December 7th I just spent hours on Youtube trying to find a song by ‘Scaffold’, you probably know it, it’s called ‘2 days Monday’. Finding the lyrics was no problem, Tuesdays is soup, but I wanted to let Huan hear it to prove I wasn’t making it up. I failed!
Anyway, back to today, which started with escort duties for Huan and Yú and then a stroll around the river for me. In the words of another song I had ‘no particular place to go’, points for giving me the name of the artist, extra points for the release date and even more bonus points if you give me the gist of the song.
Not many photos were taken today but the ones I did take give you more idea of what our river looks like. It makes for a very nice walk, even on the sunniest of days.
Other than that just a couple of trees with problems, the first because it is full of holes. Huan ‘saw’ a woman first whereas I ‘saw’ a lizard. We were both able to see each others though, I wonder if you can see them. The second tree has a different problem, it is somewhere behind all that growth you can see. It is still surviving, maybe the extra ‘trunks’ are not a problem.
It was my turn to cook today, no photos for you, but I thought you might enjoy the recipe. It’s not easy with only one induction hob, you’ll have better results with a normal hob. First I cooked a large sweet potato, and then cut it in half ready for later. Next was a head of cauliflower, once done it was also cut in half for later. In the meantime I had sliced a chicken breast in two and marinated it with a little olive oil, a little soya sauce, a dash of black pepper and a tiny squirt of honey. Once I started frying the chicken the prepared plates went into the microwave, Huan’s first, and then mine. There was a worry that Huan would find it too sweet, luckily I must have judged the honey well, she loved it.
December 8th Escort duties again for me making sure Huan and Yú arrived safely at school, oh they do walk slowly! Having dropped them off at the OAP place I walked back along the main street where I bumped into a few more ladies dancing to a Happy New Year song. Their leader even got them to sing a chorus just for me but I was too slow to video it.
The next two photos are especially for #1 son, he loves his sausages! Of course he prefers the wurst variety but as they are not so easy to obtain here these will have to do. They are cheaper, and the ones I bought today (second picture) were garlic flavoured.
The weather was not so nice today, overcast and trying to rain, but I still got more images of the river for you. Soon you’ll know it as well as us natives.
My route took me past the ‘pigeons’ today, it was bath time for the first two.
For the second two, I just thought it was a nice photo.
How about another three views of the river, that should do us for today.
PS Good news received last night, a text from Immigration, my visa
is ready. Whilst I would love to drive straight up to
December 9th We thought that today was a lovely day for role playing, in other words we were lazy and fancied a day doing not a lot, in fact almost nothing. For me it was a 100% Onslow day, apart from the lack of beer that is, and for Huan it was mostly a Daisy day with a little bit of Hyacinth on the keyboard now and then. We both revelled in it!
December 10th Back to normal and escort duty for me, see the three little maids up to Yefeng. Before that though I took this photo, through the living room window, I liked the way that the sun was lighting up just a small part of the town.
After dropping the ladies off I headed down the main street in the direction of my three legged canine friend. On the way I passed many groups of people dancing and playing various musical instruments, some of the dancers had even finished and were on their way home. Further down I spotted this sign and wondered if I had shown it to you before, yes it’s a church. We actually have at least two although I don’t go to either. Apart from the obvious language difficulties the churches I know are protestant whereas I am of the other persuasion.
At the turning for the dog with three legs I had to take the next photo to show Huan when I got home. You may remember that they were doing something to this road in one of our recent posts. The army guys we spoke to said that the trees were being relocated. Well that something has now resulted in the relocation, or removal of all the trees! That used to be such a pleasant walk, surrounded by and shaded by lots of trees. Fingers crossed that it will be again one day.
So, was my three legged amigo in residence today? Yup!
He was happy enough to see me but not all that happy about the new kiosk just nearby. Every time a new customer arrived or an old one left he would have a bit of a bark before coming back to rest his head on my knees. It’s nice to be loved!
The next one is a result chosen by the artistic director, she noticed something that I hadn’t. It may not be very clear, but as well as our bovine buddies there is a flying friend in the photo too. Can you see it? It is on the grass slightly above the cows, just off centre horizontally.
This next one was definitely a test photo, or group of photos. I wanted to create a panorama but I wasn’t sure if the sun would be far too bright in the corner. As it happened, leaving the camera on auto, which I almost always do, worked quite well.
Next up is a small cofferdam being drained. I wonder what it’s for. Huan thought it might be for a bridge support so that people can cross here. I think it’s too close to the edge for that purpose. If you have any ideas, let us know, later on we’ll let you know if you were right or wrong.
Next up is another stitch-up job, complete with the sun, but it seems to have worked again.
That’s enough scenery for one day I think. Let’s have some culture next shall we? Does a mobile book market count as culture, for me it does. This happens every year, one year I even found some English books. The pricing is pretty good, you buy five books but only pay for the two most expensive ones. We’ll visit again tomorrow for the head librarian to check it out. All tastes and ages are well catered for, there are self help books, novels, non-fiction, classic Chinese stories, classic Foreign stories too, and of course children’s books galore. Some of the historical titles impressed me, shame they weren’t in English.
Being a Friday it was ‘dinner date’ day, not where I had planned. I wanted to do a ‘Chinese’ meal with assorted dishes but the commander had to get home quickly. When we got home I was given more hulusi work to do, convert another song and load it onto a few USB sticks. Only after all that was done and Huan had gone out for another practice could I get on with combining and uploading the videos. You can find the result here - https://youtu.be/1xWGZyU9s78
December 11th I’m beginning to like Saturdays, a nice easy start followed by a nice easy walk around the riverside market. With Huan to accompany me today we went to the new little flower market first, where I got her to pose for many portraits.
She also got me to pose for one or two, mostly not so good. I can’t blame Huan’s photography, I just find it difficult to pose naturally. What’s the answer, why pose unnaturally of course!
And a final pose from her Ladyship.
Onwards to the market where once again the artistic director, or is the tourism director, told me that you had to see growing bean sprouts for sale.
I thought you would prefer to see where some of the market traders spend their night before market day, one way of ensuring they get their pitch. Maybe we should buy one of these one day and do a little bit of camping ourselves. Nowadays though, I think I’d prefer glamping.
Our last photo from the market place is a gentleman selling honey, straight out of the honeycomb. We didn’t try any; there were too many other people in front of us, maybe another time.
Finally, for today,
December 12th Long walk day beckoned us this morning so we didn’t argue. Huan chose ‘the end of the river and into the countryside’. First of all we had to cross our island bridge, where we were welcomed by a new sign; our park now has a name.
Around the corner things became a little more obvious, well to Huan anyway. I needed some help so Huan translated for me. The top of the four boards reads法治文化, Fǎzhì wénhuà (Culture of the rule of law). From the left we then have first学法, xué fǎ (Learn the law), second尊法, zūnfǎ (Respect the law), third守法, shǒufǎ (Abide by the law) and fourth用法, yòngfǎ (Use the law). All good advice there, I wish a lot more people around the world would follow it.
Finally, any topical advice will be displayed here.
Before too long we were walking along the country lanes that we like so much, lots of shade and very little traffic, just the occasional motorbike or electric moped.
We’ve walked this way quite a few times now and we both always look forward to it. Today we spotted a path we hadn’t seen before, so we did our usual thing and changed our plans.
The path kept going, upwards and upwards…
We passed a few fish ponds, a few farm buildings with no people and then a nice lily pond.
Eventually we came to a building with signs of life and music coming from it.
The farmer, it seems wrong to call her a wife, was busy chopping wood so we had a chat to her. She works here in the day time and goes back down the mountain at night. The air was so clean I think I could have slept the night up there. Huan pointed out what she told me was an old style cooker, bowl on top, fire underneath. The lady explained that they made their baijiu there.
They had fish, in the small pond above, a pig and some chickens, three of them with eggs and probably incubating more. Huan managed to disturb two of them, lots of apologies given although the farm lady didn’t seem to upset. Here’s the pig and the third hen.
We bade the farm lady goodbye and decided to continue onwards and upwards. The track goes a long way! We turned round at this next shack, we will take a walk further in the future but water and sandwiches will be needed for that.
On the way up we had seen some electrical cables, no poles, just trees and bamboo to support them. The locals run the cables from their properties down in the village for I guess occasional use. This is how the cables terminated in this shack.
On our way down we spotted good old ‘pointy mountain’ through the trees. It’s so omnipresent on our walks but we know that we’ll never be able to walk up it.
We also saw the little town of ours away in the distance.
The next photo is one that I probably would never have caught before the advent of digital cameras. As it was, this was the seventieth exposure of a continuous shooting burst. Imagine how much that would have cost to develop!
Lots of photos were taken today, far too many in fact, so most of them will reside only on my PC, (and Huan’s and the backup and on my children’s at the end of the month). Coming back along tea street though I thought you might like to see some more chickens. These are outside a restaurant, poor birdies may even know that, but for the most part they seemed happy enough. What amuses me is how many there are hiding out in the bushes.
By the time we got home it was way past our lunch time and we had walked almost fourteen kilometres. That confirmed for us that sandwiches and drinks would be needed the next time!
December 13th Monday wasn’t shopping day today, we’re travelling up North tomorrow so the weekly shop will have to wait. Instead we had a sedentary stroll around the bap market where we tried hard not to make a pig’s ear of things. Do you think we failed?
There was too great a risk of repetition today so the camera stayed in its bag most of the time. I did get it out when Huan was busy at the ATM and took a fishpond photo. Why this pond? Because normally all the fish are gold, in this pond there were different colours.
Still waiting for Huan, I spotted this little bee, not dangerous at all, he had difficulty walking never mind flying. However, I wasn’t going to give him a hand to get to a safer place!
Our route home took us back across the island where we took this photo of a flower that we don’t see too often.
And that’s all folks! I had a restful day, up early tomorrow, Huan had her usual busy afternoon and evening with music, dancing and music. I hope you life is full of music, preferably some good old fashioned Christmas stuff, and that you are all feeling that Christmas spirit! I do miss the lead up to Christmas here, but I do have her ladyship and life is good. See you next time!
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