August 3rd Inclement weather inhibited our inclination to follow our planned itinerary. In other words, rain stopped play. Nothing to report for today except that Huan has improved a little so my reverie was disturbed by flute, hulusi and guitar although not too much. I binge watched some more movies. Our only good news was that Parmesan arrived from Taobao, at least that doesn’t melt in transit! Oh, and I cooked our dinner, belly pork noodle soup. I only used one red chilli but it turned out a little fierce so I cheated and added yoghurt to mine!
August 4th Huan still improving but not 100% yet, I decided that in my acting position as Chief Medical Officer. That is a position I will lose again as soon as she is better of course, I will then be relegated to medical orderly! Anyway, the weather forecast looked good for walking today, no rain, overcast but not too hot. Huan suggested the landfill walk but thought that would be too much for her after the last few days, instead we kept to the town and the river.
First we popped into a new café and asked if we could take some photos, I wanted to take some of the walls and there were no customers in the way today. They agreed so here you are, the first one means “live better”, the second one, despite me thinking it could be a bad translation does mean “meet slowly”. What are they really trying to say? Your guess is as good as mine.
And here is the outpatient, meeting slowly with the sad rabbit at
the door. It’s a very nice looking café but it does suffer like most cafés in
You’ll notice that Huan is wearing her mask, in fact I was too, whereas the man behind her isn’t and neither is the café owner. More people were wearing masks today and I think we will see even more over the next few days. Instructions from on high have now been issued and slowly what has been advised will be implemented. There are no such things as “exemptions” here!
Not far up the road we met one of my friends, she always comes running when she sees me. Her owner was telling Huan that she won’t go to Huan because she doesn’t know her. Huan took so many photos I made them into gifs, here’s one of them.
You could tell Huan was getting better, the “director” was back
again pointing out things I should be taking photos of. My protestations about
only having my phone with me fell on deaf ears. We are still waiting for
further news about the
On our way home we had to go via the market, I needed to buy something. “Why?” asked the Minister of Finance. Those of you who know her can probably hear the phrase as you read it, I know I can. Although we had been shopping on Monday we hadn’t bought any noodles, thinking we had enough in the house. We had enough for yesterday, but not for today and tomorrow. This was the stall we stopped at, as you can see they are all fresh noodles, and dumplings. The second photo shows the ones we bought.
After lunch my teeth fell out! Now there’s a nice picture in your mind, Bob’s gnashers on the table in all their glory! I should clarify that I do still have a lot of my own teeth but I also have a few capped ones. What fell out was what I think you would call a bridge cap, three joined together. Huan suggested a visit to the dentist; I just pushed them back into place. I suppose I may have to go and get them ‘glued’ back in again!
August 5th Sat on the computer after breakfast and Huan came in with her phone. She’d only managed to take a photo of a bird outside the bedroom balcony. It’s not the clearest of photos but even highly cropped it’s not too bad.
That’s our sum total of photos for today, other things took priority. Huan was out this morning, she was playing at rent collector making sure we got paid for the next six months for our business premises. While she was out I was on Taobao standby. As it turned out, that was a futile exercise, the package came after Huan returned home.
After lunch Huan was on Taobao duty while I cooked dinner. She successfully collected that one. After dinner, I was back on Taobao standby, that package arrived just after six. Consequently there were no walks, strolls, rambles or any kinds of perambulation today, ergo no photos.
August 6th Yesterday I had a text message from the police; that always makes me worry. I learnt though that by copying the message then sending it to Huan on WeChat I am able to translate it. This message wasn’t about traffic fines but reminding me that our car was due for testing, and it had to be done before the end of this month. That meant our first stop this morning was the car wash, I wanted ‘Donald’ to look his best, he’s six years old now and this is his first test. We used a car wash we haven’t used for a long time and won’t be using again if we can avoid it, they did a terrible job. While we were waiting I prowled around, we know that this place used to be a small hotel at one time, was possibly also a KTV, and used to have a nice coffee shop attached. All of that has gone but there are oddities left behind such as this shelf of alcohol, not the type of stuff that Chinese people normally drink. All of the bottles appear to be untouched.
There were also items of miniature luggage, this is one such shelf. You don’t need to look that closely to see that it hasn’t been dusted for years. In the corner you can see where some insects have been eating the wood, what you can’t see is the enormous spider’s web.
From there we headed off to the traffic police, first off to give them my licence and my recent health check, basically an eye test. They then sent us to another small office to collect a business card for where we had to go for the car test. That was sixteen kilometres away, why so far from town I don’t know. It certainly wasn’t very busy.
There was a waiting room with a smoked glass window which I could see Donald through if I cupped my eyes and craned my head. Luckily, there was also a CCTV monitor so we could check the progress there. In this photo you can see Donald, second row up, second from the left. That is some kind of rolling road and he seemed to spend a long time there, much longer than the car before us.
Did Donald pass his test? We don’t know. The emissions test was fine and we now have a new sticker valid until August 2023. Before we left there the staff told us that if any problems showed up on the testing the police will contact us. If we hear nothing after three days then Donald has passed his test. This is when paranoia sets in for me. Why was he so long on that rolling road? Way back in time front wheel drive cars often had problems with constant velocity joints, is that the problem here? Were the brakes OK or were they too slow, or pulling to one side? We just have to wait and see now and keep our fingers crossed.
After lunch I struggled not to fall asleep and eventually decided that I was feeling this way because Huan had generously given me her bug! After dinner I dived into the medicine cabinet and found some Chinese cold medicine, hopefully that will fix me up quicker than the one that Huan used, she is still not 100% yet.
August 7th Doesn’t time fly
when you’re having fun? It’s Saturday again so we went to have a look at the
riverside market. It turns out that it has been stopped until further notice as
a precaution against the possible impact of Covid. So far there have been no
cases in Wuzhishan but the authorities are playing it safe. Strangely, unlike
the
My teeth fell out again last night, while I was asleep, luckily I didn’t swallow them! That meant that our return home from the market took us via the dentist’s where we asked him if he could glue them in again. No problem, here he is preparing the glue and then sticking them back in.
Also last night we had a message that we were invited out for lunch today, just as well I had my teeth fixed I suppose. The invite came from the leader of the resident’s committee, Zōushūxián, the reason for the lunch was that it was立秋, Lìqiū, the beginning of autumn. Here’s a terrible selfie showing Zōushūxián right behind me, Yuèqiūhuá behind her, Zhào dé at the back and Huan hiding behind some strange hanging medical contraption.
And here they all are having a quick toast. Huan may have a can of beer in her hand but that is purely for show, today she succeeded in ‘saying no’.
As usual we ate too much and, in my case, drank too much, and an afternoon’s sleep was required once we got home! Refreshed, and not needing any more food, we took another walk giving us a daily total of 12.3 kms, our first walk over ten this month.
Later in the evening we received a message along with some photos
and a video from the Taobao repair shop, our
August 8th Sunday, the Sabbath, a day of rest. I told Huan we would stick to the riverside, give her body time to regain its strength. As usual I stopped for a chat with one of my four legged friends, the one from last Wednesday. Today we also came across a little kitten, two in fact, but we could only get a snap of one of them.
Down the main road we went, stopping to chat with my three and a half legged friend on the way. He’s always so pleased to see me, quite brightens up my day. Around the corner and along the riverside walk, looking for lizards, we found cows instead.
Much to Huan’s delight we did actually find two lizards today. Taking decent photographs with our phones is not so easy as you’ll know by now, but we did get one nice one.
Our last photo for today shows the temporary table set up at our apartment gate. There’s a thermometer and some disinfectant spray and also a form for checking people in and out. That is more for visitors & tradesmen, they know who the occupants are. What does it say? 记得戴口罩Jìdé dài kǒuzhào (Remember to wear a mask) and 防护很重要fánghù hěn zhòngyào (Protection is important). We can’t argue with that!
We didn’t get ten kilometres in today but I decided 8.7 was more than enough. Besides, I had to cook today’s dinner and prepare tomorrow’s.
August 9th Another unhurried amble around the town today, keeping Huan away from the hills for a little bit longer. I thought we’d start with a historical type of photo, lots of ladies doing the landscaping along the river bank.
We didn’t stray too far from the main roads although we took a brief walk up the mountain park route, only part of the way and then back down again. One must look after one’s good lady! Our scenic walk actually has a name, it could do with a bit of a clean though.
Here we are at the spot where we turned round to go down again.
Next up, someone who would happily follow us home, he tried yesterday and again today. Huan made sure he didn’t succeed!
Next we found another four legged friend, not a dog this time, not a cow or a cat either, but a little goat. This one has obviously been separated from its tribe and has no fear of humans at all.
On our way home we noticed that the Fodelai hotel was cordoned off with police tape. We had seen this yesterday but had not investigated why. It has become a temporary quarantine hotel, no guest are allowed, only those who have come from other places and that have to quarantine for fourteen days. So far Wuzhishan itself remains free of the dreaded lurgy.
Both of us needed an afternoon nap again today, must be an age thing! We were woken with good news, Freddy was home! Yep, repairs had been completed and he was safely packed and returned to us, along with his broken bits. Here are those bits and the bill.
All we had to do was test it and send the money. This is what happened when I put the SD card in. It had worked before we went the camera away. It is possible that I tried inserting it without switching the camera off I suppose.
Following the advice from the other end I tried formatting the card in the PC, a quick format and, as that didn’t work, a full format. Needless to say that didn’t work either so off I went shopping again. Finding large SD cards is not always easy here, the last time we bought one it had to come from Taobao. My luck was in today so I went wild and bought two! I tried a few test shots and videos with both new cards, and also updated the firmware again. Somehow, while it was away, the firmware went back to an old version. Anyway, here’s Huan, not smiling, probably because she is agreeing to release the money, and here’s one of my frogs too.
My busy afternoon was followed by a busy evening, getting this
posted of course but also preparing for tomorrow’s trip. That means testing the
laptop, checking the external HDD, making sure I copy all the updated files I
need from the PC and such like. Yes, we’re off to
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