Wuzhishan, Ledong, Jianfengling Hiking, New PC

June 1^st Another 1^st of the month and another visit to Ledong! Lots of ‘hard work’ for me summarised with these two pictures. I had to replace the shower holder and stick some wall protectors behind the doors!

Oh, and I also delivered various instructions for the future tenants, all laminated too. Aren’t we good landlords?

In fact it was Huan who had the hard work; she was busy with her needles and thread until after midnight. The future tenants, or rather the old lady, felt the sofa was a bit hard. She said we didn’t have to do anything about it but Huan decided cushions would have to be made. Here she is working her little fingers to the bone.

We took a break for dinner and I told Huan I would treat her to DoReMi. However, that was bursting at the seams, I suppose because of ‘Childrens’ Day’. Instead we went to what we call a ‘choose food’ place. I suppose it would be called a buffet restaurant in the west. I’m not sure how many of my friends and relatives would dare to try this place though. Huan had fish, pig’s blood, belly pork and bitter gourd; I had egg, sausage (like chorizo), dried fish and squash. Unfortunately, pig’s blood here is nothing like black pudding back home so none for me. No problems though, both of us were pleasantly satiated.

While Huan had been busy with the seat covers I had decided to have a go at her laptop as it was so slow. She had I think five different browsers, all installed with various Chinese software. I removed all bar two, Chrome for me and QQ explorer for her. She also had four of five programs to make her computer go faster! Again these were either installed with Chinese software or by asking/telling Huan that she needed them and thus getting her to download them. All of this was fairly easy to remove. The most difficult one was something called ‘Kingsoft’ which I believe is an anti-virus software. Now before my clean up started I downloaded and installed Malwarebytes, Avast, CC Cleaner, Revo uninstaller and Auslogics Defrag. These are the tools I keep on my PC. Revo is pretty good, and fast, at uninstalling most things but it took nearly half an hour to uninstall Kingsoft. CC cleaner then found about 1700 registry problems. Result, I ended up going to bed after midnight too and leaving defrag running overnight. All done and dusted now though.

This was Huan’s result, taken just before bedtime.

June 2^nd You may remember I had a plan to go swimming so that we could show you what the pool looks like. Well the best laid plans of mice and men, (and husbands) . . . Huan decided we should visit Jianfengling National Forest Park. So off we went. A lot more details, including local hotels, can be found in my album https://photos.app.goo.gl/jxb3pJiRQW2XHwNB6 We’ll just give you a short summary here. Turn off the highway (G98) and follow the signs. We went ‘left’ inside the park towards Tianchi Lake.

There are three main sites on this road, the lake, Twitter Valley and Rainforest Valley Scenic Area. We started off with the lake; it’s quite a beautiful place with a hotel if you fancy staying. Here’s a panorama of it.

Now a visit anywhere would not be the same without some local wildlife so here we are. I almost managed to touch this fellow before he scuttled off. What about that tail eh?

And Huan managed to find something a little tamer!

She also managed to get in amongst a swarm/flutter/kaleidoscope/flight (take your pick) of butterflies. She wondered why they weren’t in the flowers so I told her they were probably feeling amorous!

From there we made our way to ‘Twitter Valley’, very aptly named. We could hear birds all the way round. Like many places there seems to be a lack of maintenance, here’s one of the abandoned tourist buildings.

Now you may remember that the doctor(s) told me I should avoid hills for a while, well, I failed miserably here. The route is about 2 kilometres and they say it takes an hour to go round. That may be true for a sprightly youngster who doesn't take any photos but not for us. It was stairs all the way up and then stairs all the way down the other side. Unfortunately I forgot to switch on the Endomondo app on my phone so no altitude (or calories used) records.

We did have fun playing Tarzan and Jane! Now now, you naughty boys, I meant swinging on trees!

We couldn’t visit the third site on this road, the Rainforest Valley Scenic Area, the road was closed. It should be open at the end of July so after that we’ll try and get some pictures for the album.

Instead we made our way back towards the gate. We did see some great, if a little hazy, views over the coastal plains on the way down.

Once down we went up the right hand route to the highest peak.

Unfortunately for us it was getting a little late in the afternoon for a two hour hike and we were both a little cream crackered from the earlier hike. Another one for next time.

Our last stop for today was ‘Deer Tree’ and “Nanya Forest Guard station. They are in the same place. There’s a story for the tree, but you’ll have to check the album for that.

The views from the guard tower were fantastic. I took four panorama shots but lost one somewhere. Here’s one of the other three.

The difference between this side of the mountain and the other was amazing. All the way around Twitter Valley we could hear birds. Here, there was only silence. It was heaven! I wonder if they’d let me live there and do the guard duty?

From there we made our way back to Jianfeng to check out hotels. We both liked this one.

It even boasts a swimming pool and unusually for many hotels, it was full of water. Unfortunately, it was also full of fish!

It seems they can’t get enough workers for the hotel. That could be because there aren’t enough guests. And that could be because this one is ¥260 sans breakfast while the next one down is ¥160 including breakfast.

So summary of our visit to Jianfengling - It’s definitely a place worth visiting. Unlike many tourist areas, it's not too busy. The downside of that is I suppose no money for maintenance. There are a lot of abandoned tourist buildings. Still plenty to see though. Looking at the map there is far more to see than we saw. A lot of what's on the map is not signposted though. One day is not enough to do this place justice. I would suggest staying in one of the hotels in Jianfeng town and then doing each route (left and right) on separate days. You may even need longer if you want to find everything on the map. Highly recommended! Details of two of the hotels are in the album plus of course the hotel at the lake.

When we got back to Ledong we managed to get into DoReMi today. Who can spot how many places are missing from their world map and name them?

And so we came to the end of a lovely day out, if a little rushed. It was finished off well by the water feature in the town being turned on and a great sunset when we got home.

June 3^rd When we stay in Ledong we have to eat out because the apartment doesn’t have all the things necessary for cooking and cleaning. If we did leave anything there, it probably wouldn’t be there when the tenant leaves! So, breakfast before our return journey. Noodle soup for Huan, and fried noodles for me.

Resting was the order of the day when we got home, at least that was the plan. Both of us had very sore calf muscles after all the stairs yesterday. I had to sort, edit and file all the photos of course, but that’s not such a big job. However, I had also brought the SD card from the Dashcam to upload the files to the PC. Lo and behold, not enough room! So, lots of time spent with Lightworks joining all the files for each trip together and then exporting as a YouTube capable file. That makes the end result a quarter of the size. I must have a clear out of old stuff, eight years worth of teaching files would be a start I suppose!

June 4^th Much more of the same.

June 5^th Summary for May from Endomondo received, a lot more kilometres this month. You can ignore the time though; I forgot to stop the app when getting home, more than once.

There was a typhoon hovering just to the south of Hainan so we had a fairly early walk to avoid any rain. Clouds abounded though.

Huan has recently been expressing a desire for shorter hair for the summer. Now normally, we cut each other’s hair but I wasn’t happy with having to shear a lot off Human’s noggin so I persuaded her to visit the hairdresser. Much cheaper than the UK or the UAE, only ¥60 and that included the massage chair.

My only request had been “Please don’t come back with a Chinese old lady haircut!” I have to say I was pleasantly surprised.

June 6^th Confined to barracks! It’s raining, the aftermath of the typhoon which has now passed Haikou. Never mind, a lot more Dashcam work done, some Chinese character learning, some Taobao ordering and some updating this blog. By the way, all done while wearing my Granddad stockings!

June 7^th Nice walk today, just over seven kilometres. I wonder if you can guess what this is? It looks like a walkway through the rainforest canopy doesn’t it?

Well, it’s not. We do have a lot of forest where we live but this is in the town. It is on the way to ‘Shangri La’. “Wait” I hear you cry “Shangri La is not in Hainan”. Well you’d be surprised, Shangri La is all over the place in China, mostly residential areas. This one is full of mostly villas and will have a Shangri La hotel when it’s finished. I doubt very much it’s part of the worldwide chain though! Anyway, the ‘walkway’ terminates in this at one end,

and in this at the other. It will be a lift so that the old people, because it’s mostly old people who buy houses in Wuzhishan, don’t have to struggle up the hill with their shopping.

Last one for today is another one for all you budding botanists out there. We are lucky to see all kinds of flora here. Don’t ask me what it is though, that’s your job!

June 8^th Now many of you in China will have been aware of Gaokao this week. For those not aware, this is the annual university entrance exam for Chinese students. Unlike the west, all students are required to take the same exam. This is considered fairer than the way we do it. You can search for a lot more details on Google. One of the things that happens though is road closures. This was one end of the closure for our local ‘testing station’. In case you’re wondering, we could still walk through. I dare say if I had broken into the ‘Day O’ song, (Banana Boat song), I would have been in a bit of trouble, both from Huan and the police!

Today’s flora and fauna included a twelve year old dog. I would guess that surprises a lot or people who don’t live in China, and a beautiful flower.

For the flower I was trying to get as close as possible so that you could see inside. Unfortunately, my phone is not quite good enough.

June 9^th We had a nice long walk today, ten kilometres. Slowly the distance is increasing again. We’ll take it a little carefully before increasing the speed though. The river on the ‘high’ side of the sluice gates was quite low today so another couple of photos were uploaded to ‘World Street Photography’. I was quite pleased with them.

And finally, at long last, eventually (etc), I finished all the outstanding dashcam work. Combining the files into ‘journeys’ saved a lot of space. You may wonder why I’m doing this. Well, it gives me something to perhaps argue with the police, or even agree with them, when it comes to time for our yearly check! I have learnt something though; I need to keep a much closer eye on the dashcam and replace the SD card before it starts ‘writing over’ earlier files. We are missing nearly two weeks from May.

Our first Taobao delivery came today. “Why so many?” you may ask. Well, a box of fifteen costs ¥90 if bought locally, and ¥62.5 if bought on Taobao, including delivery! This is about three months worth for me.

June 10^th Out for a walk again. The sky was a little overcast but we thought we’d be fine. We were wrong! At least it’s not British rain.

And another Taobao delivery. This one will mean hard work for me. The idea was to get Huan to sort out the first 500 that I have learnt, (am learning) from Memrise and then start putting two characters together for me to try learning ‘words’. It may not be so easy as their first 500 differs to mine!

June 11^th Lazy day, watching episodes of ‘The Bill’ and trying to memorise a few more characters. I’m up to 475 now!

June 12^th Black clouds everywhere today so we didn’t go out. Sod’s law, it still hadn’t rained by lunch time, we could have gone. Still, we had rain in the kitchen! Something upstairs is leaking, we know it can’t be ours, all our water pipes are under the floor. As usual of course there is no one living there at the moment. Huan turned their water off!

Last Taobao delivery, for this round anyway. My razor blades are hardly ever available here and when they are they are much more expensive.

I wouldn’t want to do all our shopping online but I must admit Taobao is a Godsend at times. It’s just a shame that we can’t order perishables!

Now, I would hazard a guess that many of my friends and relatives have never seen an electric motor scooter. That is one field in which I believe China is far ahead of the west. It can lead to the occasional surprise though. There are many that get charged in the foyer of our building but today I stepped out of the lift to this.

This one must be a tight squeeze in the lift. Now we have six apartments on our floor, just imagine if everyone tried to do the same.

As we were confined to barracks, I decided it was time for Uncle ‘Wuzhichef’ to get busy again. The treat for Huan today was a Greek dish, an easy version of Moussaka. It was finished off using the ‘Air Fryer’. I must say it went down very well.

June 13^th What a beautiful start to the day!

‘To walk, or not to walk” that was the question. We decided we would and it turned out to be a good decision. The rain held off until late in the evening and we got nearly eleven kilometres in. Early on in the walk, Huan found this little fellow walking along the path. I thought I’d help him out and put him in the nearest greenery, on a tree. He seemed a bit week though and was having trouble holding on. He was still there when we left but gone the next day and not on the floor. Perhaps he survived.

June 14^th So we woke up to almost identical weather to yesterday and once again decided to walk. Wrong decision! You guessed, it rained. Mind you it didn’t start until we had been going for four kilometres. I have to say though that it felt very good, enough rain to cool us down but not enough to cause any great discomfort. With views like this, who can complain?

And it gave me a great picture, (well I think so) to put on the World Street Photography site.

Home to cook for me, today was a curry. Not only that, it was an ‘army’ curry. Very nice indeed!

June 15^th Great walk through the countryside today, somewhere we haven’t been for four or five months. It rained again of course, this time around half way around, probably a couple of kilometres before we passed the “House in The Country” (by the Kinks for those who don’t know). As you can see it’s not used as a house but as a kindergarten. The children must come from the local farms and villages. Seems like a peaceful place to learn.

June 16^th Today the Gods were on our side once again and managed our ten kilometres without being rained upon. Some bad news when we came back though. Something is happening on the island in front of our buildings.

It seems that the long promised park is now under construction. “Why bad news?” I hear you say. “You should be happy!” you say. Well, Chinese parks tend not be the same as those in other countries. We have one very near our apartment in Ledong so we know what to expect. This one is even nearer, right in the middle of the river. We are not looking forward to being kept awake at night by loud music, dancing old ladies, more loud music, playing children, till after midnight most nights. Mind you, as I write this it is bucketing down outside so maybe the rain can help us! There is a lot more rain here than there is in Ledong.

June 17^th Lovely day for walking, and we made the most of it, nearly 13 kilometres.

June 18^th NTR Only shopping, and raining.

June 19^th Another nice long walk, again nearly 13 kilometres. As usual we tried going where we hadn’t been before, and perhaps where we shouldn’t go without the right attire. Part way through a farmer’s field I spotted a snake in front of me. He had also spotted me and was making very fast tracks in the opposite direction. Needless to say I did the same. Huan was in front of me by his stage, here she is on the way to safety!

Bad news later in the day though.

At a rough guess I would say that our many power outages are to blame for this. Luckily I managed to get it working again before the day was out.

June 20^th Only a short walk today, some good news at the front of the house though. They are planting trees across the road.

And we met one of our friends again.

He was sitting on Human’s T-shirt! In the picture, he’s sitting on a new SD card multi-reader. Yes, my previous one failed yesterday and I need that for transferring dashcam videos from the car to the house. When I shook him off you should have seen him go, I never knew they could fly so fast.

June 21^st Only a local walk, the computer had decided to do another ‘chkdsk’. We visited the land of the ‘Monkey King’ again and sat on ‘Horsey’. We both had a go! Which one of us looks more like a monkey? Rhetorical question, you don’t have to answer!

June 22^nd The computer had decided to start this morning so we went off for a longer walk, to Changhao village and back. It’s about 7 kilometres away and we haven’t walked it since my tendon problems started in January. We were supposed to be taking it slow, in fact that’s what this sign says. Can you see it, hiding in the trees?

We ignored the advice and did it in just over two and a half hours. Here we are at the half way mark before coming back. Still don’t really like selfies. In fact I don’t like having my photo taken at all unless I am unaware of it and therefore more natural.

When we got home the computer was playing up yet again so I had to re-install Windows 7. What a palaver that was (is). Previously I had the 64 bit Ultimate version. Re-installing off the same disk gave me only the 32 bit version. Consequently many thins don’t work as they should. For one thing the sound has disappeared completely and will probably never return if the internet is anything to go by.

June 23^rd A whole day, almost, spent on the chat support with Express VPN. You guessed it, that wouldn’t work either. The final analysis, after trying to install/uninstall the app, using many different versions, was that I would have to re-install Windows yet again. Of course every time you do this Windows has to download and install about three million updates. It was a late night.

June 24^th No computer work today, off to Ledong instead. I would have shown you a dashcam picture of the ‘gate’ to Ledong but I can’t play videos yet! We were there because three schoolgirls, age unknown, wanted to rent the apartment for a month. Ten o’clock was the prearranged time, or so I thought. Huan thought it was to be half past ten. In the end it was nearly 6 in the evening. What a boring day, no computer, no books, no swimming trunks. We did have a lovely lunch though and then dinner at Dico’s in the evening, Huan had itchy feet to get back to the apartment so I told her we were going for coffee first. We had waited nearly seven hours for them; they could wait a few minutes for us. This was the name of the coffee place and this was my hazelnut something or other.

It wasn’t bad but it wasn’t a patch on Human’s iced chocolate. I know what I’ll be having next time!

So, it was back to the apartment to meet the girls. They turned out to be middle school students, four friends, with no parents in tow. There had also been a communication breakdown about costs. When Huan asked for the money, the four girls each forked out a quarter of what they thought was the cost, ¥2000. They hadn’t understood, or the security lady in the building hadn’t explained, that this was a deposit against damages and missing items and the rent would also be required. So the final result, they went back to wherever they came from and we came back to Wuzhishan having wasted a day.

June 25^th Another shopping day and another Express VPN day. For some reason I just couldn’t get it work at all. Luckily for me though the chat window was available so after about two hours it was back again. Strangely enough there had been something in the local English news about Hainan having open access to the internet in tourist areas. Today’s news, looks like they’ve backed off and VPNs will still be required. Spent the rest of the day trying to work out why my audio won’t work. In the end I decided the time has come, a new computer is needed. I spent a few hours trying to work out just what I need.

June 26^th Before going to the local computer shops we decided it was time to walk up to Xia Gong hotel and have a look at the pool. We hadn’t done that since last year. The sky was overcast again so it was a pleasant walk. Imagine our surprise when we got there to find we could no longer get in without paying. We argued and got to reception where we could ask more questions. If we paid to get in we could have the money reimbursed if we went swimming or had a meal. That will put a lot of people off. It’s a very busy walk, especially in the winter. There used to be another way up, walking at the side of the river, that’s not possible any more.

We were also told that there is no way to enter by coming down from the reservoir. They hope this is going to make them money.

Whether it will or not remains to be seen. As for us two, well if we walk, we have to pay ¥20 each whereas if we take the car, it’s still ¥20. We can pay¥120 to access the pool twenty times in a month so we should not lose money. If you haven’t seen it before, the pool is worth it.

Back via the computer shop where Huan had a chat with the sales lady and I had a chat with some friends.

There are no ‘real’ computer shops here so we would have to rely on the sales lady understanding my needs and me understanding the different parts of a computer she was trying to sell me. It was fairly easy in Harbin the sales guy spoke pretty good English. In the end Huan sent photos of all my work yesterday to her son who guided me to a place on JD.com where I could build my own. Again it’s not half as easy as it could be. Everything is in Chinese so has to be translated and then trying to work out which pieces actually work with which other pieces was driving me round the bend. In the end it appeared that I wasn’t going to save any money at all by ‘building it myself’ so I decided, with Huan’s son’s recommendation, to just buy a complete computer. By the end of the day I had narrowed it down to two choices; we will have a chat to the sellers tomorrow. Fingers crossed!

June 27^th First call of the day was to have another walk before going on to Taobao. I do like the various varieties of fauna we see locally. Here’s one that I may or may not have uploaded before. If you look closely, you will see it also has ants crawling all over the flowers.

So my Taobao sojourn was basically a waste of time. If I wanted to buy a named brand PC such as Dell or Lenovo then the ‘build’ could not be modified at all. After a few hours of dallying and dallying I decided a call to Patrick was called for. I had heard of a ‘computer place’ in Haikou, and Patrick, being the font of all knowledge, would probably know more. It seems the place is called DC City and has original vendors plus ‘build you own’ places too. Plans will have to be made!

June 28^th Well, late last night, lying in bed, the plans were decided. Consequently we were up at twenty past five in the morning. I thought that this ‘time’ only existed in the afternoon! Coffee, bank and fuel and we were on our way. I must say driving that early does mean a lot less traffic on the winding mountain roads. First stop was a coffee stop in Maoyang. To think that when I was younger I would drive for hours and hours without a stop. Still, time is not so important for us retirees and the doctor said I should get out and stretch my legs now and then. Breakfast was in Qiongzhong at the bus station, always room to park the car. It is a burger place but they also have the usual ‘soup noodles’ etc. Disappointingly for me they didn’t have fried noodles but they did have a sort of Chinese omelette. Not bad, although a little salty. I told Huan that if we do this again at breakfast time, we should take a couple of slices of bread and butter with us so I can have an egg sandwich. We were in Haikou before half past ten and then the trusty GPS guided us to DC City with very little problem.

The search began! Original vendors were first and we started with Lenovo. It started well, yes we should be able to change the configuration. However, the more questions we asked the murkier it became. The final straw was when they were trying to show something on another PC and couldn’t remove the ‘boot error’. “We’ll carry on looking around” said Huan and I and rapidly made off. That was then my decision made for me, I was going to have someone build me a PC. There are many such places in DC City but we eventually decided on this one.

Neither of the guys had any English but armed with the specs I had already printed out and with Human’s amazing Chinese language skills we did manage to get them to understand what we wanted. They said it would take about an hour to sort it out so we gave them an hour and a half and went for lunch. My only proviso was that they not install any Windows software.

There is a food court in DC City but as it was now around midday it was wall to wall people. Luckily, there is a shopping mall adjacent, I think it’s called ‘Summer Festival’ but I can’t be sure. Whatever the name is, you can’t miss it. In fact it was where we had parked the car. Just for a change I let Huan choose KFC. We both tried a ‘Chizza’ which is a combination of chicken and pizza. It may work for some but it didn’t for us. Still, it filled a hole as they say. While we were scoffing away I noticed something quite normal for Haikou and probably a lot of southern China. Now many of you who live in the north or back in the west may see the occasional motorbike or scooter. This was the view from our lunch time window:

Lunch time over and it was back to the store. Build was complete and they were trying to partition the ‘big’ hard disc without much success. So they asked about Windows software and I produced my ‘original Win 10 Pro’. Here we go I said. Well after a couple of false starts we got it working and we were off. The final result is a PC with 240GB SDD, 2TB HDD, 8GB RAM, DVD, all the relevant ports, including USB 3.0 and of course Win 10 Pro. We added a 27 inch monitor and much to Human’s chagrin a lovely set of PC speakers so that I can be a pest in the office. It cost me one month’s pension to buy it all but if it lasts another five years before I need to upgrade I’ll be happy. I did forget one thing though and that was a UPS. I suspect a lot of the problems in my existing PC have been caused by the numerous power failures we have in our place. That means of course that all we bought is now sitting in Boxes around the office.

By three o’clock we were on our way home again. Of course we, or should I say I, decided that GPS was not needed, getting back out of Haikou should be easy enough. Well, I must have followed the wrong signs and after a few wrong turns we eventually got to the highway at four o’clock. Slowly the service stations are beginning to open up. There were no restaurant facilities here yet, but the fuel station was operational, they sold cold coffees and the restrooms were operational. The Gents even had three western style cubicles.

By quarter past five we were in Qiongzhong for dinner, we like to eat early! The worst part of the journey, for me, is always Qiongzhong to Maoyang but we were there for twenty to seven for my next caffeine fix. We arrived home around seven thirty. Not a bad day’s work!

June 29^th After yesterday we decided that a nice walk was in order before we started on Taobao again. We strayed off our usual beaten paths today, intentionally, and had a great walk. Tracks through the country side are what we both like and as long as it hasn’t been raining they are fine.

As usual we saw lots of pigs, ducks, chickens etc but this has to be my favourite photo of today’s ‘wildlife’. I haven’t processed it at all apart from cropping it but it looks more like a painting than a photo. I love the expression on the mother’s face. She was very, very protective of her babies.

Remember all that about the UPS earlier? Well, just to rub in the fact that we need one, we arrived back after our walk, more than three hours, to find that there was no electricity and hence no lift. We had a little rest in the garden first before braving the stairs. Huan noticed this little creature. I have to say I have never seen a caterpillar like this before. It also moved fairly fast. Huan wouldn’t let me pick it up in case it was toxic. Some googling needed methinks.

The end of the day, after we’d finished our Taobao ordering, brought something we very rarely see because of our apartment’s location in the building, a sunset. Usually when I try to take pictures of sunsets with my phone they are completely washed out by the glare, today I tried playing. Don’t ask me what I did though, I’m no expert!

June 30^th A lazy day, as far as exercise is concerned anyway. It looked very hot outside after we’d had out weekend fry up so we decided to stay in! It gave me time to catch up writing this blog anyway. I also began the reorganising of the office. Once everything arrives then this old computer will become Human’s and her laptop will only be used when we travel. Here’s what her ‘new’ office looks like and her view when she is sitting. She won’t be able to see me because this monitor is 24” and mine, 27” will be behind it!

And so we come to the end of an era, no more posts from this computer, (I hope). Next month’s post should come from an all new, all singing, all dancing computer. Of course you, kind readers, will not notice any difference at all! See you next month, bye for now.