New Year, Birthday(s), Visitors, Qipao, Achilles

February 15^th New Year’s Eve, and the last view of my ‘Movember’ moustache. Chinese tradition says that if you have your haircut, (I assume that includes moustaches) after the New Year, your mother’s brother will kick the bucket! Well, I have no Mums left and no Uncles, but better to be safe than sorry! PS I also had to shave it off because it ‘wouldn’t go’ with the shirt Huan had bought me for my birthday.

Huan was busy in the morning too, putting up the New Year decorations, with a little help from me of course.

She was busy all afternoon cooking our New Year’s Eve Dinner, this time, I’m afraid, with no help from me. Better that I stay out of the kitchen! Well, Chinese kitchens are a bit on the small side. This was a small dinner, because a big one would be coming later in the month.

February 16^th My ‘first’ birthday. Chinese people add one year, each year on New Year’s day. For those of you who don’t know, they are also one year old when they are born. This means if you are born just before the New Year you will be two years old when in actual fact you are only a few days old.

February 17^th Nothing special, another short walk. We even found some inspiration on the way.

And a friend who is now famous through ‘World Street Photography’.

And my inspiration, I’d be lost without her.

February 18^th My ‘second’ birthday. Chinese people don’t always celebrate their birthdays by the solar calendar, but instead go by the Chinese Lunar calendar. Using good old Google, I found out that I was born on the third day of the first month, which this year falls on 18^th February. (Now include your ‘actual’ date of birth and you start to understand why some young Chinese students have no idea when their birthdays are!)

February 19^th My ‘interim’ birthday. We had invited our friends from Haikou, Patrick, Flora, Podraig, Jake, Winnie and of course Dodo to come and help me celebrate my birthday. Here’s the boys, just relaxing on the balcony, while the girls catch up indoors.

As always, Huan did a brilliant job. Here’s the spread, all cooked by Huan, with the exception of the small apple cake at the bottom right. That was yours truly. Dinner was superb. And just like foreigners of course, all the leftovers went into the freezer. As I write this, on the 1^st March, we are still eating them. Much better than foreign leftovers though, each day is a surprise!

And here’s Huan celebrating that it all went well. Can’t think where she got the sign language from?

February 20^th My ‘third’ and actual birthday. Here’s the gang posing before going out to dinner.

Now, we were going out to dinner, or should I say lunch, not only for my birthday, but also as reciprocation for the ‘committee’ dinner we had been invited to. My ‘loss of face’ came when my left shoe fell to pieces before we got there. The chef actually repaired it for me. He needn’t have bothered, because on the way home, the right one fell to pieces even worse! Anyway, here we are at the door of the restaurant, with a poor little girl who was being forced to pose with the Wàiguó rén. Look closely, think about movies, and you will understand why the moustache had to come off!

As always, it was a good spread. We never managed to finish it all off. This picture shows some of it.

There are hardly any photos of Huan for this day, and what there are don’t show off her smile at all. So, none will be uploaded here. Unfortunately, almost as soon as we arrived upstairs, Huan began to feel queasy. This happens now and then but is usually over by the evening. The girls certainly missed her, the boys probably just enjoyed the beer and the ‘craic’. Anyway, here are the girls.

And here are the boys, nearly all of them anyway

And here are the boys again, being led astray by the girls. We really didn’t want to have our glasses filled and drink more toasts, but what is a gentleman to do if a lady insists?

It looks like our visitors enjoyed themselves.

I certainly did! I had to have a sleep in the afternoon when I got home, too much food, too much beer, and of course too much cake!

In the evening, after our little naps, we visited 'Time' Bar, the one that is pictured above. The problem with bars in Wuzhishan is usually that you can't just buy one beer. This time, as there were three of us, and it was 120RMB for 12 bottles, it wasn't a bad deal. What a noisy place it was though. The locals were playing some kind of dice game which seemed to require an enormous amount of banging and shouting. It was so bad we only had 30 bottles of beer!

Not sure what we did on 21^st February, probably just relaxed after our visitors, and ourselves of course, had enjoyed a full English. Well, as full as we can make it here!

February 22^nd Well, I had been putting it off long enough, because of the New Year and Birthday celebrations but today I decided another visit to the doctor was in order. Not only was my Achilles tendon not improving but I now had a swollen left foot. I must say that this doctor was a marked improvement on the last one. He prodded, he felt, he asked questions. I suspect he has a little English because he laughed when I asked Huan if she would give me her kidney! No answers today, but a lot tests organised. The first was a urine analysis, which luckily for me, could be done straight away. They tested for 22 different things! Some I could work out from the three letters (e.g. KET=ketones) but others were in Chinese only. The good thing, the thing I could understand, was that everything was ‘normal’! Tomorrow of course, brought another day.

On our way home, passing through the main street, we came upon the Wuzhishan Cheongsam (Qipao) Association. Elegant ladies one and all, although to my mind it could have been better organised with some decent Chinese music.

February 23^rd Today was the day to have the balance of the tests, three blood tests and a circulatory test. Arrived at the hospital early to give the blood samples. There were four phials instead of three. It seems one test requires two samples. Results would be ready in the afternoon; we decided to wait until morning. The second stop was the Ultrasound Department. It seems they were checking for thrombosis, to see if my circulation was OK and of course to check the cause of my visit, the Achilles tendon. Again, we waited for the morning to get the results.

February 24^th Results day. Blood test results 1 – 31 ‘points of interest’, all normal. Blood test results 2 – 3 ‘points of interest’, all normal. Blood test results 3 – 26 ‘points of interest’, not all normal! Ultrasound, seems I have very good circulation for a ‘man of my age’. Since I nearly always suffer from cold hands and cold feet with the slightest drop in temperature, I found this hard to believe. No signs of thrombosis, good. Unfortunately though, there was a problem with my Achilles tendon. I had ruptured it.

So back home we went. Now, to make sure we got to see the same doctor again, we had asked him when he would be ‘on duty’. This month it was Tuesdays, so we had to wait before presenting him with the results. That meant that –

February 25^th Spent half the day, or more, using Doctor Google. Did I have liver problems, just how high was my cholesterol and sugar, would I need my ankle cutting open? If I did, would I be able to recuperate at home? If I would have to be an in-patient would I be able to use a computer? Would I be allowed ‘conjugal’ visits?

February 26^th Remember the broken table? Well we had tried to call the shop where we bought all the dining and living room furniture but with no success. As we only had their mobile phone numbers we thought we would try and visit the shop which is in Sanya. Well, the shop is no longer there. That is, the building is still there, it is still a furniture shop, just not the same one. So, for the moment we are stuck, unless good old Taobao can help.

February 27^th Time to see the doctor again. I must admit it was with some trepidation that I sat in the waiting hall.

The verdict? Well, my liver is suffering a little, not enough to warrant drugs. My cholesterol is a little high, not enough to warrant drugs. (In fact it was much, much higher in Abu Dhabi.) My glucose is a little high, again not enough to warrant drugs! In fact all of these are probably a little high with the amount of food, especially meat and chocolates that we’ve had since Christmas and the amount of beer drunk over the Spring Festival. Finally, the Achilles Tendon? No surgery required! Yeeeeaay! I will be on Light Duties for quite some time though. No fast walking, no ‘long’ walks, no ‘lifting heavy things’, (partly stress on the ankle but also stress on my ribs, remember last month?)

Well, there you are, the end of a busy month. I would like to thank Patrick Quinn for some of the photos, (he gave me many more but they are on my PC). I would guess that with me being on 'Light Duties' March will be a much quieter month. See you then!