Rain & OAPs With Not A Lot To Do!

October 5th Another idle day was had by the O.C. and the troops, not by choice but because of the weather. Yes, it started raining last night and then persisted all day. I even missed the worldwide Facebook outage, it must have happened when we were all asleep in China.

October 6^th Two people left the house this morning, both nervously keeping a wary eye on the sky. The computer promised rain this afternoon but we’ve learnt not to believe everything it says. While Huan was having a good old gossip at the gate I took a photo of the dam and still can’t make out exactly what they are going to do and when it will be finished.

Because of our worries we kept to the riverside, first going over our little island. When we crossed the irrigation canal to the road we had another game of Poohsticks, I won this time!

Coincidentally the original Poohsticks bridge was up for auction today, offers were to be between forty and sixty thousand pounds. Our house doesn’t have a garden so no good for us and of course our wallets don’t have that much spare change in them either!

Some of you may know that I am an ‘old soldier’, some of you may think I am a ‘very old soldier’, some of you probably remember me as an often very pickled soldier. Whichever one I am, or was, this car was not mine.

Now this next picture is especially for my ex forces buddies and also my friends who worked in telecommunications in civilian life. This goes up on the mast and has changed considerably since I worked in that field. I wonder if these are being removed to be replaced with 5G. That is more than likely; we receive 5G adverts on our phones quite regularly now.

Passing by the outdoor gym I mentioned to Huan that I had seen an old gentleman using the walking machines, once without using his hands to hold on and another time using his hands as though he were marching. I told her that I had tried and failed miserably so, competitive as she can be sometimes, Huan decided to give it a go too. I think she was surprised to find that she failed, not as badly as I did, but failed nonetheless. Maybe we could both succeed with more practice; if we do we’ll let you know.

Making sure we got home before the rain started we popped through the bapman’s market, I’m not sure if we told you, but he and his wife will not be back, his Mum is still ill. The premises have been rented out and the ovens have gone. Fingers crossed we can find another one soon. Anyway, in the market we passed this little puppy and kitten, the pup looked healthy enough but the kitten not so. It even had #2 on its back but that had come from them play fighting. How did I know what it was? I made the mistake of picking the kitten up. Here I am admonishing the pup! PS The owner did try to sell us the puppy.

Down in the riverside market, we came across another little pooch and Huan got busy with her phone yet again, far too many pictures as usual. She suggested that I crop and keep these two, the little boy looking at me in both photos but check the puppy’s eyes in the second one.

Did we beat the rain? Yes, in fact we had finished lunch before it started. It then continued well into the evening. Looking at the weekly forecast we could be well be housebound for a few more days. Hopefully, the PC will be wrong and we will still be able to escape in the mornings.

October 7^th We were confined to barracks again today, rain stopped play. Huan practiced music while I surfed the internet and learnt some history that I wasn’t fully aware of. Somehow I ended up watching a couple of videos by James Bradley and one by Daniel Immerwahr. If you are interested in the China-USA relationship I recommend watching “The China Mirage”.

October 8^th Today was English weather but we thought we would go out anyway, brollies in hand so that we were prepared for the worst. Our first stop was the music lessons shop, not planned, we just happened to pass by their new place. They moved because the rent was too much where they were before, a perennial problem here in Wuzhishan. We did ask the costs, it’s ¥1,700.00 per year for children from the age of 1(?) to 12, unfortunately they have no teachers for adults. That’s probably just as well or Huan may have been signing up for drums!

Our route was planned to go via the bap market because we wanted to check out the new stall. It seems if we want to do that we will have to go before eight in the morning, by then they have sold out and don’t bake any more for the rest of the day. Perhaps we will stick to Taobao and our Russian bread for now. On our way out Huan pointed out an old friend who used to live in our building, poor soul only has three legs. (Can you name the singer(s) of the song 3 Legs?)

The rain was increasing in intensity all the way around our walk so we didn’t have a long one today. On our way back along the riverside I managed to get Huan into the driving seat of a car. Of course it wasn’t moving but at least she had her hands and feet in the right places!

We arrived home just before the rain really started, slightly damp but glad that we had at least got out of the house for a while today. Being a Friday we were due to make another “Eating Out” video, our plan had been a BBQ meal down by the river. Rain stopped that so we just went local again, you can find the video here - https://youtu.be/brpiQtqHK8Q Not only did it rain a lot we also had a power failure while we were in the restaurant.

We had to take the stairs when we got home, the power was still out. The rain was still falling too so once the power did come back I checked our weather sites and found that there is a typhoon in the area again, “Lionrock”. This one is skirting very closely around us, here’s a screen shot of its track with a red dot showing roughly where we are.

October 9^th No trip to the riverside market today, even though we had planned one. The weather was still not so good. If our dam wasn’t under construction we would have had a lot more water in front of our apartment.

We did go out though, in the car. Years ago in Abu Dhabi we used to love spit roasted chicken, so much so that I do believe I could have eaten it every day! Well here in Wuzhishan we found some spit roasted duck, after a fashion.

Of course it doesn’t come with all the extras of pita bread, hommus, mutabal etc. I had decided that our two day weekend meal would be one of those hanging ducks along with some salad. Here is a better view of the duck, out of the oven and ready to go home.

To go with the duck I made a potato salad, with bits of bacon, a little onion, some scallion leaves, some mayonnaise and a dash of mustard. The second dish was a normal salad, with Chinese cabbage, onion, scallions, carrot, cucumber, sweet corn, tomato and a little olive oil and vinegar. Can you guess which plate is Huan’s?

Both of us were quite pleasantly surprised. The duck was not a patch on Abu Dhabi chicken but it was tasty enough and not dry which we thought it might have been. The salads were extremely well received by the Chief Dietician; it was quite a job to make sure she didn’t scoff the lot leaving us none for tomorrow’s dinner!

October 10^th Bah! Another day indoors due to that horrible watery stuff that falls from the sky. I did learn something though. You may, or may not, know that Tik Tok, despite being Chinese is actually not available in China, you have to use the Chinese version ‘Douyin’ instead. I have it on my phone but have absolutely no idea how to use it, mostly because it’s all in Chinese. What I did find though was a ‘feed’ with users from Wuzhishan. From that I found out that we have a bowling alley!

October 11^th Sods law strikes again, the weather was fine this morning, but the fridge was empty. Yes, it was shopping day again. First of all we popped upstairs in Baijiahui, somewhere we haven’t visited before. There is a KTV which we knew about, but that is also where the bowling alley is. It is only six lanes and doesn’t open until six in the evening but now we know it’s there plans are afoot to visit and make a video. The video won’t be of my bowling, that was never very good even when I last bowled, more than forty years ago! Instead we will give you a guided tour of just what is in the Baijiahui building.

If you watched this week’s eating out video you may have heard my comment about Huan’s food, in particular her mushrooms which to me look, and taste, like seaweed. Here are those mushrooms in their natural state right next to some seaweed also in its natural state.

On the same stall I also spotted these mushrooms which I have never seen before. They look like they might taste just fine but as we’d already done this week’s shopping we didn’t buy any. I was busy working out how I could keep them in one piece and use them in dish presentation.

Normal life is resuming and Her Ladyship had to go out for deportment classes this afternoon. Being a practicing gentleman I decided to escort her but when we got to our gate she told me to go home before the rain started, but not before taking the ladies’ picture.

Having dutifully turned round and headed for home I looked up at the sky and decided that I knew better than the Queen of the Weather and turned right round again. Taking a different, and longer, route than they did I arrived at the OAP Uni before them, much to Yú’s surprise. Huan wasn’t surprised to see me at all!

Leaving them to it I headed via the riverside to the bap market to talk to the cat and the dog. Despite it being nearly half past three none of the stalls were open, even the dog and the cat were enjoying their siesta. I didn’t disturb them because I didn’t want to be the one to wake up their humans. Note how the cat has the comfort of a box while the dog has to make do with the cage with his legs hanging off the edge.

As you can probably tell I didn’t have the Fuji with me today, I was prohibited from taking it out just I case it rained! The next photo could possibly have been better with the Fuji but I’m not really sure. It is a photo of the post office window but those flowers and butterflies you see are not stuck on, they are part of a video display. You can see ‘through’ the video to the shop inside but I couldn’t go in to show you the other side, I didn’t have my mask with me.

I did take a video with my phone; you can see that here - https://youtu.be/w6QvEeYMR8I

My luck was in today and I was home before the rain started. Even Huan made it home although she just scraped in before the rain came back.

So we come to the end of a very uneventful week. Next week we do have a day and a half tourist trip planned, in Wuzhishan. If nothing goes wrong there should be some new photographs and two or three “Eating Out” videos. My fingers are crossed that the trip will still go ahead if the weather is bad, which, according to the computer, it will be! There is even another typhoon on the way, Kompasu, due to reach Hainan in three to four days with a predicted path between Sanya and Wuzhishan. Until next week then, au reservoir mes amis!