Bapman, Bank Troubles Again, More Rain & Autumn Festival Show.

September 22^nd Gentleman Bob was at it again today, I walked Huan to her choir practice. She was alone this morning, Yu had something else to do. A visit to the ‘Bapman’ was next on the agenda and would you believe it, I was too late again, I only managed to buy nine. However, he gave me his Wechat so next time we can give him notice and he will save some for me. I also remembered to take his photo today, I tried to get his wife in the frame too but she ran away!

Gentleman again in the afternoon, the girls had a rehearsal for their upcoming show so to save them from arriving all sweaty I gave them a lift. At least this time they seem to be having their rehearsals a little bit earlier!

September 23^rd The ‘Site Foreman’ a.k.a. SWMBO, decided that we should visit Sanya today to check on progress. Despite my protestations that it was too soon, not long after Huan came back from her magic chair session we were on the way. At least we had a good day for it. We arrived just in time for lunch and found a parking space less than a kilometre away today. For lunch we just popped into the nearest restaurant to where we parked the car, it was clean, cheap and cheerful. Here’s our lunch, I bet you can guess which was mine.

Yes, you’re right, mine was the ‘sausage rolls’, I did have a duck egg with them too. They look rather strange but they tasted fine. The sausages are just your bog standard hot dog ones but the bread was very unusual. It was soft, almost cake like, but not sweet at all and tasted great with the sausages. Huan had 包子 (Bāozi) which is a steamed bun with filling, in this case vegetables. They were going down very fast and it was all I could do to get a quick taste! They were also very good, we’ll no doubt be returning to that place when we go back to finish getting the apartment ready for renting.

Speaking of the apartment, as expected, by me anyway, there is still a lot of work to be done. Here’s our friendly workman busy scraping the walls, at least he’s not climbing them yet.

Huan was chattering ten to the dozen so I had to stop her now and then so that I could at least have some idea what was going on. I made sure she gave him some loot and then we left him to it. I think this time she has asked him to paint before we go back.

We then went walkabout looking for a) a house selling company, (just to get an idea of the going rate), b) an electrical repair company, c) a bathroom shop, d) a kitchen shop. Our walk lasted two hours around the general area of where the apartment is located and was 100% unsuccessful! With a little luck Huan will be able to find something on the internet before we have to go back down there.

Next stop was the bank, it’s her Ladyship’s birthday on Friday and I promised her a red envelope so that she could buy new high heeled shoes for her show and a 葫芦丝, Húlusī (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hulusi). Initially I wasn’t keen but I realised the other day why she insists on trying to keep herself busy. She is worried about early onset dementia although she probably won’t admit it to me. She thinks her Mum had it too early and she thinks she may follow suit. In fact her Mum was seventy two before she started on the downward path. If making more noise stops her worrying, then who am I to complain!

So, the bank, we didn’t find a branch but we did find an ATM hall, quite common here. Problems arose almost immediately, the first four numbers of my PIN were no problem, the fifth number was not reacting to the keypad at all. It did eventually react and the sixth number was accepted with no problem. I chose the language, chose the option, chose the amount and pressed confirm. Everything seemed to be going well and then the ‘money counter’ didn’t stop, it just kept going round and round till finally the screen said “Transaction failed” with some advice, a phone number and a printed receipt shot out. The receipt said I had taken ¥1,000.00 which of course I hadn’t. It may also have mentioned failure but being in Chinese I couldn’t tell. Trying the phone number was a waste of time, the ATM’s give you a language choice, the helpline doesn’t. What we got was a choice of press 1, 2 or 3 etc. Huan tried it and the first thing it asked for was a Hukou number. Being a foreigner I don’t have such a number! Off to find the nearest ‘real’ branch we went, luckily not too far from where we started out on our walk. The ‘helper’ there, checked my receipt, took us to an intelligent terminal, checked my balance and gave me a print-out showing ¥1,000.00 out and then ¥1,000.00 in. I thought OK, we’re sorted now, let’s try and get Huan that cash. None of the ATM’s would work, they all said my card was invalid. The helper stopped helping, told us we’d have to go to the issuing branch, good job we weren’t in Beijing isn’t it. Back to Wuzhishan we went.

Once there we joined the queue and got to meet our favourite cashier, again. Huan explained the problem, with my prompting, to make sure no parts were left out. Her response? “You can try here?” I guess she wasn’t too keen on the look on my face and Huan telling her that the card should work in any branch in China, not just in this particular building. She then asked for my passport at which point I gave up, this is the third time of asking for my passport to sort something out. I asked for all the money and the closure of the account. No attempt at all was made to change my mind, in fact it had me wondering a) has this happened to other people recently or b) did they want rid of me anyway? The bank in question, should you be interested, I know some of my readers in China will be, is ICBC, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the largest bank in the world. Maybe that’s why they care so little for personal accounts.

On the way from Sanya, but inserted here so as not to split the bank story, we stopped for coffee and I tried a new one. It wasn’t so good and I will not be trying it again. Here it is along with a close up of the label. Even Google translate doesn’t’ do much better; there it comes out as “No need to deliberately, you are yourself” or “No need to deliberately, I am myself”. I guess it really means “Better to drink this than to make your own”.

Dinner out today, forgot to take any photos, sorry!

September 24^th Old age is getting to me, slept until eight thirty this morning! Huan was long gone of course and after her magic chair session she had a choir practice. I could have gone for a morning walk but decided to be lazy instead, how surprising.

After I had fed her ladyship her lunch and had a wee surf on the internet I went out for an afternoon walk instead. The sun was behind the clouds so it wasn’t a case of “Mad dogs and Englishmen” today.

First up on the photo side is a damsel in distress, well, not really, but it is a damsel of sorts. It’s often mistaken for a dragonfly, by me too, until I did some Googling. It comes from the same family of insects but it’s called a ‘Damselfly’. This one was quite small and in the wild, and the photos, it looked black until I turned up the brightness. The problem with that is you lose all resolution of the wings!

Now as I said, I wasn’t out in the midday sun today, but, I had made one glaring error, maybe two. I hadn’t checked the weather before I set out and looking up at the sky I hadn’t checked which way the big black clouds were moving. They were moving west to east while I was moving east to west, I got soaked!

The rain did ease off and I had almost dried out by the time I was approaching home. I cut my walk short as the thunder had started and I didn’t know where the clouds were going next! As you can see in this next photo, all sane people had stayed at home.

You can probably also see that the quality of this photo leaves a lot to be desired. Blame me for that too, I had taken Freddie Fuji with me today and somewhere along the way it got a little too wet. As I write this I am hoping it will dry out on my desk in time for tomorrow or at least in time for Huan’s show on Monday. If the worst comes to the worst then Norman Nokia will have to come out of storage.

September 25^th I had plans for today, a nice walk in the morning, a restful afternoon and then take Huan out for dinner in the evening. It’s her birthday today. She had other plans and stayed in to make dumplings in the morning, no real complaints there, they’re always nice. It seems we were also waiting for Taobao. Just after lunch Huan had a call from the workman in Sanya which meant our restful afternoon disappeared and I had to drive us down there.

We arrived to find that, contrary to his message on the phone, nothing was really finished! The walls were white, and yellow, as far as I could see he hadn’t done two coats. I left him and Huan going at it hammer and tongs and went out for a break. That gave me the opportunity to take a photo of our transport the last time we were down here, you can see the load area where I sat!

We had no chance of getting back to Wuzhishan for Huan’s birthday dinner so we decided we’d have it in Sanya instead. At least something went right. The restaurant we found was an organic food one, expensive, but good. Huan’s was the fish and mine was the chicken.

I was going to add a photo of Huan tucking in but I’m under orders not to! Around an hour and a half away from home we had another call from one of the courier companies, the second Taobao delivery was ready, the first had arrived while we were in Sanya and it had been left with the security guard at the gate. We were too late arriving at the courier office so Huan will go and check in the morning.

September 26^th So Huan was off to the courier office, I was still on (a different) courier standby at home. Yesterday’s delivery was our new kitchen light so that was my first job of the morning. These first two pictures show the kitchen with the light off and with the light on, it’s much brighter than the previous one. LED lights are amazing, this is only 36W.

The final picture is to show you that we don’t have a “Rat in the kitchen”, instead we have a fish, Huan’s favourite food!

The rest of the day was spent searching Taobao again to refurnish the Sanya apartment. Our last tenants did us no favours whatsoever, apart from the Air Conditioner and the Water Heater we’ll have to buy everything new again. Hopefully all the things we ordered will be delivered to Sanya and not here in Wuzhishan.

September 27^th Huan had a rest day today before her show tomorrow. I thought we may be able to have nice long relaxed stroll around the river, but as usual, I was wrong. Huan spent the morning sorting out the sequins on a costume dress for one of the other choir members who has very bad eyes. I could hardly complain about that could I? Instead I was informed that I would be on Taobao standby again.

Taobao arrived after lunch, Huan’s Hulusi. As I was the one who unpacked it I thought I’d show her how good I was and give her a rendition of ‘Amazing Grace’. I failed miserably. It seems that the Hulusi is nothing like a recorder, there is a reed somewhere inside, blowing hard gives you low notes and soft gives you high notes, or maybe the other way round! I handed it over and here’s Huan trying to learn scales. Note how she’s ‘lost in the music’.

As for me, well the rain came back this afternoon so I couldn’t even have a solo walk, no chance of reaching 200km this month, probably not even a 150km. Instead I had an hour on the guitar, some songs are beginning to sound almost like songs, but none worth sharing with anyone yet!

September 28^th Another lazy morning, I left it up to the boss and she didn’t fancy going anywhere today because of her show this afternoon. Ah, how well I remember the days of me doing shows, now I’m living in the script of “A Star is Born”!

I volunteered to be the chauffeur for the singer and two of her fans in the afternoon, I had to go anyway to try and do the camera work. We weren’t late but I had lost all chance of a good position for taking videos. I did manage a hotch-potch of some from Norman the noachian Nokia and some from Marvin the paranoid Android. Being different file types, as in the video details, it will take me a while to sort them out and combine them but once done, I will try and put a link to Youtube for you. In the meantime, here’s a few photos of the show.

Huan is looking over my shoulder so there’s no picture of her group, you’ll have to wait until I’ve finished the video compilation. She is visible in the final group photograph below, although for some reason the opening musicians are not. Perhaps they went home after their bit!

If you were wondering why I couldn’t spend the time doing videos tonight, well we’re off to Sanya again tomorrow. SWMBO will have me climbing ladders, scrubbing and cleaning, probably drilling a few holes as well. No doubt she will provide the evidence to be included next week. See you then!

The Pitfalls of Being a Landlord, The Magic Chair & Rain.

September 15^th Lazy day again, no excuse, just felt like staying in this morning. Huan wasn’t lazy though, she was out before half past six to go and sit on some special aromatherapy chair. Unfortunately she didn’t take any photos so I’m none the wiser, hopefully next time.

An afternoon walk was on the cards again today and Huan said she would come with me, so she could visit the bank on the way! Mantids came to the fore again today, the first one was having a good time trying to fight me off. I tried my hardest to get a photo of it with its arms waving in the air but most of them were out of focus.

The second one may have been the child of the first one, it was certainly much smaller. Within a couple of seconds it was on Huan’s hand and shortly thereafter on my camera.

My camera looks pretty filthy in that photo doesn’t it? It looks nowhere near that bad in real life, honest! I would take a photo to show you but then again, it may turn out like that one. We did get one more of the baby mantid, you can see it clearer here.

On the next pillar we found yet another one but this one had one of its back legs missing. Maybe the other bug had something to do with that? We did watch for a while but the beetle type creature didn’t seem to be after the mantid.

More bugs were found on the way home but none of the photos came out well at all, neither from my camera or Huan’s phone. We’ll blame the wind for not letting the critter’s wings stay still! How about a couple of photos of the ‘Head of Purchasing’ doing what she likes doing best. In the first photo she is, obviously, buying fruit, in the second one she is collecting from the courier office, because we weren’t home when they called. What delightful surprises are there in that small box? More supplies of various ingredients for our medicinal flower tea!

After our lovely dinner of bratties again, with onions fried in lard and a sweet potato salad, Huan had a message from our Sanya tenants. They don’t want to renew the lease this year, in fact they told us they haven’t lived in the apartment for a year. That seems rather strange to us seeing as how they asked us in March or April for a free month because of Covid! If they were telling the truth then they should have let us know in last month when the contract expired and not this month after the ‘freebie’ is finished. I told Huan that if there’s any truth at all in what they say then they have been renting it out to someone else for the last few months! Now of course, Huan is worrying about all kinds of things, what should we take with us, should we take the ladder, what will we need to replace etc. I told her all we have to do in the first instance is change the locks! Tomorrow we can then see the state of the place and what we have to do to make it rentable again. No doubt money will have to be spent.

September 16^th We were off before half past seven, enjoying our drive down the mountain roads to the coast again. I have to say that it’s a drive I enjoy very much and today, as it had been raining all night, it looked great with the forests gleaming with water on either side of us. Despite the moans and groans you read here in our Blog we both consider ourselves very lucky to live in a place like Hainan. Shame there’s no beach in Wuzhishan though!

Our tenants in Sanya have a hardware style shop on the ground floor of the building so that was Huan’s first stop. Immediately the wife asked Huan for the money for the free month, because she hadn’t been living there! She got short shrift from Huan who pointed out that she had called at the time of contract renewal in August and the husband had answered saying Huan would have to speak to the wife. She never answered, in fact she never does. The “money for the free month” had been used between August and now.

Huan had wanted to take some cleaning materials with us, thinking that we could stay a night or two and then have the place ready for renting again. My plan was to reconnoitre only today and go back at a later date. Once inside, my plan won! Just to show you why I’ll give you a few before and after pictures. Before is how it looked when we first decorated it, after is today. The first comparison is nothing to do with the tenants, it’s not their fault the view changed.

However, everything else is down to them. The wife tried to blame the previous tenants, they left quite a few years ago. Here’s part of the bedroom.

We left them with a nice fridge and washing machine which, according to them, both reached the end of their natural working life!

And then we move to the kitchen cabinets themselves. Huan and I have lived in a fair few rental properties and have always cleaned up when we moved out. In my case, it’s a leftover of army life where your ‘quarters’ were inspected prior to ‘march out’. Neither of us have ever seen anything quite this bad, it will require industrial strength foam cleanser to clean up.

The rest of the kitchen, you can see that the other units are just as bad, the gas cooker is ready for the bin, the extractor fan doesn’t work anymore and has never been cleaned.

Next up is the bathroom where we have three before pictures, at the time we didn’t get a full length through the door, and one after. It’s almost a case of spot the difference. The tenants didn’t like the original toilet so they removed it and put a Chinese squatter in its place. Knowing they would have to forfeit their deposit if they left it like that, they replaced the squatter with an inferior quality and slightly smaller western bowl. For some reason the sink has also disappeared! They had blocked the extractor fan which consequently no longer works, lost the lamp cover and who knows what else. I suppose we’re lucky that the mirror and the water heater are still there!

Lastly, these two photos give you a general overview.

As you can imagine, there is a lot more than a couple of days work required to bring this place back up to scratch. As well as what you can see here there was more outside the front door, although that was mostly just garbage and old furniture. It was time for an executive decision. I told Huan that we were not going to do this, even though we could. We will do some, probably the kitchen cupboards and the bathroom. However, someone else can clean and paint the walls. My decision also included removing everything from the bedroom and all the extra stuff from the kitchen, leaving only the air conditioner in the bedroom, the water heater in the bathroom and the kitchen units in the kitchen, even the extractor fan can go. This means money will have to be spent of course but unusually, I won the argument this time.

Our next job was to find someone to clear everything out. The tenants had said all the stuff outside the front door was there because people wanted too much to remove it. We walked around the area and found a guy who will remove everything free of charge. Here we are on our way back to the apartment with him, driving his motorised three tricycle, Huan sat on the wooden seat behind him and me sat on the load bed beside them both.

We left him with a key and a smile, he was happy to take all. He may even clean the walls; I’m not sure what Huan arranged with him. After a burger downstairs it was back to Wuzhishan for us, with Huan hopefully feeling much better in that the at least the headache tenants are now gone. Our first port of call was the weekly shop, having not done it on Monday. The rain caught us just at the wrong time there but at least it wasn’t far from car park to entrance. Luckily, the rain eased off enough later so that we could go out and eat, nothing special, just the usual Chinese buffet style restaurant.

September 17^th Huan was out early again, off for some more aromatherapy? As for me, it was an admin morning starting with dashcam work which for some reason failed overnight again. Huan remembered to take some photos this morning so here she is posing on the chair, which to me looks like a toilet bowl with a seat. She’ll try and take a photo of the chair alone tomorrow.

And here’s the whole ‘congregation’ being advised of the health benefits of said chair. They are not pressured into buying the chairs but of course some people will buy them. Huan said she wouldn’t; let’s hope she sticks to her word.

There’s a typhoon down south of us, Noul, it appears to be heading for Vietnam but we are being affected by the rain. No walks at all today.

September 18^th For a change the weather forecast was fairly accurate today, piddling down all day. It was doing that when Huan went out and when she came back, today with photos of the magic chair which, by the way, is called 艾灸椅 (Ài jiǔ yǐ) or “Moxibustion Chair”. The first picture shows the closed chair, the second the inside where the dried mugwort is burned and the third shows the chair in operation with the mugwort burning and the infra-red heater on.

What is it supposed to do? Well, according to alternative medicine practitioners, the heat generated during moxibustion helps increase the flow of vital energy (also known as "qi" or "chi") throughout the body via certain pathways (known as "meridians"). In traditional Chinese medicine, stimulating the flow of chi is considered essential to achieving health and wellness. In fact, physical and mental health problems are thought to develop (in part) as a result of blockages in the flow of chi. Alternative medicine proponents also claim that moxibustion can help treat the following health problems: Arthritis, Back pain, Headaches, Migraines, Muscle stiffness, Menstrual cramps, Digestive problems, Ulcers, Cancer, Infertility and Tendonitis. That list comes from verywellhealth.com, checking other sites will give more or different information. Personally, I think I’ll stick to soaking myself in hot baths and holding my head over a menthol vapour from a bowl!

September 19^th Confined to barracks again today, it was still raining when I woke up. Huan was long gone for her session on the magic chair followed by choir practice. I took a couple of photos off the balcony of the river in full flow again.

Now as you know they are building a lovely new park on that little island you can see. Part of that includes a walkway on both sides. According to the publicity when it’s all done we will have a river that looks like a lake from the sluice gates down to our dam. How that’s going to work I don’t know, after all, water flows down hill and the two ends are not at the same height. Take a look at the walkway in this next photo, it’s already underwater. I can’t see the paving stones lasting long under these conditions.

The rain eased off enough in the afternoon for us to go shopping and try to find a new kitchen light. It wasn’t working this morning and my testing showed the transformer was fine meaning the light was at fault. Walking out on wet roads with my flip-flops wasn’t the best idea I’ve ever had; I had Huan worried more than once! At one stage I was walking barefoot and then for most of the way I walked in the road, less slippery than the pavement. It was all to no avail anyway and we ended up ordering a new light on Taobao when we got home.

September 20^th No choir practice, no shopping, no walkies, yes Magic Chair, yes rain! All day long it piddled down again. Huan watched TV, practiced the keyboard and her singing. I found more songs on the internet that I may be able to play and some where I doubt if my fingers will ever stretch far enough to play the required chords. I watched TV too, or rather YouTube. In other words, a pretty boring day for both of us.

September 21^st The rain is worth it when the sun comes out again, today was a beautiful sunny, but fresh day. It did get hot before mid afternoon and then the skies clouded over again in the evening bringing thunder and a little more rain.

Being a Monday, and life having got back to our normal routine it was a shopping day. That normally means no photos, however, today was different. As we were driving to the shops a small pick-up passed us with a ‘friend’ in the back. Huan thought he should be included in today’s ‘words’. We decided not to make ourselves known to said friend as he may well have decided to pop over and say hello. He did look our way but probably didn’t see us and then went back to looking at the chickens!

Tomorrow is another day, so see you next week, bieeee!