December 20th Information is still scarce at the moment, the garage owner told us that no health codes were required to enter the hospital. Our phones were showing that we were both good to go anyway after yesterday’s extra test. Arriving at the hospital we found that although scanning was no longer required, presentation of a health code was. We were allowed in, the old couple before us were not; they hadn’t had themselves tested. The hospital wasn’t too busy today so it didn’t take long before we were done. After paying the bill I could collect my two bags holding three months of drugs.
My bill wasn’t so bad today, no tests were needed so I only had to pay approximately sixty four pounds sterling, seems like a bargain to me.
We meandered through the town just to get a few kilometres in today. The weather had gone into chill mode again so we didn’t want to go too far but neither did we want to go out again later. As it happened we managed six kilometres, enough for a day. I found one of those strange people that we used to call tree huggers. I can’t be sure about the tree, it could be a Baobab, a Bottle Tree or any of a number of Latin named trees. See if you can do better. PS The model could not get her arms around the tree and the tree sounded a little hollow when you slapped it.
December 21st We dithered again this morning before deciding that we really needed to get out of the house. The weather looked like it could end up being a rainy day.
Our route to the countryside took us via the road to somewhere today. As well as nature we then had to contend with humans trying to rain on us.
Before long we were happy to be out again, the weather didn’t worsen and it became a good day for walking. The scenery, as always, helps!
As is her wont, Huan took far too many photos, mostly of me.
And what was I snapping? Well, for a change, I had managed to focus on an egret.
On our way home we took the ‘really rural route’ with no path other than that made by people’s footsteps. We both had long trousers on so we were safe from bugs, barbs and snakes.
At one stage we tried to divert ourselves through the woods where we thought it might have been easier going. We were wrong, as we often are, and had to backtrack. This little collage, although it may not seem obvious, is us both going back downhill again.
Once down we found the time to take photos of each other. Huan even found me a sunbeam!
In the village we found they were preparing for a celebration. I asked if it was for a wedding before remembering the last time we had asked when it was a funeral. It turned out that this preparation was for a New Year party, a western one and not the Chinese one. If you look closely you will see that every table has a little portable gas hob so I guess the fare will be hot pot. Maybe you can even use those hobs for fondue parties!
This village also leads us to my favourite cow house. Unfortunately there was no sign of my bovine buddies this morning; the gate was open and they had been let out to play.
We may not have seen a family of cows but we did see a family of snails. I wonder how they communicate between the house walls that separate them.
Next up I practiced being the leader of a banana republic. P.S. I didn’t rip the flower off a banana tree; I found it at the side of the road.
Having our longs on we decided to walk back along the overgrown footpath on the other side of the river. The ground was hard enough with any watery spots easy to avoid. Nearing Little Island we took a panorama of the dam to be, maybe a bridge to be too, who knows.
Today was a good day for birds, here’s another one we managed to sneak up on.
Finally, for our walk, another couple of doggie friends. Huan has never seen these two; she won’t go down the path to their house. I didn’t today I went up the hill and looked down on their back garden. Even though they were both chained up today they remembered me. I really like the big one, breed I forgot for now, and needless to say when he howled, I howled back!
So, I promised you that this week, having forgotten to photograph our pigeon dinners, I would share with you whatever culinary delights I was serving up for the mistress of the house. This was an easy version of ‘Cullen Skink”.
Our ingredients did not 100% follow the list. I used two long onions, similar to leeks but they’re not the same, added a whole garlic, used more potato which I sliced instead of cubing. The recipe says it serves four people, but I think that is as a soup starter and not a whole meal. The fish stock is something used in hot pot cooking but as a substitute it worked well. The cream was not double cream, it was whipping cream. Even the fish was not as suggested, we can’t buy that here. Instead we used some dried fish that Huan’s sister sends us, a little more salty. Oh, and I also added some tofu for Huan’s benefit. Here you can see everything I used.
And here is the finished dish, alongside some of Huan’s ‘yellow bread’ roughly cut up for us to share. The colour comes from the fish stock; if you follow the recipe it should be clearer.
If any of you try it let us know how it goes and if you enjoyed it. We did!
December 22nd Yesterday we had a message that told us mandatory testing is no longer required so we didn’t go for one this morning. The message included advice on mask wearing, looking after yourselves with good personal hygiene etc. What it didn’t include was any information telling us where a valid health code would be required in order to enter. Until we learn any different we’ll assume that hospitals are still on that list, something we shouldn’t have to worry about for another three months or so.
My teddy bear didn’t sleep so well last night so we stayed in this morning. By afternoon she was ready for a walk though, and lovely weather we had for it too.
We kept to the town and riverside this afternoon, no direct sun for Huan and no hills for either of us. This is a photo we took for a change in the ‘no house book’ complex, pretty isn’t it?
At the final bridge in town we saw that all the vegetation has now been removed. A lot more hoardings have also gone up but what is written on them is mostly slogans so we still have no idea what is going to happen here.
Going back downriver towards home I had to stop and chat to a friend. Bigfoot’s owner was also there, it seems that Blackface, whose Chinese name is 黑女Hēi nǚ (Black Woman) often plays with my friend here. He also told us that Bigfoot was back home in the village as he thought she was too big to be near too many people now.
Huan then tried her hardest to get a snap of me touching a cow; some of them had appeared along the river road. She failed, this was the nearest I got.
We then took a short cut between a couple of buildings just so that you could see parts of our hometown that you haven’t seen before.
Something is afoot in front of Baijiahui so we investigated. It appears to be a celebration of ordering food online although we are not sure about that. We are sure that this is a very big bone soup, probably extremely healthy and good for you.
And on a completely unrelated stand?
I am not keen on this activity in
the next picture as I’m sure many of you are not either. However, I can
remember similar things to this way back in my childhood days. What I can tell
you is that
Here’s an overall view for you.
Finally for today we bring you a different view of the river and ‘Little Island’, very peaceful.
December 23rd Checked my phone this morning, just to see what the health code would
be like. It doesn’t give hours any more, it just says 7 days, as it did in
We decided on a nice long walk today, past the Rendishan health complex and up to the local village. This is the one which we missed last time by doing a detour over the highway. Our first photo is something that we couldn’t be sure of until we got home, a dragon!
Arriving at this junction, we would usually go left but I told Huan there was now a bridge over the stream and that we could go right.
Something new had appeared, large covered growing areas, and when we got there we met a grumpy farmer. He was adamant that there was no bridge and we had to go back the way we came. That’s him in the distance. Note also the opening at the other side.
Walking along the ‘new road’ on the other side, this is what we found just a few metres past the opening I mentioned above. I knew I had seen a bridge!
Continuing through the village, and then coming back along the main road we could see, almost, where we looked down on the village when we took our little detour last time. We think it is the dip in the middle of the photo.
Huan was busy with her phone again, here’s Bob taking a photo of a cow’s backside?
Not really of course, there was a little baby there too.
Four legged animals of the canine kind next, a new friend, who will run out of the liquor store to see me, his Mum even takes her lead off. To Huan’s surprise, she wanted to say hello to her as well today. Maybe one day she will deign to have a dog…
Our last picture for today shows
a job that we will have to do soon. The other day, looking out of our small
window in the bedroom, I spotted something waving in the wind. In this photo
you can see that it is a tree growing at the edge of the roof. We don’t have
gutters like the
December 24th Saturday swept in again with market day, and having nothing better to do on Christmas Eve, that’s where we went. Almost there and I spotted meat being dried, not for sale though, this was on someone’s balcony. There were duck legs, belly pork and some kind of sausages. I say sausages, but the meat is not minced and as you can see, there’s a lot of fat.
Huan was at it again, she was even buying after snapping this time. The price was ¥15.00 per 100g but the market trader was trying his hardest to make everybody buy 500g. Most people refused, some argued for a cheaper price, we argued that if he was advertising at ¥15.00 per 100g that he should sell us 100g. He agreed. It is called 沙棘果, Shājí guǒ - ‘sea buckthorn fruit’ and like a lot of stuff we see in the market it is ‘supposed to be medicinally good for something or other’. Google tells me that there is no clinical proof of this whatsoever.
Some pareidolia for you again, this time we both agreed that this looked very much like a camel. Checking on the big screen at home we were not so sure, what do you think it looks like?
Walking back through the market we noticed that there were many empty spaces today, especially outside of the food street area.
Perhaps the market authorities have started asking for site rent and the traders don’t want to pay. Luckily, we didn’t need anything today, our dinner was going to be the usual salad but instead of cold meat there would be Greek cheese tossed in.
So that was my Christmas Eve, pretty boring eh? Mind you, I did have some sweeties and the odd drop of alcohol in my coffee.
December 25th It’s that time of the year again, Merry Christmas to all! As we more often than not do, we had boiled eggs and soldiers, Huan’s were toasted. You may notice the absence of butter, what can I say, she is a strange woman!
And as is the tradition, after eggs and coffee, it’s present opening time. Huan bought them all, hers as well as mine. PS I did remember a nice fat red envelope though.
Having failed with getting anything in time for Christmas dinner, we went out to the only place that does anything half foreign in Wuzhishan, the Coffee Prinz Restaurant. Last year we couldn’t get in so this year we went later, after seven, and found it nearly empty. It seems everyone is staying home to avoid getting sick.
Here we both are doing our bit for the wine tasting community.
It was then time to browse the menu.
Mind you, it says good things about Mozzarela cheese, we should start eating more.
OK, down to the nitty gritty, here is our Christmas dinner, not in the order of ordering but in the order of serving. First up is Huan’s fish, and her partial glass of wine. I had to finish it.
Next came my ‘prime’ steaks, looking quite unlike the menu.
Two vegetable dishes followed, we had already begun eating as you can see by Huan’s fish.
Eventually my starter came, almost pigs in blankets.
There was also another plate of vegetables which I forgot to take a photo of but you can see what’s left of them here.
Huan thought we could have a banana boat for desert, a bit like a banana split. She went off to order it and to sneakily pay the bill while I partook of her glass of wine. Banana boat was off the menu as they only had half a banana this evening! However, they did give us two free pots of ice cream and Huan ordered some tiramisu. Moving all the dirty dishes to one side I was able to take a photo of that for you too.
What was the verdict on our unusual Christmas dinner? Not bad at all! It seems many customers complain that the beef is too hard which had the waitress trying to change my mind. Explaining that steak should not be overcooked when frying maybe worked because mine came out really quite good. Huan’s fish was a little on the salty side, had she ordered rice too she probably would not have noticed it. The vegetables were not what we thought we ordered but they were fine. I would have to say the biggest let down was the starter. It was advertised as German sausage in ham, it looked like pigs in blankets, but it didn’t taste like either. My only other complaint would be that Irish coffee is no longer on the menu; that was solved by putting some Jamiesons in my coffee when I got home.
December 26th Happy St. Stephen’s Day to all! Most people of course recognise today not as St. Stephen’s Day but as Boxing Day so; Happy Boxing Day to all! There are various customs associated with Boxing Day, most of them charitable. However, one custom that I know from old, which in these days of 24 hour media and cell phones may or may not be still followed, is the Boxing Day walk. It used to be a very necessary event due to everyone eating far too much food, drinking far too much and collapsing on the family settees after the Christmas Day dinner. With us going out last night I felt in need of the customary walk today!
“You can’t take a picture of that” said Huan, “it’s moving and it won’t work”. Well, it was moving but it did work, here is a bee, I think.
White birds were seen again today, none very spectacular though so they are in a collage.
We walked down by the edge of the river today, I always like this view.
However, I was not impressed by these views! As they have now started on the sides with walkways it seems I may have been wrong in my previous assumptions. We tried asking some guys on bridge maintenance today, they told us it was just routing river cleaning. I hope so!
There’s a fair few collages today, I thought we should limit the number of photos a little. Our route was the ‘reverse lizard hunt’ route in which we were not doing so well at all. There were some compensations though, one who looked right at me. Oh for a bigger lens…
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush is what ‘they’ say and who am I to argue with ‘them’. Sorry to say, I could only manage two in the bush.
And then luck came knocking, a long tailed friend for Huan. I actually spotted this one first, an unusual occurrence as you probably know by now.
Huan found the remains of a packing crate at the side of the road, she wondered if she could pack me up and ship me off somewhere. The final destination was not that important!
Is there good news in my future? There could well be, it looks as though I may not have to visit Sanya every time I wish to do some banking. Let’s just hope it is a big enough branch and able to change money and other banking necessities. It certainly looks as if it will be.
It must be time for some more animals.
And then we ran into an ostrich, or should I say it almost ran into us.
Back to collages and dogs again, a friend returned from Sanya.
And here’s a new friend who may or may not have been trying to hump my arm. He wasn’t happy with my leg at all and kept making a beeline for my arm every time.
Although it was Monday today there was no shopping, we had been out for Christmas dinner last night of course, and we still had Greek cheese salad in the fridge for tonight. However, I sneakily took us past the indoor market where it is possible to buy the pork we like after four in the afternoon. Doesn’t it look absolutely scrumptious?
We bought only a small piece, just for one meal, and I have to say I loved every last morsel. Even Huan thought that the salad was much better with the addition of just a little pork. Now I know for the future, if using cheese add a little meat on the side!
That’s it, Christmas all over and
done with for another year. Maybe we’ll be rich by then and able to visit the
