December 14th There should be
a law against having two four fifteens in the day, waking up at the one in the
middle of the night is not so pleasant. Still, needs must, we had to go to
Unlike our last visit we managed to get into the hospital car park today, it was very busy but we found a space. We were early enough for breakfast and we didn’t have to worry about paying to see the doctor first. Huan had arranged, and paid, for the appointment via WeChat last week. I’m not sure if I will ever get used to the queuing system in Chinese hospitals but they do work. Dr. Zhang checked my previous records and decided I only needed to have my PSA checked this time. That was one less worry, no CT scan this time; of course I still worried about the needle!
By half past nine we were out of the hospital and on our way to the visa office. No problems there, other than finding a parking spot and Huan having to pay for the visa. They don’t accept cash and don’t seem at all keen on bank cards so Huan used her phone. She handed over ¥400.00 and I got passport back with a visa through to 22nd November next year. They also let Huan photograph the requirements for a ten year visa, (Green Card), we’ll get on to that sometime next year, probably after Chinese New Year.
Back to Haidian Dao we went and booked our hotel room for tonight, we will be able to drive back tomorrow. Lunch was at a small restaurant with the same name as last Friday’s, you can see the video here - https://youtu.be/1KIxPkEkbbg
Both of us needed a sleep so back to the hotel we went and sleep we did. I must have had over two hours, Huan a little less. Once everything was unpacked, the computer was set up, today’s videos uploaded we set off for dinner with Patrick, Flora, Padraig and Jake, passing the hospital on the way to collect my results. What were they like? Suffice to say, I am still a woman!
The restaurant chosen by Jake was 新疆烤串 ( Xīnjiāng kǎo chuàn), a nice walk for us to wake up a little. It was great to see friends again, albeit if it meant I didn’t take as much care with the video as perhaps I should have. You can check that here - https://youtu.be/UWDbNYE8d4U
We took a leisurely stroll back to the hotel, passing by one restaurant I just had to take this photo. After all, gruel is not a word we use much these days.
I then spent an inordinate amount of time trying to upload today’s videos to Youtube, with no success at all. I suspect being in a hotel wasn’t really helping me. For a brief respite I went out on the balcony and tried a couple of night time panoramas, they weren’t very good either!
Finally I gave up and went to sleep in my ‘separate bed’; Huan must have had a premonition about my test results!
December 15th Today all we had planned was shopping so the first stop was breakfast at the local street market. You can see that here - https://youtu.be/bfeS3QElCoQ And here is a photo of me trying to make a video!
From there we first went to Carrefour where I was pleased to see Christmas trees, decorations, hats and baubles on sale. For the first five minutes they even had Christmas music playing, I was in my element. We were soon to be disappointed and ended up buying nothing.
By now ‘Grocery’ was open and we headed off to replenish our butter, cheese, sandwich meat and a few other necessities. We were a little disappointed by the lack of Christmas fare but the sales staff told us we were too early this year. I was also disappointed not to find Rainers Polish Sausage sandwich meat. Once again I cleared the shelves of Raisin Bran.
Corner’s Deli was our next stop where we found signs of Christmas next door.
Corner’s Deli didn’t let us down in more ways than one, they also had Christmas on show.
Unfortunately there was no English cakes or puddings, no selection boxes, no crackers etc, but I did find a Turkish replacement for Christmas chocolates and I found some liqueur ones too. Not only that, but their selection of cheeses and sandwich meats has increased dramatically since we last visited so we topped up a bit more.
From there we drove to RT Supermarket, a last check on Christmas thingies and also to do our ‘shop’ for the rest of this week. The first thing we spotted was an electric car shop so we had to go and have a look.
They have only been open since the October holiday and in that time they have sold thirty cars, over ¥1,000,000.00, not bad eh. Huan had a ‘test sit’ in all three models and is quite taken with all of them. When we mentioned taking a driving test, “next year” was the answer which means it could be another three, five or even ten years!
Should you be interested in the prices of these cars over here in
Playtime over we carried on with our shopping and lo and behold, we found sprouts here! Not only were they available they were fresh, not frozen or canned. Happy bunnies that we were we then headed down to the food court for lunch with me doing a video on the way, or so I thought. Here I am with Huan looking at the video we are supposed to be filming!
After doing a complete circuit of the food court while Huan was ordering I realised I had to go round again, much to the bemusement of some of the catering staff. You can see the resulting video, without the intro, here - https://youtu.be/VbBWsRgwkHs
Driving home after that big lunch was not so easy but I managed it without dropping off. Huan did nod off now and again but I think she worries a lot about me falling asleep which keeps her awake! It didn’t help that today I told her that a full belly and driving into the sun was a recipe for disaster! Sometimes I can be a bad boy! Once we arrived back home my evening was taken up with sorting out this post and uploading all the videos to Youtube. Huan skipped her normal evening activities and had a more relaxed time instead. By bedtime we were both more than ready for our beauty sleep, so much so that we cancelled any long walks for tomorrow.
December 16th As foretold, no
long walks but we did have to go out and put some money into Huan’s Taobao
account. Next month we are going back to
We had to pass some electric moped shops on our way home so I kept asking Huan if she wanted ‘this one’ or ‘that one’ for Christmas. The answer was a definite NO! I couldn’t even get her interested in this little machine. Mind you, she is a little big for it.
Would you believe that we took no more photos today? If you said you didn’t you would be right. I did take one of something in the sky that wasn’t moving at all but our phone cameras are just not good enough to create enlargements from.
I also took one of a butterfly in the market, once again the phone didn’t do so well but at least you can see the result and know what it is.
More naps in the afternoon, I am definitely getting older!
December 17th NTR really, Huan went to school, I prepared tomorrow’s pork bone and blanched the sprouts for next weekend, end of story! (In other words I was bone idle.)
December 18th We almost had another bone
idle day but decided we should have our weekly walk around the market. This
week we even bought something! First of all we fancied some sweet corn for
lunch tomorrow. I had never seen multicoloured corn on the cob before we came
to
Next up could well be an illicit drug! Whenever I start eating this I always want more and have to really force myself to stop. It’s like peanut brittle but with seeds of some sort.
It was too early to think of the Christmas bird, if that is what we are going to have, but there was certainly plenty of choice. This one stall had three different varieties.
Huan had been telling me that according to “someone or other” this winter had a lot less people visiting from the mainland. I suspect whoever that ‘someone’ was didn’t do their homework. These were the views at nearly eleven o’clock by which time normally people are on their way home for lunch and the market is beginning to close up.
Strange noises were emanating from our small shopping mall as we were walking home so we popped in for a gander. There we found a group of young women, with an older male teacher, doing, or learning the ‘bamboo dance’. (The bamboo dance, also known as "jumping the firewood", is an ancient sacrificial ceremony. Generally, Li people would dress in ceremonial costumes, cook festive meals complete with home brewed rice wine and worship their ancestors at harvest time.) I couldn’t convince Huan to join in!
We did buy something else in the market which I forgot to take a photo of at the time but did it when we got home. You have no doubt heard of, and if you’re old like me maybe even eaten, ‘chicken in a basket’. Today Huan insisted we buy ‘chicken in a bag’ and ‘duck in a bag’! These delicacies are already cooked and I have to admit they are not too bad. Added to that, these were on special offer today so the cost was ¥25.00 for the two. No complaints from me, my midday cooking for this week just became very easy, one bag of bird, some salad and a baked potato on Tuesday, repeat again with the second bird and maybe different potato on Wednesday.
December 19th This morning I woke up to an empty bed, Huan had gone out early. She had to meet the bus at twenty past six, along with Yú, to go on a tourist trip. I wasn’t allowed to accompany them, “No foreigners allowed”! I think I got off lucky today, the weather was far from pleasant, very overcast with some wind and it was cold too, no a good day for being a tourist. Typhoon Rai is sneaking up on our East coast, it will be at its closest tomorrow evening although by then it will have weakened to a tropical storm or even just a tropical depression. The rain started this evening. I ended up staying in all day, wrapped up nice and warm.
The ladies, as on all tourist trips, had to ‘go to the shops’ first, where various sales people tried to get them to buy mattresses among other things. Needless to say Huan and Yú did not become customers! After lunch they moved on to Tunchang Perfume World.
Of course they went berserk with their phones and came home with one hundred and fifty four photos taken in an hour and a quarter which I then had to heavily edit and dispose of. I still ended up with fifty six photos, far too many for sharing. Here they are, individually, having a nice chat with my favourite amphibians.
Next we have Yú a little worried about going into battle.
Followed by Huan rallying the troops.
There was a lot of posing as they went on, Yú in the midst of the flowers.
And Huan checking out the porcelain skinned foreign lady!
That’s enough of the sexy models for today! They were home by sometime after six, a long day for them, and no dinner had been provided. Complaints were out of the question because the price for this tourist trip was a nice fat zero! The tourist companies make their money from the commission on any sales at the various outlets. Mind you, they are all going to get a lovely frozen chicken, they will be delivered tomorrow sometime.
Huan had enjoyed her day but I’m sure that with better weather she would have enjoyed it more. Her resident chef made sure that she had a nice meal when she got home, a bowl and a half of piping hot pork stew!
December 20th “Rainy days and Mondays always get me down.” It’s a good job that I’m not a member of The Carpenters and that neither of those two things get me down because of course it is Monday today and we woke up to rain this morning! “Don’t forget we have to go shopping this morning” said the boss, she’s busy on Monday afternoons. You’ve seen many photographs of me in my shorts and shirts because that is invariably what we wear when we go out. Well, here I am ready to go shopping, complete with long trousers, a long sleeved shirt, a woolly jumper and even socks, but you can’t see them.
And so we come to the end of another week, and another lazy day for me. I did remove a lot of ‘tags’ from Facebook, a tedious job to say the least. You can select many tags at one time but you can only delete one at a time. Some posts you have to visit the post in order to remove other comments that are preventing you removing the tags. Even worse is that some tags cannot be removed no matter how hard you try. Why do it then? I like to clean up my Facebook every now and then, posts get removed usually on a monthly basis but this is the first time I tried the tags.
The Christmas countdown is here, no more weekends before Christmas and after this post n more Mondays either. All I’m waiting for now is to find out if Huan will actually be available on the day or not. Hopefully she will be and we can have something that vaguely resembles a festive dinner. I’ll probably go for a large chicken this year.
If you haven’t finished yet you’d better get your Christmas shopping done, time is running out. Our next missive will be after Christmas so from the two of us, to all of you, whoever you are and wherever you may be, we wish you a -
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