Farming, Lazing and Summer’s On The Way

February 22^nd What miserable weather we are (still) having here, it’s just like the UK at the moment. No problems for me this morning though, Huan was off to hulusi class at Yefeng, I just stayed in and surfed.

We did go out after lunch though, planning a short around the river walk. Somehow we ended up out in the countryside again.

Lucky for us the weather didn’t get any worse and we stayed dry. Despite my photo appearing to say otherwise, we were also both very happy!

Two fishponds next, the first one still in use, we think.

The second one is most definitely not in use, even the little building is overgrown.

Huan missed another photo of me ‘trying to get something off me’; it turned out to be just a seed.

From planning a quick around the river stroll we ended up with an eight and a half kilometres through the countryside walk. No more photos for today though, let’s see what the rest of the week brings, if the weather allows.

February 23^rd Today’s words, as Huan calls my daily Blog post entries on the PC, were very easy. Due to the weather and our general laziness we just did what British OAPs do on days like this and stayed in. Well Huan did pop out to collect a Pinduoduo delivery and again after dinner for some hulusi playing.

On the green card front it would appear that Dalian will be no easier than here in Hainan. The information that we got was a little vague but from what we could work out we would need to own property in Dalian at which point they would give me a one or two year visa with a possibility of a longer one in the future. That appears to be a rather more expensive and not very efficient way to do it and it has no guarantees. I guess we will have to stick to my eleven month visas here in Hainan.

Huan has been having complaints about my birthday lunch with some people asking her why they weren’t invited. I gave her some choice answers but she is far too nice to use them. Chinese custom is that when you invite someone, you pay the bill. The neighbours I invited are the ones I know better than the rest and whose company I enjoy, for me that’s good enough.

February 24^th Three words, brrrrrrr, zzzzzzz and war. The first two will soon be over, I’m not so sure about the third. Hopefully the British government will steer clear of sticking their fingers in. If not, I foresee bad times ahead.

February 25^th There was a marked upturn in the weather today, at least three degrees higher than yesterday, so we decided a walk would be a good idea. We still waited until after lunch though. Across the bridge to our little island we went where I spotted some goats below us so popped down to take a quick snap. This one posed for us.

Down by the riverside we spotted at least seven people fishing, not with rods but with nets. I’m sure they must be taking far too many small ones out.

As always, pointy mountain was keeping an eye on us as we headed out of town.

Our plan didn’t include any fighting through the woods today but we did explore a possible new back road to get off the concrete.

Another black and white photo must mean someone else working, this gent was spraying the plants, in this case green beans.

We found a new fish pond, a very well looked after one at that, although it looks as if it hasn’t been stocked yet.

Huan had me taking photos of vegetables so that you can see what local farms are like. Here we have long green beans, red chilli peppers and leafy green cabbages (I think).

This was our view from our exploration vantage point, we were hoping to find a way to the pink building you can see centre left.

And these were the views we saw after failing to find a way across the little stream in the valley. We ended up back on the concrete!

More workers again, this time two students planting rice. Huan thought they were late so she asked them and they replied that they were in fact students from the local agricultural college and they were carrying out an experiment. They had forty eight varieties of rice and they were planting them at three different distances apart to determine which would grow better.

I knew another ‘off road’ route which we have taken before, from the other side, so I dragged Huan off in that direction. She asked me to take this next photo. If you look very carefully you can see many small birds. The photo is already cropped by over fifty percent; any further cropping would result in too much deterioration. See how many you can count!

Huan realised where we were when she saw this particular fish pond.

Once we passed that pond and its associated farm with ducks, chickens and pigs, we rediscovered our concrete way out. These birds were a little easier to photograph.

We had walked over nine kilometres when we reached a bus stop and a water stop. I convinced Huan that we didn’t need to walk fourteen kilometres today so we got the bus home.

February 26^th We were snowbird OAPs again today, Saturday being market day and all that. Knowing I had to carry eggs home, I put Huan in charge of photography using her phone. I thought we had found Bigfoot’s sister but this pretty pooch had a more pointed nose. She also had two pups that the owners were trying to sell and every time I tried to talk to the pups she got jealous and jumped up to talk to me. Unfortunately, Huan missed the pups.

Huan decided she needed to take pictures of hand tools today. This one is a car washer and I would hazard a guess that Huan wants to check its price on Taobao. Of course, if we bought one, we would have to carry buckets of water down in the lift!

Next up, the duty clicker decided we should see some soap. This is not just ordinary soap though, it is made from flowers and you buy it by weight.

Here’s the donkey with the eggs and some Xinjiang bread. We did add a cooked chicken for today’s stew when we got to the indoor market.

How about some more medicine, Chinese of course. You can see that it is made from horns and according to the sheet under the ‘wall mount’ it is a remedy for just about everything.

Huan didn’t do a bad job with the pictures today, I think I should put her in charge every Saturday. I do keep threatening to buy her a camera but she is very adamant that I must not do that. If Huan is adamant, I follow orders like a good boy!

February 27^th And just like that the weather improved dramatically with the temperature going up to 23ºC today. Huan decided we should go along the landfill route and try and find the way over the mountains to the Sanya road. On our last trip someone from the quarry village had told her that there was a way.

Have you ever wondered how intelligent cows are? We watched some coming towards us on our side of the road; the farmer was some way behind them. When they reached a gap in the central fence they did a U-turn and went down the other side at which point the farmer disappeared on his motorbike. How did they know they had to do a U-turn there? More interestingly, do you think they know us too?

At the turn off for the quarry village we had a look back at where we had come from. You can probably see that it was certainly a warm day today.

Here’s the boss, walking up the steep incline at the beginning of the hill, looking forward, as I was too, to the point where we would turn left and get off the steep hill.

And here’s the turn off, you can see the difference in the two gradients.

Before long we reached the ‘empty’ reservoir which we were supposed to go around to find the route over the mountain. This time I remembered to take a photo of the hole in the wall.

You may remember the way I had to scramble up last time. This time Huan was under orders not to take photos of the ‘old man’!

Today, down in the reservoir I spotted a man, so headed through this gate to have a chat with him and verify what we had previously been told. It’s not obvious unless you enlarge the picture but the gate is closed.

And here’s a lovely view of the inside wall.

We had a chat with the farmer in residence; you can just about see him in this photo, we think he lives here alone. Note that he is flying the Chinese flag over his little stronghold, I liked that.

Anyway, he told us that we had been misinformed and that there was no route through the mountains, at least not in this area, so we had to retrace our steps. Going back through the gate I reminded Huan about the countryside code. This is something we have in the UK, I suppose some other countries may have something similar. If you’re interested, here’s ours.

Next up could almost be a bit of history although I suspect the construction is not that old. It is a wattle and daub hut but with the addition of some concrete corners. Huan was surprised when I told her that the thermal insulation is probably better than our house. In this case, despite the recent rains, the inside was surprisingly dry.

Heading back I suggested to Huan that we go under the highway and check out if the track we could see on the other side would lead us home.

And just to prove that we were on the other side of the highway, this is looking back.

We found a farm on the way and the lady there told us that there was a new way through. It turned out to be a very pleasant walk.

Here’s my good lady, enjoying said walk.

Approaching home we passed our friendly cows again before almost stepping on a mantis. Huan managed to pick it up and it eventually ended up climbing onto my hat.

Having returned the same way we left, we stopped for water at Shifu’s store where his youngest son, (he has four), was a little bemused by my appearance. Playing with my hair he asked if I was male or female so I got him to touch the stubble to help with his decision. He then had a whale of a time playing with said stubble, at times trying to push it back in!

All that was left was to collect Huan’s Pinduoduo shopping from the local shop, then our Taobao shopping from the gate to our home and our day was done.

February 28^th Wow, the forecast was 27 ºC and it was a shopping day. At least I could wear shorts and sandals for a change. Shopping was enjoyable, easy to park the car and not a lot of snowbirds in the supermarket. Why that should be we don’t know because it is too early for the northwards migration to have started yet.

Unusually for our shopping day we went out for a little stroll after lunch, mostly because we needed to visit the second supermarket to stock up on mayonnaise. When I say stock up I really mean buy a spare jar to keep in the cupboard until the one in the fridge has run out. A screen shot from my phone confirms that today’s forecast was spot on!

We were also lucky enough to snap a couple of beautiful birds today. However, they were not in the bush and not in the hand, rather in two cages. Chinese bird owners often take their birds out with them and hang the cages on trees while they are doing something else, in this case they were playing music. There were more than two birds but after snapping through the bars of the cage these two are the best photos.

Arriving home we found that the maintenance team had been having a meeting at the gate so I took some photos of them too. As you can see they are mostly retirees too. Could I join them? Well my Chinese is not good enough yet, maybe never will be, and I don’t particularly fancy working night shifts again!

And so, we come to the end of our February, second month of 2022 and the end 一月 (Yī yuè) of the Chinese ‘January’. Google translates the Chinese as January, wrongly in my mind, but I could never get my students to understand my reasoning.

Wherever you may be during these worrying times, please take care of you and yours and stay safe. We’ll be back next week, bye for now. PS Please put the people of Ukraine in your prayers.