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!