Dreary Weather, Face Masks and Knitting.

January 28^th As you may or may not be aware, all Chinese people have a ‘Hukou”. This is like an I.D. card. Huan has a card, which acts as her I.D. and a book which is her ‘household registration’. Despite the fact that we live in Hainan her registration is in Dalian. Last night Huan was contacted by her ‘Area Boss’ in Dalian. They knew she had flown through Wuhan to Dalian and wanted more details. While some in the West believe I.D. cards are the bane of all evil, in this case it shows how they can also be beneficial. The government will be able to track all those people who have travelled through Wuhan and keep tabs on them. Huan will probably be contacted again in a week or so to see if she is still healthy or has come down with the bug.

As for today, we were confined to barracks, not because of the Wuhan bug but because of the weather. Wuzhishan was completely encircled by clouds over the mountains again and it rained nearly all day. All I needed was a fire in the living room and Radio 2 on the radio and I could have been back in good old Blighty!

January 29^th The weather was still miserable today, clouds all around again, but this time without the rain. That meant we got out for a walk, along the main street and back along the riverside coming home via the sausage market. It was like a British Sunday afternoon walk, Huan had on a knee length coat, I was wearing jeans, shirt and hoodie. The hood stayed down though, my hair needs fresh air too! I forgot to take the big camera with me but there wasn’t really much to take pictures of anyway. There were less people than expected; I guess some are staying indoors because they are wary of the ‘bug’. Of those who were out I would guess less than half were wearing masks despite the Hainan government suggesting they be worn. Huan and I will wear them in crowded places only.

Only one of us needed an OAP kip this afternoon, me. I felt very cold under the blanket and then woke up with a headache and the beginnings of flu symptoms. I’m trying not to worry too much yet, Huan has shown no signs of any discomfort at all since she returned. I gave up and took some Chinese medicine, highly recommended by the CMO, (Huan) twice before bedtime. By then I also had a splitting headache so my forehead, my temples, below my eyes and under my nose got a liberal application of Tiger Balm too.

January 30^th My headache was nearly gone, still there but not too bad, this morning. The flu symptoms had eased as well. The boss says I need to take the medicine today as well, so being an obedient soldier, I will.

Our weather was better today, still a little on the chilly side, but a walk in the fresh air was definitely what the doctor ordered. We took the other side of the river again, opposite our house, so that we could make the most of the sun. I had intended that we went up to the small village at the other side of the bridge to nowhere and turned to follow the irrigation canal. We were stopped! The village had put a guard post to keep everyone who is not from there from going inside. We tried to explain that we were not going to go inside but that fell on deaf ears. When we reached the road we passed the entrance to the village where we saw this sign, but with no guard point for some reason.

Once by the canal, I decided to give you a panorama from that side. You can see our complex of six buildings nearest to the river with a few villas in front of us. Our building is the second from the right. Behind our flats there used to be a mountain with rubber trees, and cows and things, that’s all gone and been replaced by what I like to refer to as the ‘council estate’. If you’re interested this photo was stitched, four photos each on two rows, eight in total.

Both of us feeling like an amble rather than a walk we stuck to the riverside so, as we had no photos on Tuesday or Wednesday, I’m going to bombard you with panoramas today. Here’s the first one, taken just after the sluice gates, you can see them on the right.

The next one is just a little further upriver and is Huan’s choice. I made two panoramas here, one much longer than the other. I liked the other, Huan preferred this.

And our last one for the day is at the next bridge where we crossed over to walk along the other side and get some Xinjiang bread.

Now if you go onto Google maps satellite view, or Google Earth, you can probably see where I took these. We live in a very pleasant place.

No OAP kips today, for either of us, just a lazy day indoors. After our dinner of seashells, could have been some kind of scallops, I’m not sure, we had a visit from a neighbour, bearing gifts. She had brought us some noodles because it seems tomorrow that is what we have to eat. Spring Festival lasts fifteen days and there are certain things you must do each day and certain foods you must eat. We usually forget most of it but, we’ll be eating noodles tomorrow! She was wearing her mask and wouldn’t stay for a cup of tea. In fact, she hasn’t left her house all day. There is quite a lot of worry here despite the fact that our county has no confirmed cases of the virus yet. Better to be safe than sorry I suppose.

January 31^st The Wuhan bug is spreading exponentially so we decided to make some changes in our routine. We will walk after our lunch when nearly everybody else is home for their lunchtime break. Most working people in Hainan rest from half past eleven until half past two which means the streets are fairly empty between twelve and two. We’re also going to check if I can have my PSA test done here in Wuzhishan which will avoid us staying in Haikou for two or three days. Unfortunately, the needle has to be done there so we still have to go.

We were lazy so didn’t go anywhere. As a lot of people are saying on the internet these days, we ‘self-isolated’ ourselves.

February 1^st Carrying on with this year’s theme of poetry, “Little month of February, You are small, but worthy - very! Will you grow up like the others, Like your sister months and brothers? Every four years with a bound, With a leap up from the ground, Trying to grow tall as they - All you stretch is one small day! Even then you're not so tall But just the shortest month of all.” (Leap Year by Annette Wynne)

Today’s weather was a little overcast and as we had no real need to go out we didn’t. Instead Huan carried on with her knitting and I carried on with changing the aspect ratio of my photos. It seems to be taking quite a long time but then again, #1 son is just as bad as me and takes thousands of photos where just a few would do. I managed to finish 2010 and 2011, and then synchronised mine and Huan’s computer. Only another two or three years to go, I can’t quite remember when I started using 16:9.

February 2^nd As we had two full rubbish bags on the balcony along with one bag full of plastic bottles for the cleaning lady, we decided that we had to go out today. However, we still didn’t go too far and we still probably wore too many clothes and just to be on the safe side, we also wore our masks. Just as we reached the river, a ‘strange man’ recognised us and took our photo. It seems I was supposed to recognise him as one of Huan’s singing group although How I could do that when he was wearing a very large face mask, sunglasses and a baseball hat I’ve no idea. Anyway, here’s the photo he took, not such good quality, we received it via WeChat.

I hadn’t taken my big camera today as we are quite limited on where we walk these days. Around the town we have no problems and of course we can walk along main roads in and out of town. However, many of our countryside walks take us through small villages quite a few of which are now banning ‘outsiders’. We have no way of knowing before we get there whether or not we will have to turn around and retrace our steps. Even our own complex has locked the back gate and put a notice on it. I did try and explain that as well as the security guards never actually stopping anyone at the front gate, there is also another way in without passing any security at all. “Ah, well nobody except you knows that.” was their response!

February 3^rd Busy day today! After checking with Dr. Tim in Haikou yesterday our first visit was to the local hospital to see if they were capable of doing PSA check ups. Arriving there, as soon as we crossed the entrance door, we were immediately zapped with temperature sensors by nurses wearing masks. In fact we were zapped three times each. I think the first zap showed us both having the exact same temperature, the second was much the same. They then checked on each other and came back to us again. This time we were marginally different, 36.2 for Huan and 36.1 for me. They let us in. The laboratory are able to check TPSA but not fPSA but as my last Haikou check up didn’t include the fPSA I think I’ll skip it this time too. We’ll return later in the week for the actual test.

From there it was off to the fuel station, Huan asking me “Why are we doing this today?” I told her that I wanted to be sure we had enough fuel to go to Haikou and back next week just in case they start shutting more things down.

As you know by now, Monday is shopping day so that was our next stop. Most of the customers are following the local government suggestion of wearing masks but not all. We were being model citizens ourselves! The bakery shelves were empty of supermarket baked products, I wonder if they’ve stopped the supermarket baking or if the staff stayed on holiday.

Quite a few other shelves are beginning to show signs of hoarding and/or panic buying. Our Dettol is down to half a bottle so it was on our list but there was none available. It will be at least a month until they are able to get more stock. At the checkout we noticed that the self check-outs were all switched off, I suppose because they utilise touch screens. I guess some of the health advice is beginning to trickle down and be taken notice of.

A trip to the police station was next to collect Huan’s local ‘Hukou’ card which should have been ready the day after she travelled up north. There were people working inside, behind the glass, but they are having nothing to do with customers at this time! We have to wait until there is a relaxing of restrictions from the local government. Oh what a life…

Home to our humdrum existence, me to my computer and Huan to her knitting. She has plenty of time to do this as the ‘return to school’ for everyone, children and OAPs has been postponed quite significantly. However, Huan doesn’t believe in relaxing, if something has to be done, once she starts she keeps going until it’s complete. Doesn’t she look grand and just look at the speed of those hands!

And so we come to the end of another week, a week in which Bob is actually beginning to worry a little, not so much about getting the virus, but about how life will change while the authorities get it under control. Bye for now!