Tourists in Our Own Town, Guardian Lions, Huan-Li.

February 28^th Our day had been planned for us today and we were ‘called’ at around ten o’clock. I had thought we were just going to have more questions at home, but no we were off out for a shoot. Maybe the countryside? No, we were off to visit a Li cultural workshop just on the edge of town. We have been within fifty metres of this place many times, usually stopping for water on the way home, but we never knew that this was just up the hill.

The sign outside says “Mom handworks” in English so I was asking what the script was above the English. Chinese, just like English, has many different character styles, especially when it comes to handwriting. It turns out, that even though I couldn’t recognise it to start with, the first two characters are 妈妈 Māmā which of course means mother.

While waiting to start I was taking in the view from the balcony, beautiful.

Once we got started, Huan, with her alter ego of SWMBO and Artistic Director of Uncle Bob’s Emporium, began to click away like crazy. She used her phone, and when I wasn’t required to use the camera for posing, she stole that too. The outcome when we arrived home was over a hundred and fifty photographs to filter and edit. I managed to get it down to sixty. The place we were visiting had two floors, the ground floor was much like a shop although I’m not sure whether the various items were for sale or not.

We have shown you Li embroidery in the past, but that is not all that they make. We saw costume jewellery, silver jewellery, necklaces, pendants and bracelets, all hand made. Here, Huan and I were modelling pendants, rather well I thought.

And here is Huan again with our host and guide, Ms. Huang.

Once done downstairs we moved up the second floor, (first floor for Brits like me), where the ladies were weaving Li brocade. Ms. Huang teaches weaving so she was busy too.

Before too long, the powers that be decided that I should also ‘learn’ how to weave.

And just to make sure I really got into the feel of things, I had a costume change.

And then it was back to the grindstone again, Ms. Huang supervising closely, with the able assistance of SWMBO. How could I dare not to learn?

From there we didn’t go far, just to the front of the room so that Leo could interview me again. You can see the whole crew in this photo; I have just heard the director speak to me in English so I am responding to her.

When we had finished they asked if I could ‘walk in the country’ as I often do when Huan is at her classes. Because of where we were, and time constraints, I took them to where I knew they could park the car and then I had a little walk.

From there we went off for some lunch, at our usual fast food buffet restaurant, the one we use when we can’t be bothered to cook. The TV crew treated us, very nice of them I thought. Before we went there I thought that they, and we, would take a few snaps. I forgot completely! I didn’t see them take any but if they did they should appear on the finished video.

Following lunch, we went back home where the ‘loving husband’ watched his wife playing the keyboard, and then watched her playing her hulusi on the balcony with the mountains as a backdrop. She did very well, especially as she hadn’t been expecting to play.

Finally, I watched Huan playing the keyboard again while Leo wrapped up with his closing speech. All in all we had another very busy day, but also a very enjoyable day too. Once we have the finished video, we will bore you with it too!

March 1st Happy St. David’s Day! For those of you who don’t know, Saint David is the patron saint of Wales; which is where I spent my early childhood. In Welsh you can say “Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus”. (You may need Google to help with your pronunciation.)

Apart from that, we had a very lazy day, or at least I did. Huan did make dumplings in the morning and then went out for hulusi practice after dinner. All I did was upload February’s photos for my children to see.

March 2^nd “The best laid plans of mice and men” took effect again today. My plan was to cook dinner in the morning, walk around Feicui Park in the afternoon and then relax in the evening. In other words a fairly normal day was on the cards. However, sometime during the morning when I was busy in the kitchen Huan disappeared. I thought she had just gone to the throne room, only when I finished cooking did I find that she had gone back to bed. After a long absence she seemed to have been attacked by menopausal problems again. All I could do was be on hand and provide warm water as required. She had recovered by evening time, well enough for her hulusi practice, but not well enough for dinner. No worries, we will eat the dinner tomorrow evening, I just had an egg, lettuce and spam sandwich today.

March 3^rd Today is Friday, which these days means that in the morning, Huan goes out for hulusi, and I stay home and watch Taskmaster on YouTube. The host, Greg Davies, even taught me a new word today, ‘tasklete’. Good one TM team!

I took the opportunity to check on my ‘proof of life progress’, how far has the package travelled. You may remember that it was not cheap! Well we posted it on 23^rd February, it finally left China on 1^st March. Hopefully it won’t take as long to travel through the UK.

I had planned a walk up the mountain after lunch but Huan decided she needed to make some more dumplings and that she was going to walk with me. Consequently we were later setting off than I had hoped so the plan was changed. The town and river walk would have to do. First of all, I thought you might like to see the progress in front of our building. We may grumble now and then, but a job like this would take months in the UK.

Our route took us down a little road where Huan was convinced that the little village temple had long since disappeared. Seeing is believing for the Prime Minister, she saw this too!

There is a dirty pond on this route which today, we decided to walk the other side of. I spotted a large fish, although it had gone by the time Huan joined me. The small farm was completely bereft of pigs or any other signs of life. All we could see was each other.

We didn’t see a great deal today so here are a couple of flower photos for you.

Huan’s collage of a tree chopping lady is next.

For a change we walked right along the riverside this afternoon, looking for strange wee beasties. We didn’t find any at all.

We didn’t go back up top where we usually do and carried on along the path.

Huan suggested that for a change we should try going under the bridge. Who am I to refuse a suggestion? She did go first and then told me it was easy.

We found some wee beasties! We found an easy to see butterfly and not so easy to see birds. You can see them if you click and enlarge the picture.

Finally, we even found a grasshopper, or more probably a bush cricket, where our friendly praying mantis usually sits.

All in all, after two days of no walking, I think we did all right. Despite not looking for a long one, we managed to get nine and a half kilometres in, enough for today.

March 4^th Market day, our first job was to buy some spinach for Huan to make a quiche. That meant a visit to Baijiahui before anything else. On the way we passed the pet shop where the birds refused to hop onto my fingers today. Mind you, they also refused to hop onto the fingers of the pet shop owner too!

Spinach in hand, we headed off to the Saturday market. It was still quite busy this week, but not so much as to frustrate our walking where we wanted to. How many of you have a first aid kit in your car, or a medicine box in the house? Maybe you should try one of these.

Staying on the subject of medicine, Huan took this photo. Supposedly these ‘flowers’ will help if you have belly pain. In this case, Google is of no help whatsoever.

What are you looking at? At least that’s the facial expression.

Almost every day I see photographs of towns and cities in the UK with little, if any, ‘green’ on show. I know there are towns with greenery; perhaps they just don’t make the news. For us, greenery surrounds us, nearly everywhere we walk.

Our last one for today is someone that had no inhibitions about hopping on to my hand at all. In fact she, or he, spent most of the time trying to eat me!

March 5th The boss was in charge of walks today and she decided we should do the Atuo route. You may remember Atuo, it’s the park with signposts everywhere but it doesn’t seem to really exist. We think that they mean the whole valley, from Wuzhishan to Maoyang. Anyway, the boss was happy, not far up the Haikou road she found a lizard.

We were headed to the first village turn off, Zahao Cun, where the first thing we saw was that the road is much better than it used to be.

This is also the road where Huan was hoping to see a squirrel, based on the fact that we once saw one here in the past. She didn’t see one today but on the plus side we did see some wonderful scenery, and we stitched it together for you.

When we last walked this way, this road had been completed and at that time this was where we turned around and headed for home.

Today we asked a farm worker if we could continue, she told us that we could, but that we would eventually have to turn round and come back. Ever the adventurers, onward we went, passing another worker in the fields and a farm building on the way. For artistic variation they are shown here sans colour for your perusal and enjoyment.

The farm worker was right, the road finished, but we saw that the irrigation ditch didn’t and so we carried on. Around the corner we both thought the scenery was beautiful.

Just after that we met an old couple coming the other way who told us that there was a stream up ahead, feeding the irrigation channels, a farm, and a way to go back on a different route. Even though we didn’t think that they had come down that way, we went onwards and upwards! We found the stream first.

And the farm second.

And then we found the way up, confirming my belief that the old couple had not come down that way. In fact Huan suggested we turn round, she didn’t know where were going. I had gathered enough information from their conversation and body language to be fairly certain I knew so I suggested that we continue upwards.

As we left the tiny track behind and burst out on to a larger one, big enough for motorbikes and small farm vehicles, Huan realised where we were. Seeing this next spot she briefly considered walking across the bridge to pose for a photograph. We had done so in the past, but a glance at the small bridge today suggests that it would not take much weight to knock it down! I was able to talk her out of being such a daredevil!

Not long after that, at another deserted farm, Huan found a hammock. As you can see, she needs a lot more practice at fitting her top half in correctly.

Meanwhile I was having a prowl around to see what I could find. Huan saw that I had found something, was happy about it and was taking a picture of it.

What had I seen? Well, I had seen the lesser spotted great big British Wally of course!

As a reward for my find, the Minister of Justice jailed me! Just look at those sad eyes…

Soon, as we both now knew, we were back on the main road and returning towards Wuzhishan and home. Maybe it is because of reduced traffic on this road, no more buses or trucks (because of the highway), we saw quite a few more snowbirds today, Most of them go out earlier than we do and so were returning when we were going out. We’re not sure about this pair, whether they were on the way out or on the way home. All I can say is that they were fit as fiddles.

Test cars still use the road; here are a couple of Hong Qi SUVs along with one of the two buses that passed us before I could get my camera out. This photo was shot at quite a distance, sometimes the drivers can get a little stroppy if they see you taking photos.

Next up were the狮子, two ornamental Chinese guardian lions, one male and one female, can you tell which is which in this first collage?

This collage may make it easier for you! (If you still can't tell, click and enlarge.)

The plaintive cry I often hear is “white birds Bobby, white birds”. Today I heard it without the plural and took far too may photographs of a solitary bird that was really too far away!

Today’s walk was a long one but ever the gluttons for punishment we wanted to reach 12k. To do that we walked around the little island, and passed under the bridge on the way out.

“There’s another birdie up there” said Huan, “Yes dear” said Bob.

March 6^th Today being a Monday I wasn’t expecting to add any more pictures to this little missive, not unless something odd caught our eye whilst shopping. However, the good lady had received a message that they would be having another rehearsal this afternoon. I took a couple of photos of her in costume before she left.

As Huan was all dressed up, I offered her and one of the other performers a lift to Yefeng. You can probably see from the photo that walking a long way in that skirt would not be so easy. Having dropped them off I went for a drive in the country, promising I would be back before the rehearsal started proper. The sun was shining, all was right with the world and I was wishing I still had one of my little two-seater sports cars from the seventies in Hong Kong. Coming back, I had a few minutes to spare so took a few pictures of the grounds in Yefeng.

I was not very impressed with the rehearsal, not the fault of the ladies mind you. There were four acts rehearsing today and whenever one of them was performing, all you could hear was the sound of everybody else, obviously not listening. This was like a dress rehearsal so none of the performers should have even been in the room, never mind nattering amongst themselves, apart from those ‘on stage’ of course. Afterwards Huan thought I was nit-picking until I reminded her of what the hall in Abu Dhabi was like during rehearsals, and then she understood. Anyway, here are the hulusi ladies; no doubt more photos will be forthcoming this week.

So we come to the end of another week, not such a bad one. We enjoyed ourselves very much; hopefully you will enjoy reading our snippets too. We’ll have some more for you next week, until then we hope spring is bursting out all over, wherever you are. (Today is Jingzhe, or the Awakening of Insects, the 3rd solar term in the Chinese lunar calendar. From this day on, temperature warms up, flowers bloom, and hibernating animals wake up from slumber). Sounds good to me, I want to be warm again! Tatty bye, see you soon!