Poorly Boss, Senior Citizen’s Day, Needle

October 1st “October and the trees are stripped bare, Of all they wear, What do I care?” Strange lyrics, they come from a ‘hidden track’, or so I’m told, from the band U2 and the album October. It is October of course, the trees aren’t stripped bare of all they wear, but I can still say “What do I care?” I’d like to listen to the song but I don’t have it and today, I don’t have ‘the real internet again either’.

Vertigo attacked me again last night but I woke up early enough for a nice walk. I had finished my breakfast and coffee and got myself already to go when I heard heaving from the bathroom. Huan’s not so good today, so it was back to bed for her, and nurse time for me.

As I was housebound, and as Huan did not get her place at keyboard school, I decided to put her stickers on the keys. We have had them a while but were waiting to see if the ‘teacher’ thought it was a good idea or not. They should help her as the stickers don’t only show what the white keys are, but the black ones too.

Rice soup was Huan’s food of choice when she resurfaced. It’s a good job I’ve learnt how to make it without the rice cooker as that was full of the ‘squash’ that Huan had cooked before retiring to bed. She spent the rest of the day resting in the living room so I, being the meany that I am, gave her the ‘hotel bell’ and took a picture of her.

My ‘rest of the day’ was reading, (still no internet), Chinese and guitar. My one minute chord practice is going down for some and up for others. I’ll have to persevere and have patience I suppose. I’m still practicing a couple of songs which Huan thinks are good. I think they’re abysmal but I promised myself a video a month and the next one is due tomorrow. I doubt very much if I will be uploading it anywhere!

October 2^nd Took Huan for a sedate walk today, seeing as how she spent most of yesterday bedridden. Once round the town, stopping to buy the necessities, aspirin, (for me), blood pressure tablets (for me, but nor for blood pressure, for vertigo), rubbing alcohol, (for my guitar fingers) and cigarettes, (for my sanity).

After lunch, I tried to record a ‘guitar video’ to show how much progress I have made in a month. I failed miserably! For some reason or other, I have been able to play (2) songs in the office fairly well, but sitting in the living room, in front of the camera, there were far more discords than there were chords! Try again tomorrow.

Evening saw the ladies off dancing, on the bridge to nowhere, so I went with them for my evening walk. We passed a new rubbish bin on the way, actually three bins in one. Yes, it’s our first ‘sort your rubbish disposal point’. I hope it’s not in use yet because although there are three access hatches, there is only one big space inside! Before I left the ladies, I tried for another sunset picture. It may have turned out better with the Fuji but the Nokia didn’t do such a bad job. This is a highly cropped version.

I left them dancing on the bridge and had a little walk down the river to where I knew I could cross it, then back through the town making sure I got at least four kilometres in to make my daily ten. This is the little bridge I used. As you can probably guess, it is impassable when the river is in full flow.

October 3^rd Both of us were up a little earlier today and we decided a walk to Changhao village was in order. The road works are not finished yet but, today being a public holiday, we thought there would be less dust. We were wrong, as usual, so we took the first village turning to bypass the dusty road. In that village, we watched a man getting ready, with his harness and tools, and wondered whether he was a ‘lineman for the county’. It looked like official gear he was wearing so we thought he was working either for the electricity company or one of the phone companies. Well, he might have been, but today he was collecting coconuts! This is the first time I’ve seen someone use a harness to do this. More often than not, it’s a local boy with hands and feet only.

Once back at the main road we didn’t turn right or left, instead we went down another track which supposedly led to a tourist restaurant. Needless to say, the restaurant didn’t exist! However, following the track all the way round brought us to the village of Fanna 1 Cun, right next to the ‘learn to drive centre’. Here’s how the cars look when it’s sunny.

We took a water stop here and then walked towards Changhao again, just so we could meet the bus to take us home. Walking back along all the dusty roads didn’t really appeal. Within a few hundred metres, the bus, electric of course, appeared so on we hopped. We paid with cash this time but you can pay with WeChat.

The afternoon was a total washout. I tried again to make a video of my guitar progress but each time I was ‘on air’ with the video I messed it up. Huan asked me to film her on the keyboard and would you believe it, she messed up too. Maybe the camera is haunted! For myself, I have decided to wait until I am a little more proficient than I am now, so I guess I won’t be making a video a month.

October 4^th Sandals and phone today, no camera. We had to be home before half past ten for Huan to cook a couple of dishes as we had been invited out for lunch again. This time it was the dance teacher / singing buddy. My job was to buy a few bottles of beer. The spread was not bad at all, as usual far too much for lunchtime, for me anyway.

The other three men present were not drinking beer, two were on the hard stuff, baijiu, and one was on tea, (antibiotics). That meant it was down to me and the ladies. Even Huan was drinking beer; I had to keep saying ‘slowly dear’! I did take a couple of photos of the ladies and their beer but I am under strict instructions not to publish them!

OAP kip in the afternoon and then a lazy evening with only guitar, Blog and Chinese.

October 5^th Today was absolutely gorgeous so a long walk was called for but one where we could avoid the direct glare of the sun. We decided to walk along the Wuzhishan to Haikou road, a bit like a rehearsal for walking as far as the rest stop at the top of the mountain. We certainly weren’t going to try that today. Although we went uphill all the way from home, it wasn’t too bad.

We passed by the turning for Za Hao village, 什好库, which we didn’t take as we have been there before. Instead, we shot off down a track, again, and went exploring. We found an organic chicken farm, a couple of ‘dead’ buildings, some more chicken farms and some fish ponds. We even found some puppies that were small enough to crawl under the fence and tried to follow us. Huan put a stop to that! There are many ‘dead’ buildings in the Hainan countryside, probably because the youngsters are now better educated and have all gone to jobs in the cities. It’s a shame we can’t buy one of them.

Soon the path became even more rustic

Until we reached this, which coincided with the last electricity pole. You can also see a roll of telecoms cable at the bottom of the picture, so I guess we now know why there was a path there in the first place.

Our last picture for today is nothing special; Huan thought it was a frog. It is a fountain head photographed through some plants and I suppose the water does look a little like a frog. Whatever, I’m putting it here because I like it!

October 6^th One of the things we enjoy about being retired is having no alarm clock in the bedroom. It does mean though, that sometimes we may not get up as early as we would have liked. “Special occasions” means we use our phone alarms but that is a maximum of once a month when we have to go and get my monthly neutering needle. So this morning we were a little late and didn’t get out on the road until nine o’clock.

As a result, a walk around the river was called for, no boots, and no speed. It was such a nice leisurely walk that we took hardly any photos. I thought you might like this one though, you saw this little girl’s side profile last month, well this is her portrait. Isn’t she nice?

The rest of the day saw us wondering if we would be able to rise to my sister Sandra’s challenge and record a Christmas song. At the moment, it’s looking very doubtful but I suppose we do have a few more weeks to try and get it right(ish).

October 7^th Today is重阳节, Chóngyáng jié, (also known as ‘Double Ninth Festival’. China also celebrates it as ‘Senior Citizen’s Day’. It seems there are certain things we must do on this day, one of which is to go up a mountain. You can find out more here -

https://www.chinahighlights.com/festivals/the-double-ninth-festival.htm and here - 

https://www.yourchineseastrology.com/holidays/double-ninth-festival/.

So, it was up the mountain we went, our scenic route of course, no rough stuff. I did my usual and went a bit crazy with the camera but we won’t bother you with most of the photos. I did think I’d like to dispel a myth though; here is one of our friends, the wife of the ‘boss’ who oversaw all the work we had done on our house in 2015. Does anything strike you as odd, not what you have read and heard about China? Yes, those are her four boys. What’s more, she and her husband are still thinking about another little one, hopefully a girl. There were no ‘little emperors’ here either, the three elder brothers, along with Mum, were taking turns at carrying the younger one. Even better, there was not a mobile phone in sight! They were a happy bunch and quite fun to spend some time walking with.

After lunch, we were supposed to go and watch a show being put on for local senior citizens. At the appointed time and place, there we were, and nobody else! It seems we had yet another communication breakdown on the Chinese side and we should have been somewhere else. We did eventually find out where the show was but a little too late to watch the song featuring Huan’s singing and dancing friend. We only caught the last couple of acts and I was only able to make an awful video, not at all worth sharing. Never mind, I did manage to get a fairly good picture of everybody together for their final bow.

Lastly, for today, a photograph of me. Well, as we were leaving the OAP centre, I saw my reflection in the mirror. I could hardly not take the picture, just look at the hair, and how slim I look! (No heckling in the cheap seats please!)

October 8^th The holidays are over so Huan was back to her choir practice today. As for me, well a nice long walk was called for. I set off along the river, going upstream. Now I’m sure you know all about dredgers, those very large machines that remove silt from riverbeds and coastal areas. Here we have a small version. They are removing the sediment from where one of the many underground streams and/or drains feed into the river. You can see the floating dredger pumping the sediment up to a waiting truck on the road, and the water being fed back into the river through a hole in the wall.

Then it was off through the countryside which as you can see here, does not have a great deal of shade. Thankfully, I was walking on this stretch between nine and nine-thirty.

Further upstream I came across this. It’s a good job Huan was singing today or, with me not having my Walter Raleigh cape, I would have had to carry her again!

By now I had chosen my ‘turn back spot’, it was at this bridge, which I decided to make another panorama of, just for you. Mind you, if you look carefully, you will see why it’s always better to use a tripod if you are going to take photos to stitch together.

A few more photos were taken on the way back, walking on the other side of the river. It was the usual, landscapes and cows! So, the last picture of the day is my phone, showing my Endomondo workout details. I think almost twenty kilometres in four hours is pretty good. My feet are certainly not swollen today!

Needless to say, that was me for the day. Huan was supposed to go swimming but the rain showed up so she played her keyboard and watched movies. I had a bath before doing a little guitar practice later.

October 9^th Off to Haikou today and aren’t we lucky, we didn’t have to get up in the middle of the night. Mind you, that was my choice because I said we would stop on the way to replace the two rear tyres. That didn’t go down too well with the ‘Minister of Finance’! Before we left though we had to get rid of a hitchhiker, the worry was that if we closed the tailgate on him, serious injury or death may have resulted. I’m not sure if my ‘liability insurance’ stretches to lizards and we wouldn’t have wanted his Granddad, Godzilla, to turn up looking for revenge.

It was a lovely day for a drive and as usual, the roads up our way were fairly clear so plenty of time to take in the scenery. We do live in a nice place.

By half past eleven, we had reached the tyre repair shop which, to Huan’s surprise, was not closed for lunch. In fact, it was very busy. Once our two back tyres were off I was able to show Huan how little tread was left in the middle and explain that we would be much safer once they were changed too. The front ones had been replaced in August so we should be good for another four years now, hopefully the life of the car!

Once we had booked into the hotel and lunch was finished in the little noodle restaurant next door, we tried to have a little kip. Have you ever tried sleeping in a freezer? Early evening Huan said “Let’s go and find that small foreign shop we saw once before.” “Do you know where it is?” I dared to ask. “Yes, behind the hospital through the villas.” came the reply. I knew that was the wrong place but, to keep Huan happy, we went that way anyway. That turned out to a fortuitous choice because although we didn’t find what we were looking for we did find a Carrefour. Even better, it had pickled red cabbage, pickled beetroot, gherkin relish, marmalade and ‘normal’ tinned fish.

For dinner, we had promised ourselves a 大盘鸡, Dàpán jī, which translates as ‘big plate chicken’. The chef, remembering us from a previous visit, gave us the same ‘small’ version again. Note the extra vegetables that we ordered, they go very well with some of the potato mashed in with the juice of the big dish. I guess it’s a form of mild curry and it’s always cooked to order so you have to wait a while. It’s most definitely worth waiting for! We tried our hardest but we couldn’t quite finish it all. “So how much did this culinary delight cost?” I hear you ask. The answer is approximately ten pounds, including the extra veggies and some rice for Huan. I can highly recommend it if you get the chance.

October 10^th Woke up to a ‘dead’ phone, as the laptop is awaiting repair I didn’t bring all my usual junk so forgot the phone charger too. Never mind, we were both awake fairly early not having slept so well. We had the usual running around the hospital but, despite the fact it was busy today, we were finished by eleven. I did hang around outside for a few minutes as there was a poor little baby having a blood test, from her foot! Her crying and the needle were enough to make me dawdle around in the corridor. I thought you might like to see where I go to have my needle, can’t find this one in the dictionary!

From the hospital it was a quick drive to RT Supermarket where we stocked up on bread, they seem to be the only shop in Hainan that makes decent sliced loaves. We did our weekly shop there today as well, or at least what is left of the week. I wonder if the residents of Haikou, both Foreign and Chinese, know how lucky they are having multiple Carrefour supermarkets, multiple RT supermarkets and foreign stores to boot!

As you know, we live in Wuzhishan which is in the centre of the island, the mountainous area. That means we have quite a few tunnels to pass through so I took a couple of screen shots from the dashcam today just to give you an idea. The first is going into quite a scenic tunnel and the second is coming out of the last tunnel before we reach home.

Once home I got on with dashcam work, Chinese, guitar etc while Huan cooked some lovely fish, with no bones, another little gift from RT. The rain also decided to show its face again; at least it stayed away for our drives. After dinner, the ‘Three Little Maids’ went off for a walk, not far as the rain had only just eased off and who knows when it will be back again.