March 30th Are we back to normal? We think so, although as is usual with plumbing problems it may be a day or two or more before we know for sure! Routine was back anyway, with shopping this morning. After lunch we had a walk around the river en route to some more shopping. We have two large supermarkets here, both of the same chain, but the one we can park outside doesn’t always have the same stuff as the other one, in this case my 1% coconut milk for my cereal in the morning.
We went across the bridge to nowhere to check on its progress to somewhere. Not much has happened since last time, they may be rerouting the irrigation canal slightly, but there’s no sign of any joining of the roads yet.
Searching for anything to take photos of, we noticed these pretty flowers.
Our route, conveniently, took us past the Pearl hotel where Huan, on production of her phone and Wechat, could get a free silk scarf. It’s all a con really, they scanned her phone and then sent an invite to all her contacts, including me. That went straight in the bin. The clothes on offer were quite good, mostly women’s and nowhere near as cheap as advertised.
Onwards to Baijiahui, the supermarket we were ostensibly out for, where we found that, for the first time ever, they are closed for stocktaking! Never mind, I can have real milk in the morning! Back at home Huan showed me the notice on the board advising everyone to register with the security office and/or the area health clinic in order to have our Covid vaccinations before the 10th April. There’s no way of knowing from the notice which vaccine it is, China has two, maybe three, based on the inactivated virus. We’ll give it a day or two and then pop up to the clinic to get jabbed, oh how I hate needles!
Arriving home I decided to check out the building site(s). Slowly it would appear that the absentee tenants are returning, or visiting, and sorting out their apartments. The third floor, just over the balcony so you can’t see their windows, are doing the complete insides having never done them since construction of the building. The fourth and fifth floors are replacing their windows, and, as you can see, there are no rules about colours here! Huan is busy saving money so that in a few years we can do ours. I most definitely won’t argue, whether they are brown or black they are immeasurably better than the PVC windows which you can see on the sixth floor.
March 31st Today would have been my Mam’s birthday, how nice it would have been if she had been on social media in her day. I still miss her at times but she and Dad are always with me, the lock screen on my phone. What was today’s plan? I was going to head off down river and back through the countryside but as is often the case, my plan got changed. Huan was off to her hulusi lesson alone this morning so I said I would walk her there. Our walk started by going down the stairs, the lift was out of action, and I was silently praying it would be fine by the time we returned. With my single brain cell working overtime I decided to take some of the back roads off
Reaching the main road I turned right, in my mind heading for the top road through town and down towards the last bridge on the river. For some reason, I changed my mind and took a left up the mountain park way and headed around anticlockwise. There were a considerable number of people walking today but I did manage to find a couple of spots where I could take a photo of the scenery without them, sometimes missing them coming into shot by mere seconds.
Clapping my hands and whistling brought our four legged friend running, excited to see me and probably wondering why I had no snacks, again! I didn’t feel so guilty today because there was a woman sat on what we call the “dog’s bench” and she told me they come often, just to feed the pooch. You’ve read before that we prefer the clockwise route around the park, perhaps this next collage will show you the reason why. My knees are not young anymore!
Today was a lucky day, during one of the periods when I was alone I heard something scuttling on my left and turned to see a small lizard jump from the path onto a rock. He stayed there just long enough for me to capture one decent shot.
As I reached the bridge to cross the stream and start back down the other side I heard cowbells and found a couple almost hidden behind the reeds. I managed a shot of one of them, trying to get both looking at me was unnerving them so I left them to it.
Next I came upon an alien, a spacewoman from out there somewhere, trying to zap the local flora and fauna, luckily she didn’t spot me!
It was a good day for test cars too, you know the ones, camouflaged to stop you identifying the manufacturers and perhaps leaking your photos to the competition. I got a number of shots and only later did I realise I had left my camera in B&W mode after taking the photo above. Dummy! Huan was surprised to see me, I picked her up from her class after I had bought my breakfast milk and we strolled home. Thankfully the lift was working, but I’ll have to learn to behave myself in there now, we can be watched!
Another hulusi lesson for Huan this afternoon and another OAP nap for me. I blame it on the fact that I didn’t sleep well last night, nothing to do with age, honest! Today’s dinner was the one I didn’t cook last week; surprisingly it wasn’t spicy at all. You can find the recipe here, https://www.theworldofchinese.com/2016/06/the-rice-killer/ (PS If for some reason the link doesn’t work, tell me in the comments and let me know how I can send you a copy.) I used olive oil instead of vegetable oil, dry red wine instead of cooking wine and tomatoes as suggested instead of the Chinese pickled kohlrabi which is not available here. If you do try making it, I suggest increasing the ingredients; we could have done with more.
April 1st The Times newspaper printed the first daily weather chart (1875),
Launch of TIROS-1, the first US weather satellite from
As usual I forgot all about trying to catch Huan out for April Fool’s Day until it was too late. Ah well, there’s always next year. No jokes for me this morning, just a visit to the dentist, yes, he’s come back. We didn’t take any photos today, we didn’t think you needed to see me sitting in the dentist’s chair yet again. It won’t be my last visit anyway, he just cleaned out my hollow tooth, prodded me to elicit pain, successfully, and then put some more nerve killing poison in, sealed it up and told me to come back in three to five days.
We did have a little walk around town after, Huan needed the bank to pay bills and prepare for the floor repair in Ledong. Did we see anything? We did, but my phone macro setting is absolutely hopeless. It is some king of insect in a cocoon which we initially thought was just a leaf until we realised it was slowly moving to the left. I could see some little legs with my eyes but they are not so easy to see here.
Now I am fairly sure you have seen ‘geese in a bag’ before, but just in case you haven’t, Huan insisted on me taking a photo of this little gaggle.
And that was the end of my day apart from an afternoon nap, some guitar work later and more Chinese revision.
April 2nd A long walk was our plan today and we succeeded. We set off up the road to Haikou, and I do mean up, looking for the tourist sign for 阿陀岭 (Ā tuó lǐng) which means Atuo Ridge. We know from experience that the sign relates to an area and is not really a tourist spot at all. It would appear that the authorities have also decided this and have now covered up the sign.
Have you ever wondered where your poinsettia plants come from? Here they grow at the side of the road, however, I never realised until today that they have little duck bills.
On we continued up the reasonably quiet road, it’s been this way since the new highway was built, until we reached about 4.3 kilometres where we turned to take a photo of Wuzhishan from afar. We often wonder what these views would have been like ten or twenty years ago. They have certainly changed considerably since we moved here in 2015.
A little further on we turned off the main road and headed downhill towards a place we have been to before. Spot the dilapidated gates; we passed through three more of them on the way.
For something different we decided to show you a rockface, we wondered if like us, you could see faces in the rock. Huan saw two and I saw three, how many can you see?
Carrying on we found a path that we would normally take but it was completely overgrown. There was a newer path heading up beside it before it again started heading down, we followed it until we could go no further. Huan did consider that we should scramble over rocks and head on upwards but as she was wearing a skirt and we had no idea what lay ahead we didn’t do that. This was the terminus as far as we were concerned, for today anyway.
By now we had walked nearly five and a half kilometres so it was time to head for home. Here’s Huan happy walking through the woods and a little bit nervous standing on a wooden bridge over an empty fish pond.
Our distance today was just over
eleven kilometres, not bad for a pair of oldies, and we could have gone
further! According to my phone we burned 1400 calories, according to Mapmywalk,
when I entered the data it was only 864. I prefer to trust my phone, it must
have known we were going uphill! I do miss Endomondo though.
Surprisingly, after lunch, neither of us fell into the OAP nap trap. Huan had another hulusi lesson this afternoon so she was out. That left me at home watching movies and preparing dinner. Note that I didn’t say cooking. It seems some of our readers like to see our ‘food’ so despite no cooking being involved I’ll share it anyway. It was a salad, (lettuce, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, carrots, spring onions, quail eggs and Greek ‘Goat Salad Cheese’). Suffice to say that I also went overboard in making sure that everything was scrupulously clean! On this occasion, I don’t think you need a recipe!
April 3rd No long walks planned today, instead we thought we’d try again to see if the Saturday market was back by the river. Our ‘portfolio’ for today started with a camera selfie, we do those so much better than phone selfies. This is not far from home.
Just a few metres further on we came across a familiar sight, at least we thought so at first glance. It was a pile of empty beer bottles and sunflower seed shells. Getting closer though we realised that whoever did this bought twelve bottles of beer, drank two, (we found one empty and one missing), drank some of two more and left eight full bottles, with the caps still on. Not only that, they didn’t all the sunflower seeds either. Your guess is as good as ours as to the reason why.
Next up came Chinese medicine which, as I’m sure you know, mostly comes from plants. Here’s a selection of said plants drying in the sun.
Arriving at the market we found that, yet again, it wasn’t there. Maybe it will resume after Qing Ming (Tomb Sweeping Day) and Sanyuesan Festival (Local traditional holiday) are over. All we did see was that they are installing drains for the runoff from the roofs, and the occasional lonely market trader, they nearly all know us by now.
I found some lovely flowers to photograph, some that I didn’t remember taking pictures of before. My instant plan was to stick my head in amongst them and get Huan to take my piccie. I’m glad I didn’t, you can probably see why!
Finally, two sets of babies, one visible and one not. However, you can see three babies in the first picture and a parent in the second one at a different nest. At a glance I would say that the visible babies must be a lot older than the invisible ones.
And that was our day! We lazed around doing not a lot until dinner time which was my turn. That was easy, take a portion of last week’s pork stew out of the freezer and serve it up with the remaining French bread. Yummy! Huan had to rouse her weary bones and go out for her daily hulusi practice, I just stayed in, did a little guitar, a little Chinese, this post, and a lot of Youtube!
April 4th We did it, our plan was to be out early enough for a long walk and we were on the way by eight fifteen. If I told you that we walked along the main street towards Sanya you probably wouldn’t imagine that actually, it’s a nice place to walk.
Turning left where we almost bought our first apartment, but luckily didn’t, we then took this turn off on the right, hoping that eventually it would lead us left towards home again.
Other people obviously walk this way too, two of whom told us that if we turned right there was a park of sorts. Huan was seriously considering it until I pointed out that right led away from home and would add another four of five kilometres to our walk. We also heard the dulcet sounds of hulusis and turned a corner to find this couple who were happy enough for me to photograph them playing. Huan didn’t know them but she did know the tune they were learning and joined in with a bit of solmization. For those who don’t know what that means, it means singing the tune using the sol-fa scale, (do re mi).
We had driven up this road a long time ago and apart from being a terrible road it also didn’t go very far. Today the road had been resurfaced and it went further so we followed it, right to the end. Yes, it didn’t go where we wanted it to at all.
Back down we headed to where we had seen a turn off to the left which at least we knew was in the right direction. On the way Huan spotted this, she has eagle eyes at times.
After we had turned left the road disappeared, again, but we were able to continue first by walking through a farm where, to our surprise, they had pigs. I had to take photos of course, we haven’t seen any for so long. Don’t you think they look ‘wise’?
We then headed out on another country highway, which Huan was told tonight is a dangerous thing to do; there may be red ants that bite and paralyse you within seconds. Supposedly these ants have just ‘appeared’ in Hainan. I had to wait after taking Huan’s photo to allow the geese to cross the ‘highway’ on the way to the bathhouse.
This was the view after we passed though all the farm buildings and ended up in the fields again. We could see a road to the right hand side so we headed for that.
And here’s another panorama from where the road led us to, looking back at the view above, from a distance. We had come out on the road to home but not as close as we thought we would. Next time we try this route we will attempt it from the other side.
Our last photos of today are a mother and child out for a walk. I really thought for a moment that the calf was running up to me to say hello but at the last minute it realised what it was doing and changed its mind.
By the time we reached home, a little later than usual for our lunch, we had walked just over thirteen kilometres which I think is a record for the two of us, probably since before my operation. We have walked further but definitely not recently. As you can imagine, we both needed OAP naps today!
April 5th Today’s Monday, today’s Monday, Monday is shopping day (usually) but we had something else to do first and that was to visit the area health clinic for our first Covid shot. There were no crowds at all when we arrived which I thought was rather strange and then we were told that there wouldn’t be any vaccinations in the morning, we should go to the hospital. Off we went to the hospital and there we found out where all the people were. The first queue was to check our blood pressure, temperature and make sure we answered all the questions on the form correctly. The second queue was to enter our details into the ‘system’ and be issued with the relevant slip of paper to continue. As always, Huan’s progress was swift and sure, mine was slow and not so steady, but at least they did find a way to enter a foreigner into the computer this time. It can sometimes be difficult because Chinese IT systems are based on the use of their Hukou cards which have many more digits than my passport does!
Anyway, we were soon through and into the next office where I had planned to let Huan go first so that I could take a photo of her and then she would take one of me after. The nurses were very efficient though and before I had a chance to get my phone out I was sat at the next desk to Huan. Luckily she was finished quickly enough to get a snap of me, note the finger in the ear and how I am studiously looking the other way!
All that was left then was to sit for half an hour until we were allowed to leave, without any tea or biscuits. I wonder who I can complain to.
Once out we did the shopping as usual, and I never complained about my arm once! After lunch Huan was supposed to have a hulusi class, she was told it was cancelled due to the Qingming holiday so a short walk was on the agenda. We were already out when Huan got this information so I suggested that I carry her hulusi bag and we pop into the rehearsal space jut to make sure. That idea was not accepted by the management. As we were walking past Yefeng, the complex where Huan normally goes, we spotted a woman on a moped entering with a hulusi in her basket so we turned round and went inside to check. The class had not been cancelled, if I had carried the bag Huan would have been fine. Instead I sent her off downhill on the back of a motorbike taxi to fetch her bag from our security office while I waited for her. I had planned the return photo carefully, Huan had left side-saddle, fairly normal here, with her legs on the right so I was waiting to catch a snap from that side. She came back sat the other side!
I
was then free to carry on with my solo walk, nothing special, breakfast milk,
(because I happened to be passing the right supermarket), pre-cracked walnuts,
(because I like them, they’re easier), and a swimming cap, (because somehow
we’ve lost ours, you’re not allowed in the pool without one, and I may go
swimming when Huan is learning). My meanderings took me back to Yefeng to
collect Huan and walk her home and that was the end of my day. Huan of course,
was out with the ladies in our local square for more hulusi practice.
And with that we come to the end of what was definitely a better week than last week, more walks, more food, more relaxation and let’s not talk about dentists and needles! Now that I’ve showed you all how to do it, make sure you get your vaccinations too, see you next time!
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