Panorama Day, Paranoia, Pikachu Porsche, Presidential Hair, Prang

July 28^th Time to bring some colour back into your lives and what better way to do that than with a nice walk in the countryside. Huan was at school so I did a recce of the Changhao village route, it used to be too dusty for her. There is still construction, not so much on the road as adjacent to it. “First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is (a hotel)” Apologies to Donovan. (The lyrics refer to a Buddhist saying originally formulated by Qingyuan Weixin in the Tang Dynasty, later translated by D.T. Suzuki in his Essays in Zen Buddhism, one of the first books to popularize Buddhism in Europe and the US.) Qingyuan writes “Before I had studied Chan (Zen) for thirty years, I saw mountains as mountains, and rivers as rivers. When I arrived at a more intimate knowledge, I came to the point where I saw that mountains are not mountains, and rivers are not rivers. But now that I have got its very substance I am at rest. For it's just that I see mountains once again as mountains, and rivers once again as rivers.” What you see here used to be a mountain covered in longan trees; it is fast becoming a hotel and apartment complex.

Having taken the photo above I decided that today would be ‘panorama day’. The next shot is where we turn off the main road to Changhao and head off through the countryside. It’s one of our favourite walks, no hills to speak of, no city noises and enough shade to make it pleasant. We would be walking in the same direction as the motor cyclist.

The buildings soon give way to countryside.

It’s been a while since we walked this way so memory can play tricks. I took a side road thinking it would lead somewhere, and it didn’t, I had to turn back. There was a great view at the end of the track though.

And how about a vertical panorama, these boots are made for walking.

Instead of taking the short route back to the main road I took the longer one with the intention of crossing before Changhao and turning back for home. That entailed crossing a weir, which I was hoping would be passable today.

You can see that the water is flowing over the top but not very deep. My boots got wet but the water didn’t come over the top of them. I also trod very carefully just in case there were slimy bits that could have caught me unawares.

Once I reached the main road I had a water stop before wending my way back. Next to the shop there’s a place that used to be used for driver training, it’s all closed off now. Huan tells me that the signs say it’s army land. Further towards town there’s another similar, but larger place so that’s the one I photographed for you. It’s also closed off now and marked army land.

Not far from there I bumped into a few bovine friends resting on the road. They were on a corner on the brow of a small hill so I decided not to bother them. I didn’t fancy being held responsible for any ensuing accidents. I did take a few snaps but as today is ‘panorama day’ and they weren’t, you don’t get to see them.

This next one is not a panorama either; it’s a photo of my completed walk on my phone. It’s not bad considering I stopped to take all the panorama pictures, stopped for the water stop and stopped for a second water stop at our friend’s shop. I spent ten to fifteen minutes chatting to them before telling them I had to go home and cook dinner!

Dinner was chicken noodles a la Bob, but I think you’ve seen a version of that before so no pics.

July 29^th “Paranoia strikes deep, Into your life it will creep, It starts when you’re always afraid, Not feeling well, doctors will take you away” with apologies to Buffalo Springfield for my changing the last line. Are we paranoid? Sometimes yes. Does it creep into our lives? Every time we don’t feel so well. Are we afraid? Again, sometimes yes. Luckily no doctors have had to take us away yet. My latest batch of paranoia started yesterday evening with a persistent dry cough, a tightness in my chest and a splitting headache. Interrogating Huan showed that her recent ‘cold’ had started the same way so Chinese medicine it was, for last night and three times today.

Back to normality, I had my travelling companion today but our walk was short. By the time I got up Huan was in the middle of making steamed brown bread. At least that’s what it looked like but it seems that the colour came from ‘yellow’ beans. Huan’s purse was also getting empty so a visit to the bank was called for. No problem said I, I’ll bring by bank book and get it brought up to date, it hasn’t been done since last August. Huan succeeded but I failed. A young lady helped us with the ‘intelligent terminal’ which decided that I had put in the wrong password and that this was the third time I had done it. Strange how on all previous occasions I have only put the password in once and got money out. To fix the problem my presence and my passport is needed; the copy on my phone will not suffice so a return trip will be required.

Are there any photos from today? Well there’s a bit more progress on the park bridge, but not enough progress to show you yet. Along the road by the park there’s a very wide paved area, a perfect place to plant a few trees for some shade. They haven’t done this yet, and we don’t know if they will. However, they have planted a ‘Li’ symbol of a parent and a child. It looks a bit lonely at the moment, perhaps they will add to it later.

Other than that all we have to show you is the ‘garden’ outside our building door, created by one of our neighbours. A few weeks ago there was nothing there but some soil behind the bricks you can see. I have to admit he’s doing quite a good job. I say ‘doing’ because we see him there every morning when we go out.

July 30^th Paranoia easing, I feel much better this morning. The C-in-C was asking me where I was going to walk this morning while she was out singing. I really wasn’t sure so I told her I would walk along the main road towards the Sanya route out of Wuzhishan. Most of my walks these days seem to start with slight knee troubles until I get into my stride. Would it better or worse if I had as many legs as this little one?

Along the side of the road I spotted a plume of smoke where a smallholder was obviously burning something so I wandered over to check it out. For the first time in months I spotted a pig, two actually, a piglet running around and this much larger one in the pen.

Still with animals I passed a furniture shop that has a huge cage outside which in the past, had an enormous dog that wasn’t very well looked after at all. Nobody was allowed anywhere near the cage, he was not safe. That dog disappeared a couple of years ago I think. Today they had two new dogs in the cage, one allowed me to get fairly close but then the other one got right in my face, pushing the smaller one out of the way and snarling at me. This is the bigger one.

Next it was decision time, should I take the left turn towards Nanshengzhen village or take the bend to the right towards Sanya. The village won although I still hadn’t decided whether or not to walk all the way there.

Not long afterwards I made up my mind; this was the turn around point.

On the way back a man with a jack hammer told me I was silly to walk in the sun with my shorts on. I suppose he was at least getting paid for being in the sun. Not far after that I stopped to take some pictures of chicks, goslings and ducklings. The farmer and his wife had to tell me which ones were ducklings and which were goslings, I’m still not sure I could tell you the difference. The wife then grabbed one of the chicks and advanced towards me. I thought she wanted me to buy one but no, she wanted her husband to take a photo of her, the chick and me! Fame at last.

I timed my arrival back into town for a short time before Huan’s class was over. As usual she was miles away, tunnel vision at 100%, so it was Yu that spotted me first. You can see the surprise on Huan’s face.

And my last photo of the day is our arrival back home, just over fifteen kilometres done, not such a bad morning after all.

Old age must be getting to me, maybe to both of us, I definitely needed a sleep in the afternoon and the boss did too. After that all that was left was for me to cook again. If I cook noodles once in a week I usually cook them twice, the reason being you can’t keep fresh noodles too long. Today’s was another special, sausage casserole noodles a la Bob. No photo for you I’m afraid but big yummys from both of us! 

July 31^st Admin day today, only incidental walking allowed. That meant we also had a lazy start, that came back to bite us on the bum! Our first port of call was the cellphone provider for our phones, China Mobile. Yesterday we had tried Alipay on my phone but it wouldn’t allow me to bind my bank account, only Huan’s, because both our phones are in her name. Our job today was to try and change my contract to my name. Our usual local office, where we pay our bills etc, couldn’t help, they told us we would have to visit head office, not so bad, it’s only round the corner. When we got there the first sales assistant didn’t have any idea, she told us we’d have to ask someone else. When the second assistant was free, she didn’t know either so she disappeared to speak to someone higher up in the back office. When she came back she told us that it could be done, but they would need a copy of Huan’s Hukou card, her phone number, a copy of my passport, my phone number and a copy of my sim card. For ‘copy’ in China you can often use the word ‘photo’ instead because that’s what she did, took photographs of everything required. Now we have to wait as all the ‘photos’, along with the request, have to be sent to another ‘head office’, either in Sanya or Haikou. We’ll find out in five to seven days whether we’ve been successful. While all this was going on we had ‘points’ that we’d earned somehow, converted to money on our phones, here’s Huan getting hers done.

Whenever I think bureaucracy is bad here I always cast my mind back to my first visits to the Middle East, Saudi in 1983 and UAE in 1984 and then I don’t feel so bad. In those days a simple thing like this would have required reams of passport copies, numerous passport photographs and would have taken a lifetime to sort out. China is pretty efficient really. 

Having spent more time than planned in the phone office we started off towards the bank; remember the card problems earlier this week. We made the mistake of stopping on the way to buy some fried chicken breast for my lunchtime sandwich. By the time that was done, we had to make our way home for lunch and said sandwich. The bank will have to wait, yet again. 

Mind you, I was happy waiting for the chicken and drooling, not over the food, but over this, a yellow Porsche 911. We saw it from the rear end first and I fell in love with it, I do have a thing for yellow cars! However, if I stole this one, the first thing I would have to do is sort the bonnet out. Who on earth does this to a Porsche, and why?

Although outside admin had to be delayed, there was also some inside work to be done. Huan was remiss; she forgot to take any embarrassing photos of me with my hands down both toilets, scrubbing them clean with Jif and bleach, and also giving the bath a good scrubbing too. Usually she likes to take pictures of me working; I think she does it to show my bald patch! 

August 1st “When August days are hot an’ dry, I won’t sit by an’ sigh or die; I’ll get my bottle (on the sly) And go ahead, and fish, and lie!” (In August by Paul Laurence Dunbar) Well, it’s not me, I don’t fish and I don’t drink from bottles on the sly. 

Sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever get the hang of the weather here. This week it is supposed to rain every day, and for the last few days it’s done that, later in the afternoon. Basing my plan on that I set off very early this morning, with clouds around all the mountains, just like the last few days. Here’s what it was like looking towards our house from the other side of the river looking over the first bridge.

No rain anywhere so off I went, up the main road through town towards Haikou. I planned to do much the same as Thursday and walk until I felt like turning back for home. I only got just over three kilometres away from home before the rain started. It was a few metres past the spot in this next photograph, check out the clouds, and the further I walked in that direction the wetter I was getting. Turn round time was early today.

Walking back into town the rain dropped to a drizzle, which led me to deciding that a trip to the bap shop would be in order. Going back down the hill I spotted one of those elusive little birds again. This time I put the camera on continuous shooting and out of the tens of photos that I took managed to find one that was good enough to share.

Walking towards the bap shop takes us to the other side of town where, looking over the mountains, I could see a lot more clouds and rain. I’m beginning to think that there are times, many of them, when the rain is falling all around Wuzhishan but not so much on it.

Arriving home, having completed only nine kilometres this morning, I took a panorama from the bedroom balcony. As you can see, we are completely surrounded by clouds, and I think it’s raining behind all the mountains except in the top left corner.

Ah well, getting home early meant I could cook dinner early, nothing special, just another “finish all the vegetables in the fridge and add a tin of stewed pork” stew. Huan could smell it as soon as she walked in the door, and it goes without saying, that it was delicious! Oh, and rain did come down in the city, from about three o’clock onwards. 

August 2^nd The rain hadn’t stopped before we went to bad last night and it persisted all through the night and into the morning. It seems that a typhoon named Sinlaku had been born somewhere off Sanya and was heading towards Vietnam. That’s the first one this year, the typhoon season runs from May/June to September/October. I’m not a fan of typhoons but I guess the reservoir will be glad of the rain. That wasn’t a problem for us today though as we had another admin day, this time for both of us. My first duty was to act as the getaway driver! Huan needed to go to one of her banks and withdraw a sizable sum of money. Once I screeched up, let her in and screamed off again, we were to another of her banks. This time it was to deposit the lump sum. This was part of her duties as the ‘Minister of Finance’ and she’s pretty good in that role. Her job at the bank didn’t take long at all. 

Now, this is also my bank, remember the problems with my card earlier in the week? My job at the bank should have been much simpler than Huan’s, it wasn’t! First my passport and bank card were scanned, more than once, and then the fun began. “This passport is not the same as the account details.” I got a new passport in 2016 and one of our first jobs back in Hainan was to give the bank the details and the passport to copy. Eventually they agreed that the number was the same but the name was different. Much more explanation required, the passport shows the family name first followed by the Christian names; the bank account has them reversed, as you would say my name. Finally we got it all sorted out and they then told us the account was locked because the wrong PIN had been attempted three times. It seems that it doesn’t matter whether the three times were on one occasion or over a period of time, in my case years. Thinking about it one of the ATMs here in Wuzhishan had a dodgy keyboard for a while and depressing keys did not always bring the corresponding ‘beeps’. When that happened I started again so I assume those times would have been the errors. Having sorted all that, out we were ready to go when they informed us that because of the three failed attempts my account was now frozen for a week Even they couldn’t run my passbook through to update it. What a farce! Imagine being a trader or even worse a father with a family to feed and no money for a week. As you can guess from all of that, my job at the bank took considerably longer than Huan’s.

Despite all my moaning and groaning above, I do have to say that the staff remained courteous and helpful all the time. They couldn’t explain the ‘whys and wherefores’, they were just following the rules which, according to another customer, had been changed again on April 1^st to be even stricter than they were before. I guess I could have had similar problems even in the UK and at least here the bank does provide free beneficial facilities while you wait.

And how did the prime minister feel about all of this? She was happy, her job was successful.

August 3^rd ‘er indoors was up with the larks this morning, she’d even stolen my phone to take pictures on the balcony. She was trying to get a photo of a dragonfly but didn’t realise that the phone had zoom capabilities. Consequently the dragonfly photos didn’t work very well. She also took a lot of photos of her flowers, they came out better.

Not too long afterwards I was up, stealing back the camera and taking a selfie of my morning ‘presidential’ hair. Do you think “The Donald” would approve? By the way, there is no wind at all, that is purely my normal, natural morning look. If you think it’s bad, take pity on Huan, she has to wake up to it every day.

Monday’s, as you know, are admin days, otherwise known as shopping days. Today we had some extra admin to take care of. We received a phone call from China Mobile telling us that the change of name from Huan’s to mine was agreed, and asking us to visit the office. That was the beginning of my not very good day. It started well enough, we were ushered into the manager’s office who it turns out, we know. She’s the daughter of the people who run a shop with a large Labrador that’s been missing a while. It seems the reason it’s been missing is that the lady had been off having a baby and they took the dog with them. Anyway, I digress. All was going well, we were asked to take a seat while we waited for a spare assistant so this we did. Once we were at the front of the queue we hit a bump! Previously, to make international calls you had to put a deposit on your account, ¥800.00, which of course I had done. Changing the phone to my name means that deposit has to be paid back to Huan. Another wait followed while head office, wherever it may be, was contacted yet again. Explanation when they returned? The money can’t be transferred to my name, and international deposits are no longer required anyway. Even though my phone is in Huan’s name, the money can’t be transferred to her phone either. We now have to wait another fifteen days for the deposit to be refunded and then the name change can go ahead. I was beginning to lose my patience. 

Shopping was more frustrating than usual, pushing me further into the ‘I’m not very happy’ zone, irritable is probably the best word to describe how I felt. The crunch came, literally, when we were driving into our apartments, a car came the other way. It would have been very easy for him to reverse and let me pass, but I had to reverse instead. He did pull over at one stage and then I had Hyacinth telling me to go forward and I’m still trying to go backwards. She kept on and I lost it. I yelled at her and told her she could give me advice when she’d passed her test! What she didn’t realize was the ‘space’ he had left for me was not actually wide enough which is why I continued reversing. Unfortunately, my anger at Huan distracted my attention and I managed to hit the entry barrier, I had a prang! I should just have calmed down and taken my time.

Ah well, we live and learn, or in my case, we live and never learn! Another week comes to an end, not the best of weeks. Don’t get the wrong idea though, as I sit here writing this I have a great big grin on my face, life is still good!