Court Date, Dentist (Again), Wall Tigers, Rigsby’s Back!

April 13th As often happens; today’s plans were torn up and thrown in the bin. When I got up Huan told me that we were going to court this afternoon which meant I had to do my cooking in the morning! Today’s cooking required some time, all because we have no gas and I have to use only one electric induction hob.

Why were we going to court? Don’t you remember anything that you read? We were going because of the gas saga of course. Being one of the ‘designated drivers’ I had to go twice, taking three people and Huan each time. On this occasion, I was also going to be in the court so I took a few surreptitious photos before proceedings began and stitched three of them to give you the view from my seat at the back.

Here’s the lovely Huan sat next to me, and Yu next to her, resting her eyes, although Huan thought she may actually been having a quick forty winks.

I stuck it out for an hour or so before I decided I had had enough. My Chinese listening skills are nowhere near good enough for a courtroom! As it happens, they all followed me out only about ten minutes later. Was there any progress this time? My opinion is that we are almost back at square one. The judge ruled that we have to find out who constructed the gas pipe way back when, and who was responsible for its maintenance thereafter. Every year China improves things but when our building was built I very much doubt if there were any contracts at all, and I’m 100% sure there were no such things as “as built drawings”. Yet again we have to wait and see. Anyway, here we are just after arriving home; note I’m wearing a tie!

So why did I have to slave in the kitchen this morning? I was making a sort of ‘fake’ Lancashire hot pot. Lamb is not so easy to find here, unless you want a leg, and I didn’t fancy chopping chunks off a leg. Instead I bought the ‘mutton slices’ that the Chinese use in their hot pot style of food. To this I added the usual whole chopped garlic, whole diced onion, whole diced carrot, two small diced tomatoes and a handful of sliced mushrooms. Once that was cooked, I boiled two large potatoes for the topping, sliced them when done and assembled the dish. Green beans were my vegetables of choice, but I managed to burn them while I was engrossed in a movie! Once we arrived home the hot pot was put in the oven, the extra sauce in the microwave and after the oven was turned off Huan cooked some cabbage as our veg. I did take photos of all the parts of the meal individually but they weren’t much cop, instead, here’s my plate.

One of the disadvantages of using hot pot slices in the amount of fat. Now when Chinese people eat hot pot, it is all cooked at the table by you, the customer, and then you remove whatever you want to eat from the broth. That means a little less fat than we had today. Mind you, we both thought it was really tasty and no doubt I will be cooking it again in the future!

April 14^th Gentleman Bob was on duty again this morning walking the ladies to their hulusi class before continuing on his walk. Hills and countryside are out until further notice, that is until I replace my boots. Instead I walked down the main street heading for the three legged dog point to come back by the river. Huan wasn’t so happy with the pictures today, I managed to capture some more lizards! The first one was in front of the army base, I guess that’s why he was wearing brown camouflage.

Today I thought I would treat you to some views of the river, panoramic of course and as usual created with Microsoft’s ICE software.

Next up is a watercolour courtesy of the magic of Picasa.

Now, remember ‘Pointy Mountain’? Not only does it follow us around the countryside, but we can also see it from our riverside walk in Wuzhishan.

Walking back towards town I was alone nearly all the way, the snowbirds that haven’t left were still within the confines of the last bridge. That meant I spotted more lizards. The prettiest one of all was peeping from behind a tree but by the time I got my camera up and my body in the right position he had scarpered down into the hedges. It’s a shame because his colours were amazing. Not to worry, in short order I spotted another three and before you accuse me of using the same one in three different photos, look closely!

Insects were also on the radar today, we’ve seen the empty shells of this one before but we’ve never seen it in this stage of its evolution. Just look at those long arms and the wispy grey hair, who does it remind you of?

For today’s final photo, another panorama of the river, this time looking towards the town centre. What a beautiful day it was for walking.

I forgot to tell you yesterday that due to our court appearance I had a respite from the dentist. We don’t have the usual worries about keeping appointments here in Wuzhishan, we’re not exactly a big bustling city. Anyway, we went this afternoon only to find the dentist wasn’t there, he’d gone to Sanya, the clinic staff said he should be back tomorrow. Another respite for me!

April 15^th Today was ‘The Great 壁虎 (Bìhǔ) hunt. Actually we followed the same route as yesterday because Huan wanted to see some lizards. Later on I heard her talking to a neighbour and it seems lizards, or geckos, are known as ‘wall tigers’ hence the Chinese above. So, did we find any? Well first we found our three legged dog, in residence today, enjoying some fresh oranges for breakfast.

On we went, around the river to continue the hunt. Were we successful? Initially I was getting a little worried that Huan would be disappointed but before long her eagle eyes went into hunting mode and she spotted more than I could catch with the camera. I did manage to catch nine, many of which zipped away quickly, one or two that stayed still long enough for a couple of shots and the last one that posed for ages.

I think we can safely say that Huan was happy with results today and I have to say that she spotted most of them before I did. Apart from the same bug as yesterday there wasn’t much else to see. We did try and take some bird photos nearer the house but they were so well camouflaged against their stony background and so far away, we failed.

Those OAP naps keep sneaking up on us, Huan fell asleep on the sofa and my nodding head took me to the bedroom. Luckily, or now, as the case may be, we both woke up to take me to the dentist! “Is there any pain?” he asked, to which I replied “Just a little, inside the hollow tooth.” Within a minute or two I was desperately trying to shrink through the chair and into the floor as he poked into the hole to see how bad the pain was! I could never have been a spy! Anyway, more poison was put in to kill any remaining nerves and I was sent away for yet another five days. Usually, this procedure takes two or three visits, my next visit will be my fifth, I think.

Back home it was my turn to cook, and today it was simple German food. The bratwurst does not meet the standards I am used to, both from Germany and shopping in other countries, but it’s all we can get here. You can see from the photos that they are shorter and thinner than the ones we are used to. The chips were not cooked as well as they could have been, we don’t have a deep fat fryer so I was using the wok. The currywurst sauce is fake; it is tomato sauce with quite a strong paprika sprinkled over it. Still, they tasted fine.

And that was my day done with. Huan was out again for hulusi practice. She is worrying that she won’t be able to remember the four tunes they have to play in their forthcoming show. What makes it worse is that she doesn’t know when the show is! I think I may have to stick to solo walks until she is happy to relax again.

April 16^th Huan was still worrying about learning her performance pieces so I had a short solo walk this morning. I went down river to fist check on the ‘dam’ progress. One of our committee members told us we would be able to go boating and swimming when all the work was complete. I have my doubts about that.

Past the sewage works, the “end of the road” (a.k.a. the slaughterhouse) and the gas works I came upon a family enjoying their morning bath.

They were not in the river but in a small feeder stream alongside of which is a path. We’ve never explored that way before so I thought I would give it a go today, especially as I saw the car pointing my way.

As you can see, it soon became obvious that the car had reversed there from the path I was walking on. At then end I came to a small farm, very pretty, with the usual farm birds and a very friendly puppy. After a minute or two the farm lady came back and I asked her if there was a way through. There wasn’t where I pointed, across the fish pond, there may well have been through the forest and over the hills. Given that I was wearing my sandals, I made a U-turn!

Back on the path by the river it wasn’t long before I had to make a U-turn there too. This is definitely not a route for sandals.

As I passed the sewage works I took another small detour, thinking it was the old cement works for the highway and that I would be able to come out back on the main road.

Needless to say, I was wrong and had to make my third U-turn of the day. Mind you, at least back at the entrance there was someone to see me on my way.

I was home in time for coffee break, making sure our lunch was made and preparing the meat for tomorrow’s stew. This time I am not pre-cooking the meat to remove skin and fat, just to remove the bones from the chicken legs. It smelled so good it was all I could do to avoid starting it today! This morning’s walk was planned such that I would need another one this afternoon when Huan was off to class again. As usual I walked the ladies there and then just went through town and back, nothing of interest popped into the camera frame.

Huan was cooking dinner tonight and while she always makes sure you see my creations, she is not keen at all on me photographing hers. I felt I had to today, especially as it was fish and chips but not English style. I can assure you that it is in fact, delicious!

I dragged Huan out after dinner, before her hulusi practice, to see the “Sphere of Death”. I have no idea if that’s the correct name or not, but I don’t think it’s classed as the wall of death. Here it is empty, before the start of proceedings.

It was an electric moped supplier's (XiaoDao) way of advertising. The bike was standard, apart from the LED strip lights, and the driver was a young lady, not a 'macho man' as I had expected. Perhaps they wanted to show that the mopeds are easy to control.

It was quite an impressive show considering she was driving a bog standard electric moped. Huan even gave me permission to buy one, but I said no, for now anyway! We took two videos, one with the Fuji which I missed the beginning and the end and the fireworks with, and one with the Nikon Keymission which we haven’t used for a year. We decided it was time to take it out of mothballs. You can see that video here - https://youtu.be/fw_cF-0Al94

April 17^th Saturday again, so a trip to the market again, but this time with the little Nikon camera too, the action cam Keymission 170 again. After yesterday I decided we really needed to make videos more regularly, especially as one of my many brothers and his lovely wife paid me the compliment of saying they liked seeing and hearing me! Consequently, we have no photographs of today’s walk but you can see most of it here - https://youtu.be/w06JWJl9s0A

After lunch, and our now what seems to be almost customary nap, it was my turn to cook again. The meat was prepared yesterday; here are all the ingredients. As you can see there are a lot of vegetables, more than I had planned for. Whether it would all fit in the biggest pan we had was a bit worrying but once the vegetables had cooked down a bit I was able to fit the chicken in too. Needless to say, this will be a three day one!

Having only had a short walk today we had planned an after dinner one to at least make up my daily ten kilometres but unfortunately, the heavens opened up so we were stuck indoors. Still, it gave me time to sort through the music I bought from the market and to sort out Huan’s problems with the second bedroom USB player. All’s well that ends well, I am now typing this in the office with the door closed to try and deaden the dulcet tones coming from the living room, not very successfully I hasten to add.

April 18^th Today I dcided to leave the C-in-C at home so that she could practice her hulusi songs in peace. Not having any boots, only my casual shoes, I decided that the landfill walk would be fine, after all, it’s road all the way. As I approached the highway which I would have to go under, I spotted the only wildlife of the day.

Going under the highway I found that yesterday’s rain had caused some problems. Initially I was doing fine, picking my way along a fairly ‘clean’ tyre track but then a car came towards me and I had to quickly step out of the way. So much for using my casual shoes!

Now and then I took some photos, most of which you can see above. I certainly had to stop the video to take this next one. I got three shots of this little family, however, the ones where the chickens were all upright and looking towards me were not so clear. My intention was not to get too close or they would have flown off their perch in all directions.

My aim was to do ten kilometres this morning and I succeeded, exactly! I did make a video on the way round but I made it with the Fuji camera. Unfortunately, stabilisation, especially when walking, is not so good at all so that video will not be uploaded to Youtube, it will be kept on my PC. It will also go on my FB feed for a few days so if you are on FB you may see it there.

After lunch I had the job of knitting together all the clips, as well as trying to work out why some were missing. For some reason I had battery problems today, even with a new one! Being a Sunday, and a rainy one at that, no further walks were planned, just a long soak in the bath.

April 19^th Monday, a beautiful morning, a beautiful day for a drive, so that’s what we did, from Wuzhishan to Ledong. The internet payment was due today and despite the ISP being a national company, you can’t actually renew from an office in another city. Our tenants have also decided they want to stay another year so although the contract isn’t up yet we had the new one prepared for early signature. We also had to pay them for the repair of the living room floor, the tiles that had to be replaced. We now have two different colours of tiles but at least it doesn’t look like a draughts board.

They still have problems with water coming through a couple of the outside walls, unfortunately there’s nothing we can do about that. Like many buildings, ours in Wuzhishan included, the outsides are never treated to stop water ingress. Just when I thought we were ready to go the lady of the house. (tenant, not Huan), asked us if we could do anything about the toilet seat. The short answer was not a lot, except to go out and buy another one. Here’s what the old one looked like,

How it got to this state in just over three years I guess we’ll never know. Ledong is not in the mountains and is more humid, perhaps that’s the reason.

Off we went, shopping for a new one, we didn’t want to resort to Taobao for this one. We were getting worried after a few shops came up negative but eventually one came up trumps. Here I am with the tenant, desperately struggling to get the second mounting out, (eventually I had to use a claw hammer), and posing on the finished job. Please note, I said ‘job’ and not ‘jobby’!

All I had to do then was clean the filter on the bathroom tap which our tenant had asked the maintenance company to do, but they couldn’t. Job sorted, off for lunch in Ledong and then home we headed. I’ll bet you can’t guess what we did when we arrived home. Yep, you’re right, it was another one of those afternoon naps, both of us were exhausted.

No peace for the wicked though, when we woke up Huan had a message from Sanya, the tenant there says that the washing machine hose is leaking; we assume she means the drainage hose. Rather than have to go there we asked her to see if the ‘man across the road’ who did many odd jobs for us in October could sort it out for her. We should find out later this evening if he was able to and how much it will cost us. If you ever want to be a landlord I suggest very strongly that you make sure your properties are in the same town as you are, much less hassle that way.

Once we were both alive and kicking again, Huan to go to her OAP hulusi class and I had to sort out photos, scan paperwork, get Huan’s dinner ready for her return and finish this post. Oh, life is so hard sometimes! Of course I don’t mean that, life, especially when you don’t have to go to work anymore, is just great! On that note, I will sign off with love from Hainan, hoping you will join us again next week. Bieeeee!