National Day Decorations, Dancing Continues (On and Off)

October 4^th More shopping for me this morning, I needed some more fruit and vegetables to keep my leader healthy for her dance performances. My shoes were still not dry so no long walks were possible, I started off going over to the small island park. I was hoping that this crop of a photo would like a raging river in the jungle, it doesn’t.

Being alone I then played Poohsticks against myself, I won! Of course, I also lost…

Our one and only roundabout was all decked out for National Day, I have given you three views of it. The first view celebrates the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, the second welcomes you to celebrate China’s National Day and the third view celebrates the 73^rd anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

Stating with the decorative theme I took a few pictures of the bridge as I went back into town.

My last photo was only a half empty shopping trolley with a few fruits and vegetables in plastic bags so you couldn’t see them anyway. That went in the bin. All of today’s photos were taken with the phone ‘just in case’ the heavens opened again. They didn’t this morning, but they did in the afternoon and stopped me from any further walks. I even posted this on Facebook; “Pouring with rain, home alone, cooking finished, I wonder if I can get away with having a quick fag!” Someone, who shall not be named, would be very unhappy with me, don’t you agree?

October 5th Someone had a very lazy morning, me of course. I didn’t wake up until nine, missed my morning exercises and then skipped my walk too. However, after lunch was served to the weary dancer and she went back for her afternoon session I got myself out there. I thought I would try the bridge to somewhere, Huan thinks it should be finished by the end of the year. The view from the bridge was quite nice and stitched well.

To show Huan the progress I needed to take a lot of photos. Once she had perused them, all nice and large, then I shrunk them into collages for you.

Soon I came to the end of the road to somewhere, it will one day cross the road you see here, and go somewhere through the mountains in the second photo, we think.

We haven’t had any Chinglish for a while, here’s one for you, just a simple mistake this time.

And the penultimate one for today, they say that every cloud has a silver lining, this one did and I tried to get a lovely photo of it for you. I guess I don’t know what I’m doing with Percy yet.

Remember my shoes were still wet? They should be OK by tomorrow, if not then my new sandals are going to have to come out of the wardrobe in the spare bedroom. My present sandals have reached their natural end of life!

October 6^th Test 29 for me today, Huan had hers yesterday. When I arrived there, just before eight o’clock, this is what I found, no test personnel and a big queue.

By the time I got to the blue tents the queue behind me had grown even longer. However, I do have to say that the whole procedure is very efficient, they must have seen over a hundred people before me and I was finished by half past eight.

There was danger in the air today so my dry shoes came into play, my new sandals had to wait for another day. My route took me down by the river.

Humans were rare, I spotted one Hainan local chewing betel nut; at least I am assuming he was a local. Other than that there was just one snowbird fishing, four rods and no catch as I passed him. A real bird came into the frame but as usual, distance was problematic.

This route is one that Huan likes; she spends most of her time searching the trees for lizards that I miss. I did find one today, only one, here he is rotated so that you can see him better.

At the six kilometre mark I was outside Huan’s rehearsal hall, I could see signs of progress, a show was coming together. There was no time to chat of course so spotting some of my bovine buddies up the road I went there instead.

You can see that they are closely observing me in the photo above, well closely became closer. The security guard nearby was wondering what was going on. Two of the cows, the front two in this next photo, came for a chat and a head stroke, no Huan to snap the evidence though.

Around the corner I bumped into my little friend from 30^th September. It’s not so obvious from this photo but he was overjoyed to see me again.

It was a long walk today and almost at the end, between the nine and ten kilometre marks, I found a tiny little spider. He’s very colourful don’t you think?

With Huan being busy six hours a day I am of course duty chef every day. Huan said I should show you more of my attempts so here is today’s. This is a Philippine chicken adobo, slightly modified for us. I added a potato, a carrot, and some mushrooms, all diced up. I guess it looks odd because we tend to use all these strange colours of rice instead of bog standard white. However, it worked, the end result was tasty, the chief was pleased and so was I.

October 7^th Huan went off to dance and rain stopped play for me, at least in the morning it did. In the afternoon I was lazy and watched Ocean’s 36, it would have been 44 but I couldn’t find a way to watch Ocean’s 8. When Huan finished her afternoon session she came home early with good news, no rehearsals for another week. That seems wrong to me, and I have already bet her that she will get a message that she has to go back earlier. Anyway, I had promised her a cheapo restaurant meal tonight for a change so that’s what we did. Checking the weather I decided the new sandals could have their maiden walk tonight. (Check my left foot, that’s why I have to walk every day if possible; my foot will swell up otherwise.)

With me cooking this week Huan needed her fish fix, I stuck with chicken.

Huan certainly enjoyed her fish!

There was another photo of Huan perusing her phone with a frown on her face; she refuses to accept that she needs to wear glasses. I am under orders not to use that photo!

October 8^th Huan was due for another test today, I was due tomorrow but decided we should take this opportunity to get back in sync for a while. As it happened, we both received messages last night telling us that Wuzhishan was having another mandatory testing day today so would be back in sync anyway. This was our 30^th test.

Passing the river on our way to check out the Saturday market we thought we would show you what the submerged farm looks like now. Things are definitely growing there again, although we have no idea just how much of the crop was lost.

As is often the case, the director insisted I take some photos of birds in the trees. Now the only problem with that was the weather, Percy was left at home and we were carrying our umbrellas. Maybe another time you’ll be able to see more than black smudges.

Unfortunately there was no market again today. Huan thought it was because of the weather but as we didn’t see a single stallholder I think it was down to Covid regulations again. Someone from Wuzhishan was returned to a quarantine hotel this week after travelling in through Haikou. They had shared the plane with someone who tested positive.

No canine friends today, well there were one or two but Huan skipped taking any snaps of them. She did however take over twenty photos of this little cat.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen, we come to the finals of our knobbly knees competition!” Many of our readers will have no idea what I am talking about but those of a more mature age, from the UK will. There did use to be such competitions, you can find out more by following this link https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knobbly_knees_competition. You can even do a Google search for images if you want to see more. So why did I mention it here? Well, as we were almost home, I moved onto our little square to let a car pass and went head over heels, again! If Huan had been ready to take a video, and if she had been a bit less caring of me, you would have been able to have a real good laugh. Instead you can just snicker at my minor wounds.

October 9^th Guess where we had to go this morning? Yes, you’re right, we had another message last night telling us that Wuzhishan was carrying out its seventeenth round of mandatory testing and we all needed to go again today, and tomorrow! Not many people were there this morning, maybe the weather was the reason why.

The weather brightened up and although we had to use or brollies now and then for the most part we were fine. A few photos were taken; this one shows the National Day decorations on the road out towards Sanya.

Further down the road we spotted a very lethargic caterpillar. Checking the photo at home we wondered whether it has been a victim of wasp eggs which have now hatched and flown away, or whether it was a new victim and the eggs hadn’t grown yet.

At the home of the three legged dog, who is still missing by the way, we came across a few bovine buddies. As usual Huan went crazy with her phone, I had to edit quite a few out, but she did catch me talking to them.

People were not quite as scarce this morning although pre-pandemic levels have still not yet been reached. We found a couple of fisherman, proud to display their catch. They had been there since early morning so will have been fishing in the rain.

This route takes us along the river which is of course Huan’s favourite ‘spot the lizard’ walk. She succeeded today, here is the first one, against the light and against the tree to show you how difficult they can be to spot. Both of these photos had to edited in post to raise the lighting levels.

That was the only one, at least at that stage of our walk. As we were approaching home on the other side of the small island she managed to find another one, behind a tree. Into the bushes I went, ignoring the bites and scratches, like every good hero should. These four photos also had to edited in post but not as much as the previous two.

By now we knew that we would cover just over ten kilometres by the time we reached home, and looking at the sky that couldn’t be soon enough.

The distance fair took it out of us, we had to have an afternoon sleep, mine being much longer than Huan’s. Still, no cooking was needed today, cooked duck and salad was already prepared. Old age is definitely rushing up on me, I’ll have to start going to bed even earlier!

October 10^th As mentioned yesterday, we had another test today. No matter how much I argued Huan was insistent on recording the event. As a result here am I, not looking worried but looking just a little bit annoyed! You may also notice that I am #1 in my group of ten today.

Apart from our weekly shop we have nothing else to report. I suppose I could tell you that Huan bought a lot of fish today. She missed her fishy fix last week with me doing the cooking and as she is free until Saturday she will make up for it this week. I have nothing against fish by the way; I am just not a fan of bones!

Huan must have missed being in the kitchen, either that or she is bored. This afternoon she made bread and dumplings. I played at being ‘Onslow’ binge watching Bruce Willis. A good time was had by all and I ate too much.

On that note we will bid you a good day, or morning or afternoon or evening, whatever fits in with your time zone. I think it’s only writing this Blog that reminds me of what day of the week it is. When you are retired and there are no weekend indicators it is easy to forget what day it is. It almost reminds me of my younger days when I worked shifts, I never knew what day it was then either. Anyhow, we will see you next time, tatty bye!