The Wilderness Years

(Short post this one, just to finish the missing years.) While we were in Harbin Huan had to take regular trips back down to Hainan to check on what was happening with our house. First lesson, don’t allow Chinese interior designers to work if you are not there. What we ended up with was not exactly what we had expected! I guess it’s our fault for trying to skimp on money and me wanting Huan to be with me more than in Hainan.

Looks more like a school than our living room!

We didn’t ask for this either, it’s a drain for the Chinese tea table, (which we don’t have).

Still, we had no choice once it was done. Other things happened over which he had absolutely no control. Water leaked from the upstairs balconies and destroyed our IKEA wardrobes. We were lucky that our unpacked boxes may have been damaged but the contents were fine. By far the worst though was the local government planning department, if there is such a thing. Remember this picture, when we bought the property?

Well this is what it looked like in 2013!

Added to that, the Chinese planners appear to be making the same mistake as British planners did after the Second World War and grossly underestimating how many cars people will own in the near future. Parking has now become very problematic. As for driving, in 2007, we were one of the few cars on the east coast highway and almost the only car on the Sanya-Wuzhishan road. The Hainan police departments had yet to install ‘average speed’ cameras. Oh I do miss those days.

Ah well, we are here now, time to start the retrospective Hainan bits. See you soon!