March 16th Surprisingly, on my behalf anyway, we were up early enough for a ‘countryside’ walk today. We set off over the island park bridges, where we attempted a selfie with the bridge between us. There must be a way to do this better than we do!
Once out of the woods and back on the road, we tried again to go around the front of the construction site, that is blocked as well, so through the fields we went, and as the carol goes, laughing all the way.
Back on the road we noticed that the village of Fuguan has a new sign and not only in Chinese.
After
dinner I relaxed for a while, then started on this post. Huan had gone out to
meet the ladies for some hulusi and dancing. Before too long my progress was
severely disrupted, Huan came back with one of her dancing partners and the two
USBs. It took a while but I think eventually they were both happy that the
right files had been copied from one to the other. They had another problem
then, they couldn’t access folders on the TV or on the mp3 player they use for
their dancing. I had to explain that I couldn’t do anything about that, someone
would have to buy a new USB specifically for their dancing and then only put on
the files they need. What’s the betting that my services will be needed again
before too long.
March 17th Another good day for me and a countryside walk, after I’d walked the good lady to school. Today she had a hulusi class at the OAP centre. We walked a slightly different way, with Huan worrying she would be late, one of these days she’ll learn to trust me. Passing the hospital we wondered if someone knows something we don’t, they have built a small area outside the hospital for ‘health checks’ should you have any fever and/or respiratory problems.
Eventually I was through the vegetation, over the trails, and on my way to the river. Normally, we would be climbing up these steps; it felt very good today to go down them!
By the time Huan came home I had scrubbed my boots and myself and almost had her lunch ready. “Noddy” called me after lunch and I had a solo OAP snooze, much needed for some reason. After dinner Huan was off dancing and playing the hulusi again while I stayed in, brought the Blog up to date and had a little guitar practice.
March 18th No school for the music student today so I planned to take her on a new walk, somewhere we had been before but by car with someone else leading the way. Before we left town we passed one of the numerous express delivery places, this one was receiving a shipment. The map on the side of the truck intrigued me so I had to take a photo and I had to share it with you. It appears as though it’s supposed to be an opened out version of Silverstone, perhaps you car fans can enlighten me. Check out also the spelling of the FIA World Rally Championship.
Our route took us over the
other ‘bridge to nowhere’, maybe the Eastern bypass, and the road has now been
substantially extended and is going somewhere. We of course, weren’t following
the road but going up into the hills a little where Huan thought we were doing
one of our regular walks. Only at the top when we turned left instead of right
did she twig, although she never grasped where I was aiming for. Geese, yet
again, stepped into the limelight, this group didn’t just have very noisy honks
and cackles but also a couple of really loud hissers. I noticed how their
tongues popped out when they hissed and managed to capture this one.
Continuing on our way, up more hills than I remembered, we passed through the village of Zabie Cun until I called a halt at this spot. Explaining to Huan where were headed for and that I really had no idea how much further it could be and how many more hills we would have to climb we decided to turn back for home.
Back in Zabie Cun we decided to take a different road that would possible lead us home again. As luck would have it, just as we entered the village we met one of Huan’s singing classmates coming the other way. After a little gossip they confirmed that this was another way home so onwards, and thankfully not upwards, we went!
The route we took led us out through the village of 报巴村, Bào bā cūn, so we knew exactly where we were and roughly how long it would take us to walk home.
That’s all the scenery for today but I do have yet another electric car for you, quite an attractive beast, but a little expensive, for China, at ¥300,000.00, (a little less than £35,000.00). The driver was working for the company 小鹏, (translates as little roc, roc being the fabled bird). The cars are just called XPENG, P7 in this case, there’s also a G3 SUV. I could almost be tempted apart from the fact that home charging is not much good when you live in an apartment! If you want to know more you can find them on Facebook and they have an English language website, just Google Xpeng cars.
Another birthday card was collected on the way home, this one posted on the 21st January, it seems it went to
March 19th No long walks in the countryside today, by order of the management. She has a drum class in the afternoon and she has to cook this evening’s dinner so we were restricted to a short town walk. She did allow us to go past the dentist’s surgery to see if he was back yet. He isn’t, and may not be before Qing Ming, or ‘Tomb Sweeping Festival’ on April 4th. From that we assume that his father must have unfortunately passed on.
Somewhere on our short walk around we tried another selfie. First I explained to Huan that she shouldn’t try and stand slightly behind me, something that she instinctively does when I attempt to take one of us. I also said that we should both try and look at the camera on the phone because for some reason we always seem to be looking somewhere else. This was the result!
I walked the student to school
after lunch and then went on a solo walk of around seven kilometres. That seems
a long way just to buy some baps doesn’t it? Still, it gave me a daily total of
just over ten kilometres today so I’m not complaining. Restraining myself, I
only took a handful of photos, none of them deserving of you attention.
Both of us were at home after dinner, unusually, as Huan had no evening activities on the square. If we had neighbours they may not have been too happy, two guitars playing different things, or one guitar and a keyboard, or one guitar and a hulusi. My fingers are starting to feel the effects again and I’m not sure about my wrist so my practice times are still minimal. With Huan learning so many different things she never gives herself any rest!
March 20th Huan fancied the countryside today so I decided to show her the way I went on 17th, without her shoes sinking into the cow fields if possible. I tried again to capture some small birds, very difficult as when we got nearer they kept moving away.
We also tried a selfie with the camera which it turns out is much easier, both fitting us in and for making sure we are actually looking at the ‘camera’. The background is a bit washed out but then again, you can see where we are and more importantly, you can see us. That’s the whole point of selfies I presume.
To avoid Huan falling into the wet cow field we took a detour behind the corral. All we had to do then was make sure we stayed on the narrow bit of concrete, the bamboo helped.
Huan then spotted something called lantern grass, ‘灯笼草-Dēnglóng cǎo’, (translates with Google as Peruviana) As that is strictly a western Mediterranean species, then a little further Googling showed that this is more than likely Physalis Alkekengi. It seems that this is known as a medicinal plant and is a member of the nightshade family. Cue Bob going to the ‘deadly nightshade’ page to remind Huan why you shouldn’t just eat any berries you fancy! I did find this snippet on a Chinese website and thought you may find it ‘interesting’. “This kind of folk medicine is used as a whole herb to treat functional uterine bleeding, cholecystitis, jaundice hepatitis, colds, headaches, abdominal pain, malnutrition in children, fire eyes, bruises, sores, skin sores, snake and rabies bites, Treatment of rotten feet, rotten head and hemorrhoids.
Moving on, from flora to fauna, we have a little crab that kept trying to hide under the leaves while Huan was trying to put it in a place where I could get a quick click, and a little butterfly which managed to stay still long enough for a quick snap.
Before long we were in the dell where I had stopped to chat with the farmers last time, Huan agreed with me about the beauty of the place and the sound. It’s definitely the kind of place that you’d be more than happy to wake up in every morning, unless of course it was bucketing down with rain. There was no rain today of course, so we were two happy souls, here’s one of them.
Soon we were at the river where spotted some young girls trying to cross, with difficulty, they were having a harder time than we usually do. This effort ended in failure but we did spot them later on after a successful crossing.
We chose another spot, the same place I had crossed last time. It wasn’t quite so easy today, the water was marginally higher. I managed it, my boots got wet but my feet didn’t. Huan got part of the way, past the curve of small stones, and then had to take her shoes and socks off. While she was putting them back on a local came and was across the river in no time! The difference is confidence, we wouldn’t have worried so much when we were younger.
Apart from ducks and goats that’s it for this morning’s walk and very enjoyable it was too. I certainly got my daily dose of vitamin D, my face is glowing quite well now! After lunch Huan invited me for a snooze so I dutifully obeyed, not really needing one at all of course. I was out in seconds flat! Being the weekend, it was stew time again, my turn to put all kinds in a pot and make sure it lasts at least two days. Here’s what I put in, this time all the ingredients are there bar the sauces, a little Soya sauce, oyster sauce and tomato sauce. We were too quick to get dug in so there are no photos of the resulting dish today.
March 21st Rain stopped play but it didn’t stop the visitors. Huan woke me up with a picture of one taken with her phone. Once I was up I tried with the camera but between us we frightened the little beastie off. What is it? It took me some Google searching and narrowing down using Wikipedia but I think it is this one here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrops_candelaria
The other guest was a lot more difficult to identify and I’m probably not correct but this is as far as I got. It comes from the order ‘Coleoptera’, the family ‘Scarabaeidae’ and possibly the sub tribe ‘Cetoniina’, genus ‘Cetonia’ possibly a ‘flower chafer’. If this information is not enough and you want a more accurate identification, then go ahead and do some research, just be sure to let me know the results!
So what was Huan doing while I was busy being an amateur zoologist? She was trying to get us booked on an OAP tourist trip with the usual questions about ‘foreigners’. Initially she was told that I would be able to go but that I would have to be present for the two hour talk at the ‘shop’ included in the itinerary. The length of the talk then became one hour and when Huan pointed out that most of it would go over my head, they said “maybe he can sneak out for a smoke after half an hour”. Why do they do this? On one of our previous trips, when we visited the mattress factory, everybody did sit there for a couple of hours, and I sneaked off. The mattress factory did succeed in selling to one of our group though, mattresses and pillows to the value of ¥20,000.00 or more. That kept them happy and of course the tourist company got a kickback keeping them happy. Since then I’ve always tried to stay outside while the high pressure sales stuff is going o inside. This time the answer came back that the trip was off; whether it was off for everyone or just us for being difficult I can’t say.
The weather cleared up just before lunch but then the rain came back again after so there was no afternoon walk today. Huan carried on driving me crazy with the keyboard, the hulusi and the guitar. I guess I should be happy she’s not drumming today!
Dinner was the almost the same as yesterday but we decided to stretch it out to three days by adding noodles to it today. I think it would be even better with some sea shells and shrimps but the chief taster was happy enough.
Would you believe that the weather repeated its lunchtime antics and cleared up just before dinner before deteriorating again after? Still, it gave me a chance to do some guitar practice and editing of song sheets. I also made the mistake of giving Huan one of the two mouth organs that sat on my bookcase, more noise ensued!
March 22nd Miserable weather again today but it didn’t worry us in the morning, it was time to go shopping again. Very rarely do we share photographs from our local shopping trip but this one I thought was worthwhile. It reminded me of how people in the ‘developed’ world all need to have perfectly shaped fruits and vegetables.
The weather stayed miserable after lunch but at least the rain held off. Unusually, we had wind, not storm force or anything like that, just strong enough to make it appear as though the river was flowing upstream. Huan had a hulusi class so I walked her there and then went off critter hunting. I didn’t find any, except for this poor fellow who was obviously going to be someone’s dinner tonight.
Further along I spotted a man on a bamboo raft, he was obviously fishing for more than just his dinner, probably looking to make some money too.
Crossing the bridge back into town I took two panoramas with Freddy and then stitched when I got home to make a very long one. Freddy did well on the first one, not so well on the second one. Can you spot the one wheeled motorbike with no driver?
You may have read me explaining why electric cars are not viable yet, at least for those who live in apartments, but I’ve never written about electric scooters, bikes and mopeds. More and more charging places are popping up all over the town, all different. How the local government look after them I have no idea, but for electric two wheeler, (or three wheeler) owners, they’re an absolute boon. Check out the prices for charging, based on wattage, they range from ¥1.00 for three hours up to ¥1.00 for twenty minutes. Like most things in
After seven kilometres my
batteries needed charging to so after stopping off to buy a baguette, I returned
home. It’s a pale imitation of a real baguette of course but we needed
something to go with our third day of seafood stew!
And that brings us to the end of another week; they come around far too fast, as Huan keeps reminding me. Don’t you sometimes wish you were a child again and time seemed endless? There is a scientific reason for the way we see time, but that’s for you and Google. For us, we’ll say 再见 Zàijiàn, and 下次见 xià cì jiàn!
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