February 15th Today was Lantern Festival, the last day of Spring Festival, not that you would know it here in Wuzhishan. Nothing special happened in the town at all. As for us, well we stayed in, partly because the weather was miserable and partly because we felt very tired. Our only photo was taken by Huan, a friend in the living room.
February 16th After going to bed far too late last night I still felt completely washed out this morning so no walkies. We did get out after lunch though, even though the skies were still very overcast. First off we had a kiss from a new friend.
Passing the Honda shop I popped in for a look, Huan didn’t follow me. Even though the rules don’t allow me to ride big bikes I still like to have a browse now and then.
Because of the weather we only planned a riverside walk, passing our three legged friend on the way. He is not looking so good these days, his eyes appear to have something growing over them, I suppose it could be old age. He also has no fur on his ears; the owner told us that he had scratched all the fur off himself. Ideally, he needs a visit to the vet.
The next two photos are to show you what the weather was like today. The forecast is for rain every day this week. It did try to rain now and then but we haven’t seen any yet.
Normally on this route we would expect to find a lizard, more than one on a lucky day. With the weather being as it was today, and with lizards being ectotherms, I didn’t expect to see any at all. Huan did find one, but neither of our photos of it were any good! Other than a couple of cows resting by the river the only life I found was Huan so you’ll have to make do with her photo!
We took a minor detour through a new apartment and hotel building, got slightly lost inside and had to come out via the air defence basement. It’s called a basement but we never went down at all, only up from the service road. I guess it is in the mound under the building though.
Other news of note today, our upstairs neighbour came knocking on our door. He is back but I’m not sure for how long, and he wanted to know about the damage caused to our apartment by water leaks from his. With a little luck we should have no more problems.
February 17th It seems like we are getting into a routine of not going out until the afternoon, due to overcast skies yet again. What happened to the ‘dry season’? After lunch exploration called so off we went to look for a path through the woods that we had seen last week, on the 11th. First an explanatory photo; some of you may have been wondering why we can’t climb up the mountains without looking for paths or tracks. This is why!
Looking for the path we had seen we missed it on our first pass, we had something different in our memories. However, on our way back the red banners rung a bell and we turned to see this view of a branch in the paths. The right hand fork is where we went last week and briefly this morning, the left hand fork, ominously leading upwards, is the one we were looking for.
It actually went upwards for quite a long way until we could eventually see Wuzhishan down below us on our left. We knew that keeping left was the right thing to do; going right would have had us lost in the rainforests, maybe forever!
Upwards we kept on going, it was beginning to feel never ending but at least the general direction was right. Finally we crested the top and began making our way down coming across what appeared to be an abandoned farm. There were no signs of any animal life at all but there was solar power and signs of recent human habitation. It’s not an easy place to get too so we have no idea if it is still used or not.
Looking in the larger of the two ‘buildings’ we could see more signs of habitation although perhaps not recent. I wonder if this place was used by rubber farmers, there were signs of the trees being used harvested for rubber but not for quite some time. Surprisingly though, the second building was remarkably clean and dry.
From the farm it was downhill all the way. I was explaining to Huan how if we had taken a right turn somewhere we would more than likely have been lost, forever, or at least a long time. Knowing that the town and any roads were somewhere on our left meant that, despite not knowing where we were, we were not lost.
These next photos are two that Huan took, I am looking down because although the going looks good, it wasn’t actually very easy at all. The carpet of leaves hide the branches and creepers that crawl along the ground and try to trip you up at every opportunity.
At one stage, holding on to a tree to help myself down, I felt something sticking to my hand. A brief glance led me to misidentifying it as a rather long skinny leech so Huan had the image of me leaping around trying to get it off. Luckily she was also feeling her way down so couldn’t get her camera out. In fact I hadn’t caught a leech, I had instead put my hand on this.
Of course Her Ladyship was more than happy to see my minor misfortune.
It seemed to take a long time to find our way down but I suppose we had climbed a long way up to start with. At times we got worried that the track would peter out but eventually we saw signs of life though the trees.
By this time we were also both very damp, yes the rain had caught us but at least the trees afforded us a little protection. When the forest relinquished its hold on us the rain had almost stopped and we were met with this view. The road on the left is the way home, and on the right, if you look carefully, you can see the B&B from last week too.
Before too long we were back into civilisation and a water stop.
Our last two photos of the day concern bugs. The first one was a near miss for me. I was about to rest my arm on the wall to take a photo looking over our little dam when Huan stopped me. I’m glad she did, I guess these guys may well have hurt me.
As for the last photo, we’re not sure what it is at all. Huan thought it was the egg sac of a praying mantis but Google says no. Google was no help finding any other answer either so we’ll ask you dear readers, what is it? It is very soft to the touch, almost felt like.
February 18th Let’s start with the bad
news shall we? Despite us not going out this morning. due to the weather,
that’s not the bad news. Because we stayed in Huan decided to phone the number
we had been given in
After lunch, and because of the weather, we scrapped any ideas of exploring and just went on a recce instead, looking for a birthday restaurant for Sunday. This one looked OK.
It looked as though they have plenty of choices in the menus, enough to please the guests, and they have private rooms as well. We booked and paid our deposit.
Me being me, I had to go and have a look at the kitchen while I was there, nothing untoward!
Walking back home, along the riverside and then through the centre of town, we came upon this. Entrance fee was ¥20.00 per person.
Needless to say the animals didn’t look anything like their pictures, in fact they looked as though they had been sedated. We will definitely not be paying to go and see the poor creatures suffer.
February 19th Yet again no exploring, partly due to the look of the weather but also because, as you probably know by now, it was Saturday, riverside market day. Not many photos were taken today, but Huan found something that you may not have seen before. How do you fancy some Chinese medicine, boiled honey and water with various additives.
Alternatively, you could always partake of some a little cupping followed by being beaten by what looks like a little rubber hand on the end of a stick.
All I found to interest me was a car, not an electric one, but it was a yellow one!
And finally, for today, a fire, or at least the aftermath of one. We were going to the Baijiahui market in town to buy lemons, our normal one doesn’t stock them but as we were walking towards the entrance there appeared to be some sort of haze in the air. It turns out that they had had an electrical fire that had knocked all their power out. We could still go shopping but they were waiting for someone to come and sort out the electricity. That meant a long wait for us for not a great deal of shopping so home we went.
February 20th Happy birthday to me, I am now completed my second twelve years of ‘metal’ and am entering my second twelve years of ‘water’. A complete cycle is sixty years and I finished that on my sixtieth birthday. If you’d like to learn more there’s plenty on the internet, but this is a good start - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_zodiac.
Of course
I had to have the usual Chinese longevity breakfast, noodles with an egg. I was
spoilt, I had a shrimp and spring onions too!
Huan decided I needed a new T-shirt and some alcohol laced chocolates. Here I am posing with them and a cute little tiger that already lived with us. PS Excuse my ‘morning’ hair!
Zhào dé and Yú sent round some more breakfast, boiled pork and lettuce, as well as this wonderful piece of art. We thought that Yú had painted it but it seems she asked her teacher to do it for her. It’s very nice, all we have to do now is frame it and hang it.
Because it was a special birthday, in my eyes anyway, we went out for lunch along with our neighbours, to the restaurant we found on Friday. One of the reasons we chose this place was that they would provide transport for the guests. We had to drive there early, along with two of the ladies, to sort out the menu. Forgetful Bob had to drive home again to fetch the salt cellar. Why would we need a salt cellar if we were going to a restaurant? For the tequila of course, I had promised them that would have to have ‘foreign’ alcohol before they could have Baijiu and the restaurant had no salt cellar. I have to say that they had no problems with the Baijiu at all, apart from perhaps wanting to skip the salt and the lemon. They are used to much stronger stuff. As is normal my glass kept getting topped up and there was far too much of this.
Despite my protestations before the party, a rather nice cake appeared, complete with seven candles. I’m not sure why they chose seven or the significance of the colours but it worked for me, starting my seventh tiger cycle.
Far too many photographs were taken but not by myself or Huan. We have received a lot by WeChat but nothing really worth sharing and no group photographs. However, there is a video, you can watch it here - https://youtu.be/8l8XEUO8bos
I was, as the video shows, a little ‘wobbly’ on the way home so an afternoon kip was an absolute necessity. I guess I have to wait another twelve months until the next one although as you get older, those months seem to get exponentially shorter!
February 21st The weather has decided to be English this week, highs of 11 or 12 and lows of 8 to 10. This was the view from the bedroom balcony this morning.
The rain is not obvious in the photo but it was drizzling, not too much when we set off to retrieve the car. Yes, I’m not a young rascal anymore, drinking and driving is no longer par for the course. I do sometimes wonder how I managed to reach seventy two years of age!
After our weekly shop we had to take a roundabout route to get home, we have never seen such traffic in Wuzhishan. It was nose to tail all along the main street with police guiding us as to which way we could turn. All we could think was that it must have been the first day back at school and lots of children needed collecting because of the rain.
The rest of my day was spent trying to sort out photos for us to keep from yesterday, not such an easy task, but with Huan’s help I got there in the end. On one of my balcony breaks, the kitchen balcony, around half past nine, I would not have been surprised to see snow!
So, from an old moth-eaten fleabag of a tiger, and his much younger sleeker tigress we bid you farewell for this week and look forward to seeing you again next week. Bieeeeeeeee!!
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