Christmas, Old Wine, Dead Chicken, New Year

December 24^th Christmas Eve and I have no bathroom standby duty. I decided a walk was in order, after all it’s been eight days since I had one. Mind you, my knee is still not 100% so no hills were planned except the mild ones in town. The first photo comes from our new park bridge, they have begun the suspension cable installation. I wish I could get inside to see exactly how it’s done.

I took one or two photos on my walk, nothing special though. Of course I also had an ulterior motive for going out today, I need white wine for tomorrows dinner. Now buying red wine is easy, it’s called 红酒 (Hóngjiǔ) which literally translates as ‘red alcohol’. If you want to buy white wine, you can’t ask for 白酒 (báijiǔ) because while the meaning is ‘white alcohol’, it is not wine. Báijiǔ is a spirit, whose alcohol by volume can be anything up to 65%. That’s not exactly what the recipe calls for. So what do you ask for? According to my lessons, I should ask for葡萄酒 (Pútáojiǔ) but that just means ‘grape wine’. It may work in cities where they have more availability of wines but it doesn’t work here in Wuzhishan. Every shop kept directing me to the red wine display. Here, I need to ask for白葡萄酒 (Bái pútáojiǔ) or put the colour at the end, 葡萄酒白色 (pútáojiǔ báisè). Eventually I understood but it made no difference, nobody had any. Well one shop had a 187ml bottle which would have sufficed but they wouldn’t sell it to me because it was the only one they had and they had no idea of the price. That reminded me of the store men in the army who would never let you have what you wanted if it was the last item in stock. It was explained to me as they needed the ‘last one’ to be able to recognise what it was when replacement stock arrived. I had to give up and go home where I did some searching for possible substitutes. There would also be a chance this evening in the shops I’d missed this morning

After lunch, it was time to assemble my new chair. I can’t say I’m over impressed; there was some minor damage here and there, but not enough to warrant sending it back. If we lived nearer the supplier we may have done that, but returning things from here is a pain in the proverbial. Even worse than the minor damage though, it’s just not very comfortable! Still, I guess it will do what it has to and I’ll be able to use the guitar more easily. Here’s what it looks like, one arm up for demonstration purposes.

After dinner, it was shopping for me again and this time I was lucky. The wine is made by Great Wall and they are fairly trustworthy, we’ve had many of their red wines. This one looked like it had been in the shop a long time; the sales girl said it was thirty years old. That’s obviously not right, there’s an Olympic logo on the back so it should be 2008. Because it’s ‘old’ and ‘looks it’ I thought I could wangle a cheaper price. I did, I got a whole ¥3.00 off! Instead of ¥98.00 it cost me ¥95.00. Still, beggars can’t be choosers. Once home I had a quick taste and it seems like it should do the job. I’ll let you know when we’ve eaten the chicken tomorrow. Meanwhile, here’s the wine itself.

On the bathroom front, the new installation team wanted to come tomorrow afternoon. I pointed out to Huan, perhaps not as gently as I should have, that tomorrow is Christmas Day; she’s rehearsing all morning, and then they’re all having to go back for make up tests in the evening. We only have the afternoon together. They will now be coming on Boxing Day.

December 25th Well this was not the best of Christmas Days. Huan has successfully passed on her cold; I now have gunge in my nose and throat, a headache and achy bones to boot. At least I could stay in and relax, I thought. Shortly before Huan was due home I decided to get everything out of the fridge ready for this afternoon’s cookathon. Our fresh bird, which we, (or I), had followed all the instructions for, had gone off. The bag it was in smelled like urine and the legs were changing to a grey colour. It just goes to show that you shouldn’t believe everything you read on the internet.

Once Huan arrived it was off out for both of us to try and find a replacement bird. We had no chance at all. By midday, a lot of the market traders had closed for lunch; those that were open only had tiny 1kg chickens. I know there’s only two of us but I didn’t fancy cooking such a small bird, or even two of them.

We thought we’d try for some pork, that would do just as well. We had much the same result, nearly all traders closed for lunch and those that were open didn’t have anything worth roasting. African swine fever has a lot to answer for.

Quite a while ago Huan had fed some of our visitors by buying a ready cooked duck and then sticking it in the oven prior to serving it. It’s not what I wanted to do, but I gave it a try. To me surprise, it worked out quite well, here it is. We also had sprouts and peas of course but they are not shown. We didn’t feel very Christmassy but we did enjoy our dinner!

For the rest of the day I just sat there feeling sorry for myself while Huan went out for yet another practice. We did try and sing Silent Night in Chinese while I played the guitar, for my sister Sandie and her husband John. That darn ‘F’ chord is still causing problems.

December 26^th Feeling a little bit better this morning, maybe I’ll kick this little bug faster than Huan did. I had two duties today, the first was second bathroom standby, again. The second was doing a good impression of a dashboard nodding dog while I was on the PC carrying out the first duty. Needless to say, nobody turned up before lunch.

Dinner was yesterday’s duck leftovers, reheated and guess what? As soon as we sat down for dinner, the guy turned up to do the bathroom. He didn’t need our help though so nothing to worry about. Because he turned up so late Huan had to cancel her dancing date with the Dama dancers which secretly pleased me. I do like having her around! Anyway, here’s the finished ceiling. I’m not quite as pleased as I was with our bathroom, but it’s OK.

December 27^th Almost back to full fighting fitness today, another day should do it. Perhaps a walk today would have helped but the weather was miserable. I did have a little job left to me by the Minister of the Interior though, finish off the cleaning of the second bathroom and replace all the gubbins that normally lives in there. Easy enough for a man of my capabilities and my military background of cleaning toilets!

The rest of the morning was spent on guitar and Chinese. At least I don’t have to keep trying to learn Silent Night anymore, I can get back to following the lessons I was doing. Chinese is a lot of review as well as a new lesson a day. It’s not easy and although I am learning to speak, listening is still terrible, especially when we’re out talking to friends and neighbours.

So tonight was Huan’s show and I thought I’d better go and give her some moral support. My first mistake was to leave my glasses at home; this meant that all the pictures, and videos, were of absolutely atrocious quality. Now, when I said earlier about them having a technical rehearsal, you can scrub that. Even last night they only had the stage, with no sound or lights. That was fairly obvious as I was watching some of the acts on before Huan’s group finale. The sound was terrible! For some reason they also had rotating footlights on for all the acts as well, which not only disturbed the performers but made recording videos almost impossible. The video I made of Huan’s group is not good enough to share anywhere but I am hoping that the TV people will send me something better. WeChat details were exchanged with that in mind. Anyway, here’s a screen shot from mine, you can see Huan on the extreme left.

P.S. The lovely TV lady sent me the link today so if you have a couple of hours to spare you can click on it here. If you only want to see Huan’s bit, fast forward to about one hour and forty seven minutes. 

https://live.fang.com/liveshow/play/tuwenvod/1251953760-concatFile-bd704b44b78d3bf98e0557cb3a9076b7t0/10/sanya/wap/0/?fbclid=IwAR1UHL1-jIXludoo1WuE-QWi2u3hGHWb9hUsTjTYIS7Kf9T-tctw5L09iU8

December 28^th The weekend is here, no singing for Huan, full English lunches and walkies! Well, that was the plan. The weather was miserable this morning and I was doing a pretty good impression of a nodding dog again, having woken up far too early. We stayed in and I cooked, pig in a blanket, (except it was a chicken and garlic sausage) with the usual egg, beans and toast. Here’s the sausage part.

It didn’t work so well, perhaps the sausage was too big. Once we’d eaten up and cleared all the dishes away we decided, that as the weather was fine, we would go out for our planned walk. Before long I was wishing we hadn’t. I started sweating but it wasn’t an “I’m hot” sweat, it was more like an “I’ve got a fever” one. We probably walked about twelve kilometres doing the scenic mountain route and then the river side to buy some baps. My legs were exhausted when we eventually got home. Mind you, we did see some performers down by the river. There were a bunch of people doing 太極 (Tàijí), more commonly known to you as Tai Chi and then some 新疆 (Xīnjiāng) dancers. However, Huan tells me that very few of them are actually from Xinjiang, they are mostly snowbirds who have learnt how to do the various dances. We stayed and watched two very good ladies; the first one was ‘just an ordinary dancer’ while the second one danced with ‘bowls on her head’. I was convinced she was cheating until she got to the end and proved that she wasn’t. Here they are, the first in the middle of her routine and the second just prior to starting.

December 29^th We both decided initially to go through the countryside but before too long changed our minds to a more leisurely stroll around the river. We thought we’d try and find our ‘frog’ from two previous visits. There was no sign of him at all but we did find a crab and a snail around the same place.

Today was Huan’s day for spotting, she’s the one who saw the crab and the snail as well as more snails further one. She also found this little creature.

She didn’t see this next one though, it was all mine. I spotted a few birds flying into the reeds and although I couldn’t see them very well, even zoomed in through the viewfinder, I tried to get a photo. The result is far from perfect but much better than I had expected.

Huan got this next one though, a fish, hiding near the bank. We did ‘disturb’ it with a piece of bamboo but it didn’t move very far. Huan said it had a hole in its side although I couldn’t see it. Maybe it had escaped from one of the many fishermen out today.

And here is one of said fishermen, complete with umbrella on his head!

Despite not going off into the countryside, we still managed ten and a half kilometres and we were home a little too late for a ‘Full English’. Instead lunch was tuna fish sandwiches. I did make us a ‘Full English’ for dinner this evening, before diving into a hot salty bath while Huan went walking on the stones.

December 30^th Today was a very important day; it was the Annual General Meeting of the shuǐ àn biéshù Residents Association. Well, I may have exaggerated just a little there. We don’t actually have an association and although it was a meeting, I have no idea when they last held one for all the residents. I can tell you one thing, if you think meetings in the west are tedious; do not go to one in China! Only five people spoke and the meeting lasted nearly two hours. I even had to make a video of it, which I won’t bother sharing with you. Here you can see the enraptured throng in attendance, some of the committee and my cameras.

You might be wondering if we learned anything new, the answer would be no. Lots of blame was apportioned and lots of promises were made but once again, we will just have to wait and see. Every cloud has a silver lining, and this one was ‘dinner for the committee’. Two members were absent, one way up North and the other has a sick husband, so that left twelve of us. By the time it was over I was extremely bloated. The food was good, as always, even with a couple of dishes we had never tried before. Apart from eating too much, there were also far too many cries of干杯, (Gānbēi) which is translated as “Cheers!” but literally means “dry cup”. I joined in the first toast with a small, very small, glass of白酒 (báijiǔ). After that I stuck to beer, also in small glasses, but the cries of “Gānbēi” kept coming. Huan wasn’t able to escape today either and she hardly ever touches alcohol of any kind. Within minutes you could tell by her face that she’d been drinking, she goes very red, very quickly. I’m not going to show you a photo of Huan alone, but here’s the whole crowd, with the exception of me, in a panoramic shot.

Needless to say, a very quiet day followed for both of us. Huan had a little snooze while I compiled the video for the committee. No cooking was required, not even any sandwiches were needed, we were both still too full.

December 31^st The last day of the year, and not a ray of sunshine anywhere, just miserable rain clouds. SWMBO had given me orders today, no walkies, (just as well with the weather), instead I was to pick her up after singing so that we could do our weekly shop. No driving was possible yesterday! (Hic!)

There followed another lazy day, Huan watching TV, me watching The Bill on YouTube. All was going well until there was an enormous crack and my (new) chair arm broke. As the arm is connected between the seat and the back, it was quite a worrying surprise for me. I’m not having much success with chairs am I? This is the third one we’ve bought from Taobao since 2015. Photos were taken, showing what it’s supposed to look like, and what it does look like, as well as photos of the actual ‘break’.

Huan then began the process of fighting with the Taobao store concerned. This is one case where we should perhaps have checked other people’s comments and not just relied on the ‘reliability score’. “We’ll send you as new arm” they said. As the chair had already begun leaning far away from its vertical position before the arm broke, I wasn’t too keen on this. After much arguing back and forth it was agreed that we would return the chair and get our money back. Of course we will have to pay the return shipping costs. We’ll see tomorrow whether it’s worth doing or whether we just forget all about it. For sure, my next chair will be bought locally!

And so we come to the end of another month, and the end of the last long monthly tome. From now onwards I’m going to try posting weekly, probably on Mondays when I’m not out walking. Should anything out of our ordinary humdrum existence happen, then that may well result in a special post, we’ll see. Let me know in the comments if you would rather see a long monthly magnum opus or a shorter weekly digest.

From me, and the boss, that’s also it for this year; we’ll see you, tomorrow, next month and next year. Sleep tight and have a very