainly was. It rained nearly all morning.

Afternoon was spent at Patrick and Flora’s. They had invited us for afternoon tea. Lots of biscuits, cream cakes and fruits were on hand. I skipped the healthy part and only had cakes and biscuits. Scrumptious! Despite Patrick reminding me I’m afraid I forgot to take any pictures. Bad boy!

August 26^th Gorgeous weather this morning. First things first though, full English breakfast for our friends from ‘oop norf’ before they head off home again. I say English, but the only English part was me and I’m half Welsh. Eggs, (local), sausages, (Chinese), bacon, (German, made in Haikou), Heinz beans, (made in China), bread, (local) butter, (New Zealand, made in Malaysia) marmalade, (Orange jam, made in China). Still, it was tasty enough!

Once our guests had left we decided that walking in the sun was not we wanted today and instead had a very lazy day sat in the air-conditioning. We’re such ‘cool’ people!

August 27^th Rain stopped play, again!

August 28^th Not bad planning today, we managed to get over ten kilometres in and arrived home about ten minutes before the rain came down. We spotted this rather large spider on the way, it’s as big as Huan’s hand. You can’t quite see that in the picture because her hand is nearer the camera. We did manage to get it moving but my video skills failed me completely today!

Just a few metres past this a motorbike turned up and stopped us to chat to Huan. It seems that there was a letter that they thought was for me in the Post Office and they wanted us to check on the way home. Very nice of them I thought, stopping on their way past us. Imagine my surprise when he turned round and went back the way he had come. He had made a special journey just to give us that information. Only one question, how did he know where we were? Do you think he’d been looking out for us as we passed the Post Office a kilometre and a half before? I know I am the only 外国人 - wàiguó rén or 老外 – lǎowài here but I didn’t know they could find me that easily. Maybe I am in the Chinese version of “The Truman Show”.

August 29^th Bad planning today. We got caught by the rain three times in the first three kilometres. We sheltered the first time in the lottery shop where Huan won ¥10 on a scratch card. She was smiling. The cards cost me ¥20!

We did manage to find shelter each time it rained so not too bad a day in the end. We spotted a couple of old geezers playing Chinese chess in the bushes. I think they may have been waiting a bit too long for the other to make a move though.

And finally, for today, what would life be without a few cows, resting on a traffic island.

August 30^th A great walk today, fifteen kilometres, mostly with overcast weather so not too hot. What’s more the rain held off all day, it’s not even raining now as I write this. We took a ‘different road’ again which about half way though our journey we found only went another six or seven kilometres into the mountains before stopping. We didn’t follow it to the end, instead we stopped here.

As you probably guess, it’s a local reservoir but when we got to the top we found it was more than that, it was a fish farm.

As you can see, it’s not very busy. We found the ‘owners’ who were busy stocking up with new fish and asked them why it was in the state it was. They told us they didn’t have enough money so they were stocking up to try and get people to come and fish, and then have their catch cooked here for them to eat. I didn’t have the heart to tell them that we are surrounded by rivers where the local people can fish for free.

They even had little chalets on the water where you could play 麻将 – májiàng.

On the way back down the ‘gentle’ hill we ran across one of the ‘friends’ we had passed on the way up. It’s amazing how water buffalo always seem to want to keep their ‘eye on you’.

We also passed again the site where the highway from Wuzhishan to Baoting and then on to Haitang Wan to Sanya will be built. I think it may be a while as the two young men we talked to were still surveying the route.

Just before we reached the main road we passed another site, similar to many others, which really makes me sad. A lot of empty villas, in this case around a small lake. Nobody lives in them of course; they have all been bought by those pesky northerners, as an investment. What a shame.

And so ended today’s walk, leaving us both ‘tyred’ out and in need of a good shower, or even a bath. (See what I did there!)

August 31^st Last day of the month, weather looked good, so we decided to do a bit of exploring. In the past we had been able to walk in a big circle past the medicine factory in the woods, along the ‘not yet in use’ highway and back home. We wanted to see if it was still possible. First stop, the local canine studio where this fellow was posing for me. Handsome chap isn’t he?

A little further on we spotted these on the side of the walls adjoining the rice fields. Anyone any idea what they are? They look a bit like fish eggs, but they weren’t in the water.

After the medicine factory we bumped into an old friend, you may remember her? I wonder if she remembered me. I still can’t get over the character in that face!

The road was not in the same state that we remembered from previous walks.

And look what I was wearing. What’s more, it was going to get worse!

The road didn’t circle round the way we had hope and it ended up at the river side. There we could see why it was in such a state on the way down. They are dredging the silt from the river and moving it back up the road to somewhere we don’t know.

I told you it would get worse, this was why. In places there was no track at the side of the river so a little wading was called for.

As if that wasn’t enough, Huan stumbled across a snake half in and half out of the water. She had no trouble allowing me to go first this time! As it turns out it was another dead one, a little bigger than ones we have seen previously and with different markings. I left it to provide dinner for the ants.

What a time we had, here’s Huan putting her shoes on, twice!

Our last picture for today shows that they are still working on the new Qionzhong-Wuzhishan highway. It’s supposed to open for the October holidays. We did see various work vehicles zooming up and down so maybe it will be on time.

I can tell you that we were both very happy to get home today, and in my case extremely knackered. I guess I’m not as young as I used to be!

PS Our balcony is still not sorted and slowly getting worse, we are praying that the ‘new’ upstairs neighbours will visit this winter and not just leave their ‘investment’ empty!

That’s it for this month, take care all, we’ll be back!